Local poet Anthony Owen will be on his home turf when he appears at the Third Coventry International Festival Of Literature at the Belgrade Theatre in May. The Coventry Literature Festival is unique among UK literature festivals due to its focus on community events, with public writing workshops, children’s events and opportunities for local writers incorporated into the programme.
You can buy tickets and find out more on the Belgrade website:
Wednesday 13 May, 8pm. Heaventree hosts the Festival’s opening night by inviting the editors of a number of poetry presses and magazine publishers to showcase their best new writers. Guests will include Horizon magazine, The Wolf magazine, Flarestack Press, Under The Radar and the Warwick Review.
This is an invaluable chance to research the diverse opportunities for publication offered by the UK poetry industry, gaining that knowledge of the terrain which is vital for new writers.
Tickets: £5.Thursday 14 May, 8pm.
The launch of My Father’s Eyes Were Blue by Coventry poet Antony Owen and Still This Need by Michael McKimm.
Antony Owen is a commercial manager from Allesley who writes poignant, unsettling poems, reminiscent in style of the Mersey Beats and their French forbears.
I am making my first venture into Trollope having been inspired by A Round-Heeled Woman.
And it reminded me of how intransigent people can be in their relationships with other people – and why.
A brief plot synopsis can be seen on Wikipedia – but what it doesn’t cover is the clever way in which Trollope depicts, through interior monologue, how people come to reason themselves into being so steadfast in their beliefs.
In essence, the plot is a big row about nothing with a lack of reconciliation because each party rationalises its own position and builds themselves a narrative of how they are the injured party and therefore cannot make the first move…
But what should he do? There was, first of all considerations, the duty which he owed to his wife, and the love which he bore her. That she was ignorant and innocent he was sure; but then she was so contumacious that he hardly knew how to take a step in the direction of guarding her from the effects of her ignorance, and maintaining for her the advantages of her innocence. He was her master, and she must know that he was her master. But how was he to proceed when she refused to obey the plainest and most necessary command which he laid upon her? Let a man be ever so much his wife’s master, he cannot maintain his masterdom by any power which the law places in his hands. He had asked his wife for a promise of obedience, and she would not give it to him! What was he to do next? He could, no doubt, at least he thought so, keep the man from her presence. He could order the servant not to admit the man, and the servant would, doubtless, obey him. But to what a condition would he then have been brought! Would not the world then be over for him over for him as the husband of a wife whom he could not love unless he respected her? Better that there should be no such world, than call in the aid of a servant to guard the conduct of his wife!
In fact, so far, the book is entirely about miscommunication. A cautionary tale for all of us involved in the industry!
A different tomato soup – and one which I am trying not to spill over my keyboard as I type.
Incidentally I was reading Lindsey Bareham’s A Celebration of Soup the other day, and she claims to have over 20 versions of pumpkin soup – there surely must be more. Mine never turn out the same twice for a start!
6 (or so) fat over-ripe vine tomatoes
A good slug of olive oil
Sweet smoked paprika
Salt & Pepper
1 bottle of passata
Chilli oil
Glass of good red wine
Water – splash
Beef stock (condensed in bottle) – glug
Roast the tomatoes in a good slug of olive oil in a medium over for 20 minsa of so (I did mine while I happened to be doing some tray-baked sausages). Then transfer to the hob and add all the other ingredients to taste. Bring to a simmer and then hand blend and serve.
I ended up unable to wait for the soup so I served it with a roasted sausage and onion baguette each! But I have brought the substancial left-overs into work.
Which reminds me:
Bubble and squeak and homemade chutney are back on the menu as part of a campaign launched this week to urge people to return to the values of wartime food rationing and cut the mountain of food waste emerging from the nation’s kitchens. (more)
Quite right too!
Research by the government’s waste reduction agency, Wrap, found that one third of all food bought in Britain is thrown away – of which half is edible. Wrap will claim that this discarded food is a bigger problem than packaging, as the food supply chain accounts for a fifth of UK carbon emissions and decomposing food releases methane, the most potent of the greenhouse gases. Wasted food is estimated to cost each British household from £250 to £400 a year.
The reason this came to mind is that when this recipe specifies over-ripe tomatoes – that’s because it was either soup or the bin… You (better housekeepers) can of course use fruit or veg at the peak of its perfection!
I was planning a lunchtime book-shopping spree – but fate has made
me leave my card in my jeans pocket, on the chair in the bedroom…
Anyway – I’m halfway through this, which is very enjoyable. And I
bought Duff Cooper’s diaries on Friday which has also given me a taste
for the period…
So, here’s what I would have bought had I remembered my card:
The trouble with all the Mitford stuff is that I just find myself
wanting to read entire bibliographies full of stuff – it’s never ending.
The particularly interesting thing is comparing the slants in all
the editing and writing and trying to build up a picture of your own.
Which I suppose historians have known forever!
It could be that this twists and turns in this book have fried my
brain – must as they were supposed to fry the brain of the young
anti-hero….
Anyway, as complex as it is, it’s certainly a page-turner – at least towards the second half.
According to the helpful author’s note at the beginning of my
edition Fowles struggled over this work – and at least in the first
half of this book I struggled along with him.
It certainly picks up pace towards the latter half – but
characteristically there is no commitment to a definite ending. I’ll
definitely have to reread it to see if I can glean more.
I must try and find the 1968 film version – particularly as it stars Anna Karina
I am halfway through this fabulous book and am finding it both
hilarious and deeply insightful – chortling away to myself and nodding
sagely at the same time.
It has the most fantastic desciption of the way (non)queues at the
bar work in England and the confusion this causes to other
nationalities, the best explanation about the English woman’s inability
to take a compliment and – relevant to blogging – the privacy rule
which means that you would never ask a candid newspaper columnist about
private things revealed in their column nor a Page 3 Girl to get her
boobs out at a tea party.
It also has a very funny and revealing update of Nancy Mitford’s U and Non-U language rules with an interesting commentary.
Best of all it is written by Kate Fox, an Oxford anthropologist, and
therefore has precise parameters and full definitions, but in an
intensely readable way.
OK – I am about to perform what is popularly described as an astonishing policy u-turn.
Inspired by this book, I have decided to become a lady of letters.
Accordingly I wrote my first epistle to my sister last night (to be
posted today).
The reason is that it’s a pleasure being able to see a life
unfolding in retrospect – even through the patchy and incomplete media
of letters.
Indeed in this case at least towards the beginning of the book a
hefty potted history is necessarily provided at the start of each
‘chapter’ to fill in the gaps and provide context. Towards the end it’s
not so necessary as by then she had started keeping carbon copies of
her correspondence.
I read Hons and Rebels
over Christmas as well. It is absolutely fascinating to compare all the
sisters different accounts – even more interesting if you add in the fictional Radletts.
Certainly Nancy is quoted as saying of Hons & Rebels
that Decca seems to see her childhood through the prism of Nancy’s
fiction. And Decca herself admitted that Nancy had a point in this.
The other interesting things that have struck me so far (I’m not finished reading yet) are that:
Decca
clearly blames Diana (& Oswald Mosely) for encouraging a bored and
easily influenced Unity – this is not a view that I have picked up
elsewhere in my reading.
Although appearing to have a
strong personal moral compass and inflexible opinions It seems to me as
though Decca was simply playing at being a Communist, more concerned
with the purist literature than activity, until she met Bob Treuhaft.
I had no idea about the pre-McCarthyism red-persecution.1
Now, I love Nigel Slaters recipes and I’m very fond of his diffident
style of presenting. But this book has left me thoroughly depressed.
Describing
his childhood as a cross between Dickens and Cinderella, time has not
blurred memories, softened opinion or brought forgiveness. At least the
sharp focus and unrelenting detail applies to himself as well.
Amusing
in parts towards the beginning and fascinating in its detailed
desciptions of 1960s Wolverhampton aspiring upper middle-class food
memories – I couldn’t help thinking that sad and unjust as it was the
latter parts of the book may have been better saved for therapy.
And yet I would still recommend a read – for the food.
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
An
eldery gentleman looks back at a formative experience on the cusp of
his adolescence with the benefit of experience and hindsight.
I
paticularly like the way that you get the balance between his 12 year
old incomprehension and innocence and his elderly surmise and
explanation as to the motivation and feelings of the other characters –
but whom he still feels badly served.
His own youthful
character is nicely balanced as well though – not wholely likeable with
plenty of rough edges and character flaws, but still on balance
symathetic.
He is particularly nicely foiled by the priggish school mate with whom he is staying.
I only have a chapter and a half left and was most disappointed when I had to get off the bus this morning with it unread.
Writing about 
A different tomato soup – and one which I am trying not to spill over my keyboard as I type.
It could be that I was up too late reading….
Here we go again. The diet started again today.
