Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I have never read Pride and Prej before. The only work of Austen's that I have read before is Sense and Sensibility, which I loved. I live just down the road from where Austen used to live even (Chawton in Hampshire, England) but for years I dismissed her as some unemancipated ancient writer of pathetic romances. The films of Pride and Prejudice (with Keira Knightly) and Becoming Jane (with Anne Hathaway) decidedly dumbed-down her work and her life. I am now an Austen convert, partly due to my enjoyment of S&S; a BBC production a few years ago called Miss Austen Regrets (showed her as an intelligent, fearless, mischevious real, living person) and my reading of P&P.

Jane Austen's style is fully formed in P&P, with all the wit and humour that wasn't quite always there in S&S. I found that things start hotting up around chapter 20. In the past I have never got past chapter 5. I found that I had to persevere with it, but by around chapter 20 I was hooked. Reading the book also reveals that Mr Collins, a character whom I have always found to be almost disturbing, is much more complex and harmless than he appears in the more recent film and 1990's BBC adaptation. He is a character whom I have found much more readable than watchable.

But for me the most interesting difference between the book and all its adaptations is the character of Elizabeth Bennet. She is always portrayed as a very sympathetic character in the TV/film adaptations. The book mostly follows her, but interestingly the narrative voice also reveals the experiences of other characters, and not just Mr Darcy. Elizabeth's aunt Mrs Gardiner, Miss Bingley and even Wickham's feelings and thoughts come through, which I found gave much greater depth to the story. However, I was surprised by what an uncomfortable heroine Eliza becomes. At the beginning of the book she is shown as lively, playful, young but also sharply intelligent and well-mannered. As the story progresses however, her manners remain but her intelligence becomes blunted by her prejudices. Of course, this is the whole point of the story, but I found her much less sympathetic and interesting as the book continued. She is almost irritatingly stubborn and unforgiving, which though an effective narrative tool in the book, hardly comes across in the adaptations for screen. In short, I think the characters of the book are much deeper and more complex than I had previously realised, and than are given credit in the screen adaptations.

I am glad that I am reading this book now, just a year younger than Elizabeth is in the book. Often I find that Jane Austen novels are recommended as excellent books for quite young female readers, but Austen's writing (or maybe her editors', as has recently been suggested) is so skilfull that had I read this book when I was younger, the wit, complexity and sharply observed humanity of the book would have completely passed me by.

Skirrid Hill by Owen Sheers, and The Wolf poetry magazine

I am staying with my mum in where she lives in Wales over Christmas and luckily for me she has introduced me to a poet who comes from this part of the world: Owen Sheers. He's a young poet, and is very popular with a local shopkeeper just up our lane. I have begun his poetry collection 'Skirrid Hill' (the Skirrid is a mountain over the county border from us in Monmouthshire, and has a very distinctive silhouette) although he has also written a novel and some non-fiction, and has won lots of prestigious prizes and accolades for all his work.

So, Skirrid Hill, by Owen Sheers. Now here is a poetic talent. From one of the first poems in the collection, 'Mametz Wood', it was clear that Sheers can stick ordinary words together and make music with them: 'broken bird's egg of a skull', the delicious oxymoron of 'nesting machine guns'. Poems such as 'Winter Swans' and 'Keyways' continue this ('porcelain over the stilling water'; 'the milling and grooves/ of moments in time'). Relationships and separations are the key themes of the collection but are represented in very original ways and a real playful but understated use of language.

I have also been reading issue 23 of The Wolf magazine, but this is a completely different experience to the elation I feel over reading one of Sheers' carefully constructed, thoughtful poems. Perhaps the best thing about the magazine is the use of Scott Anderson's amazing artwork (I'd call it half Dali, half Bacon). The poetry is pretentious and seems to be excruciatingly intellectual for pretension's sake. Evan Jones' 'Self Portrait with Argos the Hundred-Eyed' had me groaning from the first line ('many-eyer, many-eyer...') and Alfred Corn's 'Cheiromancy' is incomprehensible without extensive use of a dictionary (perhaps just down to my own lack of intellect, but something that has nonetheless marred my enjoyment of the poem). I have reread that particular poem several times, trying to decipher it, and even after looking up the numerous words that I didn't understand I still have no idea what the poem is about. The translated works that make up a large part of the magazine are quite interesting, and there is also lots of criticism included. An interview with Alfred Corn makes as much high-brow sense as his poetry. Cool artwork, nice quality paper, but all I can say is give me Magma any day!

Owen Sheers' work is the complete opposite. His use of language is innovative but without pretentiousness. The works are thoughtful and confident, whereas The Wolf smacks of try-hard-wannabe-let's-see-how-many-long-words-I-can-fit-in-a-single-poem. I will definitely be reading more of Sheers in the future.