The Guardian's Blog, page 180

30 years - what did you witness?

Join Edinburgh international book festival's 30th anniversary celebrations by sending us your photographs of significant events from the last three decades

Hannah Freeman

Guardian Nosy Crow book club: A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton

Join the Guardian Nosy Crow book club as we discuss Dave Shelton's A Boy and a Bear in a Boat

Last month the Guardian Nosy Crow book club had a pretty emotional discussion about Patrick Ness's much lauded A Monster Calls - at the physical book group in the Crow's Nest, on the blog and on Twitter (#NCGkids). You can still catch up with the on-the-night discussion on our blogpost, and Nosy Crow's Kate Watson has summarised the debate.

The book club is back again tomorrow with A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton, a funny tale for ages 8-up of a boy who sets out to sea with a bear, a suitcase, a comic book and a ukelele.

It's another book that has enjoyed critical acclaim – it was longlisted for last year's Guardian children's fiction prize and last month it scooped the Branford Boase award for Shelton and his editor, David Fickling.

Given that, the role of the editor in the publishing process might well crop up in the discussion. On winning the award, Shelton commented that "I had genuine doubts as to whether I would fall flat on my face. David Fickling's gentle editorial hand ensured I never quite lost my balance." Do you agree?

Like A Monster Calls. It's an illustrated book so once again we'll be considering what the illustrations add to the story. What "kind" of book is it – an allegory or something else? Did we find it funny (and, as adult readers, are we supposed to)?

In his Guardian review, Philip Ardagh says that "To an adult reader, the title A Boy and a Bear in a Boat instantly brings to mind Yann Martel's Life of Pi, with its boy in a boat with a tiger, and Moacyr Scliar's Max and the Cats, with a Jewish refugee in a boat with a jaguar." Do these kinds of comparisons work (and are they even fair)?

I'll be at the Crow's Nest in London on Thursday 8 August from 6.30pm, reporting back live on the face-to-face discussion in the comments thread below and feeding in your comments online to the group there. You can also get involved on Twitter, using #NCGkids – tweeted comments will be fed back into the discussion here and at the Crow's Nest.

If you have any other questions or talking points about A Boy and a Bear in a Boat, please add them in the comments below for everyone to consider on the night. You can post your comments and get the discussion going straight away. But do come back to follow the discussion and contribute live on the night if you can, too. Happy reading!

(Or...happy drawing! Here's Dave Shelton's instructions for drawing a boy and a bear in a boat...)

Children and teenagersMichelle Pauli
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Turning away from book trailers

These 21st-century marketing tools get between you and the author's words, so I'm sticking to old-fashioned text

A curmudgeonly late-adopter of new book-tech, I'd never seen a trailer for a novel before Lauren Beukes's Shining Girls creepfest, screened at a Kitschies event, introduced me to the idea. It looked brilliant, tightening the skin over my shoulder-blades like the sort of horror film I'd like to see but really shouldn't (for my family's sake. You can call for a glass of water as much as you like, kiddo: the shadows in the kitchen say different.)

Having seen it, I'm now holding off – painfully! – from reading the book. I need to efface my memory of the characters as the trailer's actors presented them, faces and voices already part-formed. Instead, I want hunter and hunted to appear in my own mind, gradual and unique. Fictional protagonists should develop differently for each reader, like Tristram Shandy's Widow Wadman, whose inexpressible "concubiscibility" requires the page be left blank. I don't want to start out with a nudge.

This pre-forming effect affects me less in trailers for kids' books, which often have illustrations, lending themselves instantly to animation. That doesn't give me the same sense of foreign bodies intruding too early in the private, enclosed relationship between book and reader – I tend to find it more enriching than encroaching. In the trailer for Patrick Ness's Carnegie winner A Monster Calls, the combination of Jim Kay's shadowy, poignant, frightening images, brought carefully to moving life, and the black and white text, floating unvoiced in violin music, seems like a small work of art in itself, living up beautifully to the challenge and tragedy of the book.

Children's books are also more likely to have words that beg to be read aloud. I liked the trailer for Lane Smith's It's a Book particularly, for the laconic richness of the big ape's delivery, although I thought it audacious to present a no-nonsense, low-tech message in the form of an elegant online trailer. It's inspired me to give it plenty of welly – though not to try out an American accent – when reading it to my toddler.

But I was less keen on The Graveyard Book trailer, read by author Neil Gaiman.  Seeing it after the fact, I felt the sharp black and white images and the scary music emphasised the creepy and murderous, the frightening, lonely side of the graveyard, while what I loved about the book was the balance of the mundane and even cosy with the supernatural and horrific. It's also very hard to argue with His Master's Voice. When it's the author reading, the trailer gets a definite stamp of gravitas.

Personally, I think I'd always rather read a teaser chapter than see a trailer for a book.  But is that just my Luddite opinion? Are younger readers, particularly, increasingly going to expect trailers and respond to them in different ways? And what do you find really off-putting – or enticing – about a trailer?

FictionChildren and teenagersImogen Russell Williams
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August's Reading group: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

This month we're time-travelling back more than 3,000 years, via last year's Orange prize

After a long run of classics and novels from long dead writers, the hat has selected a book that is fresh and contemporary, even if it's set more than 3,000 years ago. We're going to be reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, published just one year ago in the UK - and the winner of last year's, last ever Orange prize.

Londonsquirrel says this book is "a wonderful, age-old story, told beautifully. A book to make your heart sing, and break."

I hope my ticker can take the strain! Plenty of other people will agree with this positive assessment. Reviewing it in the Observer, Natalie Haynes wrote: "This is a deeply affecting version of the Achilles story: a fully three-dimensional man – a son, a father, husband and lover – now exists where a superhero previously stood and fought."

The strapline describes it as "the first book that portrays Achilles as a lover not a fighter". That's heartening – but also slightly troubling. For plenty of the time in the Iliad, Achilles is moping, hanging out with Patroclus his lover, annoyed because Agamemnon has nabbed his favourite pretty captive, Briseis. And it's Patroclus's death that spark his famous wrath and lust for blood. He's a lover first, in other words, but he's definitely also a fighter.

But that's a reviewer's perspective, I'm sure, and no reflection on Miller's research. I'm expecting that her take on the old blind poet is going to be impressive. She's a Latin and Greek teacher, after all, and must know her Homer. Plus, the book took a healthy 10 years to write. How she worked all that into the book is something we can look at later in the month, as well as drawing out more comparisons with the different versions of Achilles that have appeared over the years..

I'm also fascinated that Charlotte Higgins should have written that it was "culturally inevitable" that The Song Of Achilles won that Orange prize last year. Is classics really on the rise again? Maybe we'll have a clearer idea by the end of the month. But for now, the first thing to do is to get reading.

To that end, we have 10 copies to give away to the first 10 people to post a comment relevant to the book and to ask nicely that they be sent one. Don't forget to email Ginny.Hooker@guardian.co.uk as we can't track you down ourselves. Be nice to her too!

FictionClassicsSam Jordison
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Edinburgh international book festival - why does reading matter to you?

Whatever you like best about books and reading, there's no better way to celebrate than with a festival. Is there?

Later this week, the books team is off to Edinburgh international book festival to bring you coverage of as many of the events, author talks and discussions we possibly can. From 8 August until 26 August, we'll be camping out in the press yurt at the festival site at Charlotte Square Gardens. Each day we'll be writing a live blog and podcast to keep you up to date with all the latest from the festival. And whether you're in Scotland or Nova Scotia we'd like you to join in.

If you are lucky enough to be at the festival, we already have a space open for all your snaps of Edinburgh in full festive swing.

However, we know that many of our readers will not be able to be there in person, so we'll be devising lots of ways for everyone to get involved.

Our first challenge is to come up with a quote about reading, which may earn you a very special piece of posterity. For the time being, our lips are sealed - but enter your quote and watch this space.

The task is to explain in a single sentence why reading matters to you.

A couple of weeks ago we issued a Twitter challenge for six words summing up the best thing about reading, and had lots of responses which focused on escaping to other places:

RT @soph_amelia: @GuardianBooks The best thing about reading is being able to do it on your own

— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) July 26, 2013

@GuardianBooks The best thing about reading is the people you meet

— Ruby Parker (@_bunnystalker) July 26, 2013

@GuardianBooks knowing I'm either on holiday or in bed.

— Blair Millen (@discusster) July 26, 2013

The good news is that you don't have to stick to six words here. But whether or not you are inspired by that magic quote, join us for the latest news, and let us know what you want us to report. Each morning we'll start with the schedule for the day, and then post your pictures. We'll cover some events live, and even put up the odd video or two, oh, and there are bound to be a fair number of updates on the weather, too.

Altogether now:

Reading matters to me because...

Edinburgh International Book FestivalEdinburgh festivalHannah Freeman
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Can you improve on F Scott Fitzgerald's improving reading list?

Fitzgerald thought he'd prescribed 22 essential books to his nurse. But your second opinions are encouraged

It was 1936, one of the most difficult periods in F Scott Fitzgerald's life: he had just published his essay The Crack-Up in Esquire magazine, exploring the mental and physical decline that would lead to his death four years later.

As he convalesced in a North Carolina hotel, his thoughts turned to choosing 22 books that might educate his nurse Dorothy Richardson, while perhaps distracting her from her attempts to keep him sober. There's no record of whether she felt encouraged or patronised by this literary guidance.

Three volumes of introspection from Marcel Proust's À La Recherche du Temps Perdu were offset a single laugh-along volume of The Best American Humorous Short Stories. Should Richardson find Tolstoy's War and Peace hard going, she could console herself with the wit of Oscar Wilde, or the piquant brevity of Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party".

In his essay, Fitzgerald described the depths of the distress he'd suffered when, "10 years this side of 49, I suddenly realised I had prematurely cracked".

He wrote: "Now a man can crack in many ways – can crack in the head, in which case the power of decision is taken from you by others; or in the body, when one can but submit to the white hospital world; or in the nerves …"

"I realised that in those two years, in order to preserve something – an inner hush maybe, maybe not – I had weaned myself from all the things I used to love – that every act of life from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner had become an effort."

One can't help wondering how much of this cracked-up self he glimpsed Gardner Murphy's An Outline of Abnormal Psychology, or how much melancholy fellowship he found in the Complete Poetical Works of John Keats, particularly perhaps, the haunting sonnet "When I have fears that I may cease to be".

Perhaps the most heartening feature of the list is what it reveals about the range and energy of his reading: here was a man who could wax lyrical about plays, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Here's his list. Which books would you add (or subtract)?

Sister Carrie, by Theodore Dreiser
The Life of Jesus, by Ernest Renan
A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
The Old Wives' Tale, by Arnold Bennett
The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiel Hammett
The Red and the Black, by Stendhal
The Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant, translated by Michael Monahan
An Outline of Abnormal Psychology, edited by Gardner Murphy
The Stories of Anton Chekhov, edited by Robert N Linscott
The Best American Humorous Short Stories, edited by Alexander Jessup
Victory, by Joseph Conrad
The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France
The Plays of Oscar Wilde
Sanctuary, by William Faulkner
Within a Budding Grove, by Marcel Proust
The Guermantes Way, by Marcel Proust
Swann's Way, by Marcel Proust
South Wind, by Norman Douglas
The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Complete Poetical Works

F Scott FitzgeraldFictionPoetryLiz Bury
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Tips, links and suggestions: What are you reading, today?

The space to talk about the books you are reading, and find out which ones we are reviewing

Guardian readersHannah Freeman

Not the Booker prize: Here's the longlist, now vote for the shortlist

Below is a long, longlist of eligible books: now you have until next Wednesday to vote for the shortlist

Stage one is complete. We have a longlist. And here it is. In alphabetical order, and in glory:

Socrates Adams - A Modern Family (Bluemoose Books)

Michael Arditti - The Breath of Night (Arcadia Books)

Jenn Ashworth - The Friday Gospels (Sceptre)

Kate Atkinson - Life After Life (Doubleday)

Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker (Bantam Press)

James Benmore - Dodger (Heron Books)

Joel Biroco - World of Dust  (The Coronzon Press)

Neil Blower - Dividing Lines (FireStep Publishing)

Sheryl Browne - A Little Bit of Madness (Safkhet Soul)

Sheryl Browne - Learning To Love (Safkhet Soul)

JL Bwye - Breath of Africa (Crooked Cat Publishing)

Sam Byers - Idiopathy (Fourth Estate)

Brian Catling - The Vorrh (Honest Publishing)

C Karen Campbell - This Is Where I Am (Bloomsbury Circus)

Jude Cook - Byron Easy (William Heinemann)

Gavin Corbett - This Is the Way (Fourth Estate)

Lucy Cruickshanks - The Trader of Saigon (Heron Books)

Andrew Crumey - The Secret Knowledge (Dedalus)

Helen DeWitt - Lightning Rods (And Other Stories)

Sarah Dobbs - Killing Daniel (Unthank Books)

Louise Doughty - Apple Tree Yard (Faber and Faber)

Nathan Filer - The Shock of the Fall (HarperCollins)

Helen FitzGerald - The Cry (Faber and Faber)

Neil Gaiman - The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Headline)

Jeff Gardiner - Myopia (Crooked Cat Publishing)

Matt Greene - Ostrich (Random House)

Jonathan Grimwood - The Last Banquet (Canongate Books)

Matt Haig - The Humans (Canongate)

Mohsin Hamid - How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Hamish Hamilton)

Matthew Hughes - Hell to Pay\ (Angry Robot)

Tyler Keevil - The Drive (Myriad Editions)

Hannah Kent - Burial Rites (Picador)

DD Johnston - The Deconstruction of Professor Thrub (Barbican Press)

Graham Joyce - The Year of the Ladybird (Gollancz)

Thomas Keneally - The Daughters of Mars (Sceptre)

Claire King -The Night Rainbow (Bloomsbury)

John le Carré - A Delicate Truth (Viking)

Paula Lichtarowicz - The First Book of Calamity Leek (Hutchinson)

Will Macmillan Jones - Bass Instinct (Safkhet publishing)

Graham McNeill - Angel Exterminatus (The Black Library)

Patrick Ness - The Crane Wife (Canongate)

Rob Newman - The Trade Secret (Cargo Publishing)

Maggie O'Farrell - Instructions for a Heatwave (Tinder Press)

Simon Okotie - Whatever Happened to Harold Absalon (Salt Publishing)

Ruth Ozeki - A Tale For The Time Being (Canongate)

Mark Patton - An Accidental King (Crooked Cat Publishing)

Christopher Priest - The Adjacent (Gollancz)

Johnny Rich - The Human Script (Red Button Publishing)

Jess Richards - Cooking With Bones (Sceptre)

Francesca Rhydderch - The Rice Paper Diaries (Seren)

Marli Roode - Call It Dog (Atlantic Books)

Kevin Sampson - The Killing Pool (Jonathan Cape)

KS Silkwood - King of the Jungle (Unthank Books) 

J. David Simons - An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful (Saraband) 

Caroline Smailes - The Drowning of Arthur Braxton (The Friday Project)

James Smythe - The Machine (Blue Door)

Katherine Stansfield - The Visitor (Parthian Books)

Susie Steiner - A Homecoming (Faber and Faber)

Jonathan Taylor - Entertaining Strangers (Salt Publishing)

Emma Tennant - The Beautiful Child (Peter Owen Publishers)

Marcel Theroux - Strange Bodies (Faber and Faber)

Lesley Thomson - The Detective's Daughter (Head of Zeus)

Alice Thompson - Burnt Island (Salt Publishing)

Colm Tóibín - The Testament of Mary (Penguin)

David Towsey - Your Brother's Blood (Jo Fletcher Books)

Lin Treadgold - Goodbye Henrietta Street (Safkhet Soul)

Suzie Tullett - Little White Lies and Butterflies (Safkhet Soul)

Zoe Venditozzi - Anywhere's Better Than Here (Sandstone Press)

Rebecca Wait - The View on the Way Down (Picador)

Kate Worsley - She Rises (Bloomsbury)

Carol E Wyer - How Not to Murder Your Grumpy (Safkhet Soul)

Carol E Wyer - Just Add Spice (Safkhet Soul)

Evie Wyld - All the Birds, Singing (Jonathan Cape)

Meike Ziervogel - Magda (Salt Publishing)

I said it was long! This list was compiled by Harry Cockburn and boy am I grateful. Harry writes: "I especially like the sound of Idiopathy by Sam Byers – "a novel of love, narcissism and ailing cattle". Yep. That does sound good. Who says that the experimental novel is dead?

Now. I know you want to get voting, but before you do there are important things to note. And if you don't note them, your vote won't matter a mote. I'll stop rhyming now, not least because I want you to read what follows. It's important. 

First, look at rule 8 . I'll quote: "A shortlist of six books will be assembled via a readers' vote. To be eligible for this ballot, each voter must have submitted a reader review of one of their chosen titles. Each reader must vote for two books, from two different publishers – changes of mind will be governed by clause four on indecision. Readers will be invited to cast their vote in the comments field of an article published on theguardian.com/books. Voters must include a link to their reader review and the word "vote" in their comment on the associated article. Like we said in clause five. We take no responsibility for the make-up of the Competition shortlist, nor for the continued participation of nominated authors, and we reserve the right to vote ourselves, and to canvas support for nominations the cut of whose jib we happen to like."

Did you catch all that? This means that you've got to review one book, and link to it – and I'll tell you how to do that in a second. But here's the big thing. You have to vote for two books, by two different publishers. So you can still vote for your mate. And you can still get everyone in your office to vote for your mate. Or to vote for the book you've just published. But you have to pick another book too. And so, spread the love.

Right. Back to the review system. Here's a quick step-by-step guide, in case you're confused. It may look like it's cut and pasted from last year's shortlist blog – but I haven't been quite as lazy as you think. There are subtle and important variations. And a new joke! So read all that carefully too.

Let's suppose I want to vote for The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by that youthful prodigy, Alan Garner.

First I go to the search page and enter "Garner Weirdstone" into the search field.

Second, I choose the relevant edition.

Third, I write a review of no fewer than 100 words in which I try to give a flavour of the book and of its plot and to explain why I think the book is important and why others might like it. Then I hit submit.

Fourth, once my deathless prose has appeared on the page I hit the "share" button that appears in the top right-hand corner of the box containing my review. When the link text appears in a little box , I "copy" it.

Fifth, I return to this Not the Booker prize page. I go to the comments box at the bottom. I type "Vote: Alan Garner, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" into the comments field. After that I type something like: "Here is my review." I highlight that text with my mouse, and hit the button above the comment field that contains a picture of a chain – the link button. A prompt box appears saying "Enter a web address". I paste the copied text in. And then, I remember the really important thing, because I've been concentrating very hard, and nominate another book, by a different publisher. And I know that if I don't I'll have wasted all that time, because my vote won't count. I refrain from saying anything bitter about how complicated this system is. I enjoy the challenge. I relish the chance to promote good fiction. I totally, totally rock. I then hit "post your comment".

Sixth, I make myself a nice cup of tea. I choose non-caffeinated, because I am a calm and I am zen. And then, I see yet another FOOL has nominated different books and I HURL my tea across the room in rage. And now, we know we are in the exciting process of whittling down that longlist. If I like I can return to the comments with a barbed remark about whichever book it is that has annoyed me. Or perhaps, if I am a decent sort, I can instead write something celebrating the marvellous diversity of opinion and taste on display. After that, I can perhaps return to comment some more. But not vote. I can only do that once.

And that's it. Easy. You've got one week to do all that. The deadline is midnight 11 August. Which is to say, the middle of Sunday night ready for an announcement early the following week.

That's the theory, anyway. Last year, our carefully-laid plans resulted in total chaos. That was fun. And kind of part of the plan. But we will understand if you're having trouble with the review system. So if you're really struggling, and can explain why, we'll definitely be prepared to listen. And to count your vote.

And yes, counting them all is going to be even harder than usual. But that's my problem, not yours. Or possibly Harry's. Anyway. All you have to do is review, and vote - and then vote again. Go to it!

FictionSam Jordison
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Poem of the week: Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery by Meg Bateman

Published here with its Gaelic version, 'Nighean is Seanmhair aig a' Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta', this is a sharp look at youth and age

The Edinburgh-born poet Meg Bateman is acclaimed for her work in Scottish Gaelic. Her latest volume, Transparencies, published this month by Polygon, marks a new departure, containing a number of poems in English only. Nonetheless, to double the pleasure of readers who have both languages at their command, I've chosen as this week's poem the bi-lingual "Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery"/ "Nighean is Seanmhair aig a' Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta".

What the book-jacket refers to as the collection's "Gaelic aesthetic" can be sensed, even in the English poems, in the cadence of Bateman's line, and in the unassuming directness of her voice. The poems have the strength and simplicity of art made for a community rather than an elite, though they are far from artless.

The title, "Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery", sounds like the title of a painting. and the opening stanza appropriately forms a clear and focused picture.

While there's no physical description of the girl (and none seems needed), the grandmother is vividly sketched, "with her stick in one hand and her arm in yours". Those sharp monosyllables convey the almost military precision of organisation she needs to stay mobile and upright. Further details are added via a deft and cunning move into the girl's point of view ("You little imagine … ") The language is unforced and ordinary: "old as the hills", "wrinkled", "bent". "Old as the hills" is particularly well-worn, the first comparative reached for whenever we want to conjure unimaginable age. It probably sums up accurately what the girl herself thinks about her grandmother. But it achieves considerable poetic effectiveness through association. The old woman is labouring up a hill of steps. Her bent back can be visualised as a small hill. There are hills in the surrounding landscape, and they do indeed pre-date the city by millennia.

That the speaker has chosen to address the girl is declared early on by the use of the second-person possessive pronoun. She remains the addressee throughout the poem, except when, in a grammatical nuance unavailable to English, both women are signalled by "sibh", the plural form of "you" in Gaelic, at the end of stanza one.

The girl's sense of her own absolute separateness from her ancient grandmother has been established only to be gently challenged: "But you are contemporaries – " These lines, of course, also challenge the apartheid which has developed in many urban western societies between old and young. Other values, those of rural or more traditional cultures, underlie the first stanza's closing affirmation. Young and old are both connected and synchronised, "you walk this earth together".

The second stanza implies a new balance of power. Now it's the grandmother's turn to lead the granddaughter. She knows exactly where the sought-for picture hangs, "over in the corner". Again, crucial to the art and thought of this poem is the notion of balance. We were shown the old woman through the granddaughter's eyes. Now we're shown David Martin's "Self-Portrait" from the grandmother's perspective.

Her appraisal begins with the bare facts – the title of the painting, the artist's name and date. But she goes on to point out some finer aesthetic details. Her attentiveness is indicated by the reference to the "trace of foxglove in his cheeks". The foxglove's pink is sharper and blue-er than that of the rose, the flower usually associated with the human face. The grandmother must have stared searchingly at the portrait on other occasions, and thought about the exact skin-tone. The "shadowy eyes" suggest a mysterious, perhaps erotic, back-story to the portrait. Otherwise, the physical details, like those of the first stanza, are simple and conventional: "long fair lashes", "chiselled lips". They are accurate, and they emphasise the artist's youth and romantic good looks.

As before, it's the last two lines of the stanza that deliver the thrust. If there's a hint of deconstructed sonnet-form in the poem, it's most noticeable in the forceful way the two stanzas conclude, with lines six and sevan in each packing the punch, almost, of an Elizabethan couplet.

The idiomatic syntax heightens the assertiveness of tone; "and no better claim have you than she … " That the young girl has "no better claim" on the lips in the portrait might be read as the speaker's acknowledgment of the grandmother's desire, and her right to feel desire. Yet these are not actual lips, as the qualification, "caught between glazes", reminds us.

Artists in oils traditionally used glazes in building up subtlety and depth of colour. These glazes are perhaps compounded by the framer's glaze – the glass. The artist's likeness has been caught, and he appears lifelike, but he cannot escape into life.

The "claim" may be that of desire, but it may denote more simply the right of different viewers to their personal responses. Perhaps the girl imagines herself being kissed by the young man portrayed, whereas the old woman brings an equally valid act of memory to her response: she has been kissed in the past by lips like his.

By choosing an 18th-century painting, the poet has somehow telescoped the passage of time. The young artist "caught between glazes" died long ago. He is the oldest person in the trio, and perhaps, simultaneously, the youngest (at 23, he seems unlikely to be older than the granddaughter). The poem challenges short-sighted personal obsessions with time, and invites a more generous and imaginative definition of the "contemporary".

Girl and Grandmother at the National Gallery

Girl helping your grandmother up the gallery steps
with her stick in one hand and her arm in yours,
to you she seems as old as the hills,
you little imagine your own hand wrinkled
or your back bent,
but you are contemporaries –
you walk this earth together.

She leads you to a painting over in the corner,
"Self-portrait of the Artist at Twenty-Three"
by David Martin (18th Century, Scottish),
shows you the trace of foxglove in his cheek,
the shadowy eyes and long fair lashes,
and no better claim have you than she
on the chiselled lips caught between glazes.

Nighean is Seanmhair aig a' Ghailearaidh Nàiseanta

A nighean a dhìreas an staidhre le do sheanmhair,
a dàrna làmh na do làimh-sa, a bata san tèile,
saoilidh tu gu bheil i cho sean ris a' cheò,
gun smuain air do làmh fhèin a' fàs preasach
no do dhruim crotach…
ach tha sibh nur co-aoisich
's sibh a' siubhal an t-saoghail seo còmhla.

Treòraichidh i gu dealbh thall san oisean thu,
"Fèin-dhealbh a' pheantair aig fichead bliadhna 's a trì"
le Dàibhidh Màrtainn (Albannach, ochdamh linn deug),
seallaidh i dhut tuar nam ban-sìth na ghruaidh,
na sgàilean na shùilean, a ruisg fhada bhàna,
is cha dad nas treasa do chòir-sa seach a còir-se
air a bheul cumadail glacte fo gach lì.Carol

PoetryCarol Rumens
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Literary ice cream – what's your flavour?

Would you cool down with a spoonful of War and Peach, or a scoop of Captain Corelli's Mandarin? Only the most novel ice cream flavours will do …

It's summer, it's Friday. So what better way could there be to while away the hours left until the weekend begins than by contemplating the fine work of independent press Quirk Books, from Philadelphia, which has imagined a bunch of new ice cream flavours inspired by books.

Berry Potter and the Container of Secrets looks to be a crowd-pleaser, with its "magical blend of butter beer, Bertie Bott's Strawberry Flavour Beans and chocolate frogs". Oliver Twist: Please Sir, I Want Some More – to be eaten "sparingly" – promises a "rich dark chocolate and simple vanilla flavours with a smattering of English toffee."

War and Peach sounds tempting, especially for those with a healthy appetite: "An ambitious, sweeping and impeccably detailed frozen treat of truly epic proportions … Not easy to get through without a headache, but if you make it, you can brag about finishing it for the rest of your life."

I'm less sure about One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, though Quirk promises "candy fish in a chocolatey goo … with marshmallows too". But may I suggest a sorbet for your delectation Captain Corelli's Mandarin, though some may find it a little sweet. No? Then how about The Talented Mr Raspberry Ripple, a fruity concoction with a little bite? Philosophical indulgence in the form of Under the Vienetta? Some sophisticated gelato with Ice Claudius? Death on the Vanilla?

You can do a great deal better than this. Let us know your scoops …

FictionLiz Bury
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