Bryan Islip's Blog, page 63
November 25, 2009
Good reading
You know how it is when you have this dream of walking into a great house and you look around the hall in awe, deciding which of its many doors to open? And having opened quite a few, even entering and spending time in some, you finally find yourself in a room of such breathtakingly rampant splendour, offering such a huge personal welcome as to make you realise the true worth, to you, of the whole of the great house itself?
No? neither me until a few days ago. For great house read internet and...
No? neither me until a few days ago. For great house read internet and...
November 24, 2009
On Robert Burns
I was already pretty well steeped in things Robert Burns, 1759 –1796, having visited his cottage near Ayr at age 19 (all the way back in 1954!) and a few months ago Dee and I had the opportunity to re-visit that same cottage. I often talk about a passion to write. But as I sit here at my keyboard and screen, cup of coffee to hand 'midst warm air and electric lighting, with the black of night and the wind and the rain kept well at bay, I am imagining that young farmer, quill poised, baby crying, candle guttering in cold, wet air under leaky thatch. He has not long since returned from a hard day in those difficult fields of his but is now assembling some of the finest thoughts, committing them to some of the most powerful, most beautiful words ever written by anybody in any language since Man first marked the dried skin of an animal.
I've read a couple of Burns biogs and like most if not all of us I've listened often to his songs - even attempted, as have many of us, to sing some of them when refreshed enough to throw our customary caution to the winds. Who has not reeled away to Auld Lang Syne? Here's a lesson for songwriters today; if the words aren't hearable and if they don't make you feel stuff then you're wasting your own and your listeners' time; you're 'shuffling smoke' as my American boss used to say.
Our first meeting with the Wester-Ross Burn Club was fully reported on this site. Amongst other memorable events we danced the Highlands way on Ian's lawn, our pace increasing from feverish to frenzied under attack from that monstrous battalion of midges. (I am convinced that highland dancing is the outward and visible sign of an inward pre-disposition to the most violent forms of cattle stealing and clan warfare.) But now has come a greater honour yet. I have been invited to propose the Toast To The Lassies at our upcoming Burns Supper. It will be an honour and a pleasure and it will not be difficult. Leaving aside any personal knowledge on the object of the Toast I have looked for inspiration to The Man himself. I believe there are some five hundred and forty eight Burns attributed works, and of these at least a third are on the subject of The Lassies. So I shall simply follow the leader.
I've read a couple of Burns biogs and like most if not all of us I've listened often to his songs - even attempted, as have many of us, to sing some of them when refreshed enough to throw our customary caution to the winds. Who has not reeled away to Auld Lang Syne? Here's a lesson for songwriters today; if the words aren't hearable and if they don't make you feel stuff then you're wasting your own and your listeners' time; you're 'shuffling smoke' as my American boss used to say.
Our first meeting with the Wester-Ross Burn Club was fully reported on this site. Amongst other memorable events we danced the Highlands way on Ian's lawn, our pace increasing from feverish to frenzied under attack from that monstrous battalion of midges. (I am convinced that highland dancing is the outward and visible sign of an inward pre-disposition to the most violent forms of cattle stealing and clan warfare.) But now has come a greater honour yet. I have been invited to propose the Toast To The Lassies at our upcoming Burns Supper. It will be an honour and a pleasure and it will not be difficult. Leaving aside any personal knowledge on the object of the Toast I have looked for inspiration to The Man himself. I believe there are some five hundred and forty eight Burns attributed works, and of these at least a third are on the subject of The Lassies. So I shall simply follow the leader.
Works old and new
Going with Gabriel is getting going. Cheers! The new cover is the one to be on the novel from publication date 11 Feb. Notice the background landscape is my pastel painting 'February Dawn, 2009'. The one called 'White Wine at the Blueprint' is my oil painting, originally done for the Blueprint cafe in Gairloch but still wrapped up in our loft. Ah well ...
November 23, 2009
The author invisible
From recent conversations with readers of Going with Gabriel, it seems that people generally assume writers are expressing their own views through the mind, the eyes, the words and the actions of their principal characters. This may be the case with many writers but I hope not in my own.
Yesterday my blog focussed on world population, which is the main theme of Going with Gabriel besides being the factor behind the (previous) central activity of the book's Dr Gabriel Nicolson. I have to point ...
Yesterday my blog focussed on world population, which is the main theme of Going with Gabriel besides being the factor behind the (previous) central activity of the book's Dr Gabriel Nicolson. I have to point ...
November 22, 2009
A most difficult subject.
On Thursday November 19 The Times published a double page spread on a United Nations report subject (human) world population growth. Ben Webster offered his startlingly obvious endorsement in that birth control could do more to control greenhouse gas emissions that building wind turbines. Which is a bit like saying that blowing into the wind could avert a hurricane. Bronwen Maddox headlined her piece 'The taboo is broken' in reference, of course, to the unsustainable number of babies being bo...
November 19, 2009
The Art of Critique
Just occasionally you get a present that's free, generous, unsolicited, uplifting.
Earlier this year, through a visitor to our stall at the Poolewe Market, I was introduced to Michelle Miller Allen, writer of the novels, Journey From the Keep of Bones and Hunger in the First Person Singular: Stories of Desire and Power. Click into one of her blogs sites, her 'salon', the one called A Bear Named Hope. This lady does good work.
Michelle recently sent me a review of my own (first) novel, More...
Earlier this year, through a visitor to our stall at the Poolewe Market, I was introduced to Michelle Miller Allen, writer of the novels, Journey From the Keep of Bones and Hunger in the First Person Singular: Stories of Desire and Power. Click into one of her blogs sites, her 'salon', the one called A Bear Named Hope. This lady does good work.
Michelle recently sent me a review of my own (first) novel, More...
November 18, 2009
Thinking of Burns and The Lassies
Back in the summer Dee and I were invited to become members of the Wester-Ross Burns Club, a singular honour for those adopted by rather than born in Scotland.
I was already pretty well steeped in Burnsmania, having visited his cottage near Ayr at age 19 (all the way back in 1954!)and a few months ago Dee and I had the opportunity afforded by our hosts, Meron and Sandy, to re-visit that same cottage. I often talk about a passion to write. But as I sit here at my keyboard and screen, cup of tea...
I was already pretty well steeped in Burnsmania, having visited his cottage near Ayr at age 19 (all the way back in 1954!)and a few months ago Dee and I had the opportunity afforded by our hosts, Meron and Sandy, to re-visit that same cottage. I often talk about a passion to write. But as I sit here at my keyboard and screen, cup of tea...
November 16, 2009
In Wounded Fields (5)
... and this is the end of my thoughts about the poets of world war one. Well, not the end of my thoughts but the final installment of my 1996 In Wounded Fields...
To: John McRae: November 1872 - January 1918
Youth steals away from all who live, McRae,
Though weary not the sons the Highlands yields,
Canadian now (except on Empire Day,)
You're 'uncle' to the boys in Flanders' fields.
You wrote; "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow;"
And midst the dogs of war you heard the lark,
Went on; "We shall not ...
To: John McRae: November 1872 - January 1918
Youth steals away from all who live, McRae,
Though weary not the sons the Highlands yields,
Canadian now (except on Empire Day,)
You're 'uncle' to the boys in Flanders' fields.
You wrote; "In Flanders Fields the poppies blow;"
And midst the dogs of war you heard the lark,
Went on; "We shall not ...
November 15, 2009
In Wounded Fields (4)
If you've read anything by or about Vera Britten (mother of cabinet minister Shirley Williams) you'll know about the brilliant young academic, poet, soldier, Roland Leighton. If you haven't yet, then try Vera's Testament to Youth, which is largely modelled on her all time love for him and the generation lost in world war one.
As my poem suggests there are several interwined mysteries around the short life and the death of this brilliant young man. I'm not going to speculate here but there had ...
As my poem suggests there are several interwined mysteries around the short life and the death of this brilliant young man. I'm not going to speculate here but there had ...
November 14, 2009
In Wounded Fields (3)
This was number three out of the five poems in my 'In Wounded Fields' compendium.
Poets come from everywhere in the human spectrum, without links to race, colour, class or creed. As this one indicates, Francis Ledwidge could hardly have sprung from less promising roots. Most of his boyhood would have been spent amongst an equally unschooled, barely literate if not illiterate peer group. And yet ... Ireland with its Celtic ancestry has always produced great distillers of words into poems and th...
Poets come from everywhere in the human spectrum, without links to race, colour, class or creed. As this one indicates, Francis Ledwidge could hardly have sprung from less promising roots. Most of his boyhood would have been spent amongst an equally unschooled, barely literate if not illiterate peer group. And yet ... Ireland with its Celtic ancestry has always produced great distillers of words into poems and th...
