E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG BY TODD SWIFT

Eyewear Publishing Ltd. is an independent press, publishing poetry and prose since 2012.  As we all know, small press publishing isn't particularly financially stable, and we were very fortunate in that Eyewear’s successful business model included a philanthropic grant.
Sadly, at the beginning of 2014 this has been unexpectedly and very suddenly withdrawn halfway through the funding period, due to a change in the funder’s circumstances.
While this is very disappointing, we are absolutely committed to our poets and to continuing to publish new books in 2014 and beyond. We’re making every effort to maintain our work and long term success through a variety of strategies.  If you'd like to get involved or to support our work, you can get in touch with me here.

EYEWEAR'S FILM CRITIC JAMES A GEORGE THINKS AMERICAN HUSTLE, DESPITE ITS GOLDEN GLOBE FOR BEST COMEDY OR MUSICAL IS A DUD.

American Hustle is the story of a great con. No, not the film’s plot, which has the wow factor of the BBC’s mediocre television show from some years ago, Hustle. The con is the plenitude of awards this film is getting. I don’t want to imply that director David O. Russell is the artist behind these cons, but he has certainly been lucky these couple years. Silver Linings Playbook was released around this time last year, and also got multiple awards nominations despite being a very plain feat of moviemaking albeit with an enjoyable script. Driven by this popularity, it seems Russell has abandoned the quirky traditions that made his earlier films so interesting under some pretence that he is now John Cassavettes; sacrificing plot in favour of caricatures – I mean, characters.
            Of course, this is a joy for the actors! We get to see Christian Bale as we’ve …

It came as something of a rude shock to learn that this week marks the 30 year anniversary of the release and banning by the BBC of 1984 hit single 'Relax' by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Songs age and track and trace and mark us, of course, and I have around 66 songs that I cannot do without, but this one is special.  Firstly, it appeared when I was 17 and exploring my queerness (my bisexuality).  At the time I had a boyfriend, and this song, which has since been seen as the first openly gay number one hit, really moved and thrilled me.  It shaped my apprehension of a wilder, more flamboyant, aesthetic, a camp style best exemplified by my beloved gay Uncle Jack, and Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote, - somewhat dated figures - suddenly updated into the midst of 80s culture, which was generally quite camp anyway (one thinks of singles of Tina Turner's 'Beyond Thunderdome', or 'Tainted Love' by Soft Cell). Anyway, as the NMe noted this week, Madonna was a …

JAMES A GEORGE, EYEWEAR'S FILM CRITIC, REVIEWS ONE OF THE MAJOR FILMS OF OUR TIME...

There’s a lot to be said about artist turned filmmakers – both good and bad – but Steve McQueen is the crème de la crème. His short art films like Bear, Carib’s Leap and Western Deep, felt like art films seeking a narrative, but nonetheless enthralling works. This is a feeling he himself reciprocates, citing his art films as poetry, and his feature lengths as prose. I can’t confess to having seen all of McQueen’s art, but his new film based on a true story set during the later years of the American slave trade, feels like his most successful artistic endeavour and yet his least “artsy”.
McQueen’s three features have all been about physicality and confinement: Hunger, Shame, and now, 12 Years A Slave. The stoic main characters in the past films have had to deal with different types of suffering, and the viewer sees this in great brutal detail, often left to figure out how and why this has, or was all…

Good news, Close Reading by Floyd Skloot is to be featured... see announcement below from the PBS....

The Spring Bulletin will arrive with members in mid-February, and in case you missed them first time round, the Choice and Recommendations are as follows:

Choice
John Burnside - All One Breath (Jonathan Cape)

Recommendations
Tiffany Atkinson - So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe)
Vona Groarke - X (Gallery)
Jen Hadfield - Byssus (Picador)
Hugo Williams - I Knew the Bride (Faber)

Special Commendation
Lavinia Greenlaw - A Double Sorrow: Troilus & Criseyde (Faber)

Translation
Gottfried Benn, trans. Michael Hofmann - Impromptus (Faber)


We'll also be featuring new collections from Richard Berengarten, Floyd Skoot, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Selima Hill, Terry Cree and Paul Farley, to name but a few!

According to a jury of ten British citizens, Mark Duggan, a young Black man, shot by a group of armed police officers in North London in August 2011, was lawfully shot to death; but was also unarmed at the time.  A gun he was alleged to have been carrying, in his taxi, was metres away in the grass when he was shot dead.  This was announced yesterday, and even The Guardian editorial while upset with the act, today trotted out the platitudes about respecting the jury's decision.  Why is authority and law always to be respected in the UK, when, time and again, it shows itself to be partial and at times, yes, corrupt or broken? Clearly, to be a Black man in London is to be a marked man.  All it takes to be killed is for a police office to think you have a gun.  And, even if you don't, he can lawfully shoot to kill.  This is open season on innocent people.  We have been told the police conduct thousands of anti-gun raids each year, with very few serious shootings (one or less each …

This is now into the tenth year that I have been running the Eyewear blog and posting here.  Time fugit and so forth.  I started counting visits five years ago and have a million officially recorded that way, but estimating the monthly readership as between 20-30 thousand visits, it has been several million by now.  Thanks for looking in over the years!