Friday Five: BorrowBox

I don't usually listen to audiobooks - I prefer the tactile nature of reading a book and will never ceased to be amazed by the fact that printed words on a page can conjure precise worlds in the mind. However, a friend introduced me to BorrowBox, an app affiliated to my local library, where I can borrow books to listen to, and I decided to give it a go. 

I am particularly intersted in autobigraphies and other works in which authors read their own words and tell their own stories. Here are five I have listened to and enjoyed so far. 

 

Candid and amsuing autobiography from a young woman who suffered a traumatic childhood, fragile mental health, the death of her son and a terrifying stalking incident that culminated in a home invasion. her voice is authentic as she describes learning about the highs and lows of the music industry (number one singles and mainly male media backlash) in a very public spotlight. Her father, Keith Allen, does not shine through this account despite his obvious assistance in her career - he gave her a recording contract and abandoned her to take drugs at Glastonbury. She is aware of her position of privilege, but also that she has worked hard for her success.

Gabriel Byrne has one of those voices that I could listen to reading the phone book. This is much more interesting than that. He speaks a lot of his youth and his training to be a priest and then a plumber, before trying acting, which he quickly discovered was his true vocation. His is a story of searching for acceptance and finding it in a passion rather than a place. Although he is occasionally sentimental and whimsical about the Ireland he has left behind, he is thankful for his chance to escape and create a life for himself, which he guards against the frivolities of fame.

Not just an amazing footballer, Megan Rapinoe is also a firm advocate of women's rights and social justice. She had a fairly typical loving family upbringing in the semi-rural town of Redding, California, the youngest (with her twin sister, Rachael) in a family of eight. She and her sister chose football - it pains me to read soccer, but she is American so I have to get used it - as an early means of self-expression. She talks of training, of games, of injuries and triumphs as one would expect from a sport memoir. She also talks of the drug epidemic, the penal system, the understanding that she was a lesbian, the reaction to her coming out, and the fight for equal pay. Her stand on taking the knee made her an outcast in her own team and to the likes of Donald Trump and those who want to 'keep politics out of sport' when it suits them to do so. She denies she is unpatriotic - she is proud to captain her country - but is still prepared to call out injustice, which makes many of the target white republican audience mad. "I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties." She has a strong work ethic and believes in learning from mistakes and trying to do better. It may sound simple, but it is sadly unfashionable. She also believes in using her platform (and as an olympic gold-medal and two-time World Cup winner, she has a pretty big one) to speak up for those who don't have a voice. 

Another beautiful voice, coupled with a love of food and family - this was music to my ears. Stanley Tucci relates his life through important gastronimical touchstones which invoke memories and discoveries as he learns about his culture and his past and relates it all to his present and his career. He has a delightfully sardonic style and a dry humour, which is unusual for Americans, and he tends to steer clear of hyperbole, which is frankly refreshing. Through film narratives, health scares, loss of a sense of taste, and a delight in family and friendships, he shares anecdotes and recipes in a way that has the listener drooling - only partly for the food.

William McGonagall is often lampooned as the world's worst poet. That is a pretty bold claim and I have been insterested as to why he is so called. His poems are bad - they feature endless repetition, deridable rhymes, irrelevant details, poor scansion and weak metre. The mockery existed during his lifetime (1825-1902) and continues today with his work being celebrated with an Ig Nobel award in 2011. (He was also J.K. Rowling's inspiration for the name of her beloved character Minerva McGonagall.) He had no idea of this ridicule and fancied himself as having a calling to write, announcing himself as The Queen's Poet. Despite Queen Victoria refusing him patronage, he walked almost 100 kilmoetres from Dundee over mountainous terrain and through a violent thunderstorm to present himself at Bamoral where he was refused entry and had to return home. He made some money reciting his poems in pubs (the anti-drinking ones were particularly ill-advised), theatres, and the streets. As his reputation grew, his performances were attende by raucous crowds who drowned out his recitations and occasionally forcefully carried him out of venues. He found lucrative work performing his poetry at a local circus where he was pelted with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. His story has many parallels with that of Florence Foster Jenkins, and one could perhaps feel great discomfort at his treatment (he was very probably on the autism-Apserger's spectrum), were it not for the fact that his self-aggrandising writings are incredibly pompous and dismissive of others. His poems, biography and other works are read by Scottish actor David Rintoul in brilliant fashion. He allows the unintentional humour to shine forth and reveals the terrible poetry in all its magnificent awfulness. It is a thing of unimaginable joy.

A Refusal to Die of White History: Modewarre

Modewarre by Patricia Sykes

Spinifex

Pp. 90

Modewarre is the indigenous word for musk duck, a creature at home on land, water and air. Through her poetry, Patricia Sykes explores various histories and the boundaries between them which blur and blend. She splits the poems into three sections: House of the Bird, House of Water, and House of Detention, examining words and their connotations, dwelling on reflections, refractions and altered perceptions.

Naming things robs them of their magic and power, as we use “language, so impossibly cumbersome/ for discovering the true weight of things/ the grandmother would have known”. The literary fragments are almost Sapphic with physical and sensual meaning: “as always the modewarre/ places faith in its eggs/ yolk and the sun/ breed each other”. The strong bonds of belonging and connection to land go beyond words, until the frustration is clear in a poem such as eponymous, “to the interrogator who keeps asking/ ‘so are you still suckling on myths of place?’/ I say try the enigma address/ the bird who keeps vanishing in water –”

The poems recall the land and the life before the colonists came, and also the sheer incomprehension of the invaders dealing with the loss. In eupathy (right feeling of the soul) she sees the land from above as though flying with the eagle. “to talk now/ of whether this is still so/ or if the eagles in free flight/ are an option/ to speak of/ options, land, again/ once more/ not as that which was taken/ is un-ownable/ contracting and crowded/ but as lava shift/ the heat of a river/ always underfoot/ in a molten indifference/ to politics”. There are layers of knowledge contained in a word, such as the poem, ‘brid’, eight darkness in which ‘brid’ is the name given by Nyangangu, a Yolgnu artist of Northeast Arnhem Land, to her bird carving. “there, where you are,/ bred of earth, breeding sky/ working the uplift, wingbeat/ as if sculpting a refusal/ to die of white history”.

The world is a palimpsest and so is the brain – our thoughts and memories are malleable. Birds connect people and places, and are often totems for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, helping to define kinship with people, their Country and nature, connecting to the roles and responsibilities of a mob, offering protection and foreshadowing danger and momentous events. This connection extends throughout the world as the birds migrate along their own songlines.

Means of expression are insufficient, with even mechanics of speech and typing unable to capture the richness of the language. “this keyboard’s/ tireless tap-tap mouth/ which cannot voice/ the interior ‘n’ in Nyangangu/ the one with the tail/ the sound of ‘ng’ in singer”. And yet the words can be damaging and belittling. “how the eyes like linguists are never satisfied/ how they’ll poke and pry into any lexicon”, wanting to preserve and capture, destroying the natural.

The poems in House of Water are concerned with childhood, disease, death, invasion, cattle, birds, and bunyips. Roads are built over traditional lands, only to crumble and fray at the edges demonstrating their impermanence in the liminal space. “what never was field/ become paddock become/ fences become livestock/ the cattle the sheep/ foraging for the hoofprints/ they lost the last time/ they departed a shore”.

In the House of Detention, the poems move on to highlight migrants trapped in refugee camps, prisoners in cells, wives in marriages, women in motherhood, caterpillars who will one day be butterflies, political constraints, and people wanting to be “at home in every world/ where exile does not exist”. In great-aunt narrative among the excised lands, Sykes leans upon the double meaning of refuse (verb and noun) as it relates to denial and pollution: “oh my Canberra…/ high city of presumptive cleanliness/ among the dirty waters exuding from the workplaces/ the smell of your refusal laws”. She uses a rare capital letter in this poem, which must surely be ironic as her punctuation is clean and almost entirely absent.

Modewarre is a great collection of powerful fragments, connecting words to the echoes of previous language both spoken and unspoken. It is a reminder that we are merely one of millions of moving parts that comprise our environment, expressing a concern for what will happen to the delicate balance once we form a pyramid and place ourselves at the apex.

Friday Five: Books Read in August

Once again it turns out that I have (conveniently for blog purposes) read five books in a month. These are they.

5 Books Read in August:

1. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It by Ethan Kross (Vermilion) - We all have voices in our head; some supportive and encouraging; others belittling and disruptive. Kross provides pop-scientific reasons for why and which ones count. Talking to ourselves and others can be beneficial to help us distance ourselves from traumatic experience, but it can also lead us into a vicious cycle of repetition, particularly in the echo chambers of social media. This book presents ways to normalise and contextualise confronting events and suggests methods that enable us to take back 'control'. Easy to read and with a practical 'toolkit' of strategies, this is recommended for anyone struggling with daily overwhelm. 
2. Cow by Susan Hawthorne (Spinifex) - A sublime book of poetry inspired by the humble (or scared in some societies) bovine beast. From ancient aurochs to nursery rhyme moon jumpers; cattle chattel of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and good fortune to the shape-shifting Io of Greek myth who became a white heifer due to Zeus' lust and Hera's rage, there are cows, "at the edges of every known world/ like it or not we are everywhere."
3. The Club: Johnson, Boswell and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch (Yale University Press) - Named one of the ten best books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, this is the story of the phenomenal London club, established in 1764, and the men (and it was only men) who comprised it. It was established in a tavern and was the meeting place of writers, thinkers, economists, philosophers, artists, actors, playwrights, politicians, historians, lawyers, doctors, musicologists, poets, clergymen, botanists, chemists, scholars and statesmen - a who's who of the mid-late eighteenth century. Told mainly through the eyes of James Boswell (he wrote a lot), it captures the characters and the events of the times, such as the cultural climate and political happenings, but, "Above all the Club existed for conversation: not just small talk, but wide-ranging discussion on topics of all kinds."
4. Fled by Meg Keneally (Echo Publishing) - This novel tells the story of Mary (Dabby) Bryant, who was transported to the fledgling colony of New South Wales for highway robbery. Once there, she manipulated the system as much as possible until she escaped to make her way back to  England, where she thought she had a better chance of survival for herself and her children. She is renamed Jenny Trelawney for the purposes of fiction, and while the 'real' Mary Bryant was illiterate and never wrote down any thoughts or feelings, many of the facts are true and make for an incredible historical adventure. In the Mobius strip-like way that art can unfold, Meg Keneally's father, Thomas wrote a book, The Playmaker, based on the story of the first play ever performed in Australia, with Dabby Bryant being one of the actors - this book was the basis for a play by Timberlake Wertenbaker, Our Country's Good, in which I am currently performing (as Dabby Bryant) at Canberra Repertory.
5. The Secrets of Strangers by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin) - When a bloke marches into a café in London and shoots the proprietor, several of the patrons get caught up in the cross-fire and the ensuing hostage situation. We learn about them all individually in a highly stylised manner that makes the novel seem more like a stage play or a series of TV episodes. Among those captive in the café are a grandmother looking after her grandson, a lawyer who is meant to be defending her client in court, a former teacher who is now homeless due in part to a gambling addiction, and a waitress who is hiding in the cleaning cupboard, her presence unknown to the gunman. Their stories all wrap up neatly - everyone has to have a backstory to provide context for their actions, many of which are glossed over or shoehorned into the story as the cause du jour (coercive control; refugee experience; infertility obsession) - and the reader has very few gaps to fill, removing any tension necessary for a thriller. We also hear from Eliza, the police negotiator who is talking to the gunman and trying to secure the release of the hostages - hers is the most interesting and realistic voice in the novel. While the pace is fast enough that one does want to keep turning the pages, there are no surprises and the need to keep everything tidy and completed is distancing and unsatisfying to the point of triteness. 

COVID-19 Friday Five: More Podcasts

We're allowed two hours of exercise now. I walk. I listen. Sometimes I listen to the birds and sometimes I listen to podcasts. Here are some of the podcasts to which I listen.

5 Podcasts:

1. David Tennant Does a Podcast With... (Somethin' Else and No Mystery) - The former Doctor Who star chats with his showbiz friends. It's very star-studded and a bit lovely-dahling, but it makes one realise how many great actors he has worked with, from Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Elisabeth Moss, Billie Piper and Cush Jumbo to Ian McKellan, Neil Gaiman, Michal Sheen, John Hamm and Brian Cox. At this stage there is no Season 3 planned, but there are still 21 episodes to get to grips with at this stage.



2. Eyes on Gilead (SBS) - As a companion podcast to The Handmaid's Tale, a group of intelligent and interested viewers (Fiona Williams; Haidee Ireland; Sanar Qadar; Natalie Hambly) discuss and dissect each episode after it has finished. More than just examining the plot, they suggest possibilities and refer to design and direction elements that highlight the intricacies of the show. There are also bonus interviews with actors (special love for Yvonne Strahovski - well, it is Australian), composers, make-up artists, costume designers, directors and the series creator. It's one for the fans. 



3. Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics (BBC Radio 4) - a friend introduced me to this podcast after I read Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships, which re-tells the story of The Illiad from the perspective of the women involved (it's excellent - more on that later). In a sort-of spin-off from the original series, Natalie Haynes does a series within the podcast in which she 'sits down' for the myths. In a move that will surprise absolutley no one, the first one I listened to was on Penelope. There are also episodes on The Odyssey, Clytemnestra, Helen of Troy, Penthesilea and Medusa. Plus, there are the original episodes on Cicero, Plato, Sophocles, Virgil, Ovid, Aristotle, etc. It's told in a light, informative and entertaining manner. I remember most of it, and can happily go back a few weeks later to remind myself of the bits I missed first time around. 



4. The Poet Laureate Has Gone to His Shed (BBC Radio 4) - I've got a bit of a thing for Simon Armitage. No, not like that (although I do love his voice). I've met him (twice) and I'm in his book, Gig (although not by name). He taught at the polytechnic where I studied (although not at the same time) and we know some of the same people, and have a shared interest in myth (The Odyssey; The Green Knight; King Arthur). He is busy writing haiku in his shed at the bottom of his garden (or so he would have us believe) and he interviews some iconic figures from my growing-up days. So far I have listened to the episodes featuring Jo Whiley, JK Rowling and Johnny Marr. I look forward to listening to the back catalogue including interviews with Maxine Peake, Antony Gormley and HRH Prince Charles.



5. The Skewer (BBC Radio 4) - Described as the news retwisted as a comedy treat, it is a biting satire on politics and current events using the very effective sampling techniques that put words into other people's mouths. It's irreverent and devastating in 15-min chunks with dazzling wit and British pop-culture references that might stump some living outside the UK.

Friday Five: More Podcasts

Back in May I wrote a blog post about the podcasts to which I was listening in COVID-19 times. Well, it's still going on, and I'm still listening. I just keep adding them to the list, and they roll around and keep me entertained alongside my regular favourites. Here are five more recently-listened-to podcasts.

5 Recent Podcasts:

1. The Guilty Feminist (Patreon) - Deborah Frances-White hosts this podcast which ranges from stand-up comedy to interviews about hard-hitting topics such as domestic abuse and genital mutilation; recent episodes have covered Justice, Satire, Rebellion, Shame, Education and Credibility. Every episode kicks off with a round of  'I'm a Feminist, but...' as hosts and guests confess to 'shameful' double standards which we can all recognise. While mixing up the tone, the message remains firmly to fight for gender equality, and this is also the podcast that introduced me to the wonderful protest folk music of Grace Petrie. 
2. The Anfield Wrap (TAW Player) - Yes, it's all about Liverpool F.C. and yes, it has over 28 million downloads worldwide. Neil Atkinson hosts a group of blokes (and it is nearly always blokes, unfortunately) who sit around discussing the highs (of which there are many lately) and lows of the club. There are a number of levels to which one can subscribe, but the free content is sufficient for me, covering transfers, signings, matches (both before and after), player interviews and a plethora of awards. Bonus 'cup of tea' episodes address current issues and how they affect the club from supporting foodbanks to LGBTQI rights and kicking racism out of football. 



The lads of The Anfield Wrap with the manager of the Anfield team

3. No Filter (Mamamia) - If interviews with interesting folk are your thing, then this Australian podcast hosted by Mia Freedman might be for you. With a fresh approach and a candid attitude she chats to well-known celebrities (Julia Gillard and Osher Gunsberg) and 'ordinary people' with incredible stories, such as a mother of a trans child or the bloke whose wedding sparked a COVID outbreak. 
4. Have You Heard George's Podcast (BBC Sounds) - George Mpanga (aka George the Poet) delivers a highly individual take on societal issues through a mixture of music, poetry and storytelling. The first series, which came out in 2018, won four gold awards at the British Podcast Awards, plus two silvers and the podcast of the year.  His subjects included blaxploitation films, Reaganomics and why drug dealing and murder can seem the only options for black youth, whether in the 1970s and 80s US or contemporary UK.
5. Newscast (BBC News) - I started listening to this when it was Brexitcast, then it became Newscast, then Coronaviruscast, and now I think we're back to Newscast. It might be tricky to keep up with the title but the premise is the same - intelligent, topical political and social issues introduced by Adam Fleming, and discussed 'with the BBC's best journalists and other people who know what they're talking about'. It's basically how I check in with what's going on back in Blighty; it's interesting informative and measured with lots of heft and a touch of levity.

A portrait of an author ahead of her time

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

(Scribe)

Pp. 160

Margaret Cavendish was a poet, philosopher and visionary. As a child she created imaginary worlds (populated with thinking-rocks, humming-shoes, her favourite sister and Shakespeare, Ovid and Caesar) and stitched little books together with yarn. “Eventually she achieved fame, but it was not necessarily that which she sought, as children chased after her carriage calling out to ‘Mad Madge’ and she became a cautionary tale for young girls who dreamed of becoming too intelligent.

With the civil war raging, she joined the court of Queen Henrietta Maria and followed her into exile in France, where she met and married the much older William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. William was generally very supportive of her work and encouraged her to speak up and express her thoughts. Through him, Margaret came into contact with many of Europe’s leading thinkers; but she was bashful and awkward in society. When she was invited to speak at The Royal Society (the first woman to be so invited, and the last for 200 years) she could only stammer appreciation and rush away; causing Samuel Pepys to write, “A mad, conceited, ridiculous woman. I do not like her at all.”

As a woman who published books of her thoughts, she was considered doubly shocking. First that she had them, which was scandalous enough, but to voice them was even more so. Furthermore, she was childless, attempted cures for which included syringing herbs into her womb and “a drench that would poison a horse.”

Many of her thoughts centred on the physical world. As well as poetry and philosophy she wrote and published works of extraordinary utopian science fiction and fantasy. In her book, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 1655, against the prevailing ideas of the time, “I argued all matter can think: a woman, a river, a bird. There is no creature or part of nature without innate sense and reason, I wrote, for observe the way a crystal spreads, or how a flower makes way for its seed.”  

In contrast with much current weighty (in size) historical fiction, this short novel (160 pages) covers historical events in brief detail; The English Civil War is dealt with very succinctly:

“The King of England was convicted of treason. Then the King of England was dead. It was Tuesday. It was 1649. Parliament hacked off Charles I’s head outside the Banqueting House at Whitehall.” Halfway through the novel, Danielle Dutton changes from first-person to third-person narration. This ambitious move reflects the fame Margaret sought as people began to talk about her after the coronation of Charles II, and the Cavendishes’ return to London.

While Danielle Dutton doesn’t claim Margaret specifically as a proto-feminist, she does dwell on her issues with equality, or the lack thereof. Indeed, the title comes from her own self-honorific. “Though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First”. She was far from saintly, however, and, jealous of William’s success, she upstaged him at the opening of his play by attending the theatre with her breasts bared and her nipples painted.

Margaret Cavendish was a remarkable woman. She has been championed by Virginia Woolf and deserves wider renown. Unfortunately, with society’s attitude towards women, she will be better remembered for her outfits and her manners than her literary and artistic achievements.

Walking Dreams

In dreams I can walk on my hands.
Not a useful talent,
But a good party trick:
It entertains, and people smile.

I launch forward through my arms;
Lurching from side to side:
Chest pushed out; neck stretched;
Legs bent over like a question mark

Asking when will I fall,
And if it’s before I wake,
Will I die in my sleep?
Is that entertainment?

Street Poetry

Edinburgh has gone arty for the Festival. Around the base of a soaring giraffe sculpture are words inscribed in circular iron lettering: ‘Giraffes! People who live between earth and skies. Each in his own religious steeple, keeping a lighthouse with his eyes.’

I read out the words with awe. Him Outdoors has seen different words advertising breakfast – unaware of the latent lyricism he says, ‘Coffee and tea – 49p. I’m not right into poetry, me.’

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day so I thought I would share with you one of my lyrical creations from yester-year. One weekend as some friends and I were camping out at Bob's Cove we decided to entertain ourselves at dinner (hand-caught and barbecued fish) by inventing poems based around celebrities - yes kids; that's how we used to amuse ourselves before we all plugged in to i-phones!

I don't think I'm boasting when I say that my poem is the one that is still remembered by the group several years later. In fact, of everything I've ever written, this is the only thing that anyone ever quotes at me. I'm not sure what sticks most in the memory: the deceptively simple but subtly complex structure; the mesmerisingly eloquent rhythm or the deeply insightful persipience. I'll allow to you make up your own mind.

Russell Crowe

Russell Crowe

Wants to know

Where to go

In the snow.

Could you show

Russell Crowe

Where to go

In the snow?

No.

Supermarket creep

I hate supermarkets; they sap my soul.

There is so much stuff – so many varieties of things we don’t need in packages that we will just take home and throw away. We are faced with a plethora of options but no real choice. How many cereals can one person handle? I find myself standing in front of them staring at the multiple versions of maize and my eyes glaze over.

It starts with the vegetables. There are simply too many and they are all evenly spaced and displayed in colourful regimented mounds that seem plastic in their uniformity. And it’s so cold that I lose the circulation in my hands, while my mind loses the will to live.

The music is vile, and the forced jollity of the announcements telling me what’s on special in aisle four makes me want to cry at the thought that the real world is out there somewhere, but it’s not in here. What’s in here is bored-out-of-their mind women pushing trolleys and pandering to their brattish offspring.

It’s one of the domestic chores I like least, right up there with cleaning the toilet. And yet, I love a farmer’s market.

Here there is something seductive about the produce on offer. Even the names are alluring; the pale and fragrant lemon cheese; the still-warm vine-ripened tomatoes; the personally-pressed virgin oil; earthy new potatoes; regal purple aubergines; spiky but soft artichoke hearts. Some people believe that any list can be poetry if the right words are used, but that’s another matter.

I’m currently reading the brilliant Eating for England by Nigel Slater. He writes of the farmer’s market; “I shop there because I want to meet the people who grow what I eat, to experience the joy of seasonal shopping, to be as close as I can to where my food originates without actually getting my hands in the soil. And I suspect that, as I trundle up the hill with my recycled bag of cheap corn on the cob still in its fresh green husks and a swaying bunch of three-foot-high sunflowers, it probably allows me to feel just a wee bit smug about those shoppers with their supermarket packet of identically sized, overpriced, cellophane-wrapped green beans from Mozambique.”

When I was a student, I used to go to different shops to collect my groceries. There was a herbalist, a greengrocer, a fishmonger, a delicatessen (I couldn’t afford anything from there), a butcher, a baker and yes, even a candlestick maker (and I was going through that late teen/early twenties obsession with smelly incense and cinnamon and spiced pumpkin candles).

Things were cheaper, and I could talk to the people who sold them. Sure, it took all day to collect my bits and pieces wrapped in waxed paper but that was okay, because I had all day – I was inevitably procrastinating about writing an essay on eighteenth century English drama.

Now it’s far more convenient to drive to one soulless sterile building with blinding bright lights and no heart. (To be fair, when Big Fresh in Christchurch introduced singing vegetables to the greengrocery section it was truly terrifying).

And yet, some people like it. As I returned a trolley to its berth (is that what they call them? They should) a bloke smiled happily, “I love the supermarket; it’s full of hot women. I’m going to come here every day.” And there you have it; it may not be a bustling bazaar or a social souk, but it can be considered a meat market.

Oh, to be in England!

Oh, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge
That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower, -
Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I was never really a fan of Robert Browning in my youth. I thought him weary and trite and too fond of the Romantic poets for his own good. Now, as I approach my own 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', I find I'm starting to rather like him. Is this a natural consequence of ageing, I wonder?

Also, I know that he was from down south and so probably writing about the Home Counties' countryside, but I can't help connecting his words with the Lake District. I get my fix of this beautiful place through Tony Richards' Lakeland Cam website. Every day the erstwhile postman takes photos of the region on his daily walks and posts them to his site.

I love to look and them and sigh, and although they fill me with homesickness, I wouldn't miss them for the world. Because my parents have a house there, the pictures often show their road; their village; their pub; even their house.

I've walked and run over those hills; I've eaten in those tea-shops and I've drunk (and been drunk) in those pubs. Looking at these pictures every day is the most exquisite form of nostalgia.

I love the lambs and the flowers and the trees and the grass and the little grey villages surrounded by hills. And at this time of year, when we in the southern hemisphere are cold and wet and windy, everything looks so green. It's very hard to take spring pictures (as I've discovered) - cameras don't seem to be able to cope well with the dappled light effect through the whispering leaves. Tony Richards manages to capture it effortlessly.

Green is my favourite colour and it bursts out of these pictures with a glad welcome. Oh, to be in England indeed...

'Tell me a story'; 'I don't want to give you nightmares'

A Most Outrageous Humbug, Three Spoon Theatre
Downstage Theatre, 29 April – 7 May

The opening gambit of A Most Outrageous Humbug sets the scene for the entire play. Artfully designed piles of books and sombre mood lighting (Marcus McShane) form the backdrop to Edgar Allan Poe’s parents’, Elizabeth (Jean Sergent) and David (Adam Donald) ferocious and theatrical argument which ends in tears and blood.

Top hats, velvet waistcoats, silk cravats hoop skirts, and fortified corsets (gorgeously designed by Dawa Devereux) hint at the constriction of fierce passions. Meanwhile the scenario is underpinned by Tane Upjohn Beatson at the piano with its exposed hammers and strings playing dramatic, morose music. This promises to be an American Gothic Romance with dark undercurrents of violence and passion, and boy, does it deliver.

Told through a mix of Poe’s essays, poems and stories woven with imagined events, the play purports to be a biography of the man. As a lesson to anyone who ever wants to know how much of an author’s work is biographical – it’s simply impossible to know. Three Spoon Theatre under the direction of Charlotte Bradley have created a work which shows a man spiralling into madness and sabotaging his entire literary career, loosing himself in stories and wine. You might just as well worry about their state of mind.

Edgar Allan Poe became an orphan at two, the inference being he had no early stabilising factors in his life. Driven by thronging passion – ‘his ardour was matched only by his ambition’ – he hoped academia might rein in his wild excesses. We are told this by Thomas McGrath narrating as Poe from the sidelines, becoming increasingly involved in the action as the play progresses. The play both shows and tells with Ralph McCubbin Howell acting as Poe throughout.

Poe writes every moment available between his studies to the detriment of them both, and becomes romantically involved with Frances Osgood (Adrianne Roberts). His rival in love and literature is the ‘sweaty and creepy but persistent and rich’ Rufus Griswold (Ed Watson). Poe may be ‘talented and passionate’ but he also has a wild disregard for propriety reflected in his appearance. Howell plays him as explosive, which leaves him with nowhere to go as his tempo is feverish from the beginning.

The journey into madness is marked by a number of well-scripted scenes. There is a poetry reading between Poe and Griswold at which Griswold suggests ‘The ladies will enjoy our academic duelling’. There is Poe’s peculiarly abstract proposal to his 13-year-old cousin Virginia ‘Sissy’ Eliza Celmm (played with wide-eyed gaucheness by Alex Lodge) using his macabre stories as a form of courtship – ‘I liked your poetry better’. Sissy’s amusing wittering suits the young girl’s naivety, but her chilly defence is a little modern – ‘I may not be an adult, but at least I’m not a prat.’

There is the costume party book launch at which Elmira Shelton (Jean Sergent) dresses as the author – is it a sincere form of flattery or grist to his burgeoning paranoia? Meanwhile a mysterious hooded figure, seen only by Sissy, stalks the party, which cannot bode well. In orchestrated breaks from the party, guests partner up into formal dance and corpses return to life.

As Poe reads his stories we are frequently deceived into questioning what is reality and given unheralded glimpses into his manic mind. ‘What a gift to tap into the psyche of a blood-thirsty psycho so effortlessly’. He applies for an editing position only to be interviewed by characters from his short story Doctor Tarr (Adam Donald) and Professor Fether (Jean Sergent) in a show-stealing scene.

This is a brilliantly written script and hangs so tightly together that it is hard to believe it was devised collaboratively. The colours of red (the consumptive blood that claims so many characters) black (the raven feather; the relentless gloom) and white (the purity and innocence of Sissy; the bleached bones of his tales) are woven into the tapestry of the narrative. Death unifies all from his mother’s untimely demise to his own wrestling with himself (literally) in the final scene. It’s not exactly joyful, but it is triumphant, and a worthy inclusion in the Pick of the Fringe.

Simple to Sumptuous: Clasp

A couple of months ago I went to an exhibition at the National Library gallery called Simple to Sumptuous, which was a collection of book bindings from the Alexander Turnbull Library, ranging from 1400 to the present.

The function of a bookbinding is simply to hold the book together; to protect the pages from wear and tear. They are basic but practical – things of great beauty and collectors’ items in their own right. This exhibition featured many examples from around the world, including Europe, Japan and Antarctica.

The books are just gorgeous, and even the language used to describe them is rich and evocative: ‘decorative end leaves and pastedown on cream watered silk with gold-tooled turn-ins; red goatskin gold tooled and on-lain in black; endleaves of pale blue watered silk; velvet lined oak case’. It was inspiring enough to move me to poetry.

The first verse relates to the clasps and straps to keep the wood from warping and the vellum pages flat. The strap sewn to the top cover indicates that the book comes from Germany or the Low Countries; if sewn to the bottom cover it originates from England or France.

To secure knowledge, many books were kept in chained libraries with a chain passing through the clasp; there is an example of one of these clasps harbouring a miniature in a book covered in brown goatskin, edged in brass with gilt text edges.

Clasp

Knowledge is power
But a little is dangerous
So it must be rationed.
There are checks and balances;
Keys and locks

Surround her face
In a miniature oval,
Clasping the spine tightly.
Her smile is serene as she
Guards her secrets.

Beneath layers of glass
Protected and displayed
Her image is eternal;
Impossible to analyse as a
Thought in words.