Although I’ve mentioned it somewhat obliquely, I’ve not actually confirmed my AMAZING NEWS! It will, perhaps, mean a slightly different BlagLady over the next few months. The news is I have been awarded funding from the Arts Council to Buy Time to Write and to work on a first collection! There it is official. I have found it bizarrely difficult to acknowledge this wonderful new development in my life. As part of the process I’ll be reporting on the writing process – or lack thereof – and also keeping a note of my reading habits. Does this include avid perusal of Grazia on the tube? Well, perhaps a log, if not a review. Currently, I’ve been reading:
Without Title by Geoffrey Hill, which my mentor Selima Hill lent me. Thank God (aka the Arts Council) I have a mentor – Selima will be trying to help me up my game for the duration. There are lots of words and references I don’t understand in it. But that just makes it all the more interesting. I hate people that moan about inaccessibility. LOOK IT UP. That said, I still don’t know what a strigil is. Me a girl of many dictionaries. Ah, interesting. It is: n.L16 [L strigilis graze, touch lightly. 1. Class Antiq. An instrument with a curved blade, used to scrape sweat and dirt from the skin in a hot-air bath or after exercise; a scraper. ‘A strigil for my exczema, pleuorlepidid of pool chlorine’ now has a new, very precise meaning – ouch. Okay, so I stlll haven’t looked up ‘pleurolepidid’. Right – there I was defending inaccessibility. Pleuorlepidid is not only absent from my Shorter Oxford Dictionary, but also from the COMPACT which is actually the full Monty in dictionary world and not to be confused with the Concise – which means it doesn’t officially exist. And no, I’m not gonna waste my time trying the Dictionary of Slang – it just doesn’t have that slangy twang. So, Pleuro- is of or pertaining to the side or pleura (lungs). Lepidid I think comes from lepido – which essentially means scale/scaly! So voila! That this line occurs in a long poem called Pindarics after Cesar Pavese, both of which I am unfamiliar with, is, I have to confess a somewhat daunting prospect. Okay, but Greek and Latin and words that are not even in the BIG dictionary aside, I like it because the poetry is beautiful, and I don’t need to understand it, or all of it, to enjoy it. Snatches of exquisite phrasing are enough. More in my vernacular, is:
‘Shyster’s from a Yiddish word for shit.
It’s not, you know.
This is late-scaffold humour, turn me off.’
Right – so that’s Geoffrey Hill.
It only took me 20 minutes. THAT is the luxury of inaccessibility. ONWARDS. This leads me on to an important point. Next week (Tuesday 16 May) I will be performing at the Purcell Rooms on the South Bank as part of an event called Free Verse which investigates publishing opportunities (or lack of) for Black and Asian poets. It sort of confirms my thought that one of the contributing factors is canonical frame of reference – ie, what’s acceptable – or rather desirable – and what’s not. I will need to mull that over further.
Also on my list this week is Aoife Mannix’s The Elephant in the Corner. I went to see Aoife perform with Heather Taylor at the BAC on Friday, and we traded books there. It is a first collection and one of my aims is to read two first collections a month. I haven’t started it yet, but I like the title.
More literary meanderings later; other news: tradescantia slowgoing, charcoal burners too wet for the big billow, willow fencing plus VAT, Feng Shui, bluebells, wilting lilac, tail-biting dragon re-instated, cheese v fromage, lower body blitz imminent.
