dovegreyreader scribbles

The Splash of Words - Believing in Poetry ~ Mark Oakley

'Some writers have the gift of simply letting you know you can trust them, Mark Oakley has this gift in abundance...' 
Rowan Williams

Mark Oakley winged his way onto my radar via Bel Mooney.

Having shared my enthusiasm for Brian Doyle and One Long River of Song - Notes on Wonder, Bel had recommended Mark Oakley. Previously Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Mark Oakley is now the Dean of St John's College Cambridge and has written a series of books. Brian Doyle was a very successful chapter-a-day read through May and I quite surprised myself with how much I was enjoying a bit of ...dare I say...meditative reading and directed thinking.

Having been a devout C of E attendee for many years I'm now a bit lapsed, none of which ever stops me from loving the liturgy and the presence and availability of the buildings (and missing them hugely during recent months)  but I proceeded with my usual caution over any religious writing.  I downloaded a Kindle sample of  My Sour Sweet Days - George Herbert and the Journey of the Soul by Mark Oakley and decided it was all a bit too much for the current state of my soul (which felt reasonably calm and OK ) and maybe I wasn't ready for the depths of George Herbert.

In the meantime I had a complete reorganise of the poetry shelves one day because I had nothing else pressing to do. The diary was an empty void and suddenly I needed to carry books halfway round the house to new homes.

I know for sure it isn't just me that does this...

Own up now all you book movers...

It was so good to see all the poetry books again and get them all into order and sit and browse a few, pull a few old friends and new-to-me poets off the shelf for a closer look, and how thankful I was that I had stocked up backalong in case of a future dearth. A charity shop in town had taken in a huge collection of as new contemporary poetry books and was selling them for 50p each, thus swelling my shelves by a quarter as much again.  Doubly pleased too that I'd rescued them because some weeks later the shop and it's entire stock was destroyed in a flood (floor mop jammed down a toilet in the flat above).

And then Bel recommended The Splash of Words -Believing in Poetry also by Mark Oakley,

'This beautiful and wise meditation centred around the soul language of poetry opens new windows in the shared house of both poetry and belief". 
Carol Ann Duffy

...and this time the Kindle sample was enough to convince me very quickly to splash out on the book (sorry).

'The phrase 'splash of words' is a good description of poetry. When you read a poem there is an initial splash like a pebble thrown into a lake. The words disturb your surface and have their impact...' says Mark Oakley in his introduction.

Yes, I could identify with that, so far so good...

'Then, as the poem begins to do its work, the ripples of meaning head out towards your shore, often slowly but relentlessly, and you realise that these words are shifting your perceptions...'

Yes I could see that too...still so far so good

'...and consequently even transforming who you are and how you understand.'

Whoa, steady on, lets wait and see.

There is a month's worth of a poem-a-day here with a commentary to accompany which, whilst obviously it does have a religious theme, doesn't beat you over the head with it...consequently twelve days in, at the time of writing this, I am coping and really enjoying the selection. Though I might not always segue neatly with Mark Oakley's spiritual stance or interpretation I think that's entirely Normal For Poetry, so we are having a jolly good to and fro about it all.

But there is another huge advantage to a book like this for someone who has just reorganised the poetry shelves. Each poem sends me there to see if I have said poet in a collection and so far I'm doing pretty well.

Jo Shapcott, W.H.Auden, U.A.Fanthorpe, Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas, Liz Berry, Mary Oliver, Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Fiona Benson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, R.S. Thomas, Carol Ann Duffy...

It also demanded a new poetry notebook. The last one full to the brim with notes I’ll probably never look at again, but it’s somehow nice to have a record of meandering thoughts and brief quotes...

That picture of the shards we've dug up in our garden over the years feels like a perfect picture for those fragments of thought that occur as I read.

But likewise Mark Oakley is finding new poets for me too, and I was so spellbound by Jen Hadfield's Paternoster that I immediately ordered her collection Nigh-No-Place .

Mark Oakley starts his book with Paternoster and that feels entirely right. It is a poem that cannot be rushed...in other words sets a reader's pace for what is to come, holding the steady rhythm of the plough horse, the swaying of the head, the sounds, the time honoured labour of man and horse. I don't even like horses that much, but I love this one a great deal. It brought to mind that other plough-horse related poem by Edward Thomas, As the Team's Headbrass. I've read Paternoster over and again and feel as I've ploughed the equivalent of Long Acre in front of the house in the process...

This on Jen Hadfield, who now lives in Shetland, from The Poetry Archive...

'Her poetry is found where the secular and non-secular converge: ‘Paternoster’ is the Lord’s Prayer as uttered by a draft horse, and one can almost smell the mix of grass and mash on its breath as it repeats the words “it is on earth as it is in heaven”.

And here the opening lines...

Paternoster. Paternoster
Hallowed be dy mane.
Dy kingdom come.
Dy draftwork be done.
Still plough the day
And give out daily bray
Thought heart stiffen in the harness.

'The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper,' said Bertrand Russell...

'Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret' said the Persian poet Hafiz (another of the choices in The Splash of Words) but like many I sometimes struggle to find it, or to sharpen my wits, so I am really enjoying Mark Oakley's light shining a deeper understanding over these gems.

Oh...right...

'...and consequently even transforming.... how you understand.'

Meanwhile, any new poetry discoveries to report...

Any favourite collections jumping off the shelves at you lately...

Moved any books around the home from A to B to C, and those that were at C to A,  and those that were are B to C recently...

 

 

 

 

Hair today & gone on July 27th...

Have you all had the phone call...

The one we’ve all been waiting for, at least here in the UK...

Did you trip over on the way to pick up the phone because you couldn’t see where you were going...

’Hi Lynne...it’s Ed...’

’EEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDDD’

Ed is my hairdresser. He’s a good friend of the Kayaker and I had sent a nice message along the lines of  ‘tell him to ring your mother.’

I’ve been through the rumpled messy Carol ‘Gardener’s World' Klein look and am now heading for the full 1970’s page boy. it was almost time to get out the flares and the platform clogs. 

1975 I think. I'd just won a goldfish at a fair on Hampstead Heath, for which I bought a tank and luxury fixtures and fittings only for it to die a week later. Please note the Felicity Kendall 'The Good Life' dungarees and the 6" turned up hems, but also the page boy haircut. We used to go to the Jingles Hairdresser Training School, where their apprentices would practise on you for £1. I'd had the ignominious honour of being 'evicted' from the seat because a page boy was 'too ordinary and boring' for the up and coming student stylist.

Anyway, nothing fancy ever required for my hair these days. No colour, no foils, no highlights (age seems to be providing those without help) Just chop it to above my ears, sweep it sideways, don’t layer it to much or I look like a hedgehog, no thank you to the hairspray, quick ruffle with the dryer and off I go. 

As luck would have it I’d had my hair cut shorter than usual in early March thinking I would be going to New Zealand, and which was sure to involve some wilderness camping. Last time I went to New Zealand I made this amazing discovery at Cascade Creek that my hair could be washed (without shampoo) in a stream and would dry by itself without a hairdryer.

And again at Lake Hawea..

A skill once learned that I readily transferred to Dartmoor

Extraordinary.

As it is we seem to have been on a different ‘wilderness’ experience this last few months and although the fringe goes sideways it still has the power to annoy me when it grows too long,  but years ago someone taught me a cutting trick that never fails...

You carefully separate off whatever constitutes fringe, gather it together, twist it and twist it into a tight bundle and just chop off the end. Hey presto. you can see where you’re going again and it annoys you slightly less.

Someone said at the beginning of all this that after six weeks people would realise there is no such thing as natural beauty. Now being a person who worries more about my dahlias than my eyebrows I wasn’t too worried, but I suspect plenty of people have quite enjoyed a rest from the treadmill, maybe rediscovered something that had been lost in a sea of habit, even found a new style, who knows.

But hasn’t the unruly, over-long hair also become a badge of Lockdown Survival. We’re seeing it left and right on the TV (no names, no pack drill) and as Bookhound approaches the moment when he might need a pony tail it’s all become quite hilarious here.

Anyway, I’ve got my appointment, how about you...

How are your lockdown locks doing...

Anything else that you surrendered graciously and may never bother with again...

Anything that has driven you crazy and you are first in the queue...

 

Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) - A memoir of love, exile and crosswords ~ Sandy Balfour

'Like a crossword clue, history never makes sense at first reading. The surface is plausible, but discordant. We need a second reading to impose order.'

I honestly don't know what I'd do without you all.

How would I find books like this if one of you didn't email and suggest I read it.

It was one of those mornings when I was in need of 'different' then in whizzed an email from one of you suggesting I read Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose (8) - A memoir of love, exile and crosswords by Sandy Balfour. It took me less than a nano-second to be convinced and order a copy...perhaps a sort of reverse version of what I do to some of you sometimes...maybe.

Here's the blurb...

Half a million people a day do it in the Telegraph. The Times claims almost as many, and the Guardian 300,000. Most people remember their first time, and everyone has a favourite. You can do it in bed, standing up, or on a train. You can do it alone, with a loved one or in groups. The Queen does it in the bath. It is not illegal, immoral or fattening. In fact it tops the Home Office list of approved entertainments for prison inmates. Crosswords are a very British obsession.

Crosswords are a very British obsession. Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose is a personal reminiscence and a guide to solving crossword puzzles. But it is much, much more than a 'how-to' book. Each chapter starts with a clue, and uses anecdote, history and autobiography to solve it, in the process describing something of what it means to love England. In the process, we encounter The Best Crossword Clue Ever, The Most Beautiful Clue in the World 'Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose' and the eccentric personalities behind such legendary compilers as the Guardian's Araucaria and The Times'Ximenes.

The Queen does the crossword in the bath??

I can't pretend to be an expert, nor obsessed, but crosswords do fascinate me whilst also making me feel that there's a whole world of knowing that I am excluded from. It is this knowing when you are looking at an anagram, when you are not, when the word is hidden in plain sight in the clue, or when you've got to really stand on your head and turn your logical and ordered world a little upside-down, and think way beyond the box. Sometimes I get into the mindset, sometimes I don't, so it was good to read that it took Sandy Balfour years and years before he felt at ease in the world of the crossword.

I hadn't realised how traditional the whole thing is either. Famous compilers who garner a reputation and a following, one of  earliest of whom was the nature writer Adrian Bell (Corduroy, Silver Ley, The Cherry Tree, Men and the Fields)

One of the lasting memories I have of sitting as an observer in a workshop on memoir writing with Julia Blackburn and Penelope Lively, was their suggestion that all memoir needs a scaffolding. Once you've found it the book takes shape around it and Pretty Girl in Crimson Rose is that clever memoir that has used its scaffolding well. 

Born and raised in South Africa Sandy Balfour's journey begins in 1983 when he and his girlfriend leave Cape Town, avoiding army conscription and apartheid, and with a plan to hitchhike to London. The journey takes him around the world but effectively into exile, in search of a place he can belong and which he would like to call home...

'I have only a desire to be on the move. I have cut myself off from friends and family. I have discarded my past. It feels like a kind of death. All that is left is myself.
I am not sure that is enough.'

Weaving through the quest are the crosswords, a quest in themselves, and if I could remember all the details I think I could probably smash out the Times crossword in hours rather than the days it would take me if I stuck at it, rather than surrendering. It felt as if I'd stumbled into a new world that has always been a mystery to me...

That each newspaper has its own style...

This whole network of compilers who go by pseudonyms like Rufus, Araucaria (a Monkey Puzzle tree) Bunthorne, Hendra, Custos, Logodaedulus. Gemini, Quantum...

That the editor has the final say if they feel a clue doesn't play by the unspoken rules...if it isn't 'cricket'...

And that cricket itself is a compilers dream providing a plethora of clues and solutions...

Sandy Balfour's journey woven around the crossword clues, of which there are plenty to solve, was indeed a great read and highly recommended if you fancy not only a  life-journey but also a glimpse into this mysterious world of wordplay.

So tell me...are you a crossword guru who knows all the tricks...

Or, like me, have you spent your life in the half-light not quite understanding the rules of the game...

Do you ever cheat and look up the answers online...

 

PS Thank you again to the recommender and what about the answer to the clue which is the title of the book... shall I spoil it...no maybe not just yet...

And what about these...

'The real reason for the meeting of Volkswagen and Daimler (6, 6)'

And this apparently one of the best clues ever set...

'Amundsen's forwarding address (4)'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Masks...

I’d put it off and put if off but to no avail, I’ve had to sit down and make some masks.

The Kayaker had sent me patterns and must have been on his tenth request for a mask, made with the fabric he had brought back from Africa in early March, before I capitulated.

Does that return from Africa seem like half a lifetime ago now...yes it does.

’Hold your breath when you land in Brussels,’ I had said...

‘ Why?’

I hadn’t liked to bother him with the finer details of what was heading our way, and after that initial visit on arriving back on March 6th we didn't see him for another twelve weeks.

For years he kayaked the White Nile in Uganda and had made many lifelong friends along the way. The village by the river is his second home, the people know and trust him, he knows and trusts them, all of which puts him in an ideal position to give something back and to know what might help them most. He’d been in Uganda for two months rolling out the project he’d been single-handedly raising money for over the last year. The Sleepwell Project had been a resounding success in the Acholi Quarters in Kampala and it really didn’t seem fair to taint the moment.

Here's the family that we supported by contributing a mattress, blanket and mosquito net. 

Reality soon hit home after landing at Heathrow, and I’m pleased to say the Kayaker took it very seriously and played by all the rules from his shared house in Plymouth, whilst raising more money to buy food for the people he'd just said goodbye to.and who were now in lockdown.  Lockdown in Uganda means something very different to lockdown here, and without work families simply can’t earn money to buy food. They have no savings, no back up, no NHS, no safety net. Watching this project unfold has given us a much-needed sense of perspective over the last few months.

The Kayaker also raised funds to pay one of the village seamstresses to make masks and they were beautiful.

Honestly, just look at them all...

Anyway, I pulled myself together and set to, and it's true, African fabric makes beautiful cheerful colourful masks and I could feel my spirits life as I matched the patterns and stitched.

Did anyone see Nicole’s incredible flamenco skirt on The Great British Sewing Bee a while back?

Wasn't it the most joyous and celebratory thing you have ever seen. I recognised the vibrant African waxed fabric designs instantly.

I was trying to think where this mask aversion might have originated, apart from the recent events that make them a necessity in certain places and situations now,  and I’ve traced it back to theatres as a student nurse. 

I did a theatre placement as a student nurse at Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Hackney and apart from the mask-wearing I loved it. It was smaller than Gt Ormond Street and more intimate. One surgeon and lots of opportunities to scrub for some really interesting operations. We would do on call which involved sleeping in a chintzy little bedroom next to the theatres and would be woken up at 3am to prepare for a baby in need of emergency surgery. We all knew our General Set of instruments by heart and would fire up the autoclave and have everything sterilised and ready, and it was all actually very exciting, but oh oh oh how we hated the masks.

I’m trying to think were they disposable or fabric tied on back in the 1970s?

I know just about everything in theatres was fabric and reusable, from our dresses and gowns to all the cloths used in surgery. Scrubs, as in trousers, were for surgeons not us and I'm sure we were all bare-legged because didn't tights risk a static spark...or have I made that up.

Whatever, the masks were awful, gave us spotty chins and we suffered. Why I then eventually decided to do my last three months at GOS in the main theatres, after qualifying as a staff nurse, remains an unfathomable mystery to this day. After a week, and having a top ENT surgeon throw a set of tonsils at me (my fault too slow), I bailed out and transferred to a ward, the metabolic unit, proper uniform, no masks, patients who were awake and the happiest few weeks of my hospital life.

The summer of 1976 and remember that tap dancing song Lullaby of Broadway?

It would start playing on the ward radio and we’d all grab a child and dance with them.

So anyway, that's me and masks and I'm just going to have to embrace it like everyone else.

Are you all masked up and ready too...

And what about The Great British Sewing Bee...

Hasn’t it been a cheery weekly feast for the eyes, and for me a very worthy winner took the trophy.

 

handiwork ~ Sara Baume

"In this contemplative short narrative, artist and acclaimed writer Sara Baume charts the daily process of making and writing, exploring what it is to create and to live as an artist. Elegantly encompassing images and in itself a significant artefact, handiwork offers observations that are at once gentle and devastating on the nature of art, grief and a life lived well."

What a beautiful and thoughtful book this was. Sent as a gift from a friend via Much Ado Books in Alfriston, Sussex, and arriving gift-wrapped and clearly much-loved before it even fell into my hands. I read a few pages a day through May, feeling not only the creativity and that flow which comes with an engrossing and all-consuming craft project, but woven in alongside was Sara Baume's grief at the death of her father. It inevitably reminded me of that summer after the Tinker journeyed on, the six weeks I spent finishing a quilt whose making had spanned some twenty years. I'd started it soon after we moved here, three children living here, my mum and dad regular visitors. Somehow it joined up all the dots that I held dear and needed to stitch into one. I took that quilt to New Zealand and gave it to our farthest-flung family member to somehow bridge the miles and keep the dots joined up.

There is much to cheer here. Sara Baume quoting Stephen Knott for example...

'Modellers often have a variety of different projects that are left half-finished or are completed at different speeds: it is not always a case of finishing one thing and going onto the next...'

'Oh good' I wrote in the margin.

There was so much that I understood and acknowledged about handiwork (the lower case is deliberate) and the book jogged many lovely memories too...

'What we all shared - me, my dad, his dad - was a suspicion of modern life, a loathing of fashion, a disappointment with the new technologies and a preference for the ad-hoc contraptions of the past - anything that can be disassembled and reassembled with hands and tools, based upon the principles of common sense.

Each in our own time, we lived and live in consonance with nostalgia for a former one...'

The importance of, and inspiration from a book like this for me, whilst acknowledging the author's life as portrayed, is also its ability to segue into my own memories and experience. I think that's true for just about every book I read, and this one was no exception.

One memory in particular about the Tinker's dad, my granddad...there's me in the smocked frock sitting on the wall with him, my brother too and my dad (in his reindeer jumper).

My granddad joined the police force after the First World War until eventually, retiring from a life doing point duty on Tooting Broadway in the mid 1950s, he and my grandmother moved from the London suburbs to a cottage built into the hillside in a little village just outside Crediton in Devon. The stairs were carved out of the rock and there was no mains drainage or indoor facilities. it was jugs and ewers and an Elsan up the garden. Milk had to be collected in a jug from the local farm... everyone thought they were crazy. But they loved it and so did we.

We would all travel on the steam train to Bow for our own  'fortnight in September' where we would be met by the Austin A30 and don't ask me how we all fitted in. I'd sit on my dad's lap in the front seat and 'do' the indicators (the switch on the dashboard that sent the little pointed arm out of the side of the car). It would be a very sedate drive because my grandfather was of the opinion that anything over 30mph and you were aiming a car, not driving it. We'd all settle in, visit the Elsan up the garden, smell the familiar scent of the geraniums in the conservatory and then head to my granddad's workshop to look at the brass microscope in the wooden box (I have it now) and where he'd always be making something out of something else. It was at this point that I obviously told him that the latest school craze was the hula hoop but I didn't have one. 'Hang on a minute,' he said, and before you knew it he'd found and coiled a piece of polythene pipe into a circle, joined it with a wooden stopper and I spent the next two weeks doing nothing else but hula hooping.

I was also extremely disappointed not to be allowed to take it home with me on the train. I couldn't see what the problem was.

Sara Baume's memories are intertwined with the making of a series of carved and painted birds and I used the book like a journal, writing in my own thoughts and recollections, prompted by Sara's, through that strange and surreal month of May 2020 that we have all just travelled through. The book is beautifully sized at 5" x 7" and well-spaced, often just a paragraph on a single page, almost begging me to add something of my own while giving me permission to use that blank space to think.

If you have read handiwork please do share your thoughts in comments..

And now I'm reminded of The Repair Shop...does anyone else watch it...and think the chap who does the clocks is a dead ringer for Steve Redgrave...

And though I understand it might not have been the case for everyone, I hope plenty of you have good memories of granddads too...please do share them.

 

 

Hamnet ~ Maggie O'Farrell

Did anyone else 'do' any of the Hay Festival online a few weeks ago?

I booked a few things though wasn't really sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised at how lovely it was not to have to drive 185 miles, try and park the car, find the venue, queue, pile in, try and stay awake in a hot and crowded tent after lunch, fight my way out and drive home again and take days to recover.

I caught an interesting talk by Rhidian Brook about his book Godbothering, a compilation of his Thought for the Day broadcasts on Radio 4, and was impressed with his combination of assurance and humility as he talked about his faith, about what mattered to him and to the many millions who must have listened to him over the years. I knew the name rang a bell, I wrote about Rhidian's novel The Aftermath back in 2013.

And I also 'went' to Maggie O'Farrell's event.

I know, I know, it's all about being sociable and being there and soaking up the atmosphere, but as I sat on my sofa listening I'm afraid I realised that this is the litfest of the future for me. You know, that falling asleep thing in the midst of the crowd...where you allow yourself a very long blink...just the one and before you know it your head slumps forward and you wake with a jump and hope no one has noticed. Well I sat on my sofa, may have closed my eyes as I listened, but Maggie O'Farrell's warm and engaging voice was all enough to confirm what my partial listening of Hamnet had already confirmed, that here was a book I needed in my hand.

I 'visited' the bookshop and the book arrived the next day.

It is 1596 and while the reader is never told this is Shakespeare's family, and the playwright is never named, it is quite clear that here is an aspect of his life told from an entirely different angle and giving centre stage to Anne, or Agnes as she is named in the book, and their children, Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Given that we were also mid-plague it was fascinating to read of the bubonic version arriving in Stratford and its detailed journey there via a single flea.

Family relationships are fraught and complex in the feverish atmosphere of Stratford and there is only one way that the couple know they will get permission to marry. Months later their first child Susanna is born, followed in a few years by the twins. There will be a terrible death that leaves Agnes undone, unravelled, dismantled and utterly changed and the book gives an incredibly moving account of the impact of that grief. The burial is both powerful and visceral while the aftermath sees the couple take diverging paths, thinking that neither really understands how the other is feeling. It is the writing and production of Hamlet the play that holds the key, and has the power to bridge the couple's divide, the question is will they meet in the middle and understand.

Expect more tears...

In fact maybe expect to feel like a wrung-out dishcloth by the time you turn the final page, but in the best possible way.

Along the way I was regularly stopped in my tracks by the imagery, and it was listening to the audio that made me realise I needed to read the words and let that happen...

'The fireplace, which is filled only with ashes, held in the fragile shape of the log they once were...'

Taken out of context that line may not seem particularly powerful, read in the narrative moment for which Maggie O' Farrell intended it and my breath was well and truly taken away.

And also perhaps expect to have your interest in Hamlet revived a little. If it is a play you know you might find that Maggie O'Farrell has invested it with a new significance, around themes of eternal life and remembrance. If it is a play you are less familiar with you might at least feel tempted to explore it with Hamnet in mind.

If you have read Hamnet please do add your thoughts in comments.

And talking of Shakespeare does anyone have a favourite play...

It is a long time since I have read any, probably too much studying and essay-writing in a previous life, but I do feel the urge to go back, and there are plenty of the plays that I don't know at all.

And other fiction based on Shakespeare plays...heavens there must be hundreds..

 

 

 

 

 

Hamnet alert...

A post coming up about Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell in a few days' time, but a heads up that it is 99p on Kindle today, and I'd hate you to miss it if it's a book you've been thinking about reading.