Irish Obama

There's something immensely moving about the way the world is being lifted by the Irish Spring that is Obama's election victory. And now, a hit song about Obama being Irish.

TS Eliot Shortlist

Just saw this now - must have been out of the loop to have missed this - actually, just busy with the American elections, teaching, and my own life (poetry does slip sideways and away some times - probably good to let the hot air out of the tires from time to time). Good to see Jen Hadfield on the list - she stayed with my parents for a few days in St. Lambert as part of this epic Canadian journey poem; and Romer. Imlah should win, I'm sure. Maura Dooley has a good shot at this, too. Notably absent are any of the good Salt collections from this year - including those by Katy Evans-Bush. Also, where's the Simmonds? Ah well, at least they got Doty on it. Good luck to them.

In Search of the British Obama

The man who should know whether there could be a British Obama says bias in the UK would hold such a surge of joyous meritocracy back. If so, that's a shame. But not entirely surprising. Those, such as myself, who live here in Britain, but observe it from an outsider position, can clearly detect the curvature of class beneath the skin - bluntly, some more force will be required to even this place out, to allow a level playing field. I think the key may well be education. Clearly, access to good schooling is paramount. But so too must ideas change. Americans "dream" and dream big - they will themselves to transform - and while it is sometimes terrifying to others (when the dreams are nightmares of domination) there is no denying the possibility of anything happening in the US of A - even very good things. That nation is a green beacon of excellence.

The UK, too, is a democracy, with much genius, yet it is timorous when it comes to change (its reference is resistance to revolution, not acceptance of it) - and this can be seen in an enduring provincialism of spirit, at its worse typified by anti-European, anti-American, and anti-international, thinking. An Obama style leader can come from the UK, but it will take a shift in thinking, as well as social structures (often of course the same thing). However, one final barrier remains: religion. President-elect Obama is a Christian convert. 54% of Roman Catholics who voted voted for him. He also did quite well with mainstream Protestants. Obama snatched the "God Vote" from McCain and the Republicans.

Note that the amazing joy of the American people after electing this great man was partly the joy of a religious nation, reaching out to the horizon of belief. Britain is a far more secular, even militantly atheist, society - and, famously, proud of its self-protecting "irony" (versus American sincerity). It is hard to have both a faith-based idealism such as lifted Obama up, and a cynical, secular elecorate, such as too often keeps Britain's political climate down. No God: No Obama.

Duncan's Underground

Andrew Duncan's Origins of the Underground: I've been reading it on the train from Manchester to London today. The book is must-have for anyone interested in British poetry from the 30s to the present, and counting. It's as if Lester Bangs, or Greil Marcus, those great rock and roll / punk critics, had been turned loose to consider, in freewheeling yet always informed, and brilliant fashion, poets like Terence Tiller, F.T. Prince, George Barker, and Lynette Roberts - yup, that's right, it's a completely personal, eccentric, yet researched foray into my favourite British period - the Forties.

This isn't a review or a full-blown commentary on the book - wait for my book on the 40s for that - but an appreciation of a book that's never less than controversial, impassioned, and often deeply useful, even when annoying. One of the things that Duncan really achieves is to push along the tired us/ them, avant-garde/ mainstream thing - and observe that the real issue should be poets driven by ideas, or intelligence, and those not. Duncan writes with such an engaged conviction that poetry is not obsolete, he breathes new life into it.

Poem by David Prater

David Prater (pictured) is the poetry editor of Cordite (see links) and a significant Australian poet, currently based in the Netherlands. He'll be reading for the December 2 Oxfam fundraiser.

Eyewear is happy to feature this poem, at this time.


Insurgency

drained without shame under
lights in a clearing skin so
oh provoke me white drifters
slide a canvas wax wing over
the unforgiving cold conduit
called rations pipeline by a
soft sand footprint threaten
strikes upon infrastructures
western worlds never noticed
what smouldered in the lusty
icons our yesteryears alpine
lakes polluted by hot sperm
swimmers upstream & cryptic
destinations hand sheathing
beehive hairdos bleach peel
coming into cans & over fat
sizzling in pans on bracken
eucalyptus highs in moments
of fire right inside a zone
unaware of their binoculars
trained upon my abs a laser
tracing the sky or my pants
shifted nervously from feet
to a crotch reassured by wet
stains i'll stand above you
shading your upturned mouth
then we'll switch a shallow
dummy bid for freedom trick
the snipers bleak radiation
meet me at these coordinates
lover oh xx by northwest xx

by David Prater

Todd Swift Reading For the Oxford University Poetry Society

I will be reading from my new collection, Seaway: New and Selected Poems (Salmon, 2008), this Thursday, 6 November, as part of the Michaelmas '08 series, as a guest of the Oxford University Poetry Society - a great honour. Former invited guest poets include Dylan Thomas, Ted Hughes, Elaine Feinstein, Andrew Motion, Seamus Heaney, and Paul Farley. Other guests forthcoming include Colette Bryce (next week), and Daljit Nagra, Week 8.

The venue will be St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall and the reading should start at 8.30pm.

Hope to see some of you there.

Crichton Has Died

Sad news. The major popular, controversial novelist and entertainment writer Michael Crichton has died - at the young age of 66. He was astonishingly prolific and succesful in tapping in to the zeitgeist, creating the TV series ER, and the Jurassic Park franchise. This alone would make him a key cultural figure of the 90s.

His greatest novels were The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man - icily-procedural and strangely prescient thrillers about the collision between humanity and science, or the unknown aspects connected to science (bacteria, brain surgery). I still think the original The Andromeda Strain one of the most disturbing films ever made, and can still recall the underground labs, monkey autopsies and the epileptic fit as if it was yesterday.

Crichton lost many fans (including me) when he became a sort of Dawkins of the anti-global warming set, though. His finger usually on the pulse, this pro-Bush perspective was oddly out of step with the times, and his death, timed at the moment of maximum goodwill after the election of the greatest potential president since Kennedy, 48 years ago (that is, half a century ago), is equally unfortunate. What should not be lost sight of, though, is that Crichton had a kind of genius, for combining fact, fear and entertainment, in a way that updated Poe's hyper-rational terrors.