Poem by Adham Smart

Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Adham Smart (pictured unseasonably with snowman) this Halloween Friday (the poem does have a pumpkin in it, so some seasonal tie-in occurs). Smart is, according to his own bio note, "an Anglo-Egyptian boy in his first year of Sixthform" who lives in Southeast London. He first became known as a young poet of much promise after winning the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2006.

Smart has been published in a handful of places, including a poem in The Rialto, short stories for The Cadaverine and a digital chapbook on the Mimesis website, and was recently selected for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2008. He also helps to run the online youth poetry magazine Pomegranate. Get Smart, as it were - he's one to watch.

Pumpkin Heart Boy

A lovester after his own fashion, he took her
hand and held it in his. Oh, was he a wonder-
kid, his hair in tufts and sweeping waves
like dolphins surfacing in a line. Golden-eyed,
he licked her lips with hand on thigh,
and stroked that pillar of bone and skin,
told her that she was more than meat to him.
His pumpkin heart, more than a muscle,
drummed and drummed and drummed and
drummed the boy and girl into the heat
of being loved and not being meat.
A sweetened lifting of his senses
drove to dreams of burning clouds. It was
the longest time they’d felt the breath
of this pumpkin-life, that never-death.

poem by Adham Smart

Theatre on the Air

70 years ago today, America's greatest 20th century media-genius, Orson Welles, boy prankster, terrified parts of New Jersey, and beyond, with The Mercury Theatre on the Air's infamous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Last night, a very different genius of American reinvention, and media expression, Barack Obama, presented the glossiest, and most expensive, political broadcast in American history.

Much has changed in 70 years, in terms of credulity among the masses - and much remains the same. One thing does seem strikingly similar: America's dependence on the media, for information, and entertainment.

The dangers in the time of Orson are the same as in the time of Obama - when the twain meet too closely (as in some slurs that repeat and multiply over the blogosphere). For the world now, Eyewear hopes Mr. Obama can win next week; but fears, as much as any Martian invasion, the menace of Alaska's own monster, so close to the lip of power.

BBC Heaven

The BBC has finally acted decisively. This is a major cultural moment for England - a turn to seriousness. For years, comedy, and comedians, have ruled the celebrity roost in the UK, often converting everything they touched to dross - even making British poetry safe for lightweight laddishness. Before the credit crunch, such a culling of major BBC talent would have been unthinkable - but it seems the times demand rigorous accounting - for economic, as well as moral, failings. Ironically, the attack was on a great comedian (and his family). Brand will bounce back, and likely in film, but Ross might be severely damaged. He's been a family-friendly brand for years, and has now crossed into the blue.

Brand Names

Two of Britain's highest-paid BBC bad boys are now facing unprecedented political pressure (as is the BBC) today, after Gordon Brown waded in. What makes the occasion more bizarre is that a comedian from Fawlty Towers, and his erotic-dancer granddaughter are also involved. Not just a tempest in a teapot, then, but more a cabaret in a cuppa. But mostly, bad words from the BBC at a time when funding needs to be cut, somewhere. Silly, rude, and, finally, unprofessional.

Killer Kowalski Has Died

Sad news. Arguably Canada's greatest wrestler (other than Mad Dog Vachon) has died, The Guardian reports in this moving obituary.

Governor General's Award Nominations for Poetry

The GG's are still Canada's biggest literary awards. Announced on October 21, these are the poetry finalists for this year: Weyman Chan's Noise from the Laundry; A.F. Moritz's The Sentinel; Sachiko Murakami's The Invisibility Exhibit; Jacob Scheier's More to Keep Us Warm and Ruth Roach Pierson's Aide-Memoire. Eyewear ran a review of the Moritz earlier this year. It's a very good book, and likely the favourite. One comment - knowing, as I do, how rich and roiling the CanPoetry scene is currently, I am a little surprised at not seeing more of the younger poets now rising in the ranks, including Boyd, or Mooney.

Poem by Morgan Harlow

Eyewear is very glad to welcome the American poet Morgan Harlow this Friday.

Harlow was raised in Madison, Wisconsin and studied English literature, journalism and film at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She completed the MFA at George Mason University in 1999.

A Pushcart nominee, Harlow's poems and fiction can be found in Washington Square Review, Descant, the Tusculum Review, Nthposition, and elsewhere. Her essay on Ray Bradbury's work has been reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism.

Harlow has worked as an editor in the medical and social sciences and taught as an adjunct. She lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband and their sons.

A Partial Lexicon: "Fresh" and Related

Of all words contributed to English
by Felines, perhaps the one which
retains most its original flavor is the adjective
"fresh," demanding a squinching of the eyes
and nose for articulation in the Cattish.

The word's true usage occurs in two instances,
"fresh water," and "fresh kill;" the nouns,
of Old English and Old High German, arguably
reach a higher level of meaning with augmentation
from the Cattish than could ever have been
accomplished without. Similar expressions exist
in the Old Norse, Slavic and Portuguese, however,
these have origin in the Ermine and so are not to be
discussed here.

Other words derived from Cattish are "lime-twig,"
most recently a verb [to ensnare small birds, as in
(loosely translated) 'a lime-twigging we will go'] and
"rrrowl," not occurring in most dictionaries, being
too animal and the triple r beginning not formally
recognized in English. However, rrrowl has been
used optimally by Roy Orbison in "Pretty Woman,"
and by Bob Hope in his acting with fair accuracy.

"Meow," a word commonly thought to be of Cattish
origins, is actually of the Meerkat. It is all too easy
to confuse the two as both languages allow
impulsive, even reckless grammar and have no
alphabet or conjugating schemes that we know of.

poem by Morgan Harlow