Wednesday 22 June 2016

Swanwick 2016

I've just found out that I've won second prize in the short story section of the Swanwick Summer School competition so I shall be off to Derbyshire in August for the second year running - and I'm really looking forward to it.

If you don't know about Swanwick, do look it up. It's now in its 68th year and the longest running residential summer school for writers in the world. The surroundings are beautiful, the atmosphere is so relaxed and friendly and the food delicious. Then, of course, there are the courses .... the specialist ones that run over four days, the short ones that change daily and the hour long ones on a whole variety of writing-related topics. Every evening sees a different after-dinner speaker and there are open mics and short dramas to join in with. Certainly worth thinking about if you're planning to invest in your writing this summer!

Tuesday 21 June 2016

"Learning by heart"

Having re-read some Coleridge last week, I've been rediscovering some other classic poets such as Longfellow. That followed some family history research when I was looking at my grandmother's childhood in Stackpole in Pembrokeshire. She and her siblings were at the village school there in the early 1890s; when I visited the school a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to find records of the curriculum from her time there and they made fascinating reading. Reading books included a series entitled "The Royal English History Readers" (of which I can now find no trace) and there were "object lessons" on items such as postage stamps, the forge and coal, taught to combine elements of literacy and numeracy - pretty much like present day project work.

But it was the poetry teaching that really caught my imagination - I could almost hear the children reciting in turn the weekly poem set for learning by heart. Favourites seem to have been "The Wreck of the Hesperus" by Longfellow, "The Forsaken Merman" by Matthew Arnold and "Somebody's Mother" by Mary Dow Brine - all good, "improving" stuff! But woe betide the children if they failed to commit the poems to memory and to regurgitate as required - corporal punishment was very much the order of the day. My grandmother had a life long stammer and must have found recitation before her peers a nightmare.

I have known many people put off poetry for good when it was badly taught at school, but I know others who have developed an ongoing love of it when it was introduced in an interesting and sympathetic manner - I'd include myself in that group. I'm always so pleased when I hear of schools in which poetry is still an important feature and delighted when we have young people taking part in our local poetry events. Not that we hear a lot of "The Wreck of the Hesperus" these days though ....


Stackpole School staff and pupils c. 1891



Monday 13 June 2016

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan .....


Over the last couple of days I've spent time re-reading some Romantic poetry. Although I have always loved "Frost at Midnight", I have to admit that the last time I read much Coleridge I was probably still at school! But, having been visiting the Somerset area where the poet lived for a while, where he wrote several of his best known poems and gained inspiration for many others, I felt duty bound to revisit his work.

The house where Coleridge spent three years in the late 1790s is in Nether Stowey; now looked after by the National Trust, it's an interesting place to visit. But not only do you find there a lot about Coleridge, there is so much too about his wife, Sara.  And I found myself full of righteous indignation at the lot of so many male poet's wives! I've always felt for Helen, the wife of Edward Thomas, given such a bad press by Robert Frost after her husband's death in France. At Nether Stowey my heart went out to Sara Coleridge. She was burdened with total responsibility for all things domestic whilst her husband pursued grandiose and unworkable projects, she was left unsupported by him during their second child's illness and subsequent death, only to be written off by Wordsworth's sister (who gladly ate her food, spent long hours walking with her husband and even borrowed her clothes) as "a sad fiddle-faddler"! How many strong, intelligent women, talented in their own right have sacrificed themselves in the past to enable their partners to shine? And, sadly, how many continue to do so today?

Statue of The Ancient Mariner
in Watchet Harbour








Monday 6 June 2016

When is enough enough?!

When I began my project that should (eventually!) result in a comprehensive family chronicle I was convinced that I had at least the bulk, if not all, of the research under my belt. How wrong I was. The more I write, the more I find I still have to follow up.

Family history is by its very nature an endless quest. The story I am writing is in part the story of my personal quest to pursue my forebear's lives and to put them into their social and political context. Even though I am sticking religiously within my defined parameters, avenues keep opening up which cry out for exploring if I am in any way to do justice to the saga. But there has to come a point where the line is drawn! Something I think I recognized in a  poem I recently wrote ...

Needlecraft

(“At fifty one wants forebears almost as much as heirs” James Lasdun)

I have stitched you a life,
a patchwork of shades and shapes,
of textures and tones,
remnants pulled from the ragbag
of memory, snippets of hearsay,
embroidered at the edges
to neaten off your days.

But would its pattern
perplex or please?
Would you recognize
the contours of your years,
lie comfortable beneath this quilt?
Forgive my inept needlecraft -
this is all I have in which to wrap you.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2016)