News and Views (1): Norwich ... not just 'A Fine City'

Pull's Ferry, with Norwich Cathedral behind

Having lived in Swansea, which was chosen to host the UK Year of Literature and Writing (1995), for nearly 20 years, I now find that Norwich, a short train ride away and the home city of my teenage years, is the new UNESCO City of Literature!

•  Writers' Centre Norwich 

Caistor St Edmund, Norwich

On the train journey home from Norwich today, I took this photo of Venta Icenorum, the Roman town and one of the regional capitals of Roman Britain (can you see the square of the outer walls?). The village is now known as Caistor St Edmund: it is a place I knew well from my Norfolk childhood, but I had never seen the Roman walls so clearly before. The tower-like structure towards the left is Bastion 7136.

Magazine Moment (8): Cultural Horizon Magazine (Romania)

'Horizons?
If not horizons,
then at least a few cracks
through which light pierces'

Maria Dolores Garcia Pastor
on writing her novel (details below)

I was delighted to receive a package from Bucharest, Romania this week. It contained the latest copy of 'Contemporan Orizont Literar'/'Cultural Horizon Magazine' [Annul III - Nr. 1 (15)/January- March 2010]. The publishing concern responsible for the venture is a media partner of MTTLC at the University of Bucharest. Magazine editor-in-chief, Daniel Dragomirescu, and his team of translators do a terrific job in producing a publication that is largely bilingual, always thought-provoking and refreshingly global in outlook.

The current issue contains features and poems from many corners of the world, for example...

Romania
The opening article, 'Eminescu and Postmodernism' by Daniel Dragomirescu considers the impact of the hugely influential Eminescu on those who followed him, and on the contemporary poetry scene in Romania. But what of the future? Dragomirescu raises some concerns. Eminescu's 'Evening Star' found its way in to the Guinness Book of Records as the longest love poem in the world. Readers will not be surprised to learn that the gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, also appears in the 2009 edition of this popular volume.

Nigeria
We move from Romania to Africa for Abiola Olatunde's feature on the theatre in Nigeria, which is, she writes, 'on the wane' at a time when interest in film and video is soaring.

UK
I enjoyed Anne Stewart's poem, 'Winter Loving', prefaced with an epigraph from Elizabeth Jennings. Stewart's image of the 'whale-song of the trees' is one that will stay with me.

USA
Peggy Landsman the in USA shares an update on her first full-length poetry collection and on a subsequent chapbook. Watch this space!

Spain
This edition of CHM comes with a supplement, featuring the Spanish publication, 'El Boletin Del Autor'. There is an interview with Maria Dolores Garcia Pastor, the author of El susurro del los árboles ('The Murmur of Trees'), a novel about Chile. The interview has been conducted by Victor Morata Cortado.

... and back to Romania
Finally, there is the text of an enlightening conversation in the Dialouri Culturale/Cultural Dialogue series, between Professor Lidia Vianu and Mrs Ioana Ieronim, former students in the Pitar Moş English Department. I supplemented my postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) with a TEFL qualification (back in the 1980s), with a view to teaching English in international contexts - and was fascinated to read Professor Vianu's memories of her time as a student and later as a teacher of English. She speaks about her best-selling work, English as a Key (Teora 1993/2005/2006/2008). Professor Vianu recalls a period during her student days when she experienced 'a desperate hunt for books'. I would like to think that books will somehow continue to be widely treasured as tools of learning in university circles and beyond...

Why not visit the CHM site: you will find out a bit more about the current state of international culture - from a Romanian perspective!

• The Eminescu exhibition in the Romanian Parliament Palace
• On the subject of Welsh Dialogues/Dialoguri Galeze, you may like to know that Byron Beynon's latest book, 'Nocturne in Blue' (Lapwing Press) has just been published. I attended a launch at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, Wales, last Friday.
  

Seasonal Spotlight (3): Mince Pies and Dylan Thomas

Yesterday,
A Mince Pie Afternoon

(Do please let us know if you bake special biscuits, cookies or cakes at this time of year!)

I wonder if you have read 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' by Dylan Thomas. I love the illustrations in my copy by Edward Ardizzone. The descriptions are wonderful: why not add a pinch of the following to your Christmas reading recipes:

'Then I would be slap-dashing home,
the gravy smell of the dinners of others,
... the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils,
when out of a snow-clogged side lane
would come a boy the spit of myself...'

Dylan Thomas

P.S. Steven of The Golden Fish has posted a wonderful James Joyce description of the rich and regimented fare of Christmas Past: do take a look, and keep an eye open for the wonderful seasonal painting at the end of the post while you are there!

Buried Treasure: Tenby, 'Thalatta! Thalatta!'

Seth Apter of the Altered Page is hosting his 'Buried Treasure' event for those of us who have been taking part in his DisCo project (Disintegration Collaboration). Seth has asked participants to post a favourite blog entry from a while back. I have chosen one on Tenby, which you can read below. A year has elapsed, and I have now passed my National Open College Network programme in Art ('Arts and Crafts: Developing Basic Design Skills'). I have the certificate to prove it!

You can see two of my experimental card designs above. The red one formed part of my final portfolio: the blue one was fun to do! This is the old post (and my thanks to the Weaver of Grass for reminding me about Buried Treasure - see here, too!) ...

We were in Tenby (South Wales, UK) recently so that I could take photographs for my 'Design' course project. I decided to focus on the theme of 'Thalatta! Thalatta!' ('The sea! The sea!' - Xenophon), since the Tenby Sea Water Bath building has a Greek inscription on it. You can read the translation on the Blue Plaque. You may or may not agree with the sentiment ...

It seems an age ago since I began to learn Classical Greek at Newcastle (1979!).

While we were in Tenby, we thoroughly enjoyed seeing the art of Augustus John, Gwen John and others in the Tenby Museum and Art Gallery

First posted 11 June 20087 at 21.57 UK summer time.

P.S. You might like to see my thalatta poem on Dr Marc Latham's Folding Mirror Poetry site.

On The Thirty-Nine Steps

I wonder what you made of the new television version of the Buchan classic. Richard Hannay is one of my all time favourite book heroes. I was introduced to him by my English teacher at school, and have been a Buchan aficionado ever since. One of my new year resolutions is to join the John Buchan Society.

• The Times Online: Rupert Penry-Jones as Hannay
• Patrick Barlow's stage production of The Thirty-Nine Steps
• Buchan on my blog
• The Penry-Jones version on dvd
• N.B. the reviews are worth reading!
  

Swarm: when worlds collide

Followers of my blog will know just how much I enjoyed Mark Cocker's book, Crow Country in 2008 (see bookshelf below). I was fascinated by his intricate descriptions of airborne corvids along the river Yare in Norfolk, where I was privileged to spend part of my childhood. It will come as no surprise that when I saw a TV listing for Swarm: nature's incredible invasions, I was keen to watch the programme. (BBC1 Sunday 4 January 2009 - with part two next Sunday: click link for BBC iPlayer)

In terms of photography it certainly met my expectations. We saw locusts and crabs, starlings in Rome, mayflies in Winsconsin, mice in Australia - quantities of mice - and cicadas in the USA, to name but a few examples of the swarm phenomenon. We were introduced to an entomologist who was covered from head to toe in honey bees. He had been studying the species, and knew how to behave like their queen! We saw midge cakes - or rather burgers - in Africa, which apparently are very popular in some regions, and full of protein.

I wonder what delights are left in store for programme two: rats, spiders and jellyfish perhaps ...

• iPlayer
• David Tennant, the narrator
• When worlds collide
  

The President reads Walcott

'... sinuous swans ...'
Derek Walcott, Omeros XXXVIII, III

I had the privilege of hearing St Lucian and Nobel poet Derek Walcott at the Guardian Hay Festival the summer before last; and was captivated by his outlook on the world, and particularly by his book, Omeros which I bought in The [excellent!] Poetry Bookshop in Hay.

Here in the UK rumours currently abound in the press regarding the identity of the Poet Laureate Designate. Poetry, it seems, is equally alive and well on the opposite side of the Atlantic. I am grateful to the Poets who Blog site for pointing me in the direction of an article on CityFile about US President Obama reading Walcott's Collected Poems - thereby presumably encouraging others in the support of poetry.

I have already mentioned my early love of the tales and travels of the Greek hero, Odysseus. Omeros as the name implies, is another epic poem about the web of human existence exemplified in sea travel and culture: indeed it is - in my humble opinion - a singularly fascinating 'take' on Homer's Odyssey. It is more than that: it is a new and unique work in its own right (though I use the word 'new' advisedly as the book was first published in 1990!). The poem makes use of the engaging Terza Rima form of chiming verse, a form used effectively by Dante.

Postscript
My copy from Hay came for good measure with a news cutting inside the cover: 'Hustling Homer' by Oliver Taplin, who was reviewing a production of 'The Odyssey' (Walcott style) at The Other Place in Stratford. The production was, apparently and appropriately, 'a cyclopean feat of poetry'!

Further information

• Omeros Study Guide (enotes.com)
• Derek Walcott’s Omeros, and the Significance of the River of Ancestry

Blogspotting (2): Galumphing

Left: a lamp in the Cathedral Close at St Davids, Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK. The reflection makes me think of Narnia and Mr Tumnus.

Galumphing: the title alone is a curious one, and it comes from The Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll. It is the 'other' Lewis (C.S. Lewis), however, who features most prominently in this blog, along with a few others such as Tolkien, Homer and Shakespeare!

The blog belongs to Jeremy W. Johnston, a teacher of English and Classical Studies (two of the three subjects I trained to teach as part of my Exeter PGCE back in the 1980s).

On the subject of Tolkien, you might like to take a look at the blog entry for 18 August, entitled The Annotated Hobbit. I was particularly drawn to the words of Horace on the subject of reading and re-reading. If I really like a book, I like to read and re-read it. Do you?

Johnston highlights an interesting point about the etymology of Bilbo's name. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll were all masters when it came to making up names for their characters. How often do we attempt to create new words? In my craft class last week, I tried to think of a term I could use to describe my new technique of turning a photograph into an abstract greeting card design. I am not quite there yet ...

Johnston mentions Homer, and I was reminded of how much I fell in love with the tale of Odysseus as a result of a child's version of The Odyssey. Perhaps that was why I went on to read Classical Studies for my degree. You might be interested to read an article by By George Elliott Clarke about the universality of the Homeric themes in the Chronicle Herald.

Costa competitors

It seems that we live in a world in which characters like Noddy triumph over Othello and Hamlet. The poll at the Costa Book Awards has raised some eyebrows, but one is left wondering whether the results for the nation's favourite authors would have been totally different if a larger section of the population had been asked to cast a vote.

Blue is the colour

On our way back from a few days in Berea, Pembrokeshire, we decided to drive across the Preseli landscape to see the bluestones in their natural environment.

In the course of our meanderings in the hill country, we came across this plaque (left), nailed to a stone memorial in Mynachlogddu. The plaque was on the far side of the stone pillar in the lower photograph. Waldo Williams was a Welsh language Romantic poet.

We were particularly interested in the view from the memorial of Carn Menyn or 'The Cairn of Butter' (Carnmenyn on OS map) and Carn Meini (SA66 7RY).

This is real Stonehenge bluestone territory. Current Archaeology published what some may view as a controversial article, Message in the Stones, about the purpose of Stonehenge.





The air was very pure, and there were many interesting and unusual lichens on the stones. We watched a kestrel as we sat beside a stream (or series of mini-rapids, thanks to the exceptional August rainfall). It was a most evocative place.

Poetry: the art and craft of writing

Right: the Lighthouse Keeper's Cottage on the tiny island of Eilean Bàn, under the Skye Bridge, where Gavin Maxwell lived and wrote.

Like Sylvia Bardell, I enjoy poems about poetry, but I also recognize that with such masterpieces in mind as In my craft or sullen art by Dylan Thomas, it can be hard to write on this subject with an original and authoritative voice.

It would be interesting to know whether most of us love these 'poetry poems' or whether we would pass over them for others. Is it, perhaps, all down to which individual poems happen to speak to us, regardless of subject? I know Mary Biddinger, for one, is not keen on poems about poems.

I love to visit places associated with writers, and to see their desks and pens. Many modern writers scribble notes on till receipts; but how many of us still prefer to write our drafts in long-hand, thereby allowing our thoughts to flow from brain to arm to hand to paper - without interruption? I use notebooks (and till receipts) and a tiny dictaphone; but when it comes to writing a first draft, I love to sit at my computer. I may not watch for mermaids (which is what the Reverend R.S. Hawker of Morwenstow reputedly did on occasions when there were no shipwrecks); but I love to peer over my screen and to know that the sea is 'out there', with rhythms of its own.

Incidentally and in connection with Eilean Bàn, we remember Maxwell as a prose writer; but his title, Ring of Bright Water originated as a string of words in a poem, The Marriage of Psyche, by Kathleen Raine.


P.S. On the subject of writers' rooms (see comment by Susan Richardson below), how about a poem about a writer's drawer?

Jeremy Fisher or Toad of Toad Hall?

This fabulous frog (for I think it is a frog and not a toad) hopped up on to our backdoor step in a teeming shower of rain at 1pm. I told my husband that the amphibian was rather like a gherkin with a yellow stripe down its back. Imagine our excitement for a split second when Google seemed to come up with the ID of Natterjack Toad!

If anybody can help us to name this frog (i.e. to tell us what sort of frog is gracing our garden), we would be thrilled. He was about the size of an adult hand, if you think of the body as the palm and the legs as - pretty long - fingers! We do not have a pond, and our garden is high up and about 3 km from the coast. The photographs should enlarge if you click on them.

• Read about amphibians at the Froglife website.
• Read about 'Geordie' frogs in the Daily Telegraph. My thanks to Professor P. Brain for pointing me in the direction of this article.
  

Lark Rise to ... Carnglas

Local residents in Swansea have been living through their own Lark Rise to Candleford experience since the announcement some months ago that the Carnglas Road Post Office was on the list of local branches that could be closed.

There is a spirit of great rejoicing today, as news has filtered through on the BBC that - thanks to the representations of local people - the Carnglas Road Post Office has been saved.

The tragedy is that 44 other branches in South and West Wales have not been spared.

• The real 'Lark Rise to Candleford': about the author, Flora Thompson
• 'On the Trail of Flora Thompson' by John Owen Smith
• Flora Thompson's plaque
• Flora Thompson's poetry
  

The Island of Spinalonga

Left: Thalatta, thalatta

I do not watch much television, but I have been enjoying Francesco da Mosto's voyage through the Mediterranean, aboard the beautiful Black Swan. David Bellamy's surprise appearance added a great sense of je ne sais quoi to the programme on Corfu, and helped to bring us closer to the spirit of that other naturalist and conservationist, Gerald Durrell.

I am, however, particularly looking forward to the episode of Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage on BBC2 tomorrow night at 8pm, in which the intrepid Venetian visits the little island of Spinalonga, once a colony for those with leprosy.

I am about a third of the way through The Island by Victoria Hislop, and have formed 'my' picture of Spinalonga (from her narrative); so it will be interesting to see whether the 'real' island matches the one in my mind. As someone who writes poetry, I am always fascinated by the reception of art. The viewer or the reader brings so much to the painting or the poem.

I have enormous respect for the work of The Leprosy Mission. It is amazing to think that leprosy can be cured with modern medication. It is awful, though, to think that there are still many with the disease who lose sensation - and the vital warning signal of pain - in their lower limbs, and consequently develop ulcerous and infected wounds from accidents. The Leprosy Mission has developed special footwear to help these patients.

• Francesco's Mediterranean Voyage BBC Listing Wednesday 6 August, 8pm.
• The Guardian: The Island by Victoria Hislop
• TLM Trading (The Leprosy Mission online shop)
  
• Spinalonga.com

Postscript: I have just come across the ILEP site ('working for a world without leprosy'), which is well worth visiting. It comprises 14 non-governmental 'donor agencies', including TLM.

Small Stones (& Poetry Pebbles)

Fiona Robyn is collecting 'small stones'. Take a look and see if you can 'find' any.

Children in Alexandria, Louisiana at the Tree House Children's Museum are being asked to make 'poetry pebbles' ...

Official ID: a burying beetle

I am very grateful to representatives of Wicken Fen and Buglife (The Invertebrate Conservation Trust) who have helped me to find out about this beetle. Sadly, perhaps, it is not the rare Crucifix Ground Beetle. It seems instead to be the Necrophorus vespilloides, a member of the Silphidae family or burying beetle.

Matt Shadlow of Buglife replied to me with the following message:

Dear Caroline

Unfortunately this is not a Crucifix beetle (Panagaeus cruxmajor).
There is a certain resemblance, but the photo is a much bigger species,
a type of burying beetle. While the Crucifix beetle (Panagaeus
cruxmajor) and its close relative Panagaeus bipustulatus (which is
commoner but still very rarely encountered) are predators of small
insects or snails, the beetle you have seen is associated with dead
animals, most commonly mice. A male and female burying beetle will meet
up at a carcass and form a bond, they then defend the mouse from rivals
as they dig out the soil form underneath the animal so that it sinks
underground. At the same time the beetles allies the little mites that
they carry around jump off and eat any fly eggs that have been laid on
the body. Once it is underground the beetles create a chamber on top of
the mouse and the female lays her eggs. When the larvae hatch out they
sit in a 'nest' and beg for food. The male and female beetles help
their young by partially digesting the mouse and feeding it to their
offspring. Eventually the larvae pupate and the parents leave.
These are four species of burying beetle (Nicrophorus spp.) with colour
patterns like this and we would need to see the colour of the antennae
and the shape of the legs to know which it is.

You are not the first person to get excited by potentially finding the
Crucifix beetle.

I hope this is useful, if you would like to support our work conserving
populations of endangered invertebrates please go to
http://www.buglife.org.uk/joinus/

Cheers
Matt Shardlow

Director
Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust
170A Park Road
Peterborough PE1 2UF

01733 201210
079 21 700151

www.buglife.org.uk
Conserving the small things that run the world.

Matt thought I would be interested to hear about Darwin's encounter with a TRUE Crucifix Ground Beetle in 1846. You can read the 'unsavoury' account in Letter 109 on the Darwin Correspondence Project site.

STOP PRESS: a message from Sean McHugh, Communications Officer of Wales Biodiversity Partnership (published here with his permission):

Caroline

Thank you for your recent email. I submitted the details to two experts
and here is their conclusion:

'I believe it is a sexton beetle, Nicrophorus humator, similar markings
to the Crucifix ground beetle Panagaeus crux-major, but the latter is a
saltmarsh/fen specialist, only known in Wales from either side of the
Burry Inlet, and not recorded on the Gower side since 1912'.

'Sexton Beetle. Although the elytra markings are similar there is also a
white stripe on the thorax (the thorax is also a different shape) and
there's a dead mouse there'.

A key observation is the dead mouse; Nicrophorus humator lays eggs
beside corpses of small mammals and birds which she buries.

However, it's a great field observation & we need more insect
observations to be reported. Take a look at the Local record Centre
sites, for the Swansea area it is covered by Sewbrec
(http://www.sewbrec.org.uk/) where you can submit online records and
find out more about recording & training. Also, take a look at our
website (www.biodiversitywales.org.uk) to see how you can become
involved in Welsh Wildlife.

Regards

Sean

Sean McHugh
WBP Communications Officer
Wales Biodiversity Partnership
c/o Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales, Fountain Road, Tondu, Bridgend, CF32 0EH
E-bost/e-mail: s.mchugh@welshwildlife.org


So the picture has changed, and I can no longer say that I discovered a Crucifix Ground Beetle, but at least I now know more about it. Incidentally, I thought the name 'burying beetle' rang a bell from somewhere. Those who know me will be familiar with my passion for 'things Cornish'. It suddenly dawned on me that there is a delightful book, set in St Ives, called 'The Burying Beetle'. My posting has come full circle - and has rotated around to literature once more!

Burying Beetle sites:

• Dr Sheena Cotter at the University of Cambridge
  
• 'The Burying Beeetle' by Ann Kelley, Luath Press Limited

Postscript: on the subject of burying creatures, I have just read the earthworm poem as part of the project on 'animal mask poems' at the Wild Rose Reader blog ...

from the field book

Right: Chough in Pembrokeshire (taken with a zoom lens).
Copyright Caroline Gill 2008

How many of you enjoy poems about birds? For some of us, our acquaintance with birds in poetry began with Edward Lear's splendid, if distinctly unconventional, owl in the pea-green boat. More recently I have fallen in love with some of the poems by Edward Thomas: his owl poem is particularly poignant.

If like me, you enjoy the flutter of feathers as you turn the pages of a poetry volume, I would thoroughly recommend from the field book by Carol Thistlethwaite. The author speaks with authority when she writes about the 'slender hips' of the water rail and the 'straw-bent legs' of the avocet, for Carol has worked as a field teacher for the RSPB at the Ribble Discovery Centre.

from the field book is crammed, end to end, with the jizz on birds. Meadow pipits are to be found alongside the red-legged partridge, and pied wagtails perch opposite the wren. There are occasional illustrations: I particularly like the Common Tern, with its simplicity of line. This bird pops up again on the cover, but you will need to look carefully to spot it!

snipe is a concrete poem: it literally covers the page. black-headed gulls, another concrete poem, is playful in tone. Poems of all shapes and sizes flit across the pages and somehow manage to fit between the covers of this delightful volume.

The final poems encompass the theme of darkness: we encounter the striking image in Barn Owl of the 'phantom with the weight of life hooked in its claws'. This creature could hardly bear less resemblance to his benign cousin, the 'elegant fowl', who sang to his 'small guitar'!

If you would like to experience the jizz for yourself, you might like to buy the book!

• from the field book blog
  

• from the field book (for sale at BeWrite Books)
  

• WorldCat

On the nature of poetry ... and poetry huts (& sheds)

Definitions of poetry intrigue me. As soon as poetry is pinned down, it has a habit of slithering its way out of its straitjacket, or so it seems to me. I have decided that it would be revealing to blog links to articles that include some of these definitions. So here goes:

Poetry and the Possible by John J. Ronan, Poet Laureate, Gloucester, Massachusetts. From Wicked Local Gloucester, Mon 28 July 2008. The letter includes quotations from:

1. Edward Arlington Robinson
2. Carl Sandberg
3. Mark Twain

P.S.

• I rather like Scott Naugle's poetry definition (or observation) in The Sun Herald.
• I also like the Reverend Gideon Cecil's description in his letter about Martin Carter, National Poet of Guyana: 'One of the delights of Carter’s poetry is its rendering of profound philosophical thoughts locked in magnificent imagery.' From Letter to the Editor in the Stabrook News. Tues 5 Aug 2008.
• There are some good 'poetry definition' nuggets in this piece of advice for poets in Africa from Anis Haffar. The writer refers to Albert Camus, the Nobel laureate, reminding us that we are “obliged to understand rather than to judge”.
• Does poetry matter?
  

P.P.S. We often thinks of monks scribbling away in hermit cells, but poets like reclusive places, too. Here are some fascinating writing places ...

• The Travelling Poetry Hut, featured in CBS 3 Springfield News.
• Parson RS Hawker's cliff top 'driftwood writing hut' at Morwenstow, Cornwall, UK. Property of the National Trust.
  
• The writing shed at Laugharne in Wales, UK, where Dylan Thomas wrote his poetry. The original doors are in the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea.
  

Animated Poetry

I read an article by Nigel Kendall in the Times Online, and went to the link at the end of it. See what you make of Ana Marie Uribe's 'anipoems' (aka animated poems) ...

What would the Reverend R.S. Hawker have made of these mermaids?

Disability Arts

I intend to post one or two sites on the subject of arts and disability (my particular interests lie in the fields of writing, photography, card-making and art).

• Disability Arts Cymru: Wales, UK
• Kaleidoscope Magazine: 'Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts', Ohio, USA.
• Twenty-Four Seven: an opportunity for carers to contribute to an anthology on the subject of being a carer. Go to: http://anthologynewsandreviews.blogspot.com (this should take you to the blogspot where you may need to type 'anthology' into the search box). http://www.carersgroup.com/publications.htm