E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

ARTIST OR FINANCIER? Recently, the Canadian government increased by 400% its funding for the arts, while arts funding in Australia and the UK continues to be slashed; this has led to a massive wave of joy and exuberant hope among the Canadian artists I know - musicians, composers, dancers, painters, poets, writers.... hope that in America we assume will not bear fruit in 2017, as Trump slashes cultural funding ever more. Justin Trudeau gets culture, and I am proud he is our PM in Canada. However, there is a different intensity of vision, which I have, and share no doubt with other practitioners of the creative arts and industries. It is this, simply this: Cultural and Creative production, activities, processes, projects are not just one other thing to do, not a hobby, a side-line, an option, but, actually - THE HIGHEST ENDEAVOUR OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. Scientific and medical research is incredibly vital; religious meditation and conjecture equally so. But only the arts can fu...

Poet and teacher Richard Hugo I finally got around to reading Richard Hugo 's hugely influential, and very readable, slim volume on creative writing and poetry, The Triggering Town, the other day - oddly enough starting it around the 30th anniversary of his death, on October 22, 1982.  I have since begun to go back to his poems.  I was in a poetic dry spell, but reading him is allowing me to get started again.  I found his chapter on his wartime experience in the field in Italy particularly powerful, and it has reminded me that truths told in stylish prose can achieve the force of good poetry.

Geri Lambert – Former MA Student of Creative Writing at Kingston University By Jo van der Borgh On Tuesday 16 th November Geri Lambert passed away after a long battle with cancer at Guy’s Hospital.   The last time I saw her was at the end of September with a mutual friend, Emma Strong .   It was at the hospital and she was full of life, her hair curly from the chemo.   It suited her.   She spoke of her writing plans, the food she missed, the people she missed; her dear partner Trish and her mother.   She generously told me I was born to be a mother, as I gave my little, then eight month son Oscar a tub of baby food he wasn’t enjoying at all!   Emma had her little Eva with her and Geri was enjoying the makeshift nursery atmosphere. I first met Geri when she bounded into the room where I sat on my own waiting for our first workshop with Todd Swift.   Within moments I was told all about her background.   How she had given up a lucrative care...

Matt Morrison has done a good job in his recently published Key Concepts In Creative Writing , of compiling terms that relate to writing that could assist students and lecturers of the subject.  I balk though at the word "concepts" because what is singularly lacking in the book - a glaring omission it seems to be as a creative writing lecturer - are any concepts at all, relating to the actual subject itself.  For one, "Creative Writing" should have had its own entry, discussing the origins of the idea, and how it has emerged into such a popular subject in Britain, having come over from America's Iowa workshops via UEA.  Secondly, where is the concept "Workshop" itself?  That is like a book on Freud that doesn't mention the analytic couch.  Thirdly, there is no discussion of pedagogy.  Creative Writing cannot be allowed to drift - in this climate of brutal cuts to Mickey Mouse modules (so-called basket-weaving courses) - as just a place where big n...

Eyewear attended graduation ceremonies today for Kingston University's class of 2010, in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.   Professor Sir Peter Scott , Vice-Chancellor, spoke out powerfully and with noble clarity about the dangers of the Coalition proposals to savagely cut university budgets. I was very proud of the students, many of whom I've tutored these past three years, as they graduated, often to the applause of friends, family and other supporters - still so young, but on their way - into an increasingly fragile and contentious socio-economic space, where the arts are less and less valued beyond their merely financial merits.  Seeing them in their gowns, tossing their caps in the air, I felt they at least had the security of their degrees, experience, and conviction, to aid them in their dealings with the "real world". One of my former students, Stefan Mohamed , this morning graduated in Creative Writing with Film Studies BA (Hons), first class, and w...

The scrapping of the vetting for people who work with children in the UK is a tragic mistake, Eyewear feels. While authors, like Phillip Pullman , claimed lofty indignation, the Soham murders established that the person next door can be - and sometimes is - a dangerous, even murderous, predator. To deny otherwise is not very literary - writers and poets, of all people, should be aware of the depths of human behaviour, and especially sensitive to the risks of child abuse. Many poets and writers I know have had such abuse experiences themselves. What would have been a cautious, but sensible, tracking of all those who sought to work closely with children in positions of trust has now been removed - and while civil libertarians can rejoice, sadly, and ominously, so will those with more sinister interests. The recent history of priests, and boy scout leaders, established, I think, that society needs to guard against institutional laziness around child abuse and predation. This gov...

Eyewear is very pleased, on the eve of election day, to offer readers an occasional light verse poem by a creative writing student of mine - a poem on being undecided in the UK that has a particular resonance with me, for one. Thomas Hewson is a 21-year old Kingston University student. He lives in South Yorkshire and will be voting in the Sheffield-Hallam constituency on May 6th. Sheffield Hallam’s current MP, and prospective MP, is the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg - whom will be expecting to win the seat with a comfortable majority. Voting on May 6th Gordon Brown wants substance over style, Cameron thinks Labour should be put on trial. But the Lib Dems are definitely affirmative - Cleggy boy offers a brand new alternative. As for the other parties, UKIP and Green, they have no real policies I think it would seem, and then there is Griffin, who for power does hunt, - I’ll say just this – he’s an ignorant… Cameron, you’ll spend our money without any waste - well if that’s true ...

Vortex is a magazine of student work from the University of Winchester which also accepts submissions from other universities. You can email Neil McCaw at neil dot mccaw at winchester dot ac dot uk with your queries or electronic submissions. Deadline is March 31, 2010.

The Poetry School group I work with has disbanded for the summer. A bittersweet moment, as such partings after a project well done always are. I have so much enjoyed working with them - they're talented, smart, and very good at supporting but also honestly critiquing each other's work. This year, the group included Kai Adams , Emily Berry , Mike Kavanagh , Samantha Jackson , Katrina Naomi , and Alex McRae . They've won prizes, have books out or pamphlets out, or on the way, and have completed or soon will commence, MAs, and PhDs. They're active. Whenever I count my blessings - and should more often - I consider the chance to work with these (and other) poets through the Poetry School, and at Kingston, high on the list of good things. Poetic faith is renewed by such mentoring, by such fine students - students who become peers, and colleagues, and sometimes, friends, with their dedication and goodwill. I sometimes hear writers question the value of teaching creativ...

I heard Malcolm Gladwell , the Canadian guru, on the BBC today, citing an idea from his new book on successful persons (though this idea has been kicking around for a while): namely, it takes 10,000 hours to master the skills of something, from football to math, to music - so, Mozart is not born, just given more time to practice. In poetry this explains hard-working Pound (or Yeats ), but not quite young guns like Rimbaud , or Keats . Creative wrting, as a methodology, begins to make more sense when seen in such a context though - as the valuable space in which the mind can continue to do what it must for its art.

Talk and Reading by Al Alvarez Legendary poet, critic and writer As part of the WORDS IN CONTEXT KINGSTON LITERARY SERIES "The Writer's Voice" Thursday 27 November 2008 At 5.00 pm Clattern Lecture Theatre, Penrhyn Road campus Kingston University Kingston KT1 2EE The talk will be followed by a wine reception and book signing RSVP to Lisa Hall by Tuesday 25 November(020 8547 7853) Travel and location information: http://www.kingston.ac.uk/about_ku/location/maps/index.htm

Hanif Kureshi is one of the more celebrated writers in Britain at the moment - and he's known to have a Swiftian urge to his writing. He's been at the Hay festival, sponsored by The Guardian , where he was no doubt encouraged to say inflammatory things, to earn his keep; the rotten truth about the media-literary nexus these days is they make every writer perform like a two-bit Oscar Wilde to oil the wheels of interest. The books, the writing, never enough for them - a story is required. They got one. Just saw this . If indeed Kureshi did make these remarks, it is disappointing. They're just basically silly and counter-factual. I am a visiting writer at Kingston University, where he also teaches creative writing. I know he's inspired a few good writers there since he arrived. These comments - even taken lightly, in a spirit of '68ism - well, they do tend to damage the enterprise of creative writing teaching. His comments boil down to three points: 1) creative writin...

Martin Amis is a famous British novelist - maybe the most famous - and he thinks of himself as something of an Orwell , too - an essayist lucidly battling dogma and cant where he sees it. He is also a university lecturer, and his hourly rate has just been published, as £3000. That's just under 100 times more than most any other lecturer makes (it tends to be around £37). Obviously, the department was buying a brand, as well as a creative writing teacher - and the number of applicants went up by 50% when his position was announced. However, creative writing departments in the UK are dangerously close to making the same cheapening and trivialising mistakes the poetry community has already made of late - that is, in the process of seeking to popularise what they do, they have begun to use the marketing and PR techniques of the advertising and political spheres. It is often said, sotto voce, that British Poetry needs a " Saatchi " - that is, a rich, spin doctor, to "sel...

Writers write - and get into trouble. Many still have an image of Humphrey Bogart , fists balled for a contre-temps, playing the solitary, heavy-drinking, angry writer in Los Angeles, or perhaps a youthful, beautiful Capote - literary figures who seem to rise, like cream, to the top, with little effort (and then have different, personal, trouble, staying there, on the light surface of things where the glamour of evil - and leisure - resides). It is because writing is - to the onlooker - so mysterious, and troubling - that it seems occult. And, like magic, somehow above pedagogy - though surely Rowling 's version of magical education has altered that. At any rate, some people used to think creative writing could not be taught - or ought not to be taught - at university. That idea, at least for Americans, now seems as quaint as thinking we need more horses on our streets, pulling carts. The British were less sure, though the impressive successes of UEA's graduate creative writin...