Tracey Warr's Blog, page 16
July 5, 2020
Taking a Line for a Walk
Alan Smith talking on his COVID-19 drawings. Part of the Call Centre art research project on the coronavirus crisis by Tracey Warr. Being and getting home. Experiences of time and momentum.
Images emerge from the marks like something uncertainly perceived in flickering candlelight in chthonic darkness underground.
Drawing, Alan says, is ‘thinking that happens on the periphery of other more direct thoughts or observations’. It is, he reflects, like working to see in limited light, drawing imagery out of shifting shadows, related to the rhythms of handwriting and the spoken word.
The image has to be extracted. It comes out of the paper rather than being put on it, although, he says, ‘of course, I have to find those images. I am responsible for them’.
June 14, 2020
Home
Call Centre is an art research project inviting people to share their experiences of this time of COVID-19 and how it has impacted on lives and creative processes. The project is curated by Alan Smith and Helen Ratcliffe at Allenheads Contemporary Arts. I am working on the project, together with writer Martyn Hudson Watts and artists Annie Carpenter, Kerry Morrison, Helmut Lemke, Ben Ponton, and Andrew Wilson.
I am reflecting on being and getting home and on the sense of momentum and time in dialogue with three ‘correspondents’: JR Carpenter, Nuno Sacramento, and Alan Smith.
In his post ‘Out of the Seemingly Chaotic’ Alan Smith writes on his return to drawing after a 25 year absence: ‘in some ways I had rediscovered a way of creating order without the stress of striving for a known objective’.
I am carrying out a series of interviews on diverse journeys into a new paradigm in these times. The first interviews are posted on the Call Centre site now:
An interview with Lucas and Ana, who have begun a new life living on a narrow boat.
An interview with Jack, a young writer whose first pieces of writing have been published during lockdown.
June 4, 2020
Add Women to History and Stir
An interview with me by my publisher, Jeffrey Collyer, to coincide with the publication of my new historical novel The Anarchy – the final book in the Conquest trilogy set in 12th century Wales, England, and Normandy. The book is available now as an e-book and will be out as a paperback in the next few weeks.
The image opposite is the medieval village and bell tower of Brousse Le Chateau in the Tarn Valley, France, one of the first inspirations for my historical fiction writing, which I talk about in the interview. [Image by Didier Descouens & Thierry Descouens – CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50166237.%5D
My title above is adapted from a remark in Erler, Mary & Kowaleski, Maryanne, eds. (2003) Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, London: Cornell Press.
June 3, 2020
Sumptuous and Presumptuous
My blogpost on Henry of Blois, the 12th century bishop of Winchester, is published today on the English Historical Fiction Authors site.
Henry of Blois, was the grandson of William the Conqueror. Bernard of Clairvaux described him as ‘that old whore of Winchester’. For Henry of Huntingdon he was ‘a new kind of monster, composed part pure and part corrupt … part monk and part knight.’ Brian FitzCount accused him of ‘having a remarkable gift of discovering that duty pointed in the same direction as expediency’. He was also a papal legate, a major patron of the arts, and played a significant role in the civil war between King Stephen (Henry’s brother) and Empress Matilda (Henry’s cousin), during the period known as The Anarchy. I weigh the evidence for and against Henry, and judge that he lived sumptuously and was impressively presumptuous.
[image error]Henry of Blois’s tomb, discovered in 1761 in Winchester Cathedral, ‘wrapt in a brown and gold mantle, with traces of gold round the temples’.
June 2, 2020
Publication Day – The Anarchy
The Anarchy is the final novel in my Conquest series focused on Nest ferch Rhys and the 12th century struggle between the Welsh and the Normans. Published today by Impress Books.
The e-book is out today and the paperback is coming in a few weeks.
[image error]
May 28, 2020
The salt sea flood
My new novel, The Anarchy, is published next week by Impress Books. It is the final book in the Conquest trilogy, focused on the life of Nest ferch Rhys and the 12th century struggle between the Welsh and the Normans.
In the novel I (anachronistically) use a poem by the Welsh bard Dafydd ap Gwilym:
Yr wylan deg ar lanw, dioer
Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer,
Dilwch yw dy degwch di,
Darn fal haul, dyrnfol heli.
O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides,
White as the moon is when the night abides,
Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glows
Bright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throws
A glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.
You can listen to those lines from the poem in Welsh here.
With thanks and permission from WJEC CBAC Ltd
Translation by Robert Gurney in Bardic Heritage (Chatto & Windus, 1969).
April 25, 2020
New newsletter published
New newsletter just published. Contents include news on my next historical novel, The Anarchy, which will be published by Impress Books in June; a radio interview with me on Soundart Radio; a book reviewing competition; my work in progress on a biography of three medieval sisters; and residencies and workshops I’ve undertaken in the last year at Matadero Madrid, Gresol Arts in Catalonia, University of Exeter, Hexham Book Festival and Allenheads Contemporary Arts. You can sign up for my newsletter with the link sign right at the bottom of this page, next to the Facebook and Twitter link signs.
April 24, 2020
Down the research rabbit hole
I’m working on a biography of three 11th century sisters and, at this stage of the research, every thread to pursue involves disappearing down a rabbit hole for a very long time, trying to get answers.
The critical thing is to record everything in the research process, including more threads and queries to pursue, so that, after many, lengthy escapades down many holes – so many that you seem to be standing on a veritable hole-pierced rabbit warren – it does eventually become possible to construct an ensemble of information from it all, which can then be turned into a narrative.
George Eliot’s Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch comes to mind. I always feel a bit sorry for him. He has a fabulous wife and doesn’t know what to do with her. He is researching a mammoth tome and never gets it finished. His research turns out to be an enormous folly, without outcome. He’s not the best example to have in mind at this point!
[image error][image error][image error]Tracking the fey, Melusine, half woman, half winged serpent, in Lusignan, France. Left to right: Rue de la Fee Melusine in Lusignan; Melusine symbol on a chimney pot – she was said to wail in chimneys and around the turrets of Lusignan castle; Melusine sculpture on a wall in Lusignan.
The fairy, Melusine, half woman, half winged serpent, is associated in medieval stories with the lords of Lusignan. One of the sisters I am researching, Almodis de La Marche, married Hugh V of Lusignan and there is a possibility that the Melusine story is linked to Almodis. I’m currently tracking this question down various rabbit holes.
April 19, 2020
Text is material
‘For all writing, you need to be nosy.’
‘To me, text is material in the same way as stone or paint are.’
‘A pen is like a prosthetic for me. It’s like a visual artist needing a sketchpad always to hand, or a sound artist needing to record on their phone.’
‘The first thing with beginning to write is always fear. Fear about whether you will be able to come up with anything, to broach that blank sheet. Once you’ve got bits and pieces, drafts, you can see how to keep working forward. You have momentum and obsession on your side after that first, fearful beginning.’
‘I often start writing with sentences I get on first waking or when I’m in the bath. I’ve had to figure out how to catch those sentences, to write them down when half asleep in the dark, or when immersed in water.’
‘I have a morning head. I’m hopeless after 4pm in the afternoon. Other people are owls. If I can get access to my morning head, without any distractions, then I believe I can make an inroad into whatever creative thing I’m trying to do.’
Extracts from an interview on my writing with Sarah Gray on Soundart Radio. Listen in here: Soundart Radio Podcast.
April 17, 2020
Water Love
My post Water Love is just published on meanda.net. It outlines my future fiction and books on water art and writing workshops for adults and children. Also if you are drying out, unable to swim in these lockdown times, check out the links to octopus art, pool art, underwater soundart and the Outdoor Swimming Society’s solutions for desperate hydrophiles.
