Sad news. Norwich Union is to change its name to Aviva. As a student of Creative Writing at UEA, I was - and am - often in Norwich - a city famed far and wide for its eponymous life insurance company. Aviva strikes me as the sort of bland globalspeak that does no one any good, and aims to avoid striking any chords or nerves - but its very blandness rankles. I suppose it does have the latinate life at its root - but the better name was the one that had a home, a real city, at its heart.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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