My Own...Poetry: Thoughts From A Breton Separatist Toad With A Red Feather Beard

Wrote this poem in about twenty minutes. Might not be finished, might be. The idea came from a writing exercise I sometimes do to get me going, where I just write whatever comes into my head for five minutes. That's where the toad and his beard came from. The Breton separatist bit came from some of the people I follow on Twitter! (I'm not a terrorist or anything, I just like to hear about what's going on in Brittany). There are a few little details in this poem about my own childhood, when every holiday was spent in Brittany. We had a wonderful neighbour whom I think of as a surrogate granny, and who was terrified of toads and salamanders, apart from being one of the wisest and kindest people I have ever known. Our garden was full of toads, so every time we found one we would go and show it to her. There is no landscape on earth quite like the Breton. I miss it terribly so this crazy poem is a tribute to one of my favourite places.


Thoughts from a Breton Separatist Toad with a Red Feather Beard

When I was just a comma in my jellied womb
long ago in Finistere, in a quiet freshwater pool
under glowering granite and dripping tongues of ivy,
it felt like sphereing when a fish swam past,
I rolled over in my world and felt a kick in my belly.

Now somewhere by my flimsy-skinned navel
I feel wingbeats when I sing. It is the same feeling,
and I sense myself glowing in the forget-ne-not blood
of a summer sunset; the sky glows like granit rose

or the opal expanse of la Cote d'Emeraude.
My skin was once gwen ha du, now faded to brown-green,
peppered with dimples
like the buckwheat shroud around a sausage. This land
is beautiful and terrible, and as I am le diable, it suits me
to a ty.

A croak rumbles in my belly; I let it go.
I feel wingbeats again. The moon rises and paints the slogans of my skin
proudly gwen ha du. I look around me, feel

the footsteps of a giant, the stillness of stupefied
ancient armies,
here by the side of the same small pool
hidden between glowering granite and dripping tongues of ivy.



copyright (C) 2011 stays with me.

Poetry Renaissance

Just read a really good article from the Guardian here about the current 'Poetry Renaissance', as brought to my attention by poet Pascale Petit over twitter (recently discovered twitter - its a brilliant tool for all things literature-related. I'm @flomoses by the way). A really heartening, uplifting article, and very inspiring too.

A Room With A View by E M Forster, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, & Le Petit Prince d'Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I have been doing lots of reading since my last blog!

First of all let's start with E M Forster's 'A Room With A View', written and set at the turn of the 20th century. It tells the story of Lucy Honeychurch, who meets a lower-class young man on holiday, finds he is attracted to her, and is then whisked off and eventually agrees to marry someone who she doesn't really love. Then George Emmerson, the young man she met in Italy, comes to live in the same village as Lucy. Mayhem ensues and she is torn between a marriage of convenience and love.

I quite enjoyed this book although I found it a struggle, which was strange, as it's written in very readable English. It wasn't a Chaucer-like battle with the words. I think it was that for me the characters were rather bland. I kept mixing them up. This probably wasn't helped by the fact that it took me over a week to get through this slim tome, but for me not a single character was inimitably themself. I read somewhere that Forster believed in writing well-rounded characters, but I think that in pursuing this ideal he failed to bring them to life. At least for this reader.

The story was also well-trodden. Forster was probably quite a pioneer when it was written, what with social class still being such an everyday necessity in those days. But so many people have copied him since then that for me, as a 21st century reader, it was, quite frankly, dull. However he writes beautifully, particularly the descriptions of the views that are so crucial to the novel (constant symbols of freedom, emancipation and the pursuit of true love) and the book is full of humour. I loved the bathing scene, with Freddy's cries of 'I've swalled a polly-wog' making me laugh out loud. All in all an interesting presentation of Edwardian Englishness.

Jeanette Winterson's 'Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit' on the other hand was an absolute joy to read. Written in the 80's, from what I can interpret set a couple of decades or so earlier. From the first page I was laughing. Winterson writes in a gloriously light, playful way, despite the book's darker themes of oppressive religious dogma, forbidden (homosexual) love and the diffiulties of being an outsider. It is told from the view of Jeanette - I think half autobiographical but half fictional - as she grows up and starts a love affair with a girl called Melanie. One section that had me in hysterics was Jeanette-the-little-girl's daydream about the just and noble king Tetrahoedron and his nemesis Iscoseles. The book seems to become more abstract as it continues, through the inclusion of fairy tale style stories that intersperse grown-up-Jeanette's adolescent troubles. But for me it was a lively book, with deftly-painted characters who really came alive, especially Jeanette's frustrating, hypocritical, lovelorn mother, and I thought that Jeanette's self-discovery and the backdrop of oppressed lesbianism was very sensitively written. I will be coming back to this book again and again. It is completely different in genre to anything I have ever read before but Winterson writes in just the style I like. Top marks.

Finalement, ce soir j'ai fini Le Petit Prince, d'Antoigne de St-Exupery (pardon, je ne sais pas comment faire des accents sur ce clavier). C'est le premier roman francais que j'ai lu. Il m'a surprisee que je pouvait le lire et, la plupart de temps, le comprendre parfaitement - en suite, j'essayerai quelquechose un peu plus avancee! Pourtant j'ai trouve Le Petit Prince une introduction inspiratrice a la litterature francaise. J'ai adore l'usage de fantaisie, et je me suis tres bien amusee en me replongeant dans le monde de l'enfance. C'etait une aventure nostalgique, pour moi. Une histoire imaginative et charmante. Alors, je vais trouver un peu de Camus...

Finally, this evening I finished The Little Prince (in French), by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (a classic French children's book with beautiful illustrations). It's the first French-language book I have ever read. I was surprised by the fact I could read it and how much of it I understood! Next I'm going to try something a bit more advanced. However I found The Little Prince an inspiring introduction to French literature. I loved Exupery's use of fantasy, and I really enjoyed plunging myself back into a child's world for a little while. For me The Little Prince was a nostalgic adventure, and an imaginative and charming story. Right, now I'm off to dig out the Camus...

Don Patterson on the Picador Poetry Prize

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/21/don-patterson-finding-new-poets

Good vs Groundbreaking and General Pontificating

I've just read this blog by Chielozona Eze, 'New Rules for Writers..' http://africanliteraturenews.blogspot.com/.

This put a big smile on my face, for one thing, and got me thinking about what makes good literature.

Ground-breaking literature isn't necessarily good, or perhaps more often, enjoyable. Tolkien is dreary. I don't know anyone who has ever got through Ulysses. The only people I know of who have are abstract intellectual entities and Kate Bush.

But literature doesn't have to be ground-breaking to be good. There is lots of literature out there that talks about normal life, human conflicts, or nothing very much, but does so subtly, intelligently and with flashes of its own originality. Some of the best stories follow set formulae - e.g., likeable hero is screwed over by nasty antagonist, likeable hero mopes around, but then picks himself up from the depths of despair, defeats the nasty antagonist and still has the time to find true love. Sometimes a simple story, executed with a deft touch, can be just as powerful as the ground-breaking gut-busting head-hurting waffle we call 'art'.

So it's heartening to read things such as Eze's blog, celebrating the astonishing things we humans can come up with and exploring tjhe highest heights of our creativity, especially when you're trying and so far failing to get published. Even industry cannot limit our imaginations.

But equally, I know that not everyone (maybe not myself? We shall see) can write well, and even the people who can don't necessarily make it to publication. And what is good writing? Is it uniqueness we look for, or is it the well-written familiar? Why is it that The Adventures of Captain Underpants have been published and not the life's work of some poor impoverished writer with real, though hidden, talent? Big questions. I have no idea.

But I do know the kind of writing I like. Here is my checklist.

1. unpretentious and comprehensible, but still intelligent, thoughtfully observed and original


2. a feeling for the music of words


3. exotic characters or settings or ideas. Something has to be new to me and out of the ordinary


4. human-ness. Something or somebody I can sympathise with
5. Wit. It doesn't have to be laugh-out-loud funny, but I always appreciate a light touch and a little humour never goes amiss.
6. It has to be well-written. It doesn't even have to be plain English. It just has to not be Ben Elton-stylee.

Maybe, despite my last blog, The Bell actually is one for the bedside table; maybe learning to love it is my Everest and will make me a better reader and writer. Maybe it has been thrust into my unwilling hands for the sole purpose of my conquering it and learning from it. Maybe my teachers were just really desperate for a mid-century novel by a female writer. Who knows?

The Bell by Iris Murdoch

It's taken me a while to finally write about this book, even though I read it quite a while ago now. It's taken me a while to get my head round it, and to be honest I'm still not sure if I'm quite there. It is the strangest book I have ever read, and if it hadn't been an exam text I would never have stuck with it.

The Bell tells the story of the inhabitants of a lay religious community in mid-20th C Oxfordshire. Murdoch's characteristic observations on human nature are apparent, as the narrative is driven by the interactions between characters. The main protagonist is Dora, and erring wife returning to her much older husband, the controlling and possessive Paul. Other characters include Michael, who is constantly struggling with his suppressed homosexuality and his religious fervour; Toby, a young innocent who discovers a mysterious bell in a lake; and Nick and Catherine, a brother and sister pair who have past dealings and hidden feelings towards Michael. The bell discovered by Toby is also an important aspect - almost a character in its own right, from Murdoch's giving it a name and lots of the vital, living imagery associated with it. It is the discovery of the bell that begins to reveal the complex human relationships of the story and to fracture the peaceful life of the community...

This is the first book I have read that I have had such strange emotions about. It is the only book I have ever read that I have not connected with at all, in any way. It's not that it's a bad book - despite it being one of her earlier novels, Murdoch's writing is very good and subtly powerful. It's just that nothing - not the setting, not the plot, not a single character - struck a chord with me. It's about people whom I have absolutely no understanding of. Some of them I got very bitter about (Dora is a rather hopeless heroine, particularly at the start of the novel) but mostly I was completely indifferent. The only character with whom I could sympathise even a tiny bit was Nick, the destructive and unsympathetic force of the plot, and a character who only appears a handful of times. Everything that Murdoch tried to achieve through the plot and the characters' crucial, narrative-driving relationships left me absolutely cold. It has been the weirdest reading experience of my life. I feel nothing about this book. It is just a collection of words about a non-story. The hours of my life spent reading it are just a blank space in my memory. The only reason I remember anything about The Bell is that I have to revise it and write essays on it.

For how to use language, this book is a good one. Iris Murdoch can clearly write in good English. But I found it clinical, apathetic and utterly unmoving. Not a bad book, not negative - just not. I can't express how completely removed an experience reading this book was. One that will lurk on my shelves gathering dust (after my exams! Until then I will be frantically flicking through it periodically, trying desperately to feel something that will help me remember it) before meeting an unceremonious end in the charity shop. Not one for the bonfire. Not one for the bedside table. Just not.

My Own...Flash Fiction

Here are a couple of Flash Fiction pieces I wrote. They are old submissions to Mslexia magazine. I like Flash or Micro-fiction - telling a story in as few words as possible - because it's the perfect medium for capturing snapshots of daily life and twisting it into a story. For both of these pieces, the word limit was 150 words. These were some of the first pieces I wrote after a long break from writing, a break that spanned almost my entire teenagerhood. They're rough - really rough - but I feel attached to them, as they signal the start of me honing my talent for writing again (isn't it strange how growing up stagnates your imagination? I'm still working on reawakening mine) and pursuing the career I have always dreamed of.

Eyebrows - 118 words - early 2010

I sat next to him watching with disdain the soft white swell of flesh beneath his chin. "Save room for pudding, there's ice cream," said Adam's mum as she set down piles of cocktail sausages and cubes of cheese and pineapple on little sticks. But Jeremy didn't take any notice, piling chicken nugget after chicken nugget on his party-printed paper plate. I raised my eyebrows at him as high as they would go, staring at him meaningfully, emmitting waves of disapproval. Glutton, you fatty, I thought. How can you possibly finish thirteen chicken nuggets? Finishing the thirteenth nugget in one bite he turned to me and cocked an eyebrow. "Why are you making that funny face? Do you feel poorly?"

Alley Cats - 97 words - 2010

Recently the chickens have been stalked by a longhaired cat. The squawks alert me to each ambush and I dash out mid-cuppa brandishing sprays of hot tea. But the cat's appetite for feathery drumsticks seems insatiable. One day I am slow to run to the protection of my flock. I brace myself for the worst. Instead I find the cat cowering before the menacing figure of a broody hen. She is mercilessly plucking its fur for nest material. The cat, rapidly balding, looks relieved to see me. Beverage warfare offers better odds than food that fights back.

(C) stays with me, 2011

Any comments, tell me what you think, or share your own flash fiction!

Opened Ground by Seamus Heaney

This is a collection of Heaney's poetry spanning some forty years of his writing career, and my current bed-time reading. I found it while browsing in the bookshop for some books that I needed for my studies and just had to have it.

Heaney is an Irish poet who writes beautifully. His poems often present history, the writer's Irish homeland, and rural living, and do so in wonderful English. None of the poems that I have read so far have a single obscure or unusual word; every word is the sort of word you'd use everyday and yet Heaney manages to stick them together in ways that are sometimes ambiguous despite the clarity of the language, and that always sound almost like music. Heaney has that ability to express complex ideas with simple language, which I personally like in a poem. Not every meaning or message is clear; not a single poem is dull or follows a set formula. Heaney clearly has an ear for the music of words and ideas and a deft touch with concise but startlingly accurate choice of language.

There are so many poems to love in this book, it is impossible to choose my favourite, but if I really had to, I would say that The Haw Lantern and The Bog Queen come close. But perhaps the one poem that actually left me lost for breath, such was its quiet power, was a couplet simply entitled 'For Bernard and Jane McCabe'. Find it on the internet if you can. If you only read poetry occasionally, this poem is an occasion. It is the best couplet I have ever read, and shows just how good a simple two-line poem can be when it is given the magic touch of poetic genius.

Perhaps what I like best about Heaney's work is its natural and rural subject matter, imagery and mood. Maybe if I had been born in the city I wouldn't be able to identify with it so much. But I'm a country lass and for me the poems included in 'Opened Ground' evoke all the rugged, untamed beauty of nature and the landscape I love. 10/10.

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

It isn't often that I read plays. Really I only do it when I have to, for study, although I love the theatre and I always enjoy them when I do read them, so I don't know why I hardly ever read them. This play is of course a classic, but until I read this I had never read any of Oscar Wilde's work, and neither have I ever seen any film adaptations of any of his work. So I came to this wondering what to expect, with only vague ideas about the writer's life and no idea about what it was he actually wrote.

Sometimes this is the best way to come to a piece of literature, as it allows you to enjoy it as it is without reading it through a blinkering lens. I don't care about Wilde's homosexuality and his being an outsider in Victorian society. I don't care about what the readers of today can draw from it. The only thing that matters is that I absolutely loved this play. It's short but packed full of wicked one-liners (of the sort you often wish you could snap back with in real life. If only!) and a plot with plenty of twists. It actually had me laughing out loud, something that only rarely happens when I read (what with being a serious student of literature, ahem) since I stopped reading the adventures of Captain Underpants when I was 12. But - dare I say it? - Wilde's infamous wit is funnier even than Captain Underpants. By miles. And easy to read and get into as well. He was clearly a writer who appreciated the pure unbridled enjoyment that a piece of literature or theatre can offer, as well as its ability to drive home a point. Both are entwined marvelously in Wilde's writing.

Also he has a wonderful ability to inspire hunger in his reader, or so I found. Reading about Algernon tucking into muffins uninvited made me crave muffins. Just one way in which a skilled writer can bring their story to life. Wilde was a very skilled writer.

I'll read this play again before I have to write about it, paying attention to the use of language and the writer's purpose etc. etc. but whether you read for work or pleasure, whether you read plays or avoid them like the plague, read this, and if you read it many moons ago, reread it, becuase it is a work of genius and British humour at its best.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

This is the first book of Shamsie's that I have read, and I enjoyed it so much that I intend to splash my cash on all her other novels too.

'Burnt Shadows' tells the stories of two families whose lives intertwine across the years, with the narrative jumping from WW2 Japan, to Delhi in the 1950's, to Pakistan in the 80's, and finally to Post-9/11 New York and Afghanistan. The members of the two families - especially a very sympathetic character Hiroko, a Japanese woman, who is the only character present in every section of the book - find themselves in a web of friendship, love and betrayal as their lives intersect at each conflicted and politically turbulent point in time. Major themes include the relationships between the characters, the nature of Islam, betrayal and truth, loss and survival, belonging and isolation, family and friendship.

Shamsie writes very well indeed - literary but accessible, lively but mature and fully-formed. There are flashes of brilliance in her writing, especially in her painting of her characters - they come across as real, living people and by the end of the book I really did feel as if I knew them all. I particularly liked the use of the recurring motif of the spider throughout the novel, and the switches between time and place, coupled with the very mysterious prologue that holds the key to the story, were very cleverly executed.

The different cultures portrayed through the novel are very expertly done. Hiroko's journey from a well-behaved resident of Nagasaki through to a free and fearless independent woman living in New York is subtly and coherently continued throughout the book. All sides of Islam are explored: the fundamentalism that frightens us so much today, as well as peaceful devotion and indifference are shown. Pakistani-Indian conflicts are explored, as well as the tribal differences of Afghanistan. Perhaps the American characters are the most stereotypical (but possibly correctly) of the novel, and seem to be the blundering blind, messing up everything for everyone else. However they are shown as very loveable, big-hearted and accepting also, and 9/11 I felt was dealt with very sensitively; no one, no culture, is shown in an unbalanced light, which I think is one of the great successes of the novel. One of the book's chief messages is surely why, when we share so many similarities (a need for safety and security, love for our families and friends, even linguistic similarities), do we still go and mess everything up for each other?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It started off, I feel, as quite a feminine book, possibly because it is the female characters that really lead the early narrative, but really got going before I was halfway through it, and has as many shocking twists in its tale as a broken slinky. There is action, there is romance, there are secrets and frantic escapes. I can see readers of both genders and all kinds of backgrounds enjoying this book, and would definitely recommend it.

'Burnt Shadows' is powerful, challenging and yet remains entirely human. Amazing, surprising plot, vivid and believable characters, and a unique viewpoint on conflicts old and new. Good job, Ms Shamsie.

White Ravens by Owen Sheers

I got this novella in my Christmas stocking. It's a short but sweet little book from a series of stories by various authors, who use the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh fables, as the basis for new stories. 'White Ravens' is based on a story called 'Branwen, Daughter of Llyr', which features the mutilation of horses, a Welsh-Irish marriage and the protection of Britain by a king's severed head. I read a few stories from the Mabinogion a while ago and really recommend them - very interesting and a completely different viewpoint on the way things were in ancient Britain, as well as purely magical fairytales.

But onto Owen Sheers. 'White Ravens', set partly during the Second World War, tells the tale of a family whose lives are changed by their war experiences. Matthew O'Connell is sent on a strange mission by the War Office, on which he meets and falls in love with Branwen. They marry. Branwen's brother Evan has been much changed by his war experiences and dreadful things happen. Matthew and Branwen move to Matthew's native Ireland and set about trying to be happy. But it is only then that it becomes clear that Matthew too has been damaged by his war experience. A climactic confrontation between Branwen's brothers and Matthew ensues. Years later, Rhian must make a decision about whether to abandon her sheep-rustling brothers or to stick by them...

'White Ravens' is a really interesting little book (I read it very leisurely over the course of a couple of days) with an uncomplicated but effective narrative structure: present > story from the past > present. I liked the circular nature of it, coupled with the fact that the ending remains slightly ambiguous. Sheers is clever with his story telling, revealing just enough but not too much, although I felt that some of the events towards the end of the story seemed a little rushed. Overall however, the narrative arc is well constructed and a joy to read, and I think Sheers' use of the Mabinogion was also very clever: he stuck to it, but not strictly, making a more realistic and ,but none the less magical tale.

You can tell by reading 'White Ravens' that its writer is a published poet. The writing itself is unfussy but considered, simple but not simplistic - for me, the best and most enjoyable writing there is. However, the book is peppered with truly original and stunningly exquisite descriptions; one of these that I remember particularly clearly was the description of the blood dripping from a piece of plastic wrapped meat, swirling like clouds in a sped-up weather forecast in the plastic, or something like that. Owen's imagery is new and something I have never seen before.

I liked the little extras in the book too - a quite synopsis of the Mabinogion story it was based on, and the lyrics in Welsh and English of a song that features in the book. Little touches like that really brought the story to life for me. Reading the lyrics of the song, I could really imagine Branwen singing it.

I would definitely be interested to read more books in this series and see how they rework the Mabinogion, and 'White Ravens' itself was a joy to read and a confirmation of my admiration for Sheers' writing.