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

Eyewear, the blog, loves to recommend new songs for you, our loyal and scattered readers, residing in various places across this wondrous globe. Erm, anyway, it has been a shit few weeks (again) in terms of the Year 2016 - a crap rubbish low year, which is killing more beloved celebrity musicians, film-makers, writers, boxers, actors, etc, than ever before.

Someone should call time on 2016 - can we vote again for 2015? Anyway, the musical year is top notch - I cannot recall when more major artists brought out new material in such proximity - and it keeps coming (Radiohead, Tegan and Sara, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Drake, Rihanna, etc).

Perversely, as always, these are not on the list below, which is actually simply songs that currently form what we in our office would call Earworm Brexitania.

These are songs we turn to, in this awful dire chaos of the sun, and listen to a lot, because they are cool, and we like them. The tracks below, in alphabetic order of artist, are not the best, the…

Eyewear has always been a proudly British company, since its founding in the Olympic year of 2012.  But from the start, it had the backing and support of a small group of Dutch poets, artists and eccentrics.  Every one of the Eyewear pamphlets (over 30 so far); our over 40 poetry collections; and our key prose titles, has been typeset and/or designed by one person - the Dutch poet-artist Edwin Smet.

Smet's clean, stylish, modernist, and retro book cover designs have, over the past four years, rightly made Eyewear one of the most iconic and best-loved indie poetry presses of the new century. But his talents are deeper than his commitment to our small press.

Smet, who is a melancholy, handsome, witty, and wry man, enjoys privacy, and long walks in the midnight streets; his art works have won him admirers at many exhibitions and galleries; and he is a good poet, worth seeking out. Now today is his birthday, and we doff our hat and raise a toast to this most talented of 21st century per…

The Eyewear blog is no stranger to hyperbole - I can go over many of our past posts, as editor and chief writer, and see claims of looming disaster, downfall, or war, that never quite materialised; crisis is the loom on which a poet spins his best writing.

The past week in Britain - to be dramatic, in British history - has been different.  It rendered me speechless. While there were some facebook declarations, I could not face this blog, or gain the strength to compose lines on this debacle. I have been profoundly hurt by this nasty decision. It has all been said, and at least as well by others. I think the Downfall video meme, featuring Boris Johnson, may be the best, but Jonathan Freedland, Polly Toynbee, AC Grayling, and others, have also done a good job of sketching out the horrors ahead, and the horrific causes of them. But the past week has just been plain bad for England, the UK, the world - and me personally, too.
Since last Thursday I have lost my 12 week old kitten Woody; and …