Kathleen Jones's Blog, page 67

Tuesday Poem: 60 Years in 60 Poems

photo copyright John Heseltine

Jo Shapcott: The Great Storm  - 1987
We rode it all night. We were not ourselves then.

Through the window everything was horizontal.
In cars and ships and woods, folk died.
Small trees scattered like matchsticks
and a whole shed flew by. The world roared.
A branch broke into the kitchen,
strewed twigs into the banging cupboard,
filled broken crocks with leaves. I heard
a tricycle roll up and down the attic as
the firmament streamed through smashed tiles.

I loved you but I loved the wind more,
wanted to be as horizontal as the tree tops,
to cling to the planet by my last fingernail,
singing into the rush, into the dark.
I didn't know then I would watch
my beloveds peel off the earth

each side of me, flying among tiles, bins,
caravans, car doors and chimney pots,
watch them turn themselves into flotsam
and disappear as wholly as the pier
the next morning, a Friday, mid-
October. Gone, split, vamoosed
like the fifteen million trees.


Carol Ann Duffy invited 60 poets to contribute a poem celebrating one year of the Queen’s sixty on the throne.  It’s an amazing collection by some of the UK’s best poets.   I chose 1987 because I remember the big storm very well - I was living in a roof-top flat in Bristol and stayed awake all night listening to horrific noises and expecting at any moment to be looking at the sky through the rafters.  In the morning I discovered the roof tiles stacked in piles in the gutters and the lead on the dormer windows rolled up neatly as if by experts.  I liked Jo Shapcott’s poem because she captures the exhilaration of it, the adrenaline rush of the experience.

The collection can be read on-line at the Poetry Book Society , or on the Guardian’s web site or here at Jubilee Lines dot com.

For more Tuesday Poems check out the web site and find out what Tuesday Poets are posting from around the world.

Off to Poland and Slovakia with Katherine Mansfield

Life here is never dull.  Just cramming a few items of clothing into Ryan Air sized hand-baggage and getting ready for the long drive to Milan airport to fly to Krakow early on Tuesday.  The Slovakian university of Ruzomberok is hosting a Katherine Mansfield conference, with special reference to her eastern european adventure in the form of writer/lover/chancer  Floryan Sobienovski, who had an affair with her at the spa in Germany where she lost her first baby, seems to have got her pregnant again, pursued her across Europe, turned up on her doorstep when she least wanted to see him and eventually blackmailed her over indiscreet letters she's written to him in the first flush of passion. 


Florayan also introduced her to the Polish language and a writer called Stanislav Wyspianski whose work she was helping him translate.  She wrote a lovely poem to Wyspianski too, in the style of Walt Whitman, which is a hymn to both Wyspianski and her homeland in NZ.

From the other side of the world,
From a little island cradled in the giant sea bosom,
From a little land with no history,
(Making its own history, slowly and clumsily
Piecing together this and that, finding the pattern, solving the problem,
Like a child with a box of bricks),
I, a woman, with the taint of the pioneer in my blood,
Full of a youthful strength that wars with itself and is lawless,
I sing your praises, Magnificent warrior; I proclaim your triumphant battle.

I've never been to Slovakia, or to Krakow, so really looking forward to this visit, as well as the company of other Katherine Mansfield fanatics!
 

Planning a Writers' Retreat

Need space to write?  A friendly source of feedback on the WIP?  We usually run a writers' retreat/writing course at Peralta in the spring.  But this year, because of the economic downturn, we're running it at the end of September so that participants can take advantage of  the cheaper off-peak flights. 

For anyone who hasn't already come across it, Peralta - high on the slopes of the Alpi Apuane looking out over the Mediterranean - is an idyllic place.  It's an area once settled by the Etruscans and just further north is the ancient and mysterious kingdom of Luni.  

Peralta was left to fall into ruin after WWII, but was discovered by the Italian sculptor Fiore de Henriquez, who fell in love with the hamlet, traced the owners of each ruined house one by one and rebuilt them.  She wanted to create an artistic community, renting out to tourists in the summer to pay its way, but filled with artists and writers in the winter.  Dinah, who runs Peralta now, tries to do so in the same spirit.  It is a beautiful place with a very special atmosphere and a good place to write.


Laura  - who has cooked for Peralta since she was a girl - still provides us all with wonderful Tuscan home cooking.  There's local wine and prosecco by the gallon and the guarantee of convivial company.

This time my partner at Peralta is the novelist and memoirist Caitlin Davies who is a very impressive writer (and the daughter of Margaret Forster and Hunter Davies)  and we make ourselves available for  one to one consultations as well as running workshops for anyone who wants to participate.

All details are on the internet here ,  special rates can also be provided for anyone who only wants to come for a few days retreat rather than the full week.   Come and join us in September and watch the sun set in the Mediterranean!

The Last Kitten

This morning Neil said goodbye to his favourite kitten - the last of Batcat's brood. 

 
We put her in a box and took her down to the charity stall in Pietrasanta market.
 
She was much admired, but four other kittens turned up - two fluffy black ones and two fluffy white.  When I went back at one o'clock as instructed only our kitten remained unwanted.  Not fluffy enough I suppose.  So, I guess it's fate.  Another mouth to feed!  Neil will be pleased.  And we'll now have to think of a name.......

The Midnight Cactus

I've just had a punishing week in England, with high winds, monsoon rain and winter temperatures. There were people to see, events to attend, friends and family to catch up with, and tax returns to be done (a 2am headache!) before I could come back to Italy.  No time for blogging - there were days when I didn't even manage email.   But an unexpected bonus was being there when the cactus in my rooftop study finally flowered.   It hasn't flowered for more than 12 years - and has only flowered once before, though I've had the cactus for about 25 years.  Obviously the English climate doesn't suit it!

When it does flower, it's spectacular - each flower is about 9 inches high and they are about 6 inches across at the top, with deep throats smelling strongly of vanilla.


This time, the buds opened at about 11.30pm, and - because I was burning the midnight oil - I was there to see it.   I presume, in the wild, they're fertilised by some kind of moth, because by the following day they're beginning to droop and after only one more night they die.


It could be another 12 years before I see them again.


Now, I'm back in Italy where temperatures are up in the thirties (it was 10 degrees when I left UK) and I can't get used to the hot nights - no need for the goose down quilt here!   But the sun is very welcome and it was good to see the Batcat and her kitten  - which has grown a lot bigger since I left. 

She's very playful and won't stay still long enough to be photographed - quite a headache for her vigilant mother! Sadly, we've got to part with her on Thursday and send her to a good home.  We will both be shedding a few tears.

In England, in the rain, with Catherine Cookson

If I've been very quiet, it's because I've been travelling to England where the skies are grey and rain seems to be dripping from every orifice!

The schedule is frantic - no time for blogging, or poetry, but I hope to report back at the end of the week when things slow down a little.  Today I waved Neil off to Italy to take over kitten duties, and tomorrow I'm going to Newcastle to talk about Catherine Cookson.  

It's the launch of a book called 'Catherine Cookson Country:  on the borders of legitimacy, fiction and history',  published by US academic publisher Ashgate.  It's a collection of essays on Catherine Cookson's life and work and is the first (I think) to give her books the recognition they deserve.  There's a contribution from her biographer (me!) - very complimented to be asked to write the foreword.  It's a lovely book.

Anyone in the Newcastle area tomorrow afternoon, the launch, with talks and wine will be from 2pm to about 6pm at Northumbria University,  Sandyford Road, Room 020A, Squires Building.  It's free and all are welcome.

And then there was only one .........

Sadly today I took the two biggest kittens - the black and white brother and sister - down to Pietrasanta market to be re-homed by a charity called Nati Liberi (Born Wild).  They have a stall in the market and exhibit kittens in baskets for people willing to give them a home.   Six weeks is far too early to part a kitten from its mother, though both were also eating solid food heartily.  But I was told that organisations that take in wild kittens to be domesticated like to have them at this age because apparently, after that, the mother teaches them to avoid humans and it's almost impossible to tame them.  I'd already noticed, in the last few days, a tendency to run away from me, even at feeding time.
Breakfast for four

But it felt terrible, enticing them  indoors with a saucer of food and then popping them into a cat carrier, out of sight of their mother, and sneaking them off through the olive grove to the car.  At least we've left Batcat with one kitten - the smallest of the three, who isn't eating properly yet.  She's also the tamest and hopefully we can still rehome her in the next couple of weeks.  Then, with the help of this wonderful organisation, we hope to be able to sterilise the Batcat so that there are no more unwanted kittens to add to the flock of feral cats out in the woods.
Kitten in the Hi-Fi! It's been lovely having the kittens though.  It was great fun watching them using my furniture as a playground.  And hopefully they'll be going to a loving home.

Setting an ambush Ambush foiled!

Tuesday Poem: Wild Oats in the Olive Grove

Swinging from their straw stems like 
rows of origami insects or 
wild locusts, filtering the light
through pale tissue-paper wings,
spread wide to fledge a seed 
stilt-legged as a crane fly, and flaunt
an underbelly furred with fine
hair to catch the wind and launch
them casually onto the breeze.

Random, reckless, extravagant
progenitors;  last year's scatter
arching over the grass. The gauze
artistry of their arrangements in
pendulous, quivering imagoes.




Copyright Kathleen Jones
Photographs Copyright Neil Ferber

For more Tuesday Poems, check out the Tuesday Poem hub.   I'm this week's editor, with a poem by Michael Woods, from his first collection 'Absence Notes'. 

Earthquakes in Italy

Regulars on my blog may remember that in April Neil and I went on a day trip to Emilia Romagna, the region just north of us.  It hasn't been hitting the international news much, but Emilia Romagna has been badly hit by a series of earthquakes.  Two of around magnitude 6 have hit the region in the last two weeks and there are continuous aftershocks (more than 80) of magnitude 5 or more.   Some of these have been felt by people living in Pietrasanta - but up here in the hills we don't feel anything at all - thankfully.  My memories of the Christchurch earthquakes in New Zealand still give me nightmares. Waking up in the dark feeling the house shaking itself apart around you isn't a good feeling.  This 'seismic event' isn't over yet - there was another big shock last night bringing more buildings down and sending terrified people out into the streets.  We have been watching the tragedy unfold on our television screens and our hearts go out to the people whose lives are being - literally - torn apart.



There are more than 30 dead, hundreds wounded and thousands homeless. 
 
Several factories collapsed.  This is the industrial heartland of Italy, the engine that drives the economy, and the damage caused by the quakes will hit an already struggling economy very hard.  One quirky positive - it's now possible to buy some very cheap Parmesan cheese on the internet.   The racks where the cheeses are stacked were brought down in the quakes.   When you realise that Parmesan retails for at least 24 euros per kilo (and that's the cheapest), there is literally a fortune in cheese to be salvaged.



Apart from the loss of life, injury and destruction of people's homes, the area has lost some of its most important historical buildings.  Bologna, Padua, Modena were all affected, and Ferrara and the inappropriately named San Felice also lost buildings of great historical significance.   Ferrara lost the Castle Estense, which used to look like this; 


but now looks like this and the rest is either badly cracked or reduced to rubble.



This beautiful clock tower was shattered.  

 
As the photographer was filming, there was another aftershock and the rest came crumbling down.



The fault line went right across the landscape.


It's a sobering reminder that for all our 'advanced' technology, we live on a violent and unpredictable planet that can alter our lives at any second.

Kittens on a hot roof

The kittens are 5 weeks old today.   Last week they began to fall off the top shelf in the tool shed and Neil re-located them to ground level - a move that mum wasn't too happy with.  During the day Batcat moved them again herself and we tracked them down under the roof of our landlord's shed further down the olive grove.  The main roof is corrugated and overlaps another flat roof by about a foot - just enough space for a cat and kittens.
Spot the kitten!
It's an ideal location - the kits can play on the roof during the day and hide under the roof when necessary.

Mum is very protective.

The kittens are getting curious now - this one is almost off the roof.  He's the male of the trio.



Saved by Mum!  We're amazed how good a mother she is considering that she's a novice.