Category: Inspiration

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Making, moving, cleaning, reading, studying, growing … life while social distancing

Funny how quickly our vocabulary grows around novel situations. A few weeks ago I’m not sure I was familiar with the terms social distancing, self-isolation or elbow bump. Now – well, you know.

With so many projects and events cancelled in the last few days, and many more to come, I’m reminded how crucial it is to stay positive. But what does that mean? I’m fortunate at the moment to be thinking about ‘social distancing’ rather than ‘self-isolation’.  I’m also lucky to be a bit of an antisocial person anyway. Even so, box sets and jigsaw puzzles have a limited appeal. A couple of newsletters came into my inbox today which made me feel like putting together a list of Things We Could be Doing While Social Distancing. I hope something here strikes a chord!

Making

You may not have any spare clay hanging about but what about paint? Or string or rope? The Collective Gen blog has put together 12 Projects To Do Using Supplies You (Probably) Already Have – macrame (I’ve recently rediscovered this myself and no ball of string is now safe). I recently found a rather tatty old jardiniere (plant pot stand!) for £10 in a junk shop and painted it with some leftover Farrow & Ball paint. The joy of middle-class upcycling!

Moving

“If there was ever a time to re-energize, re-connect with your willingness to sit with yourself, care for yourself – it could be now. If there was ever a time to acknowledge that your relationship to the above can have a direct impact on others – it could be now.” –  my yoga guru Adriene Mischler sends out a weekly newsletter to calm your spirit and remind you to take care of yourself and others. Plus there are all her fantastic (and free) yoga videos to do at home. I was a complete beginner when I started following her in 2018 and I love her energy and sense of fun.

Cleaning

Dusty house, dusty mind… or something like that? If you’re healthy and have got the energy how about joining me in a ritual Spring clean. No kidding. A Victorian flat seems to grow dust balls in the hall quicker than you can say ‘tumbleweed’.  Spring cleaning tips from Reader’s Digest here…

Reading

It’s a bit obvious for a poet that now’s a great opportunity to read all those collections that have been piling up. However, I’d like to throw down the gauntlet. I’ve been reading Dante’s Divine Comedy, and am finding Paradiso heavy going. BUT I see there’s Digital Dante – all the text, context, commentary and much more. I’m definitely going to get help here to get me through Paradiso with a greater appreciation. If you’ve not read this work, why not set yourself the goal? Alternatively, my next classic tome to tackle is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Can I even call myself a poet and not have read this work? I did study the Prologue and some other bits of it at school, about 100 years ago. I’m ready to go for it now, in the interests of furthering my knowledge of The Canon. At the Poetry Foundation you can read the whole prologue.

Studying

How about taking an online course? Search for ‘poetry’ at Coursera and there are any number of free courses you can join. ‘Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan’, ‘Modern American Poetry’,  ‘The Ancient Greeks’ – actually that last one isn’t poetry, but I bet it’s interesting. Or if you’re willing to pay, the Poetry School runs a number of online courses, as do of course the wonderful Live Canon.

Growing

The satisfaction to be gained from sowing seeds and watching them grow is hard to overestimate. I’m very, very lucky to have a garden, but even if you only have a window sill you still may be able to grow something. I think the first bit of growing I ever did was to sprout some seeds. Urban Turnip has a post entitled Best urban gardening & container growing blogs – not a recent post, but it includes links to various indie gardening blogs (ie not the big ones where you’re encouraged to buy stuff). Now’s exactly the time of year to be sowing stuff, and if it’s something you can eat, even better. It really makes you feel that life goes on, and it’s a beautiful thing. Happy growing.

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Free Verse at Conway Hall

Up to London yesterday for the The Poetry Book & Magazine Fair aka Free Verse, at a new time of year (February rather than September) and back at Conway Hall.

Recently I’ve been plagued by headaches so after getting off the train I decided what I needed was a nice fresh(?) air walk across London from Victoria to Holburn.  It’s almost a straight line if you don’t mind the crowds – Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus,  Shaftesbury Avenue – but of course I tried to be clever by diving down side streets and avoiding tourists or shoppers. This always means a few poor decisions and at least another ten minutes to the journey. But it’s often serendipitous. On Savile Row I passed a blue plaque announcing ‘The Beatles played their last concert on the roof of this building’. A few streets later I came across Marshall Street Baths, a 1930s building now restored and reopened as a public leisure centre in a most unexpected location in Soho. I remember visiting it when I was working for Nike in the 1990s, to assess its suitability as a venue for a fitness event. In the end we went with Seymour Leisure Centre in Marylebone, another historic old ‘baths’ (of the type mostly disappeared from our towns) now brought into the 21st century.

I love walking around London and discovering quirky, lost or almost lost sites. Author Paul Talling’s ‘Derelict London’ walks are a must if you’re into this sort of thing and within striking distance of the city. I’ve been on a few of them – but you have to book months ahead, as they fill up within minutes of his posting them online. Subscribe to his email alerts and you’re given a day’s warning so you can be ready on the dot of 9am to hit ‘buy tickets’. Paul’s site is fascinating and labyrinthine, but you can sign up for his emails here if you’re interested the walks.

You may wonder what this has got to do with poetry, but in fact it segues very neatly into a little pamphlet from Tamar Yoseloff’s Hercules Editions that I picked up yesterday, called Formerly. It was the first pamphlet from the press, and a collaboration with photographer Vici Macdonald. Vici’s photos of London’s derelict buildings, ghost adverts and Victorian boozers were the prompts for Tammy’s sonnets. Doorstep sellers, ‘Sweeney’-style low life, barmaids and the dead are some of the voices in these poems, as the poet imagines the people inhabiting these nearly-gone and semi-lost places.  It’s accompanied by a pull-out guide describing the locations, and Vici’s and Tammy’s accompanying notes. Fascinating. I admit I’m a sucker for attractive packaging and Hercules specialise in gorgeous covers – fab fonts, spot varnish and gold leaf abound! The press’s latest publication is Martyn Crucefix’s Cargo of Limbs, which I also bought and am looking forward to reading.

Here’s my haul from yesterday:

Books from Free Verse the poetry book fair

During the afternoon I was helping Jeremy Page on the Frogmore Press table, now becoming a bit of a tradition. Next to us was Andy Croft of Smokestack, with whom I had some fascinating conversations about the ethos behind his press, communist poets, mutual friends such as Peter Raynard, and the like. I covered for his table when both he and Jeremy were on a break, and managed to sell two books and two copies of the Frogmore Papers. I’m not sure I did so well the rest of the afternoon but it was a flying start!

As ever, the Fair was as great chance to catch up, meet for the first time or just wave ‘hello’ to lots of lovely poets including Abigail Parry, Carrie Etter, Susannah Hart, Briony Bax, Tamar Yoseloff, Jess Mookherjee, Sarah James, Jinny Fisher, Liz Bahs, Joolz & Hilaire, Rishi Dastidar and Davina Prince. If I’ve left anyone out I do apologise. It was also nice to chat with people generally while on the Frogmore table, including some people who turned out to be non-poets but just come in to browse and check it out. Which was fantastic. It was quite a crush all day, but I did feel it was the friendliest Free Verse I’d been to so far. Huge thanks to the Poetry Society for their organisation of the event.

I’d like to give a shout to Jeremy Dixon of Hazard Press and his intricately-made books. At a past Fair I’d bought three of his ‘micro books’, this time my eye was drawn to pocket-sized pamphlet called Caught by a Wave, which opens out into two concertinas featuring found black and white photos and overprinted with words that repeat and overspill (rather like waves I guess). Some of the print is overlaid in blue foil. Jeremy explained that he tries not to buy new material but to use what he has already collected. Each booklet featured sightly different paper stock or colour of cover. I have number 21 of 40. A collector’s item! I was also sorely tempted by My Nineties Madonna Scrapbook, but that will have to wait for a future fair, if it’s not sold out.

caught-by-a-wave - Hazard Press

Conway Hall is an iconic building, home of the Ethical Society and venue for all kinds of events. Yesterday the Main Hall was crammed with poetry people and books, but the balcony provided a quiet place to take time out. Also a good place to take pictures.

conwayhall-stairway

Free Verse 2020

Free Verse Poetry Book Fair 2020

When the Fair ended, I was due to meet a friend for supper in Crystal Palace, that’s deepest South London to those not in the know. I was supposed to walk to City Thameslink station, but took a wrong turning somehow and ended up walking all the way to Blackfriars and catching a train from there. So it was definitely a ‘see London’ day yesterday.

I actually bought two copies of Formerly by Tamar Yoseloff and Vici Macdonald and to celebrate a lovely day at Free Verse I’d like to give one away to one of my blog readers. Just leave me a note in the comments telling me why you’d like it, and if there’s more than one I’ll put the names in a hat and draw a winner.

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Music, art, poetry launch and a party

It’s February. It’s rainy and windy. What better reason for arty distractions?

On Wednesday we slipped over to Chichester to see The Sixteen perform Handel’s Acis & Galatea in the cathedral.

The next day we visited the Pallant House Gallery to see an exhibition of work by 20th century artist Jessica Dismorr and several of her (female) contemporaries. I confess I hadn’t heard of her before, but enjoyed learning more about her life and seeing some of her art, which certainly developed over her lifetime, from this:

to more abstract work such as this, one of a series of pieces entitled ‘Related Forms’:

In a neighbouring room was an exhibition of work by Jann Haworth, mostly billed as ‘pop art’ and ‘soft sculpture, which was great fun. One of the pieces got me thinking about a poem, although I’m not generally into ekphrastic stuff. On the way in, visitors had been invited to think of a person who was their own female hero and to draw her face onto a card. The resulting display was strangely moving.

The Pallant House Gallery is housed mostly in a modern extension to an original Georgian house, although you pass seamlessly from one to the other when viewing exhibitions. Having started in the new section I was struck particularly by the different smells when walking into the rooms of the old house. A smell of old building, yet each room was different. The impressive stairway and hall of the old building is also used as an exhibition space, currently Wall Pomp by Pablo Bronstein which I loved – I want massive graphics like this in our flat!

pallant house stairway

That evening I was in Brighton for the launch of the first collection by poet friend Sarah Windebank, Memories of a Swedish Grandmother, together with five other books in the new series from Spotlight, which bills itself as a collaboration between Creative Futures, Myriad Editions and New Writing South. I’m so pleased for Sarah – it’s a super collection and I was privileged to hear several of the poems when she brought them to Brighton Stanza for workshopping. I also really enjoyed the reading by Jacqueline Haskell, a poet I wasn’t familiar with, and I came away with her book Stroking Cerberus.

Myriad Launch

myriad launch

Yesterday was the third of six choral workshop days that Nick and I are organising in Lewes and Eastbourne, and despite the threat of bad weather everyone showed up and we had a fine day learning one the six Bach Motets. The workshop days are great fun and high energy but take some organising. Three more to go. Following that, Nick went off to conduct a concert and I took myself to Brighton to Peter Kenny‘s birthday party and a right good knees up among poet and non-poet friends. Sadly I had to leave unfashionably early, but I slept very well last night.

Looks like the storm is abating – I hope you’re staying dry and well.

 

Angst/

A chilled start to the year

January 15th and I’m just getting round to my first post of the year, something that would have concerned me a bit in the past but for the new decade I’m surprisingly chilled. A new decade. Hmmm. Is it me, or has it passed rather under the radar this year? I think I remember the start of the 80s in terms of pop music if nothing else. “Pop go the seventies!” You have to put that into context: there were only 3 TV channels in those days, no web, no TV on demand, no mobile phones etc etc. So Who Was Number One in the Hit Parade was pretty key. BUT I have no time for all those click-bait/lazy media articles about how ‘boring’ the Olde Days were. I’m probably preaching to the converted, so moving on…

Currently reading

I have a lovely pile of books to read and so far I’ve absolutely loved Hubert Moore’s The Feeding Station (Shoestring Press) which I’ve reviewed for an upcoming issue of The Frogmore Papers. Moore is a good example of a poet who’s been writing for some time and isn’t part of the social media merry-go-round, nor the champing-at-the-bit-for-readings crowd. I’m sorry to say I’d not heard of him, because this collection is wonderful. I feel quite inspired, and certainly will be seeking out more by him.

Another poet I’ve finally got around to reading properly is David Borrott. David was one of the standout poets on a course I did at Ty Newydd back in 2013. His pamphlet Porthole was a Laureate’s Choice (Smith Doorstop) in 2015 and I can see why. The pamphlet is wide-ranging in subject matter and very accomplished. Nothing predictable about it, very enjoyable.

My subscription to Stand magazine is drawing to a close so I’ll be moving onto another publication shortly, in line with my ‘subscription rotation’ policy. I’ve really enjoyed my year with Stand, it’s quite different and I’ve discovered names I’ve not read before, for example in this issue (Volume 17/4) Natalie Linh Bolderston and Iain Twiddy.

I’m about halfway through Robert Hamberger’s Blue Wallpaper (Waterloo Press) and enjoying it immensely, which is probably why I’m taking my time over it. For me his work still feels vastly underrated. There is so much to love in his poetry. Robert is also quiet and modest, qualities that I can’t help but find endearing. All I can say is, seek him out. The works speaks for itself.

Back in the summer I decided to read Dante’s Divine Comedy, in a Penguin parallel edition with the original Italian and Robert Kirkpatrick’s translation. Many decades ago I was an eighteen-year-old ingenue in Rome, arriving by train and taking up an au pair job while speaking no Italian. My host family were kind enough to enrol me in the Dante Alighieri School to learn the language. This was my first encounter with Dante, and I’m ashamed to say it took me all this time to decide to actually read his most famous work. It would have happened sooner if I hadn’t changed course at University and ditched Italian literature. So – I galloped through Hell (Inferno), then spent around two months in Purgatory. There was so much to process. When I reached the end, I felt I needed to re-read the introduction. But now I’ve just started Paradiso – although I’m still only on the introduction, which is itself daunting. Interestingly, Nick is conducting a performance of ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ in Brighton in March, which is basically a story about a soul’s journey after death through Purgatory and beyond. So we’re been comparing notes over dinner: is there actually a Lake in Purgatory, or two rivers (as Dante describes)? Is it possible to be regaled by Demons trying to lure you to Hell once you’re in Purgatory (Gerontius) or are you impervious to that? (Dante) I have to remind myself now and then that this is all pretty much theoretical.

Currently writing, and a resolve for 2020

One reason I haven’t been blogging much lately as that I’ve been writing, which is of course an excellent thing. Several new poems in the pipeline plus I’ve been creating a skeleton for a collection, complete with ideas and poem titles on card which I move around and play games with. The new work is putting flesh on the skeleton.

This year I’ve decided not to enter any competitions, a decision that was reinforced when I received a recent email exhorting me to enter a particular competition which appears to have raised its entry fee considerably, while the prize money seems spectacularly unspectacular. Harrumph! My magazine subscriptons and submissions will carry on though.

My competition ban (in terms of pamphlet or book comps) may have to be relaxed if my collection plans progress well… but I’m trying not to succumb. Definitely no single poem comps though!

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Dante on Brexit

I’m only at the first layer of Hell but am already enjoying the ride that is Dante’s Inferno. And it’s all feeling rather relevant despite having been written over seven hundred years ago.

In his excellent introduction Robin Kirkpatrick explains Dante’s conception of Hell, where sinners are ranked according to just how bad their crimes have been. Some readers may be surprised to see the ‘sins of the flesh’ and even murder consigned to the mid-range.

Go right down to the depths and you’ll find the ‘sins of deceit’ : corruption officials,  intellectual dishonesty, ‘rabble rousing’ and treachery.

‘For Dante, the most heinous offences that a human can commit are those which threaten to destroy the unity and cohesion of the social order,’ says Kirkpatrick. He reminds us that the Commedia was written at a time when ‘the new wilderness of mercantile capitalism began to establish itself’ and when ‘there appeared an irrigating surge of prophetic voices, declaring that too much a concentration on the here-and-now […] could only diminish the scope of human possibilities.’

Here’s the map, just in case our PM and any of his supporters would like to set their SatNav now:

Dante's Plan of Hell

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And from this cluttered desk

I admit it – I’m very nosy about other people’s workspaces. Writers and artists especially. So I loved Josephine Corcoran’s recent post about her ‘cluttered desk’ – although I thought it looked pretty good actually.

My first instinct was of course to compare it to mine, so I reached for the camera – but before tidying up. Monday is usually my day for clearing the desk and starting afresh, so this is the gritty reality of the pre-clean-up. Josphine’s desk seems to be in a lovely light, airy place, whereas mine is a darkish corner where I’m flanked by bookshelves, a chest of drawers, a tall filing cabinet and a printer. But it’s cosy though, and nobody can come up behind me 🙂

There are actually two desks. The main one with the nice big screen and the standing desk with the laptop. Here goes – with Josephine’s post still open on my screen which shows how I leapt up to take a photo!

Robin's desk

You may be wondering about some of the items here… the Brownie Badge Book (I’m a volunteer Bownie helper, so just doing a bit of record-keeping for the Unit) and the empty toilet roll (I’m learning knots at the moment and one of them calls for a tube … don’t ask!) And two pairs of glasses may seem greedy but hey. Believe it or not there is some legitimate work stuff in that pile of papers. I’ve always had a big screen desktop comp as I used to do a lot of graphics and website stuff. Although I do less of that now, I like writing at the big screen and seeing words unfold there. I don’t do any writing longhand.

As it happens, the standing desk is currently my poetry desk, and I’d like to say it’s tidier, but…

Robin's other desk

Somewhere in there is a renewal notice from the PBS, a copy of The Author, poetry collections by Stephen Sexton and Jericho Brown, a copy of Dante’s Inferno which I’m reading in English and Italian (a good way of stretching my vocabulary!) a couple of notebooks and a copy of ‘101 Things to Do in a Shed’ which is brilliant and altogether 101% distracting. All that’s missing is a half-drunk can of Diet Coke (it was too early in the morning) and Bobby, the black cat who likes to block the screen and nudge my mouse hand when I’m trying to type (like now!) In fact I think it’s time for a little yoga (Bobby likes to join in, and he does a fine Downward Dog).

So thanks Josephine for the idea. I’d love to see some more of these ‘my workspace’ posts. Like I said, I’m a tad nosy!

Angst/

A few thoughts from Virginia Woolf on praise and fame

Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary is proving a rich source of inspiration. On the subject of a writer’s insecurity, it’s refreshing to find the same things bothered her that do us all – is my writing any good, what will people make of it, how come so-and-so got more coverage/attention than me, and so on. She didn’t have social media to cope with of course, but she had a fiercely intellectual and competitive circle of friends and family, and the media of her day carried enormous influence.

Here are a few extracts I’ve enjoyed so far. (‘Nessa’ is Vanessa Bell, VW’s sister, and ‘Lytton’ is Lytton Strachey.)

Shall I ever be able to read it again?

March 1919 

“I don’t suppose I’ve ever enjoyed any writing so much as I did the last half of Night and Day. Indeed, no part of it taxed me as The Voyage Out did; and if one’s own ease and interest promise anything good, I should have hopes that some people at least will find it a pleasure. I wonder if I shall ever be able to read it again? Is the time coming when I can endure to read my own writing in print without blushing—shivering and wishing to take cover?”

This question of praise and fame

March 1921

“Nessa approved of Monday or Tuesday—mercifully; and thus somewhat redeems it in my eyes. I now wonder a little what reviewers will make of it—this time next month. Let me try to prophesy. Well, The Times will be kindly, a little cautious. Mrs Woolf, they will say, must beware of virtuosity. She must beware of obscurity. Her great natural gifts etc etc. … […] then, in the Westminster, Pall Mall and other serious evening papers I shall be be treated very shortly with sarcasm.

[…] And I ought to be writing Jacob’s Room and I can’t […] you see, I’m a failure as a writer. I’m out of fashion: old: shan’t do any better […] my book out (prematurely) and nipped, a damp firework. […] Ralph sent my book out to The Times for review without date of publication in it. Thus a short notice is scrambled through to be in “on Monday at latest”, put in an obscure place, rather scrappy, complimentary enough, but quite unintelligent. Oh, and Lytton’s book is out and takes up three columns […] my temper sank and sank till for half an hour I was as depressed as I ever am.  […] To rub this in we had a festive party at 41: to congratulate Lytton; which was all it should be, but then he never mentioned my book, which I suppose he has read, and for the first time I have not his praise to count on.

[…] This question of praise and fame must be faced. […] I think the only prescription for me is to have a thousand interests—if one is damaged [by criticism] to be able instantly to let my energy flow into Russian, or Greek, or the Press, or my garden, or people, or some activity disconnected with my own writing.”

Beyond boasting – the supreme triumph

May 1921

“I sat in Gordon Square yesterday for an hour and a half talking to Maynard [Keynes]. […] Maynard said he liked praised, and always wanted to boast. He said that many men marry in order to have a wife to boast to. But, I said, it’s odd that one boasts considering that no-one is ever taken in by it. It’s odd too that you of all people should want praise. You and Lytton are passed beyond boasting —which is the supreme triumph. […] I love praise, he said. I want it for the things I am doubtful about.”

Angst/

Summer reading, thinking & waiting

After a couple of weeks of what’s felt like full-on socialising in our sunny garden, I’m enjoying a quiet day alone catching up, which means giving my blogs a little TLC. On the subject of which, I was delighted to come across this observation in Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, in the entry for January 20th 1919:

entry from V Woolf's 'A Writer's Diary'

… would VW say the same of blogging, I wonder? People sometimes ask me if blogging takes up a lot of time, but for me it has to be the fastest of writing jobs, because I confess I really don’t spend much time editing. I read it as I go along and sometimes delete entire passages, but the decision is usually made quickly, I don’t think too hard & long. I do try to pick up on typos or bits or grammatical clunkiness before hitting ‘publish’, but just as often things slip through. And I kind of like that -makes it more like regular speech I think. And I certainly wouldn’t want to miss out on any ‘diamonds of the dust heap’!

Submissions update

Poetry magazines seem to be having a (no doubt well-earned) summer hiatus in terms of dealing with submissions, and I haven’t started writing anything new in a few weeks. We should all be outside topping up our Vitamin D anyway. Here’s what are currently out to magazines:

3 poems out for 499 days (yes really  – I’ve sort of decided these are probably dead, and I’m aware of/sympathetic to the reason for the length, but there they are, still heading up the list with their ghostly, greyed-out presence)

4 poems out for 195 days (28 weeks) – patience is a virtue

4 poems out for 107 days (15 weeks) – OK, not tapping my foot yet

3 poems out for 68 days (10 weeks) – this one is tricky, as I asked to withdraw one of them on Submittable, but the system only allowed me to withdraw the whole lot, so I’m not sure if two of them are still under consideration or not. I haven’t resubmitted them elsewhere, just in case… which is probably a bit silly, but there you go.

3 poems out for 34 days (5 weeks) – it’s early yet

In addition I’ve got five individual poems out to competitions (a rather high number for me, but I suppose I was running out of suitable/available magazines to submit to) and three pamphlets out to competitions. One of these has been ‘long listed’ by Live Canon, which of course I’m very happy about, but there’s no telling when the final results will come, I suspect not before the autumn. Another pamphlet went to Templar Poetry for their I-Shots competition, the results of which were due (according to their website) by the end of June. However there are no results on the website, and I’ve not heard anything from them, although I have tried asking them nicely on Twitter. I’ve taken this to mean they’re not interested in my pamphlet, which is fine, and I’ve now sent another version of it elsewhere. However, when you pay a fee to enter a pamphlet competition (in this case £18 – and which I’m very happy to do by the way) I don’t think it’s too much to expect a simple email to say ‘sorry, not this time’ or whatever, or acknowledgement of a polite query. Am I being unreasonable?

Current reading

Lots of lovely stuff on the pile at the moment, alongside the aforementioned VW diary, and the recently re-discovered and excellent Feel Free, a collection of Zadie Smith essays, I’ve also got Vanitas by Ann Drysdale (Shoestring) which I’m reviewing for The Frogmore Papers, and two Smith Doorstop pamphlets recently given to me by Marion Tracy: The Topiary of Passchendale by Christopher North and Sleeve Catching Fire at Dawn by Madeleine Wurzburger (now there’s a TITLE!)

I’m also having a bit of a Camus moment. I wonder if the current state of the Western world is driving me to Absurdism? I think it’s taken me forty years to shake off the association of Camus with the horror of French A level and finally return to him as an adult. Anyway, I’ve read and re-read his strange little essay in ‘The sea close by’, and am looking forward to tackling The Myth of Sisyphus in a Penguin ‘Great Ideas’ edition with a very satisfying cover design featuring embossing. All adds to the sense of anticipation!

Books on the reading pile July 2019

 

 

 

 

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Look what I found! Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Writer’s Diary’

Virginia Woolf A Writer's Diary

… Fourth Impression (1965) with a foreword by Leonard Woolf. Hogarth Press! Original dust jacket bearing Vanessa Bell’s design!

I found it at Much Ado Books in Alfriston, well worth a visit if you’re ever in the area. It’s housed in a range of quirky buildings set back off the road in its own front garden. I did find the plethora of notices rather off-putting  (a number of which suggest one is guilty until proven innocent – PLEASE LEAVE LARGE BAGS AT THE COUNTER BEFORE GOING UPSTAIRS, PLEASE RESPECT OUR GARDEN etc) but I can only suppose this quiet, well-do-do village must have its fair share of book shop-lifters and vandals. What a shame.

much ado books alfriston

Anyway, I look forward to sharing extracts and thoughts on Woolf’s reading and writing process with you here from time to time.

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Estuary English

Estuary by Rachel Lichtenstein

It seems as if class and regional differences are very much to the fore at the moment. No surprise there I suppose, nor the increased discussion of accent as a status marker. When I was growing up my mother was at pains to correct her children’s accents so that we didn’t pick up ‘lazy’ habits, such as glottal stops instead of T at the end of a word like ‘hat’, or saying (shudder!) ‘tomorrer’ or ‘sumfingk’. By lazy of course she meant working class, particularly Cockney, and it was all tied up with her aspirations for us. Her reasoning was that Cockney-sounding females didn’t become (or marry!) doctors or teachers. Similarly, she didn’t want me to learn shorthand typing (as she had) because she felt I’d then be ‘stuck’ in secretarial jobs. But whether I learned to type or not (I didn’t), her main concern was that I should be ‘well-spoken’, because such an accent would mark me as middle class, with all the social and economic advantages she believed that would bring.

It’s funny how things change. These days communications advisers tell people in the public eye to tone down a public-school accent in order to sound ‘friendlier’ or ‘one of the people’. It’s not just accent of course – it’s also the avoidance of Latin sayings or words like ‘hence’ or ‘thus’.) Hence (oops!) the rise and rise of ‘Estuary English’. Actually it’s generally known to linguists as ‘Southeastern Regional Standard’ or ‘London Regional Standard’, since ‘Estuary English’ has been used too often as a mild slur.

This preamble is by way of introducing a wonderful book by Rachel Lichtenstein, Estuary (Penguin 2017). When I picked this up I realised right away how little I knew about the Thames Estuary, its history, communities, traffic and commerce, even its geography. Considering I grew up not so far from the Thames at Greenwich, I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t have pinpointed on a map any of the place names downriver, even the historic ones – Tilbury, Gravesend, Canvey Island. I didn’t even realise Southend was in the estuary at all, imagining it to be much further around the Essex coast. Now I’m as much of an Estuary girl as I am a Londoner, certainly by my accent (which in its unselfconscious state is a bit rough around the edges whilst still being ‘well spoken’ enough to satisfy my mum. Sometimes it slips though…) And I find the mysteries of the sea compelling, particularly when it’s as well-written as this.  (I remember devouring Adam Nicolson’s Sea Room some years ago… highly recommended.)

Lichtenstein takes us on a number of journeys, both on the water and into the region’s many communities. We learn how difficult it is to navigate the treacherous shifting sandbanks, how the area has changed and is changing still with the decline of old industries like cockling and the building of the gargantuan London Gateway container port. There are ‘more shipwrecks per square foot than anywhere else along the UK coastline […] over six hundred known wrecks in the main shipping channel alone’, and the remains of plenty more, from as far back as the Bronze Age.

The book is entrancing with its vocabulary of boats, fishing and coastal communities. At times it read like a foreign language to a landlubber like me who doesn’t know a mizzen from a Genoa (although there is a glossary to help.) But it doesn’t detract from the drama, quite the opposite. And in places it feels like poetry.

Thames estuary sea forts - credit A London Inheritance

We turned the engine off for a while and circled the fort in silence, listening to the gentle sound of the boat cutting through the water, the creaking of the shrouds, the ensign flapping at the stern, the rattle of the boom and the occasional lonely call of a seagull, and then, in the distance, the great boom of guns being tested on Foulness Island.[…] A coastguard border-control ship came towards us, moving quickly through the water. Seawater splashed up over the bow; the wash made us lurch violently from side to side. There was another big explosion over at Foulness: a great cloud of black smoke rose over the Essex coastline.  (Estuary, Chapter 26, ‘Barrow Deep’)

The above photo is from a fascinating blog about mid to late-twentieth century life in London, A London Inheritance.