Kathleen Jones's Blog, page 35

Tuesday Poem: William Blake's 'The Lamb' set by John Tavener

John Tavener's setting of William Blake's poem 'The Lamb', performed by the Tenebrae Choir.  This is just one of the pieces of music featured in the Italian film ' La Grande Bellezza' - The Great Beauty.



The Lamb is one of the poem's in Blake's 'Songs of Innocence'.  Though I'm not religious, I find it's simplicity very moving.  It was one of the poems we had to learn at school, alongside 'Tiger, tiger, burning bright'.



There are 28 Tuesday Poets coming from all over the world - New Zealand, America, Canada, France, Italy, England, Australia, and Africa.  We try to post a poem every Tuesday and take it in turns to edit the main website, which you can find by clicking this link.  Please take a look and find out what we're all posting. 

Once upon a winter's afternoon . . .

There's a part of my very northern soul that loves winter - however cold the wind and however bleak the trees and stone walls look with the snow blowing across them.  I still feel that lift of the heart - the excitement I felt as a child when the white flakes began to fall out of a steel-grey sky.   It was minus three degrees this afternoon, but I had to get out into it and walk up the river with the snow blowing on a wind that the Scots describe as lazy - because it goes straight through you rather than round!  There was snow cloud on the fells, so I couldn't see their summits from the river. The colours were all sepia, like old photographs.


There's been quite a lot of gale damage in the woods that line the river bank.  But my favourite oak tree is still standing - a very old tree with a trunk that would take several people to circle it with their arms.



 The next door neighbour hadn't been so fortunate, lying prostrate in the snow. One gale too many.



The wind chill was quite challenging and the temperature will go down to minus ten tonight if the forecast is right. I was very well wrapped up against the cold - more suitable for a Himalayan expedition than a walk up the river Eden. It felt very good to be outside after being cooped up inside with flu.  Now to curl up on the sofa with a good read.  Italo Calvino?  'If on a winter's night a traveller' . . .   One of my favourite books for comfort reading.  But I haven't read William Fiennes 'Snow Geese' yet though it's sitting on my Kindle.   And then there's a little voice inside nagging me about all the things I'm supposed to be writing myself. Choices!

Women Writing Women - 'Unforgettable Books by Exceptional Writers'

So here it is at last!  The secret we've been sitting on for the past three or four months.    Women Writing Women - Outside the Box.  Seven of us, all ALLI members, got together last autumn at Jessica Bell's suggestion, to see what woman-power could accomplish in the world of Indie publishing.  This is a new experiment - both scary and exciting - and I'll be reporting back regularly on it's progress.

We've put together a box-set of 7 novels with unusual female protagonists - women who don't get to feature in mainstream fiction very often.  7 Award-winning authors;  7 blindingly brilliant books.

Apart from my own novel, The Centauress, 'Outside the Box' features:

Orna Ross founder-director of The Alliance of Independent Authors, and named by The Bookseller as one of the 100 most influential people in publishing. Orna's contributed Blue Mercy, a novel about a woman who has spent time in jail for killing her tyrannical father, and is now determined to reveal the truth.

Joni Rodgers is a New York Times bestselling author, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a Discover Award finalist. Joni's novel, Crazy for Trying, features a bookish and freshly orphaned young woman who seeks to escape the shadow of her infamous mother—a radical lesbian poet—by fleeing her hometown.

Roz Morris, ghost writer and teacher of creative writing master classes for the Guardian newspaper in London, is the author of best-selling My Memories of a Future Life, the story of a gifted musician who is forced by injury to stop playing the piano and fears her life may be over.

Jane Davis, a British writer whose debut won the Daily Mail First Novel Award, contributed her latest novel, An Unchoreographed Life,  in which a former ballerina turns to prostitution to support her daughter.

Carol Cooper Author, doctor, British journalist and president of the Guild of Health Writers contributed One Night at the Jacaranda, in which an undercover journalist after a by-line, not a boyfriend, unexpectedly has to choose between her comfortable life and a bumpy road that could lead to happiness.

Jessica Bell  is an Australian novelist, singer/songwriter, Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal  whose award-winning poetry has been broadcast on ABC National Radio. Her novel, White Lady, features the wife of a drug lord who attempts to relinquish her lust for sharp objects and blood to raise a respectable son.

We're a formidable lot!



What Reviewers have said:-

"The Magnificent Seven! This is a showcase of truly inspiring authors brimming with passion, talent and the courage to push the boundaries. Beautiful, poetic, imaginative, passionate, thoughtful, witty, sensual and intelligent, Outside the Box is a feast. Unforgettable books by exceptional writers."
J.J. Marsh, Books with Jam.


"The authors of these books are at the forefront of a strong cohort of ground-breaking, boundary-pushing women writing and self-publishing literary fiction. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough." Dan Holloway, columnist for the Guardian books pages and publisher

Watch this space!

For more information visit the website at www.womenwritewomen.com
The Box-set of 7 novels will be released on February 20th but is available for pre-order now on Amazon and at other oulets for a very, very competitive price.
Please visit our Facebook page and give us a 'like'.

We're also on Goodreads if you want to add us to your 'want-to-read' list.

Dying to Write

Are you prepared to die for what you write?

Because if you're a journalist you just might have to.

The terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris is a game-changer, not just in terms of European security, but for writers and artists.  12 members of the magazine's staff died because of what they wrote and the cartoons they drew.  Journalists are under attack everywhere: -

3 Al Jazeera reporters are in jail in Cairo in very poor conditions for reporting the news in Egypt.

James Foley and Steven Sotloff were beheaded by Isis in  2014

More than 17 Iraqi journalists have died in Syria in the past year.

In Europe journalists and others who blow the whistle on the establishment are punished with stiffer sentences than a serial killer.  Bradley Manning got 35 years for exposing American atrocities in Iraq. Wiki-leaks founder Julian Asange is still holed up in the Equadorian Embassy to avoid capture, Edward Snowden has taken asylum in Russia.

It has never been a more dangerous time to be a writer.

Salman Rushdie spent years of his life in hiding because of a Fatwa issued after he wrote Satanic Verses.  This is what he has to say about Charlie Hebdo

"Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.

I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity.

‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion’. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect."

How should we respond?   Simon Jenkins in the Guardian puts it very well -

"Terrorism is no ordinary crime. It depends on consequence. It can kill people and damage property. It can impose cost. But it cannot occupy territory or topple governments. Even to instil fear it requires human enhancement, from the media and politicians.

That is why the most effective response is to meet terrorism on its own terms. It is to refuse to be terrified. It is not to show fear, not to overreact, not to over-publicise the aftermath. It is to treat each event as a passing accident of horror, and leave the perpetrator devoid of further satisfaction. That is the only way to defeat terrorism."

But I have no doubt that in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo our governments will use it as an excuse to limit our personal freedoms even more.   And all writers will be looking over their shoulders and thinking before they write - an act of self-censorship more potent than any law.

I've just watched the heart-breaking interview on French TV with the partner of the murdered editor of the magazine.  It is deeply saddening.

Happy Epifania from Italy - and Beware the Witch!

My small Italian treeIt's the 6th of January - 12th Night in the UK and not much noticed except by the superstitious who have to whisk down the Christmas Tree to avoid bad luck.  Here in Italy it is Epifania - a big feast and a public holiday. It is the last of the great Christmas feast days.  There are church services, parades and a lot of celebrating.  Later on La Befana makes an appearance - the Witch of Epiphany - sometimes accompanied by her Three Wise Men.  It seems a strange mix of the pagan and the Christian.  La Befana rewards good children with sweets and bad children with charcoal and she has her own song, which is sung in procession or, in our village, also played by the town band as they accompany her round all the houses.

Sadly, I am still laid low by post-viral exhaustion, after a very nasty bout of Italian flu caught on New Year's Eve, and I've been watching the glorious sunny weather outside harbouring evil thoughts towards whatever malevolent spirit of Last Year or This Year that gave it to me.  Not getting too much work done either - my head is so full of virus that I can't even contemplate the Theory, or the Concept, never mind the Practise, of Anything.  But I did manage to struggle out of bed to take the tree down before La Befana flies past on her broomstick! Always did prefer sweets to charcoal.

The Hidden Legacy of World War 1

Looking back at 2014, the anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1, I've watched all the celebrations and memorials, observed the perfectly timed publications in book shop windows, listened to the programmes on war poetry, seen the avalanche of ceramic poppies in London and - among the heroes and the victims and the horrors of war - little has been said about the long-term effect of the First World War slaughter on families not just at the time, but down the generations. It wasn't just the deaths of sons, husbands and brothers that caused havoc - the ones who returned often caused much more grief.   Millions died, but millions more came back maimed both in body and mind and families often broke under the strain.

Gt Uncle Charlie in his sailor suit to the left of his mother - my grandmother is standing next to him.My mother's family only lost one member to the war - my great uncle Charlie - a favourite brother to my grandmother, closest to her in age.   This is a photograph of the whole family taken just before the turn of the century. Charlie is the cheeky looking blonde boy in the sailor suit.

The family had a tradition of serving in the merchant navy, so Charlie was on board ships rather than in the trenches - he's listed as being killed in action three times in the records, but was finally lost in 1917.  He had a wife and young son who lost contact with the family afterwards.  We always wondered what had become of them,  but Charlie's son and his wife made a surprise visit to my mother, a few years ago, just before she died, having traced her through the records.  She was absolutely delighted.  It was a pity my grandmother wasn't there to see it. Harry with his boxing cupOn my father's side things were very different.  His father, the illegitimate son of an Irish dressmaker and folk singer, joined the Border Regiment in Carlisle and went off to fight in France in 1914. Harry, as he was known, had been a champion boxer, sponsored by Lord Lonsdale, and he was also a footballer, good enough to play in the local league.  He had a very promising future.
A very sun-tanned Harry second from the left at the back.
Harry's football medalArmy life suited him.  He kept a diary during his time in France, which he later typed up and gave to his son.   Harry was going out with an Anglo-Irish girl from a Protestant family working in the cotton mills, Elizabeth Blair. Her father was in the Orange Order and didn't approve of her relationship with a Catholic, so he wasn't allowed to marry her before he left for France.
Harry in his private's uniform in 1914Harry endured the horrors of the trenches, was promoted to Sergeant and gained a number of medals, which I have inherited.  He was blown up in the battle of the Sommes - gassed and pierced by shrapnel, which lodged in his arms and legs and one piece near his spine which couldn't be extracted.  But it was the mental damage that affected him most.  He came back a war hero but much changed.  Elizabeth wasn't sure that she wanted to marry him, but felt obliged to honour her promise. It was a disastrous decision, leading to a very unhappy life for both them and their children.  Shortly after their marriage my father was born - in the Workhouse, where accommodation was being given to returning war heroes.  My father always remembered the queue outside the gate at dusk every evening, odd characters and 'men of the road' - a few women - all waiting for admission.

Some of Harry's medalsHarry became a writer, worked for the Post Office - which found jobs for many disabled returned servicemen - and ran a touring amateur drama group which entertained in village halls and for private parties.  He wrote the scripts, including Cumbrian dialect monologues.  Harry was very popular and was eventually awarded the Imperial Service Medal by the Queen.


What no one saw behind the public facade, was that Harry had an obsession with little girls - he was a paedophile - something the family has always put down to his 'shellshock' during the war, exacerbated by a virtually sexless marriage.  That's something I can't comment on, but it has affected the family down three generations.   I have his medals and his memoirs and copies of the things he wrote for the newspapers, but they are a tainted inheritance.
When he died, no one could find his birth certificate and it was discovered that he had been using three different names on insurance policies and other official documents.  It was only later that his illegitimacy came to light and it explained a lot.  At the time, the registrar eventually issued a death certificate with all his names on it.  His true name was probably  Hugh Cunningham - sometimes spelled Conyngham.

Harry Slight, otherwise Henry Hugh Cunningham Slight. War is a terrible and unnecessary thing that blights lives and has repercussions far beyond the immediate conflict.  I would like to think that 2015 will be a more peaceful year than its predecessors, but history doesn't encourage me to hope.
  
  

Tuesday Poem: For the Year's Midnight by Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald is a very interesting poet - when she gives a reading she recites all her poetry from memory without a prompt, and she has a particular style that comes from older traditions of oral poetry.  This poem - Tithonus: For the Year's Midnight - is a solstice poem specially commissioned and performed at the South Bank with music on the nykelharp by Griselda Sanderston.  It lasts exactly as long as the midsummer dawn, linking the two solstices, and telling the story of Tithonus who fell in love with Alba (dawn).  Alba begged Zeus to make him immortal so that they could be together for eternity, but she forgot to also ask for eternal youth.   This BBC radio version of the poem is introduced by the poet Paul Farley, who is one of my colleagues at Lancaster University.

This is the link:

Alice Oswald:  The Guardian
The Tuesday Poem is on holiday until January, but if you'd like to have a look at what they've been posting during 2014 please follow this link.  

The Christmas Selfie

It wouldn't be Christmas without the obligatory selfie!  Neil and I have been going for a walk on Christmas day (whatever the weather!) and taking photos of ourselves for more than twenty years - propping cameras on walls and dashing back to pose without panting too obviously.  We have quite a few shots of the sky and blurred rocks, but also quite a collection of ourselves huddled in anoraks (Lake District weather is not clement in December) behind walls and on sodden hillsides - even one in a blizzard.

Neil and Kathy on Christmas dayThis year I'm in Italy to spend Christmas with Neil.  Since I began work at Lancaster University in November, Neil has been forced to wash his own socks and cook his own meals, so the prospect of having someone to do it for him has been very welcome.  We don't go in for presents, but this year I got a collection of chocolates - so I think he's glad to see me!

We ate our Christmas lunch on a wild stretch of beach between Torre del Lago and Viareggio. Smoked salmon sandwiches, frittata, prosciutto and a bottle of prosecco.  And we sat and watched a grey and turbulent Mediterranean roll in towards us.  We had it all to ourselves.  Utter bliss.

Picnicking on a wild stretch of beachExperts will note the John Lewis picnic backpack, (for professional picknickers) which was a Christmas present from daughter No 3 a few years ago.  There's even a cheese board and a wine cooler!

Wishing everyone the very best of whatever festival you celebrate at this time of year, and a very healthy and happy 2015.  

Tuesday Poem: The Peace of Wild Things - Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 ‘The Peace of Wild Things’, Wendell Berry


Katherine Mansfield once wrote 'the mind that I love must have wild places'.   I feel like that too - the need for solitude and the wild (both inside and outside). Christmas is a time when solitude can seem very hard to find! 
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips's claims that  'cultivating a capacity for "fertile solitude" is essential for creative work' 
The poet Wendell Berry, in a series of essays called 'What are People for?'  talks about  'the ennobling effects of solitude . . . gained only by surrendering to nature's gentle gift for quieting the mind:
“We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness...  True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.'
If you'd like to read more - there are two marvellous blogs on the subject with more of Berry's work.  One is at 'How the Light Gets In'  The other is 'Brain Pickings Weekly'  'Wendell Berry on Solitude' 
For more Tuesday Poems from around the world, please visit the Tuesday Poem Hub where this week's main post is Emily Bronte 'No Coward Soul is Mine' - a poet who really knew about solitude. 

A Catherine Cookson Surprise

One of the nice things about writing biography is that a lot of the people you meet during your research keep in touch with you afterwards.  You suddenly have a circle of new friends and sometimes even become an honorary family member.  The Catherine Cookson biography was one of those.  I met some lovely people, particularly among Catherine's wider family.
Catherine Cookson with her beloved husband Tom 
Last week, as I was packing up to come to Italy for Christmas the telephone rang and it was one of Catherine's cousins from Australia who just happened to be staying in Cumbria for a couple of days and could she come and visit me with her husband?  It was a lovely surprise.  I flashed round with the duster and the hoover (does any writer have a tidy house?) put the kettle on and whizzed out to the Spar for some chocolate biscuits before they arrived.

The Australian Cookson Cousins, looking rather damp and cold on a bleak, Cumbrian winter's day.It was a really interesting morning.  It turned out that both husband and wife were Catherine's cousins, through her husband Tom Cookson, and they shared stories of visits to Catherine's home when they were young and she was their much loved  'Aunt Kitty'.  I was able to give them copies of photographs and birth certificates and other family material you accumulate when you write someone's life story and it's all now on its way to Australia.

Such a nice surprise for a gloomy winter morning!  And it's spurred me on to revise my Cookson biography for re-publication after Random House withdrew their permission to quote from some of Catherine's novels and made it impossible to reprint the original.  When I get back to the UK after Christmas, I'm going to re-write the book without the quotes, but including all the new information that I have from family and friends. Watch this space!