Vincent O’Sullivan
Vincent O’Sullivan is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, biographer and critic. He has just finished work on volume five of The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield (Oxford: Clarendon Press) which will be out later this year.
O’Sullivan comments: ‘In recent years, I’ve been both drawn and puzzled by how one writes poems with political content or ideas without sounding like a preacher or a poster. “Blame Vermeer” is an attempt to come at it through a famous work of art. Everything the painting contains and represents is humane and decent – what war and violence inevitably destroy, and regard as “the enemy”. The details of the painting, and those one can imagine going with it, generate the images of what in turn threaten it. The very loveliness of the picture creates the fear of what destroys it, “what will happen next.” ’
Poem: Blame Vermeer
