Cornflower Books

January's books

    From the top: The House that is our Own, O Douglas; The Midnight Folk, John Masefield; Mrs. Miniver, Jan Struther; The Idea of North, Peter Davidson; Miss Buncle Married, D.E. Stevenson; The Robin: A Biography, Stephen Moss; You'll Never Walk Alone, Rachel Kelly; The Star-Nosed Mole, Isabel Bannerman; Babel, R.F. Kuang.

    There's a lot there to enjoy, but The Idea of North stands out because it's unlike anything I've read, it's thought-provoking, and it's beautifully written. It ranges over literature, art, myth, history, observation to try to grasp the very subjective and almost ever-shifting concept of 'north'. 

    One of the many norths it describes is the southern shore of the East Neuk of Fife and the area around Kellie Castle; it's a particularly lovely passage which I'll quote here to give you a flavour of the book.

    "On midsummer night almost the whole landscape of pastoral Scotland can be seen looking southward across the Forth from the Law, the little hill behind Kellie Castle*. The castle garden is crossed on cut stone paths flush with the shaved grass between the borders in their brief summer depth of Celestial roses, white Lothian stocks, Cockenzie pinks, weavers' pinks from Paisley. The way out into the the trees and up onto the hill is by the recalcitrant, seldom-used back gate, beside Robert Lorimer's stone garden house. Gentle dun slopes with a midsummer scatter of umbelliferous flowers. On the tussocky plain of the summit, under the hourless light, brightness lingers on the northern horizon in a false, unwavering dawn.

    ... The castle with its sculptural, abstract pattern of stair towers lies at the foot of the hill, the garden walls in a parallelogram to catch every moment of winter sun, every benign stir of the air. Nearer the Firth are solid farmhouses, dense trees around the larger Georgian houses with their terraced gardens. Past the coastal burghs is the stump of the Bass Rock. Edinburgh registers only as a stir and glimmer in the distance far to the west... To the left the Firth broadens to the points with the lighthouses, the unquiet house of Wormiston in its dark wood guarding the peninsula, the North Sea.

    In the little sitting room in the tower, under the deep-cut plaster medallions of emperors and heroes, talk goes on as the room fills with midsummer twilight, so that the mouldings on the panels show still as wavering bands of light. Mirrors, picture glasses and chandeliers hold a pencilling of brightness at their edges. The sky outside is never quite dark; the trees are silhouetted, always with a tinge of blue behind them. And in the preposterously early dawn, the fields of green barley stretch to the blinding sea."

*See also

You'll Never Walk Alone

 

    'Poems for life's ups and downs' is the subtitle of Rachel Kelly's You'll Never Walk Alone, a book which offers poetry (and a little prose) "to keep you company whatever your mood, from sorrow to joy."

    Whether you seek solace when times are hard, or look for a word-mirror for your feelings when they are brighter, here is a carefully chosen and very varied collection arranged thematically by season. Winter is designated 'Time for Sadness', Spring '... Hope', Summer '... Joy', and Autumn '... Reflection'. Within each section are thirteen texts, some no more than a couple of lines, others longer, each with a commentary which, like a knowledgeable, gentle guide, points out features we might not have noticed or fully understood: 'This might help. This you might like. Look at it this way and you'll see a different side ...' There is no classroom analysis or textual criticism here, rather an appreciation that poetry unfolds - light dawns - slowly, and while connections with words, the images they conjure, the emotions they embody, can be made instantly, deeper engagements can often take longer. The book makes its own time and space for that.

    In addition to the poems themselves, Rachel provides a comprehensive and personal introduction, suggestions for enhancing your enjoyment of poetry through reading, learning and using it, and biographical notes on all the poets featured. If you're not a seasoned reader of poetry, this book would make an excellent starting point, I think, for while not every entry will spark or reflect something within every individual, if even just a handful 'speak' to you and lead you on to read more, then the sense of fellow feeling - as the book's title* suggests - will be a gift to be nurtured and treasured.

    As Rachel says, "when we have a poem by our side, whether on a bedside table or tucked into a bag, it feels as if we are accompanied by a friend: an authorial arm is wrapped around our shoulders." With her natural eloquence and empathy, Rachel herself gives the reader that feeling of comfort and companionship.

*Whether you know them from the musical Carousel, or Gerry and the Pacemakers and the terraces at Anfield, Oscar Hammerstein's words are undeniably powerful. Here they are sung by Joyce DiDonato.

Painting and poetry

    Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis and Clare Best

This and that

    Carolyne Larrington's interesting talk on The Poetic Edda makes reference to William Morris, Wagner, and Game of Thrones (as yet unread and unwatched by me - anyone here a fan?).

                                                ~~~~~

    Here's an article to add to our occasional writers' notebooks series of posts - Robert Macfarlane on his 'underground' stationery.

                                               ~~~~~

    Sir Tim Waterstone was a recent guest of Georgina Godwin's on Meet the Writers; listen to his interview here.

John Sandoe recommends

    John Sandoe have published their selection of books for the new year; here are some that particularly caught my eye:

    Joyride: To a Reunion at Kardamyli, Tony Scotland

    The Man who was Saturday: The Extraordinary Life of Airey Neave, Patrick Bishop

    The Face Pressed against a Window: A Memoir, Tim Waterstone

    Threads of Life: A History of the World though the Eye of a Needle, Clare Hunter

    Season Songs, Ted Hughes

    Clifford Webb: Illustrator and Wood Engraver, Simon Brett

    Japanese Gardens: A Journey, Monty Don

    Copsford, Walter J.C. Murray

    The Well-Gardened Mind, Sue Stuart-Smith

The Way through the Woods

    A little poetry to start the week; in the vicinity of The Trout the other day (and see this post), we came upon a chained gate which brought to mind some Kipling:

  THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.

Communion with the past

   

    "And the seasons roll through literature, too, budding, blossoming, fruiting and dying back. Think of it: the lazy summer days and golden harvests, the misty autumn walks and frozen fields in winter, and all the hopeful romance of spring. Sometimes, as with Chaucer's 'Aprill shoures', the seasons are a way to set the scene; sometimes they are the subject-matter itself - but there's magic in the way a three hundred-year-old account of birdsong, say, can collapse time utterly, granting us a moment of real communion with the past."

    Melissa Harrison, Spring: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons.

Friday reads: Rain

 

    Melissa Harrison's At Hawthorn Time, a beautifully wrought, unsettling novel of contemporary rural England, impressed me greatly when I read it a couple of years ago. Although that was fiction, the author's skill as a nature writer was more than apparent in it, so I didn't hesitate to buy her most recent book Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, "an evocative meditation on the English landscape in wet weather".

    I'm currently reading the second of the four walks, in Shropshire in April. On Easter Sunday, in a country lane, the cow parsley is starting to come out, and it reminds Melissa of Edward Thomas's poem 'It Rains', "with its lovely sense of the lushness of spring rain on new green growth, and its clear sense of rain's oblique relationship to memory and the past:

    

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence
Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense
Forest of parsley. The great diamonds
Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break,
Or the fallen petals further down to shake.

And I am nearly as happy as possible
To search the wilderness in vain though well,
To think of two walking, kissing there,
Drenched, yet forgetting the kisses of the rain:

Sad, too, to think that never, never again,
Unless alone, so happy shall I walk
In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk
Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower
Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,
The past hovering as it revisits the light."

    This and another Thomas poem, "Rain", are discussed here.

    What are you reading this weekend?

Save

If you don't already know ...

... the excellent A Clerk of Oxford, take a look at today's post which is typically full of knowledge, interest, and the magic of words.

Quote of the day

   

    "If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he's weaving a tapestry, he had better shut up, he'll never do any good at all."

    William Morris

Literary links

    -  As winter does its worst, why not take shelter at Hearth, a micro-literary festival at Gladstone's Library in Wales next month.

    -  Jewish Book Week in London later in February will be playing host to many big names, among them Judith Kerr, Tracy Chevalier, Victoria Glendinning, and Howard Jacobson.

    -  If you're a writer yourself and short fiction is your thing, you may be interested in the Mogford Food and Drink Short Story Prize or the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook Short Story Competition; deadlines for both are approaching but there's still plenty of time to enter.

    - Lastly today, a poem I came across recently (which is right up my street).

Printing masterclass

   

    Here's something I'd love to go to if I could, a printing masterclass offered by Faber & Faber:

    "This Masterclass is perfect for people with no prior experience to learn how to prepare work, and print on a press from start to finish. You will learn hand typesetting in both lead and wooden type, how to lock up your work into a forme, selecting paper stock, choosing and mixing inks and how to set up the presses. At the end of the day, you’ll take home your own unique poetry print."

    That sounds tremendous fun!

    Details here.

Reading in the rain

   

    As rain is the theme over on the other site today, I thought I'd continue it here with links to posts on some 'rainy' books and poems:

    The Rain Tree: A Memoir by Mirabel Osler

    The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith

    Who Loves The Rain by Frances Shaw

    A Thunderstorm in Town by Thomas Hardy

    History of the Rain by Niall Williams

    Like rain it sounded till it curved by Emily Dickinson

 

    And see also.

Snow

    Faber have recently published an edition of Walter de la Mare's poem Snow illustrated by Carolina Rabei. I haven't seen the book, but the trailer is delightful enough to make me seek it out.

Betjemania

    Sir John Betjeman was a founding member of The Victorian Society and campaigned to save and preserve many of the period's buildings, perhaps most notably St. Pancras Station and its attached Midland Grand Hotel (which in its new incarnation was my home last week).

    Sir John is commemorated in the station by a pub, The Betjeman Arms, and by this statue by Martin Jennings. Inscribed on its base are lines from the former Poet Laureate's work Cornish Cliffs:

    And in the shadowless unclouded glare

    Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where

    A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.

    Last Thursday, the 28th. of August, would have been Sir John's 108th. birthday, and someone who recognises his contribution to the country's architectural and cultural heritage left flowers and a birthday card beside his statue - a sweet gesture, I thought.

    I missed Monday night's A.N. Wilson documentary Return to Betjemanland, but thanks to iPlayer (and a timely comment from Kaggsy) I watched it last night and greatly enjoyed it. Just by the way, Wilson's last television film was on C.S. Lewis*, Betjeman's tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a man with whom he did not get on; Wilson has written biographies of both.

 

*If you haven't already seen it, this post may be of interest.

The plot thickens

 

The Squire is in his library. He is rather worried.

Lady Constance has been found stabbed in the locked Blue Room, clutching in her hand

A fragment of an Egyptian papyrus. His degenerate half-brother

Is on his way back from New South Wales.

And what was the butler, Glubb,

Doing in the neolithic stone-circle

Up there on the hill, known to the local rustics

From time immemorial as the Nine Lillywhite Boys?

The Vicar is curiously learned

In Renaissance toxicology. A greenish Hottentot,

Armed with a knobkerry, is concealed in the laurel bushes.

 

Mother Mary Tiresias is in her parlour.

She is rather worried. Sister Mary Josephus

Has been found suffocated in the scriptorium,

Clutching in her hand a somewhat unspeakable

Central American fetish. Why was the little novice,

Sister Agnew, suddenly struck speechless

Walking in the herbarium? The chaplain, Fr O'Goose

Is almost too profoundly read

In the darker aspects of fourth-century neo-Platonism.

An Eskimo, armed with a harpoon

Is lurking in the organ loft.

 

The Warden of St Phenol's is in his study.

He is rather worried. Professor Ostracoderm

Has been found strangled on one of the Gothic turrets,

Clutching in his hand a patchouli-scented

Lady's chiffon handkerchief.

The brilliant under-graduate they unjustly sent down

Has transmitted an obscure message in Greek elegiacs

All the way from Tashkent. Whom was the Domestic Bursar

Planning to meet in that evil smelling

Riverside tavern? Why was the Senior Fellow,

Old Doctor Mousebracket, locked in among the incunabula?

An aboriginal Philipino pygmy,

Armed with a blow-pipe and poisoned darts, is hiding behind the statue of Pallas Athene.

 

A dark cloud of suspicion broods over all. But even now

Lord Timothy Pratincole (the chinless wonder

With a brain like Leonardo's) or Chief Inspector Palefox

(Although a policeman, patently a gentleman,

And with a First in Greats) or that eccentric scholar,

Monsignor Monstrance, alights from the chuffing train,

Has booked a room at the local hostelry

(The Dragon of Wantley) and is chatting up Mine Host,

Entirely democratically, noting down

Local rumours and folk-lore.

 

Now read on. The murderer will be unmasked,

The cloud of guilt dispersed, the church clock stuck at three,

And the year always

Nineteen twenty or thirty something,

Honey for tea, and nothing

Will ever really happen again.

 

Send for Lord Timothy by John Heath-Stubbs, from The Watchman's Flute.

 

See also: P.D. James on detective fiction

                Oxford crime fiction

                Margery Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke

                Dorothy L. Sayers's The Nine Tailors

                Cyril Hare's Tragedy at Law

Break of Day in the Trenches

    The darkness crumbles away.

It is the same old druid Time as ever,

Only a live thing leaps my hand,

A queer sardonic rat,

As I pull the parapet's poppy to stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies.

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life,

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the shrieking iron and flame

Hurled through still heavens?

What quaver - what heart aghast?

Poppies whose roots are in man's veins

Drop, and are ever dropping:

But mine in my ear is safe -

Just a little white with dust.

Isaac Rosenberg (25th. November 1890 - 1st. April 1918)

 

There is a brief commentary on the poem here.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

 

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,

And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

 

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield

An old favourite for National Poetry Day and this year's theme, "Water, water, everywhere", and to illustrate it, plenty of "flung spray" and "blown spume" on the beach in Lewis.

What the bird said early in the year

I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear:
This summer will come true.  This year.  This year.
Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.
This year time's nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.
This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.
This year, this year, as all the flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell
Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Look, look, look, look! the gates are drawn apart.

C.S. Lewis

    This plaque in honour of C.S. Lewis is in Addison's Walk, Magdalen College, Oxford, and although now in September we are not 'early in the year', I took the photograph a few days ago on my birthday, and - 'one year older' - thought that a particularly appropriate time to read the poem; (you can find the 14-line version, Chanson d'Aventure, here).

    Speaking of birthdays, I share mine with some illustrious souls, as you'll see from this splendid 50-word story which my 'twin' Sarah wrote for us!

Friday reads

 

 

    We have a winner in our book bag draw, and that is Martina, so the bag will be on its way to her in Australia soon, and meanwhile thanks again to everyone who entered and listed their travel reads.

    What are you all reading just now?

    I'm in the early pages of Jane Gardam's Crusoe's Daughter (our book group book for September) and it's off to a great start. I'm also dipping into a lovely collection of short essays, Simple Pleasures: Little Things That Make Life Worth Living, and reading my daily poem (today's was A Runnable Stag by John Davidson). And speaking of poetry, sad news this morning of the death of Seamus Heaney; I've posted his Blackberry picking here.

    Back to the book group for a moment, and I have ideas for books for both October and November - I'm still swithering over one of them but hope to be able to post about them early next week so that we can all get ahead if we wish.

    Finally, please come back later for 'book of the day'; I was going to include it here, but I think it deserves a post of its own ....