I came across the witch
in the woods above my Czech house. She is actually a stump of a tree
which tumbled in a high wind. I was walking lost in thought when I
turned a corner and saw her through the trees. She made me jump, I
don’t mind telling you. She’s vanished now into the rich earth of
the forest.
Tuesday 6 November 2012
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Poems for multiple voices
When Carolyn Howard
Johnson reviewed my poetry book Fool’s Paradise as
“Very experimental. Wholly original” I was surprised. Of course I
don’t think of what I write as particularly original, what I write
feels normal. So Caroline’s review made me think, after all
Caroline is a multi award-winning poet.
As I have said in
previous post I was blessed with being taught by an inspiring
creative English teacher – Elizabeth Webster – who introduced me
to the work of some wonderful and great poets. In particular she
introduced me to the work of the British poets of the early to mid
twentieth century – T S Eliot, Dylan Thomas and Louis MacNeice. And
surprise, surprise the works she first introduced me to were all
verse plays: Murder in the Cathedral by T S
Eliot, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas and The
Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice.
Those early readings
were etched into my memory and, I suspect, my poetic DNA. Every year
at this time on the cusp of winter I find myself repeating the lines
from the opening chorus of Murder in the Cathedral:
Since golden October declined into sombre November
And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud
Since golden October declined into sombre November
And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud
What is more under her
direction I acted in a number of verse plays – including Under
Milk Wood and plays by another British verse play writer
Christopher Fry. Plays like Under Milk Woodand Louis
MacNeice’s Dark Tower were written to be performed
on radio, the BBC was a major sponsor of verse drama. But the roots
of poetic dramas are deep in the beginnings of theatre. When I was
twelve or thirteen I performed in a production of Alcestis by
Euripides, first performed in the 5th century BC. I can still
remember some of the lines:Daughter of Pelias fare thee well. May
joy be thine in the sunless houses.
Just listen to the
cadences in that one line. And of course there was Shakespeare. I was
playing Caliban in The Tempest at the age of twelve,
loving the poetry in the play (Caliban has the isle is full
of voices speech) and realizing how verse can by woven into
drama. Later I was to play Viola in Twelfth Night – another
character with some great poetry.
The poetry group at the
Arts Centre, which Elizabeth ran and of which I was a member, gave
regular readings and in one of these we performed MacNeice’s The
Dark Tower and in another extracts of Blood
Wedding by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca. The poetry
group with its emphasis on reading aloud taught me the importance of
poetry as performance. Some of the best poems, even when not written
to be read by different voices, are dramatic. And some, such as
Eliot’s Four Quartets, although not written as
plays nevertheless have different voices woven into them. My long
poem called Poem for Voices, is the same.
You can see why writing
poetry for different voices is so natural to me. I don’t
always write for voices, many of my poems are to be spoken by one
voice. But writing for voices allows me to explore textures, emotions
and forms in a unique way. This approach, which was once so
prevalent, is now so unusual that Carolyn comments on it. Have I
developed it further? I don’t know. It’s just how I write
sometimes. But then it does seem to me that if people claim their
work is original and experimental it almost certainly isn’t.
Labels:
Alcestis,
Blood Wedding,
Dark Tower,
Dylan Thomas,
Fool's Paradise,
Four Quartets,
Lorca,
Louis MacNeice,
Murder in the Cathedral,
poem for voices,
poetry,
T S Eliot,
Under Milk Wood,
verse drama,
verse plays
Sunday 21 October 2012
Desert Island Books - Jane Eyre
Orphaned Jane Eyre grows
up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness
and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This
troubled childhood strengthens Jane’s natural independence and
spirit – which prove necessary when she finds a position as
governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her
sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret
forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him and live with
the consequences, or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving
the man she loves?
Jane Eyre was the first
“grown-up” book I read. I must have been about eleven, when I
discovered I could read adult books. I loved the book and reread it
regularly through my teens and still read it occasionally. I
think Jane Eyre is an ideal book for teenage girls.
I identified with the heroine, as did Charlotte Bronte. Like Jane I
felt unattractive and awkward in society. I admired her resilience
and spirit and I was delighted when Rochester expressed his love for
her. My love of the book was reenforced by an excellent BBC TV series
starring Sorcha Cusack in the title role and Michael Jayston as
Rochester. It was shown in the early evening on Sundays, and I was
always worried that I would not get back from rehearsals at the Arts
Centre, but I didn’t miss any of it. It was only later that I
discovered that Elizabeth Webster, the director, was also a fan and
so stopped rehearsals with time to spare. Michael Jayston was the
ideal Rochester, not particularly handsome but with the sexiest
voice! He was my first crush.
Now that I am mature
woman I find new depths in the book. The psychology of the book is
spot-on. What is it that attracts a rich man of the world like
Rochester to the plain inexperienced Jane? He has been surrounded by
women who flatter him because he is rich, Jane is totally unlike
them, she speaks the truth. He does not know what to make of her and
wants to know more. But there is more than unfamiliarity – on the
surface Jane is reserved, but underneath she is capable of passion.
In the second scene between them Rochester examines Jane’s weird
paintings in which her imagination takes her to the northern seas.
How like the book’s writer: her imagination escaping the
restrictions of her life?
The Jane Eyre plot is a
classic Cinderella/ugly duckling story. There are only so many
plots and this is one of the most common. It is a plot that I have
used in my trilogy The Healer’s Shadowtrilogy. Some
people say that Jane Eyre is a Cinderella meets Bluebeard plot, but
they are wrong. Bluebeard is a psychopath that destroys the
female, Rochester may have a first wife in a tower, but she is alive,
as Jane discovers to her cost.
Wednesday 17 October 2012
Photo Inspiration - Forest
I took this photo in
the Forest of Dean last Sunday. I love the forest. When I was a
little girl I stayed with my grandmother in Berryhill, not far from
Symonds Yat. My house in the Czech Republic is only fifteen minutes
walk from the forest. When I can’t write, I take a basket and
wander through the trees looking for mushrooms.
Sunday 14 October 2012
Desert Island Books - Earthsea books
A superb four-part
fantasy, comparable with the work of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the
“Earthsea” books follow the fortunes of the wizard Ged from his
childhood to an age where magic is giving way to evil. As a young
dragonlord, Ged, whose use-name is Sparrowhawk, is sent to the island
of Roke to learn the true way of magic. A natural magician, Ged
becomes an Archmage and helps the High Priestess Tenar escape from
the labyrinth of darkness. But as the years pass, true magic and
ancient ways are forced to submit to the powers of evil and death.
Goodreads description
I managed to not read
Ursula Le Guin’s books as a child and a teenager. It was not until
my student son read The Wizard of Earthsea and told
me that I would love it, that at last I settled down with the book.He
was right, I loved it and all the other Earthsea books. Why, oh why
did I wait so long? Maybe because I wrongly thought of them as
children’s books. They can be read by children, but an adult reader
will get so much more from Le Guin’s writings. What makes Le Guin
so special?Le Guin has a genius for world creation – Earthsea
feels like somewhere I know and will know. Sometimes, as with my own
fictional worlds, I come upon a place in this world which is
Earthsea. Of course every reader will have a different Earthsea; Le
Guin is brilliant at giving enough but not too much description so
that we each can see our own vision. The same is true of the
descriptions of her characters. I have an image of each, but what I
remember tends not to be their physical appearance, but their
thoughts, motives, loves and fears. For all Le Guin’s genius in
world-making, she writes about humanity.
I love the way she is
able to create fantastic worlds which allow her to explore big
issues. In the Wizard of Earthsea, the first Earthsea
book, the young hero makes an error of judgement and must face the
consequences. In Jungian psychology all that we dislike and repress
about ourselves is called our shadow. In order to be fully mature we
must turn, face it and name it, something most of us fail to do. This
happens quite literally in the Wizard of Earthsea. There
are other similarly important themes in her other books.I had been a
poet, playing with symbols and metaphors. Le Guin showed me that this
was possible in a novel too and that it was possible to do this
whilst telling a good story.
Ursula Le Guin inspired
me to start writing novels. And she even provided the best book I
know on writing – Steering the Craft.
This
morning my new book Love of Shadows had its first
review on Amazon and
Goodreads. In it the reviewer says that she thought the series
“similar to Ursula Le Guin’s books set in the fictional country
of Orsinia”. I could not be more honoured by a comparison.
Monday 8 October 2012
Photo Inspiration - Olsina
This is a photo of Lake
Olsina in Southern Bohemia. I can walk here from my Czech house. It’s
a very special place for me. It is set in a natural bowl formed by
the surrounding hills. One of its attractions is that it is
undisturbed. Much of the surrounding forests are in a military zone,
which means that it is accessible only at weekends and that building
is restricted in the locality.
The lake is man-made –
a renaissance fishpond, which is still farmed today. Every other
Autumn (in October or November) the sluices are opened and the lake
drained. The carp are herded into the nets of the waiting fishermen.
My friend Hannah had an old cottage next to the lake and I stayed
with her one year, waking at 6 to watch the harvest. Crowds gathered
to watch and buy fresh fish. When everyone had gone, it was the turn
of the water birds to arrive – gulls of course, but also herons and
white egrets.
At other times I have
watched the mating dance of crested grebes rising and bowing on the
still surface of the lake. In the summer Hannah and I would go
swimming in the lake’s now warm waters, with the carp blowing
bubbles around us or we would wander into the forest to collect wild
mushrooms.
On the day of Hannah’s
funeral I came to Olsina and launched a little paper boat on the
waters in remembrance of her. In the boat’s prow I set a picture
she had painted of a man waving. The boat bobbed in the current
before disappearing round a small headland. My farewell said, I
returned to my car and drove home. Later when I looked closer at the
picture I saw that it was titled “Crossing Lethe.”
Sunday 7 October 2012
Desert Island Books - Weirdstone of Brisingamen
A
tale of Alderley
When
Colin and Susan are pursued by eerie creatures across Alderley Edge,
they are saved by the Wizard. He takes them into the caves of
Fundindelve, where he watches over the enchanted sleep of one hundred
and forty knights.
But
the heart of the magic that binds them – Firefrost, also known as
the Weirdstone of Brisingamen – has been lost. The Wizard has been
searching for the stone for more than 100 years, but the forces of
evil are closing in, determined to possess and destroy its special
power.
Colin
and Susan realise at last that they are the key to the Weirdstone’s
return. But how can two children defeat the Morrigan and her deadly
brood?
Amazon
description
This
(and Moon
of Gomrath,
the second book in the Alderley trilogy) has to be my all-time
favourite book from my childhood. I remember arguing with my
teacher Elizabeth Webster that Alan Garner’s stories were better
than Tolkien’s.
What
makes this so great is the authenticity of the stories – they are
based on real localities (Alderley Edge) and local myths. They are
fantasy, but their roots are in the hills of Cheshire and British
mythology. Garner arguably gave me my first introduction to magic
realism, the genre in which I write. I could have chosen other books
by this writer – The
Owl Service, Elidor and
of course the great Red
Shift,
but Weirdstone was
how I first experienced Garner’s work and so it holds a special
place in my heart.
Whether the book had
such a strong hold on me (which it retains) because it chimed with my
vision of the world – history and myth woven in to the present –
or because it informed my view is impossible to say now. But I read
this book over and over again throughout my childhood, delighting in
Garner’s wonderful descriptions – the account of Colin and
Susan’s journey through the disused mineworkings of the Edge beats
the journey through the Mines of Moria into a cocked hat.
After
many years Garner has just published the sequel – a book for adults
called Bonelands.
It’s on the list of what I want for Christmas. That’s if I can
wait that long.
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