Lucy is like a young Queen, straight from one of her historical novels. Kind, still, steady, her dark hair in waves to her waist. She thinks of duty and acts with solicitude. Sometimes she is timid and longs for a quiet room, a place away from the world. She is at home in silence with her pencils and pens, with worlds appearing from the nothing of the paper, in colour, detail.
Arwen is our leaven, light with words and quick with wit. Our competitor, our girl on a quest. Light on her feet as well, a dancer, one eye on the audience, the other on the dance, an acrobat, our everything. She wears her costume, her camoflage - jeggings, gloss, a purple flower in her hair - she's my girl of the moment. She shines. She dreams of London. She wants to be away. Somehow away but here, somehow in my arms and not, at the same time.
Snowy's real name means comfort and rest. He is always moving, always speaking and in the sphere of his love and his action I find it. My comfort and my rest. He is from another century than mine, he is rapid, he is technological, he is like a heart beating inside a sculpture of golden wires. He is my arms around him and love whispering.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Would You Like to Waste Some Time ?
If so, please visit I Write Like to find out...er...who you write like. Probably best to avoid if having a unique voice is important to you, because the only impossible answer is "You write like yourself".
I discovered I am quite Lovecraftian. Apparently. Doubtfully. Your results may make more sense to you. It isn't totally random, because when I entered some genuinely Lovecraftian paragraphs, written by Lovecraft himself, the site informed me..again...that "You write like Lovecraft." So, you know, at least Lovecraft doesn't write like Stephen King.
Any time.
I discovered I am quite Lovecraftian. Apparently. Doubtfully. Your results may make more sense to you. It isn't totally random, because when I entered some genuinely Lovecraftian paragraphs, written by Lovecraft himself, the site informed me..again...that "You write like Lovecraft." So, you know, at least Lovecraft doesn't write like Stephen King.
Any time.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Sweet
A calm oasis of a blog, I visit to remind myself that music, books and the natural world matter deeply and truly.
Receipt of this award involves passing it along to 15 of my favourite blogs, many of whom Christina has already gifted with the pavlova, but I've a few in mind.
Now, bear with me, because it also involves telling you ten things about myself. Awful, isn't it, the things I'll do for meringue ?
1 When I was in high school, I kept a photo of David Bowie tucked inside my bra.
2 My worst habit is diving into an argument about things I know nothing about. Today it was the Duggars.
3 I secretly like doing laundry.
4 I would like to find someone who adores Nigella Lawson as much as I do.
5 Something I don't understand is how the internet works. Or telephones.
6 When I'm sad I listen to Joni Mitchell's 'Blue'.
7 I was surprised to find I like Paris.
8 I'm a Middlemarchian living with a Proustian.
9 I've had 18 homes and 15 different paid jobs.
10 One of my dreams is in the process of coming true - I'm going to be an Aunty!!
Still awake ?
Consider yourself sweetened if I list your blog below! More to follow...
Hobbit Happenings
Lego Adventures
Loving To Learn
Motherhugger
Our WorldWide Classroom
Between The Worlds
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Granta - the F Word, An Ambassador, A Few Poems, A Quote, A Lovely Landscape
Thanks to Catherine for this link to the latest issue of Granta, which explores the ways in which feminism continues to inform, address and complicate. Check out her blog MotherHugger in my blogroll, especially if you have an interest in maternal feminism.
Selected prose, poems and essays from the issue online here.
I see that the poet Gillian Allnut has a poem in this issue; Sadly, it isn't online. Gillian was my very first writing tutor at a young writer's retreat near Hebden Bridge in the UK, not far from where Sylvia Plath is buried. She was quiet and patient, the perfect person to critique the work of 15 rather intense and inexperienced writers. I seem to remember she turned down our invitation to join us on a slightly inebriated walk to pay homage at SP's graveside but I don't hold that against her at all. Her poetry is delicate and tough.
Our other tutor, the writer David Dabydeen, came with us. I have mixed feelings about David. On the one hand, he thought I should be writing, not about the Wicker Man, which I was at that time, but about things I knew. He suggested Aboriginal legends as an example of things I might know and I suggested to him that not only was I much more interested in, and knowledgable about, the Wicker Man, our First Peoples might not take kindly to me appropriating their stories. He wrote about post-colonialism, so I never really understood his suggestion. I'm an Anglo-Celt all the way through so the Wicker Man is pretty much mine to do with as I wish. On the other hand, he was charming...if your poem wasn't working, he would say things like "the whorls of your ears are like a sea shell", which, at 19, was consoling.
Get a glimpse of the writers retreat, Lumb Bank, here.
To return to the topic of feminism, however, I find this is as good a post as any to post my favourite Rebecca West quote, known to you all, I'm sure.
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
More Rebecca West Quotes here.
ETA - a quick google tells me that David Dabydeen has moved on from charming writing students and is now charming all of China as the Guyanan ambassador! I'm feeling all star struck...
Also - it sounds as if I'm being flippant about His Excellency, which I'm not. He was lovely; he gave me some excellent advice and support with my writing during that retreat and after. And he's a well regarded writer. And no, I'm not sure how I ended up here either! I only sat down to post a link.
Anyway...a little poetry now this post has become a hodge-podge. This is from David Dabydeen's long narrative poem, Turner.
Stillborn from all the signs. First a woman sobs
Above the creak of timbers and the cleaving
Of the sea, sobs from the depths of true
Hurt and grief, as you will never hear
But from woman giving birth, belly
Blown and flapping loose and torn like sails,
Rough sailors’ hands jerking and tugging
At ropes of veins, to no avail. Blood vessels
Burst asunder, all below – deck are drowned.
Afterwards, stillness, but for the murmuring
Of women.
Read the rest of the poem here.
And this is by Gillian Allnutt.
Epiphany ( Yorkshire Dales )
for John
Solitude your death a drover's
road two dry stone walls the borders
of the earth each stone a hand's width and the berth of God
Where blackthorn lays the wind bare to the bone
you herded stars.
Selected prose, poems and essays from the issue online here.
I see that the poet Gillian Allnut has a poem in this issue; Sadly, it isn't online. Gillian was my very first writing tutor at a young writer's retreat near Hebden Bridge in the UK, not far from where Sylvia Plath is buried. She was quiet and patient, the perfect person to critique the work of 15 rather intense and inexperienced writers. I seem to remember she turned down our invitation to join us on a slightly inebriated walk to pay homage at SP's graveside but I don't hold that against her at all. Her poetry is delicate and tough.
Our other tutor, the writer David Dabydeen, came with us. I have mixed feelings about David. On the one hand, he thought I should be writing, not about the Wicker Man, which I was at that time, but about things I knew. He suggested Aboriginal legends as an example of things I might know and I suggested to him that not only was I much more interested in, and knowledgable about, the Wicker Man, our First Peoples might not take kindly to me appropriating their stories. He wrote about post-colonialism, so I never really understood his suggestion. I'm an Anglo-Celt all the way through so the Wicker Man is pretty much mine to do with as I wish. On the other hand, he was charming...if your poem wasn't working, he would say things like "the whorls of your ears are like a sea shell", which, at 19, was consoling.
Get a glimpse of the writers retreat, Lumb Bank, here.
To return to the topic of feminism, however, I find this is as good a post as any to post my favourite Rebecca West quote, known to you all, I'm sure.
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
More Rebecca West Quotes here.
ETA - a quick google tells me that David Dabydeen has moved on from charming writing students and is now charming all of China as the Guyanan ambassador! I'm feeling all star struck...
Also - it sounds as if I'm being flippant about His Excellency, which I'm not. He was lovely; he gave me some excellent advice and support with my writing during that retreat and after. And he's a well regarded writer. And no, I'm not sure how I ended up here either! I only sat down to post a link.
Anyway...a little poetry now this post has become a hodge-podge. This is from David Dabydeen's long narrative poem, Turner.
Stillborn from all the signs. First a woman sobs
Above the creak of timbers and the cleaving
Of the sea, sobs from the depths of true
Hurt and grief, as you will never hear
But from woman giving birth, belly
Blown and flapping loose and torn like sails,
Rough sailors’ hands jerking and tugging
At ropes of veins, to no avail. Blood vessels
Burst asunder, all below – deck are drowned.
Afterwards, stillness, but for the murmuring
Of women.
Read the rest of the poem here.
And this is by Gillian Allnutt.
Epiphany ( Yorkshire Dales )
for John
Solitude your death a drover's
road two dry stone walls the borders
of the earth each stone a hand's width and the berth of God
Where blackthorn lays the wind bare to the bone
you herded stars.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Poetry Friday - Sharon Olds and Afternoon Thoughts
I have not grown
up yet, I have lived as my daughter's mother
the way I had lived as my mother's daughter,
inside her life. I have not been born yet.
- from Physics by Sharon Olds
Looking for a poem to celebrate my daughter's birthday, I find this. Strike Sparks, Old's Selected Poems, sits on the bookshelf, mostly. I love and loathe Old's brashness in equal measure. I read her poems and wonder how she could write them - how she could step out from behind the shelter of metaphor and claim and declaim and brag - as a mother.
When poetry was the centre for me, a spine of text that held me upright through first love, first despair, first disillusionment, I knew how to be open with words. They tumbled onto the page, between dusk and midnight, stolen words, broken words, words translated in a dream, words remembered, words used as a weapon, as a scalpel, as a dare, as a cry, as laughter. Words used as a puppeteer takes up the strings and makes his puppet dance.
After children I grew careful of words. Words shape and wound the living child. Words are for weighing, for being exact, for restraint, for hiding, for creating a new self. A self who is watched, endlessly. A self who carries the burden of the child's gaze. A self who thinks before she thinks, who edits the thought before it becomes a thought. A mother, a living puppet from whose mouth comes the words of others, written in books, in picture books. A mother who speaks love-words, being the words she feels and the words she knows she should feel.
A child is ill. The dark words call a poem-path that lead straight to the heart, the dark centre of the heart, the fear of the child's death. The child recovers and the poem dies; the poem can never be brought to light; words can shape and wound the living child.
How can she write the poems she writes ?
How can I write ?
How is the poet born from her life,
the love-words and the dark-words,
how does she write them under the child's gaze ?
The Poetry Friday round up is here.
up yet, I have lived as my daughter's mother
the way I had lived as my mother's daughter,
inside her life. I have not been born yet.
- from Physics by Sharon Olds
Looking for a poem to celebrate my daughter's birthday, I find this. Strike Sparks, Old's Selected Poems, sits on the bookshelf, mostly. I love and loathe Old's brashness in equal measure. I read her poems and wonder how she could write them - how she could step out from behind the shelter of metaphor and claim and declaim and brag - as a mother.
When poetry was the centre for me, a spine of text that held me upright through first love, first despair, first disillusionment, I knew how to be open with words. They tumbled onto the page, between dusk and midnight, stolen words, broken words, words translated in a dream, words remembered, words used as a weapon, as a scalpel, as a dare, as a cry, as laughter. Words used as a puppeteer takes up the strings and makes his puppet dance.
After children I grew careful of words. Words shape and wound the living child. Words are for weighing, for being exact, for restraint, for hiding, for creating a new self. A self who is watched, endlessly. A self who carries the burden of the child's gaze. A self who thinks before she thinks, who edits the thought before it becomes a thought. A mother, a living puppet from whose mouth comes the words of others, written in books, in picture books. A mother who speaks love-words, being the words she feels and the words she knows she should feel.
A child is ill. The dark words call a poem-path that lead straight to the heart, the dark centre of the heart, the fear of the child's death. The child recovers and the poem dies; the poem can never be brought to light; words can shape and wound the living child.
How can she write the poems she writes ?
How can I write ?
How is the poet born from her life,
the love-words and the dark-words,
how does she write them under the child's gaze ?
The Poetry Friday round up is here.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Now This Is A Free Range Kid! Also, Some Books.
I like to think I'm mildly free range as I tend to hover on the correct side of paranoia. As in, I don't think the children I've allowed out without me have been kidnapped at the park until they're at least 10 minutes late in coming home...
Reading Emil and The Detectives to Snowy, I got a taste of the real thing.
Emil, who has had his money stolen on the way to stay with his relations in Berlin, teams up with some local boys to catch the thief. They plan on an all-night stake out. A boy named the Professor organises the boys and sends a couple home to man the phones.
"I say, ring up my father," the Professor called after them. "Tell him I've very important business to attend to. Then he won't worry about me being late." he added to Emil.
"My word, parents in Berlin are jolly decent," said Emil.....
"On the whole, they're pretty reasonable," returned the Professor."Most of them know that as long as they trust us we aren't likely to deceive them. I promised my father never to do anything mean or dangerous and as long as I abide by that, I can do pretty well as I like. My father's a good sort."
Sadly, I find I am not a good sort. At least not by Berlin standards.
Still, at least I choose good books. Snowy enjoyed Emil, and we're now part way through Knight's Castle by Edward Eager, in which he makes merciless and rather jolly fun of Scott's Ivanhoe. We're also part way through Philippa Pearce's A Dog So Small, another of her rich and imaginative explorations of the interior life of a child. This time it's London boy Ben, who longs for a birthday dog - a mastiff, a Borzoi, a wolfhound - and out of whose disappointment and sorrow grows a tale of wishes postponed and granted.
So whilst Snowy may never experience the delights of staying out all night to capture a thief, he will be adequately entertained in his imprisonment...
Reading Emil and The Detectives to Snowy, I got a taste of the real thing.
Emil, who has had his money stolen on the way to stay with his relations in Berlin, teams up with some local boys to catch the thief. They plan on an all-night stake out. A boy named the Professor organises the boys and sends a couple home to man the phones.
"I say, ring up my father," the Professor called after them. "Tell him I've very important business to attend to. Then he won't worry about me being late." he added to Emil.
"My word, parents in Berlin are jolly decent," said Emil.....
"On the whole, they're pretty reasonable," returned the Professor."Most of them know that as long as they trust us we aren't likely to deceive them. I promised my father never to do anything mean or dangerous and as long as I abide by that, I can do pretty well as I like. My father's a good sort."
Sadly, I find I am not a good sort. At least not by Berlin standards.
Still, at least I choose good books. Snowy enjoyed Emil, and we're now part way through Knight's Castle by Edward Eager, in which he makes merciless and rather jolly fun of Scott's Ivanhoe. We're also part way through Philippa Pearce's A Dog So Small, another of her rich and imaginative explorations of the interior life of a child. This time it's London boy Ben, who longs for a birthday dog - a mastiff, a Borzoi, a wolfhound - and out of whose disappointment and sorrow grows a tale of wishes postponed and granted.
So whilst Snowy may never experience the delights of staying out all night to capture a thief, he will be adequately entertained in his imprisonment...
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