Kathleen Jones's Blog, page 41
July 7, 2014
Tuesday Poem Pascale Petit: A Poem for Frida Kahlo's Birthday ...
Little deer, I've stuffed all the world's diseases inside you.
Your veins are thorns
and the good cells are lost in the deep dark woods
of your organs . . .
[Little Deer from What the Water Gave Me]
To read more click on the link below
Pascale Petit's Blog: A Poem and a Reading for Frida Kahlo's Birthday 6 ...: This Saturday 6th July is Frida Kahlo's birthday and to celebrate it I will be giving an illustrated reading from What the Water Gave ...
July 5, 2014
Writer's Houses - wandering round Ibsen's house in Oslo
Today I'm blogging over at Authors Electric about Ibsen's home in Oslo and what it revealed about the author. Did you know that he had a portrait of his greatest rival, August Strindberg, staring sternly down at him as he wrote? That he had a hat fetish? Or that he kept a box of carved figures on his desk called 'The Devil's Orchestra' to help him work out his plots when he was stuck?
Click here to find out more . . . .
July 3, 2014
Living on the Bank of the River
Rivers have their own stories, but you have to listen for them.
The Eden is a big river, just at the start of its journey. We’re only a few miles from its source up in Ravenstonedale, but already it’s deep and wide - made much more so by the weir. The river was dammed hundreds of years ago to power the water wheels of the mill. The foundations of the weir go back to Roman times - humans have been controlling this river for a long time.
Or trying to - there are lots of times when the river is beyond control. It can rise fast and spread across the landscape in a lethal brown flood. In 2005 the footbridge at the mill, which is 20 feet above the river, was completely submerged - including the handrail.
It regularly drowns my garden and runs through the ground floor where the mill wheels used to be. We don’t use it in winter - just in case!
The weir is becoming increasingly ruinous, despite efforts by the local council to patch it up. Personally, since that involves dumping bags of concrete into the water, I’d prefer they didn’t -
Cement is not a sympathetic material hereThere’s something natural and graceful about the process of decay - it makes spaces for wild life to flourish. There's always a heron fishing in the early morning light. Today I spotted a duck with her tiny ducklings, and once we saw an otter walking up the face of the weir with two cubs.
One of the natural breaches was widened recently to help the salmon make their way upstream in the autumn. This means that we no longer see the salmon leap in October - a really beautiful sight.
Now there’s mimulus growing in the fallen boulders from the weir.
Islands are beginning to form, creating pools that contain wild crayfish and salmon fry.
I love the trailing weed, with its daisy like flowers - it always reminds me of Lizzie Siddal’s hair when she posed in the water as Ophelia.
At night I lie awake with the window open, listening to the river, letting it sing me to sleep. I was blown away by this verse in Jean Sprackland’s poem ‘Night in the House’ because it describes my feeling exactly.
‘In the night house
she is nothing but riverbanks
all she can feel is river
drawn through her
like a green rope.’
Jean Sprackland, ‘Night in the House’ from Sleeping Keys
The Eden is a big river, just at the start of its journey. We’re only a few miles from its source up in Ravenstonedale, but already it’s deep and wide - made much more so by the weir. The river was dammed hundreds of years ago to power the water wheels of the mill. The foundations of the weir go back to Roman times - humans have been controlling this river for a long time.
Or trying to - there are lots of times when the river is beyond control. It can rise fast and spread across the landscape in a lethal brown flood. In 2005 the footbridge at the mill, which is 20 feet above the river, was completely submerged - including the handrail.
It regularly drowns my garden and runs through the ground floor where the mill wheels used to be. We don’t use it in winter - just in case!
The weir is becoming increasingly ruinous, despite efforts by the local council to patch it up. Personally, since that involves dumping bags of concrete into the water, I’d prefer they didn’t -
Cement is not a sympathetic material hereThere’s something natural and graceful about the process of decay - it makes spaces for wild life to flourish. There's always a heron fishing in the early morning light. Today I spotted a duck with her tiny ducklings, and once we saw an otter walking up the face of the weir with two cubs.
One of the natural breaches was widened recently to help the salmon make their way upstream in the autumn. This means that we no longer see the salmon leap in October - a really beautiful sight.
Now there’s mimulus growing in the fallen boulders from the weir.
Islands are beginning to form, creating pools that contain wild crayfish and salmon fry.
I love the trailing weed, with its daisy like flowers - it always reminds me of Lizzie Siddal’s hair when she posed in the water as Ophelia.
At night I lie awake with the window open, listening to the river, letting it sing me to sleep. I was blown away by this verse in Jean Sprackland’s poem ‘Night in the House’ because it describes my feeling exactly.
‘In the night house
she is nothing but riverbanks
all she can feel is river
drawn through her
like a green rope.’
Jean Sprackland, ‘Night in the House’ from Sleeping Keys
July 1, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Listening to Glenn Gould on Orton Scar
I'm delighted that New Zealand author and poet Helen Lowe is featuring one of my poems on her blog today as her Tuesday Poem. 'Listening to Glenn Gould on Orton Scar' - and she's also included 'Winter Light' to celebrate the NZ winter solstice. Thank you Helen!
You can find it here on this link
Today's main hub poem is ' Cloudmother' by Siobhan Harvey. Why not click over and take a look?
You can find it here on this link
Today's main hub poem is ' Cloudmother' by Siobhan Harvey. Why not click over and take a look?
June 27, 2014
Parties, Picnics and Sculpture
This writer has been having a bit of a blog holiday because it's been a packed week of work and social events. Perhaps it's a sign of age, but I can't party like I used to and still function the following day!
A celebratory dinner at PeraltaLast weekend was the anniversary celebration at Peralta for the Italian artist Fiore de Henriquez, who died ten years ago. I had the privilege to know Fiore and she was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. Full of vibrant energy, passion, and a complete disregard for rules and regulations! There are some film clips from Richard Whymark's film
'Fiore' on this link.
The party at Peralta went on for three days, so her life was very thoroughly celebrated. Fortunately for the guests, the Comune chose to open the road to allow residents through, even though it's not finished. In January, after the catastrophic storm that dumped 300mm of rain on us, the road looked like this - 6 feet of crumbling slippage
before disappearing down the mountainside altogether, taking the trees and utility services with it, leaving an unbridgeable gap.
AprilIt's been a really big engineering job to rebuild it - involving a huge retaining wall - and everyone thought it could be many months before the village was reconnected to the outside world. But the Italian workforce has pulled out all the stops and got there early! It's not finished yet, but is usable. Everyone was cheering and tooting as they drove through for the first time in 6 months.
JuneI've been tied to my desk with deadlines all week, but did manage to get out for a picnic to belatedly celebrate the summer solstice. We went upriver into the mountains where there are rocky gorges and deep pools to swim in.
We had two lovely pieces of news this week. My biography of Norman Nicholson has been shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year Award (judged by Hunter Davies, Fiona Armstrong and Eric Robson), and Neil has been selected to carve a piece of marble for the ' Omaggio a Michelangelo ' at the Carrara Marble Museum. He picked up his block a few days ago and is already busy chipping away at it. Nice things do happen!
A bit rough now - but watch this space!
A celebratory dinner at PeraltaLast weekend was the anniversary celebration at Peralta for the Italian artist Fiore de Henriquez, who died ten years ago. I had the privilege to know Fiore and she was one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met. Full of vibrant energy, passion, and a complete disregard for rules and regulations! There are some film clips from Richard Whymark's film
'Fiore' on this link.
The party at Peralta went on for three days, so her life was very thoroughly celebrated. Fortunately for the guests, the Comune chose to open the road to allow residents through, even though it's not finished. In January, after the catastrophic storm that dumped 300mm of rain on us, the road looked like this - 6 feet of crumbling slippage
before disappearing down the mountainside altogether, taking the trees and utility services with it, leaving an unbridgeable gap.
AprilIt's been a really big engineering job to rebuild it - involving a huge retaining wall - and everyone thought it could be many months before the village was reconnected to the outside world. But the Italian workforce has pulled out all the stops and got there early! It's not finished yet, but is usable. Everyone was cheering and tooting as they drove through for the first time in 6 months.
JuneI've been tied to my desk with deadlines all week, but did manage to get out for a picnic to belatedly celebrate the summer solstice. We went upriver into the mountains where there are rocky gorges and deep pools to swim in.
We had two lovely pieces of news this week. My biography of Norman Nicholson has been shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year Award (judged by Hunter Davies, Fiona Armstrong and Eric Robson), and Neil has been selected to carve a piece of marble for the ' Omaggio a Michelangelo ' at the Carrara Marble Museum. He picked up his block a few days ago and is already busy chipping away at it. Nice things do happen!
A bit rough now - but watch this space!June 20, 2014
Premiere of Richard Whymark's film 'Fiore'
I'm in Peralta, a Tuscan hamlet on the shoulders of the Alpi Apuane, quite a lot this weekend for the premiere of US film-maker
Richard Whymark's film
'Fiore', about the life and work of Fiore de Henriquez, who created Peralta and spent much of her life there. She died ten years ago tomorrow and many of her closest friends and colleagues will be at Peralta to remember her.This page on 'Art is Life' talks movingly about her life and work.
Fiore was unforgettable - an extraordinary person who was one of the inspirations behind my novel 'The Centauress' and is the subject of Jan Marsh's biography, 'Art and Androgyny' which will be re-published shortly by The Book Mill.
This is an extract from her life story:
"Born in pre-war Trieste under the twin sign of Gemini, she discovered during puberty that she was, in fact, hermaphrodite. This theme of duality was to run through all facets of her fascinating and varied life – her art, her friendships, her romances and her self-image; it was possibly this struggle between the warring sides of her nature that gave Fiore’s art its vitality and extraordinary diversity.1After experiencing an epiphany of purpose in Venice, she developed an enormous talent for sculpting and began working in the male-dominated world of fine art. Her first creation was entered in an anonymous sculpting competition; when she won, the other male entrants, discovering she was female, threatened to blow up her work.She fled to England and immediately became a consort of the rich and famous, who were attracted to the young, androgynous, provocative Italian sculptor with her perceptive talent and forceful persona. . . .' To read more, click here.
June 16, 2014
Tuesday Poem: 'Flag' by John Agard
With everything that's happening in the world at the moment, this poem by John Agard seems very apt.
Flag
What’s that fluttering in a breeze?
Its just a piece of cloth
that brings a nation to its knees.
What’s that unfurling from a pole?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that makes the guts of men grow bold.
What’s that rising over a tent?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that dares the coward to relent.
What’s that flying across a field?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that will outlive the blood you bleed.
How can I possess such a cloth?
Just ask for a flag my friend.
Then blind your conscience to the end.
© John Agard
Half-Caste and Other Poems (Hodder Children's, 2004)
If you would like to hear John Agard reading this and other poems this is the link to the Poetry Archive.
John Agard photographed by Caroline ForbesJohn Agard was born in Guyana in 1949 (a British colony at the time) and settled in Britain with his partner, the poet Grace Nichols. He has an awesome list of publications - 'Flag' is included in the GCSE English syllabus.
Many thanks to Gerry's blog, for recommending this poem to me.
Why not pop over to the Tuesday Poem website and see what other Tuesday Poets are posting? Just click on this link.
Flag
What’s that fluttering in a breeze?
Its just a piece of cloth
that brings a nation to its knees.
What’s that unfurling from a pole?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that makes the guts of men grow bold.
What’s that rising over a tent?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that dares the coward to relent.
What’s that flying across a field?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that will outlive the blood you bleed.
How can I possess such a cloth?
Just ask for a flag my friend.
Then blind your conscience to the end.
© John Agard
Half-Caste and Other Poems (Hodder Children's, 2004)
If you would like to hear John Agard reading this and other poems this is the link to the Poetry Archive.
John Agard photographed by Caroline ForbesJohn Agard was born in Guyana in 1949 (a British colony at the time) and settled in Britain with his partner, the poet Grace Nichols. He has an awesome list of publications - 'Flag' is included in the GCSE English syllabus. Many thanks to Gerry's blog, for recommending this poem to me.
Why not pop over to the Tuesday Poem website and see what other Tuesday Poets are posting? Just click on this link.
June 15, 2014
Secret Gardens and Abandoned Houses
In the woods on the other side of the river bank is a beautiful house I often fantasise about living in - mainly for the wonderful gardens. It was owned for years by the same family and very private - I only once crossed the doorstep, for a fund-raising fete in the walled garden. But for some time the house has lain empty, a forlorn For Sale notice on the gates.
Today, walking in the woods to see the rhododendrons, which are in full bloom now, I noticed that a section of the perimeter wrought iron fence was missing and there was a boot-track through the wild garlic. Who could resist such a temptation?
The track soon expired, but I beat my way through the nettles between the yew trees, all curiousity and courage. There was a fallen tree and on it a rather poignant wooden plank - 'My Daddy's Tree Hows'.
I discovered a seat overlooking the river, mossy and overgrown but very peaceful.
Emerging from the darkness of the wood, but still waist deep in nettles I found the gate to the walled garden ajar. Who could resist this?
Or these steps?
The garden, once an immaculate lawn with picture perfect flower beds is now a wilderness of wild flowers. Probably a haven for wildlife.
In the middle there's an old apple tree -
with a neglected wooden seat under it.
And there is a small summer-house in the corner, just perfect for a writer to tuck herself away! Or as the setting for a murder mystery......
Inside, the obligatory abandoned umbrella.
There were roses too, lost in the frantic weed growth, but you could smell the perfume. This one is an old rose called Buff Beauty - one of my favourites.
I didn't have the courage to wander round the outside of the house - that felt too much like trespassing (who knows what security cameras they have installed!) but took this picture from the driveway.
My imagination is now racing! Who knows what might happen next. . . .
Today, walking in the woods to see the rhododendrons, which are in full bloom now, I noticed that a section of the perimeter wrought iron fence was missing and there was a boot-track through the wild garlic. Who could resist such a temptation?
The track soon expired, but I beat my way through the nettles between the yew trees, all curiousity and courage. There was a fallen tree and on it a rather poignant wooden plank - 'My Daddy's Tree Hows'.
I discovered a seat overlooking the river, mossy and overgrown but very peaceful.
Emerging from the darkness of the wood, but still waist deep in nettles I found the gate to the walled garden ajar. Who could resist this?
Or these steps?
The garden, once an immaculate lawn with picture perfect flower beds is now a wilderness of wild flowers. Probably a haven for wildlife.
In the middle there's an old apple tree -
with a neglected wooden seat under it.
And there is a small summer-house in the corner, just perfect for a writer to tuck herself away! Or as the setting for a murder mystery......
Inside, the obligatory abandoned umbrella.
There were roses too, lost in the frantic weed growth, but you could smell the perfume. This one is an old rose called Buff Beauty - one of my favourites.
I didn't have the courage to wander round the outside of the house - that felt too much like trespassing (who knows what security cameras they have installed!) but took this picture from the driveway.
My imagination is now racing! Who knows what might happen next. . . .
June 10, 2014
Tuesday Poem: Dylan Thomas - Under Milkwood
Dylan and Caitlin Thomas - Photo, Dylan Thomas SocietyIt's the centenary this year of the birth of Dylan Thomas, who wrote some of the most memorable poetry in the English language. I've loved his work ever since I first read Fern Hill as an impressionable teenager and then had to study Under Milkwood for A Level English. I'd never listened to such singing prose poetry, particularly
narrated by Richard Burton
. The chorale of voices perfectly portrays the small town Protestant fundamentalism that created almost as many psychological problems as extreme Catholicism. The night skies of Milkwood are 'Bible black' in more ways than one."Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning, in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman's loft like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is tonight in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot. text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies .......
Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
Come closer now.
Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.
From where you are, you can hear their dreams."
Dylan Thomas was extraordinarily gifted, but also with a strong compulsion towards self-destruction. He drank excessively, and died at the age of 39. His wife was a dancer - formerly a model for Augustus John (who was a family friend) and raped by John at a very young age. Caitlin too had a problem with alcohol. The stormy relationship between the Thomas's was beautifully explored in the BBC film A Poet in New York - the events of the last few months of his life taken directly from Caitlin's own autobiographies, Leftover Life to Kill and Caitlin: Life with Dylan Thomas, also Not Quite Posthumous Letters to my Daughter, and a journal that she kept during her marriage.
After Dylan's death in 1953, Caitlin moved to Italy and lived with a film director much younger than herself, giving birth to a son called Francesco when she was 49. She died in Sicily in 1994 aged 80. I find her life absolutely fascinating.
And yes, I do know all about Dylan Thomas's verbal excesses (much disapproved of in university circles!) but even now I get goosebumps when I read the last lines of Fern Hill
"Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea."
I didn't know what it meant when I was 16, but I do now.
If you want to listen to Richard Burton reading Under Milkwood, this is the YouTube link.
For more Tuesday Poems please follow the link to the website - check out what the Tuesday Poets are posting!
June 8, 2014
Horses in my garden - Appleby Fair
All week the riverbank has been full of horses - and a few human beings! It's Appleby Horse Fair - the biggest Gypsy gathering in Europe. The Mill is on the riverbank and it's traditional for the gypsies to bring the horses down here to wash them before the trading/racing/trotting starts every day. This peaceful place suddenly becomes like the wild west! This year it's been very busy because the town council and the police have put restrictions on the section of the river they usually use in town and so more people and horses have moved up here.
Some of the individual horses are very beautiful.
They take the trotting horses into the river to strengthen their legs.
We've witnessed a great deal of animal cruelty over the years and the RSPCA are a constant presence. This year a foal was abandoned, lame, with a sore mouth, and had to be rescued. I saw the tailgate of a horse trailer being slammed against a young stallion who was kicking up because he was frightened - and there are lots of other brutalities. Sadly the horses are a commodity and there are some who treat them like that. Trotting horses and breeding horses fetch a high price, but many of the rest go for pet food. There isn't the market for horses that there used to be.
This has been a lively week! Just getting out of our driveway has been challenging, and I've had to fence off my flowerbeds, but in a couple of days they'll be gone, the council will send people to clean up the rubbish that's being generated, and we'll have the riverbank to ourselves again. The horse fair has been going for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years here, and I love the horses and the feeling of tradition, but much of what comes with the Fair (like the cruelty and the refuse) isn't easy to tolerate, so - like most people in the town - I'm very ambivalent about it.
Some of the individual horses are very beautiful.
They take the trotting horses into the river to strengthen their legs.
We've witnessed a great deal of animal cruelty over the years and the RSPCA are a constant presence. This year a foal was abandoned, lame, with a sore mouth, and had to be rescued. I saw the tailgate of a horse trailer being slammed against a young stallion who was kicking up because he was frightened - and there are lots of other brutalities. Sadly the horses are a commodity and there are some who treat them like that. Trotting horses and breeding horses fetch a high price, but many of the rest go for pet food. There isn't the market for horses that there used to be.
This has been a lively week! Just getting out of our driveway has been challenging, and I've had to fence off my flowerbeds, but in a couple of days they'll be gone, the council will send people to clean up the rubbish that's being generated, and we'll have the riverbank to ourselves again. The horse fair has been going for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years here, and I love the horses and the feeling of tradition, but much of what comes with the Fair (like the cruelty and the refuse) isn't easy to tolerate, so - like most people in the town - I'm very ambivalent about it.
