Poem by Jonty Driver, recently published in The Spectator

FOR THE ONE ONLY

As we walk, she says she hears

waxwing, fieldfare and redwing;

you seldom see them now, she says,

but, if you listen, you can hear them sing.

Above, the clouds accumulate

to what may yet become a storm.

The brambles stretch across the path

to slow us down.

We’re coming closer every day

to where things end, that gulping beast

which swallows everyone

as if we didn’t matter in the least. 

And who’ll go first, you or me?

Me, who worries if you go alone

to town? You, afraid I might indulge

(old fool) in this or that, too much, too soon?

Think of something else, you say, something nice.

The oaks have held their leaves

later than the ash, though colours merge –

and somewhere far away a raptor grieves.

C.J.Driver

 

(Thanks to Jonty for permission to reproduce this)

March 2018 news

Best wishes to Alan McKinna for a speedy recovery from his recent accident and subsequent surgery.


The Rye Bookshop is hosting a book launch with local crime author Chris O'Donoghue on Saturday 31st March.  The time is yet to be confirmed, but it will most probably be in the afternoon. The author will be promoting his new book "Blood on the Shrine"

Next Literary Society meeting, Friday 16 March:  Novel and Screenwriting – John Howlett

John Howlett is a novelist, biographer and writer for film, television, radio and stage.  The creator of “If”, he has recently completed the Harry Cardwell Series, six novels that follow lives through the20th century. Here is a link to his Wikipedia page, where his work is listed: CLICK HERE 
He also has a website and blog where you can find more about him and his work:  CLICK HERE

(Please note that this meeting will be followed by the Society's AGM. If you have not yet received the agenda, please contact Hilary Roome)


Thanks to Pamela Voice for drawing attention to  the following "Venice in Peril" March Lecture:
 

Alan Hollinghurst, Booker prize-winning novelist and author of the recently published, 'The Sparsholt Affair', on how Henry James wrote about, and experienced Venice, leaving us with some of the most luxuriant and evocative prose ever written about the city.

At the Society of Antiquaries, 19 March, Burlington House, London W1J 0BE. Doors open 6.30pm, lecture at 6.45. £18 for Friends, £20 others

Unfortunately, this event is already sold out, but if anyone is lucky enough to have a ticket, perhaps they could write a short review for the blog.

For more details CLICK HERE

Childhood

This was the theme of the "members' evening" at the Society's February meeting. Contributions were of varying length from Biggles and Just William to a one-liner about the complaint from the child after his first day at school that he hadn't been taught much, and would have to attend the next day. Hilaire Belloc and Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, the choice of two members), were among the other authors chosen. Below is a contribution by Kim Zanes, written for the occasion, with a rapid tour of her favourite childhood reading:

Miss B, Miss Potter, small animals, the National Trust and her rare Herdwick sheep.

The Little Prince in French and in English, something to speak

The Beano and the Dandy on Saturday morning

Swallows and Amazons imagining at playtime

Piggy on the island with the Lord of the Flies

Enid Blyton and of course, her Famous Five

The Gruffalo and all of the monsters inside

Harry Potter’s wizardly adventures, read by children worldwide

The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graham’s adventure surprise

Scheherazade tales for a thousand and one nights

Arabian Tales, magical carpet flights

The biggest, the first that I read, was Lord of the Rings

Alice’s adventures of wonderful things

The Jungle Book & Riki Tikki Tavi a valiant young mongoose

All the Anansi Tales no matter how crazy or obtuse

 But My favourite of all, The Tiger who came to Tea

Most of all of them I STILL, wish that had been me

Kim Zanes February 2018

"A QUESTION OF MUSIC CRITICISM" a talk by Bryce Morrison at our January meeting

Bryce Morrison is best known as a music critic and broadcaster.  But he is also a pianist, teacher, and adjudicator of piano competitions.  In the course of this multi-faceted career he has met a great many well-known people, a generous selection of whom he mentioned in the autobiographical conclusion of his talk, which focussed finally on his friendship with two pianists, the late Eileen Joyce, whose performance legacy he is intent on preserving, and Alfred Brendel, despite the latter’s acerbic opinion of composers whom Mr Morrison admires such as Mendelssohn, Fauré , Grieg (“music for chambermaids”) and Rachmaninov.

For Mr Morrison, who detests the expression “classical music”, and claims to dislike musical snobbery (a dig perhaps at his friend Brendel?), “music is about everything”, and he began his talk by citing Mendelssohn’s view that “music isn’t too vague for language; it’s too precise”.  Hence there will always be a question about music criticism. Members of an audience may well express their views about a concert they’ve just heard, for or against, but ephemerally.  Critics on the other hand publish their views, and thus expose themselves to criticism of their criticism, with subjectivity difficult to avoid.

Many writers and musicians, including Iris Murdoch, John Fowles, Sibelius and Noel Coward, saw no point in criticism, while others, including D H Lawrence, T S Eliot and Dr Johnson, regarded it as indispensable, if elusive, with music criticism, in Mr Morrison’s view, the most elusive of all.  He suggests that critics should themselves be performers and should avoid criticising works that they themselves have never performed (conditions that could surely rule out much of the critical fraternity, as well as discussion of premieres?).  Music, he believes, is for ever as new as it was when it was composed; thus lofty denigration of “old hat” composers is merely snobbish and consequently worthless.

A good critic is knowledgeable, committed, enthusiastic, able to write well, with talent and understanding, and a desire to point people in the right direction rather than merely to score points.  Many pianists, obsessed with their own genius or technique, find it hard to be objective.  But there have been exceptions, all of them excellent critics, including Schumann, Barenboim, Debussy and even Liszt – and presumably Bryce Morrison, though he was modest enough not to point this out. 

Richard Thomas

Rother Books: a New Bookshop In Battle

In November Ian Cawley, who used to work at Waterstone's in Hastings with Lizzie Lee, opened an independent bookshop in Battle. 59 - 60 High Street, TN33 0EN. Details of events there, such as book signings, will appear on the blog.

Here is a link CLICK HERE to their Facebook page. 

STANZAS

STANZAS, now in its third year (No 10 has just been published, four numbers a year) is a literary magazine devoted almost entirely to poetry.  Although it is based in Cape Town, the magazine publishes poems from anywhere in the world, including translations.  An international sub. costs less than £30 a year (SAR 452) and may be obtained from www.stanzas.co.za

The editors are Douglas Reid Skinner (who gave an excellent talk to the Winchelsea Literary S ociety last year) and  Patricia Schonstein. Both are working hard to extend the range of the contributions, and are beginning to attract work from younger black writers such as Tshepiso Mabula  and Medzani Musandiwa, as well as publishing the poems of more established writers like Tony Voss, Fiona Zerbst and John Eppel. The latest editorial says that “the editorial team have always viewed Stanzas as a kind of co-operative and we are grateful to everyone whose contributions of ideas, skills and writing have enabled us to reach the first bend, get around it and as far down the road as the first milestone.”

 

Here, with the permission of the editors, are a couple of "tasters":

 

 

This Turning (by Athol Williams)

My mother kisses me

on the lips,

leaf to leaf.

My sister wraps her head in a scarf

wherever she goes, like a meatball

wrapped in cabbage.

My father crushes and rolls

dried leaves, then adds a flame

to make smoke, to make merry.

My neighbour abducts worms

from their homes on leaves

for his dinner—the worms, not the leaves.

I don’t eat worms or meatballs

but my diet is more than leaves—

pumpkin, mango, tofu, pasta.

I am almost fifty, yet still

my mother kisses me

on the lips, leaf to leaf;

I wish she wouldn’t

but the earth turns

and the wind blows

and the leaves come and go

and I am part of this turning

my mother, sister, father, neighbour,

all of us, part of this turning.

RHYMES for a friend in trouble (by C J Driver)

We seldom get what we deserve:

luck, like light, travels in a curve.

Yet how we wish this were the norm:

to promise what we then perform.

The world’s a complicated place,

where grief walks hand in hand with grace,

a paradigm of love unearned,

revenge reserved, reward returned,

a kind of chaos thickly sprayed

to thwart the best plans ever made

and all advice the old can give

subsumed in  this:  you learn to live.