Poetry At UEA Tonight!

Alumni Event
Thursday November 15th 2007
The Drama Studio, UEA, 7pm
Free Admission

Leading independent poetry magazine The Wolf and UEA’s Creative Writing programme team up for an exciting event featuring four returning poets who have been published as UEA alumni in The Wolf.

Featuring

Fiona Curran
Sandeep Parmar
Will Stone
& Todd Swift


Hosted by UEA’s Creative Writing Professor George Szirtes and The Wolf Editor James Byrne

To reserve tickets please email
James Byrne thewolfpoetry@hotmail.com
or Alison Rickett: A.Rickett@uea.ac.uk

All writers are graduates of UEA’s Creative Writing MA Programme, with the exception of
Will Stone who studied an MA in Literary Translation

This event is part of a tour to celebrate 5 years of The Wolf. For a full itinerary
or to find out more about the magazine please visit the website http://www.wolfmagazine.co.uk/

Delbert Mann Has Died

Delbert Mann, one of the great directors from The Golden Age of Television, has died. Mann's finest moment was in winning a Best Director Oscar for Marty, the famous small film about two plain people who find each other in the 50s. It was always one of my father's favourite films - it made a great impression on him. As it did on many who saw it.

Ernest Borgnine's unexpected face, and everyman's physique (and no woman's fantasy), revealed that love, and yearning, did not simply reside in the matinee idols, but in the banal crowd, too. Borgnine, who also won the Oscar for playing the eponymous protagonist, went on to make such classics as The Poseidon Adventure, where his earthy cop's mad love for his wife Linda ends tragically. What in some hands would have been a maudlin role was transformed by the homely actor into a galvanized character study of a man on the edge - his final scream of loss, calling out her name, is in its way, as effective as Brando's Stella!

Marvellous Work and A Wonder

Marvel has placed much of its extraordinary comic book back catalogue online. Can't wait to take a closer look and report back.

Lest We Forget

In The Trenches (1916)

I snatched two poppies
From the parapet’s ledge,
Two bright red poppies
That winked on the ledge.
Behind my ear
I stuck one through,
One blood red poppy
I gave to you.

The sandbags narrowed
And screwed out our jest,
And tore the poppy
You had on your breast ...
Down - a shell - O! Christ,
I am choked ... safe ... dust blind, I
See trench floor poppies
Strewn. Smashed you lie.

poem by Isaac Rosenberg

Modern, Not Ms., Baroque

Edward Burra was one of the great 30s British modernist painters - but has been mainly airbrushed out of the official record. It is good to see Jane Stevenson setting the record straight - perhaps an ironic way of wording it, since Burra was an eccentric, queer figure. Stevenson has identified a different kind of modernist style, "modern baroque", and describes it in the following way: "inclusive, protean, humorous, unafraid of bad taste, entranced by games with perspective; a modernism that finds Harlem dudes in camel overcoats more interesting than all the log piles in the world."

My study of late-modernism in British poetry of the 30s and 40s suggests that such a baroque style also prevailed there, at times, and has been similarly marginalised. It is time to foreground such a style, especially when critics of "good taste" so often manage to ignore or downgrade some of the most thrilling, enjoyable, and provocative works. Art can also be flamboyant without being flim-flam.

In the news

In a somewhat Ouroboros-like way, Eyewear is glad to note that one its recent posts, on the 2007 TS Eliot Poetry Prize shortlist, has been published in today's Guardian Review section, in its regular roundup of literary blogs. As The Guardian noted, earlier this week, blogging, and the use of social networking, is becoming an increasingly widespread, and respectable, phenomenon in Britain - much like writing letters used to be. Meanwhile, as co-founder of the original Poetry group on Facebook, I'm pleased to mention that the first winners of the first Poetry Facebook contest will be announced later this month.

Poem by Guillermo Castro

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Guillermo Castro (pictured) this Friday. I first met him in New York, about ten years ago, on, I think, February 14. Walking back from a poetry reading together with a few other poets, we saw the Empire State Building, lit up with a vast pink heart. While that was memorable, so too was the man himself - and his poetry. Over the years, I have followed his career, as best I could, and, whenever possible, included him in magazines and anthologies that I have edited. I like his work very much.

Castro is a poet and translator. His work appears in Nthposition, EOAGH, The Recluse, Bloom, Barrow St, Lapetitezine, Frigatezine, Margin, among others, and the anthologies Full Green Hour, Saints of Hysteria, This New Breed, Short Fuse, Poetry Nation, and Two Hearts’ Desire.

His prose is represented in the anthology Latin Lovers. His translations of Argentine poet Olga Orozco, in collaboration with Ron Drummond, are featured in Guernica, Terra Incognita, Visions, and the U.S. Latino Review. He’s also collaborated in a musical with composer Doug Geers, How I Learned To Draw A Sheep, providing book and lyrics. Castro is the author of a chapbook, Toy Storm. He lives in New York City and is a native of Argentina.

Aftermath

I know of
the solitude he savors
in cafés,
reading a book.

Here I too
do the same,
seeking solace
in the verse
of others.

It’s my way
to keep him
company
as I blow
steam off
this cup of coffee,

a dispersed
kiss
to a ghost
amid strangers.

poem by Guillermo Castro
This poem first appeared in La Petite Zine.