Glad or Mad? ‘Loudness’ by Judy Brown

Over the next few months, I will be the marketing intern at Gladstone’s Library. Whilst living and working in a library, it would be a crime not to read, and so I am going to be reviewing and reading all the books I can get my hands on, and highlighting which made me Glad(stone), and which made me Mad(stone). I assume at some point I’ll have to add a category of ‘Indifferent(stone)’.

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Book the fourth: Loudness by Judy Brown

(from the library collection)

One of the things about my internship that I really love is the opportunity to read a book and then discuss it with the author over dinner. I’ll never get the option to quiz Gerard Manly Hopkins about ‘The Windhover’ but here I had the opportunity to pickle the brains of Judy Brown, our current writer in residence, as I read the book, and so I had to take it.

And good thing I did, because I misread ‘Spontaneous Combustion’ (which is eerie at the best of times), and absolutely terrified myself – luckily at lunchtime Judy was able to tell me that I was being an idiot and that televisions can not kill people. The poem was still haunting, but at least I could watch tv without fearing for my life.

Loudness is Judy’s first collection of poetry and is really, really good. I’m really bad at reading poetry generally, let alone poetry that doesn’t rhyme, but I was still enchanted by the collection.

Something that was always drilled into me in Creative Writing class was the use of ‘significant detail’, of finding new ways to describe things that would make us see the world afresh. Here in Judy’s poems I was provided with instance after instance of significant details, which rather than being the rather try-hard, dry examples I was used to seeing in university, were alive, well-observed and really made me think ‘aw, crikey! That is how that looks’.

Cursive orange peels, children that turn like seals; her poems are full of such beautiful and arresting images.

After careful consideration, I would have to declare ‘The Ex-Angel’ to be my favourite poem. Defiant, almost punky, but coached, as ever, in the most elegant of language, it is filled with ideas and images that are humorous, but also slightly sad.

A book of poetry that doesn’t rhyme. It’s a hard sell for an uncultured slob like myself, but I’m very glad that I got to read it.

Glad or Mad: Glad.

Glad or Mad? Charlotte Lennox’s ‘The Female Quixote’ Review

Over the next few months, I will be the marketing intern at Gladstone’s Library. Whilst living and working in a library, it would be a crime not to read, and so I am going to be reviewing and reading all the books I can get my hands on, and highlighting which made me Glad(stone), and which made me Mad(stone). I assume at some point I’ll have to add a category of ‘Indifferent(stone)’.

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Book the First: The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox

(from the blogger’s own collection)

 

The Female Quixote is one of those books you buy for cheap because you misread the blurb and then you read it three years later and it turns out to be quite enjoyable. First published in 1752, Lennox’s novel is heavily influenced (obviously) by Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and follows the young Arabella, who has lived in solitude her whole life with naught but a great deal of 17^th century French Romances for company, and convinced that she must also be a Heroine, lives her own life according to the strenuous and hysterical rules of the novels she reads.

The book, with its mix of the ordinary and the extraordinary, bears many similarities to Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (which I thoroughly enjoyed and hope to re-read soon) and I read somewhere that Austen read Lennox’s novel – I assume she enjoyed it!

Many of the subtleties of Lennox’s novel were lost on me, sadly, because of the age of the book. It took me half the book to realise that Arabella spoke in a very antiquated way, and contemporary audiences would have enjoyed the juxtaposition of her overly formalised speeches with the more modern dialogue of her cousin and longsuffering lover, Mr. Glanville.

Lennox also references the Romances of Scudéry, Roger Boyle, and Gauthier de Costes de La Calprenède constantly, but because she does so rather thoroughly, by half way through you are perfectly acquainted with the sources and can follow Arabella’s conversations without having to constantly flip to the notes in the back of the book.

However, a great deal of the novel’s humour is rather in your face and farcical, so that even 21^st century audiences unfamiliar with these Romances can enjoy Arabella’s outrageous behaviour and the convoluted plans she hatches. In fact, the beginning, especially, reminded me of the manic energy of a Carry On film, and I hope any big screen adaptation will be underscored entirely by the Benny Hill theme.

Of course, this being an 18^th century novel, the no holds barred, thrilling finale takes place in the form of a debate about novels between Arabella and a clergyman as she lies on her sick bed (so exciting!). This debate was a little hard to follow, accustomed as I was by that stage to the book’s language, and lacked a little bit of a ‘wham!’, which I would have liked. But, as a writer, I enjoyed its dissection of fiction, though I did think it rather paradoxical that Lennox should chose to slam fiction as a grave source of evil (except for Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa) in a novel! However, her examination of the human brain, and the lengths it will go to fit anything into its chosen paradigm, was very well handled.

Although I wouldn’t call the book feminist (women are largely depicted as silly and vain, and of the two sensible ladies, one is Arabella, who is only sensible half the time) but it does draw attention to the impossible constraints society placed on women in Romances, unable to listen to declaration of love, but expected to marry:

‘… But pray, what would you have a Lady do, whom an importunate Lover presumes to declare his passion to? You know it is not permitted us to listen to such Discourses; and you know also, whoever is guilty of such an Offence, merits a most rigorous Punishment…’ (Lennox, 1998, pp 146-147)

 

The novel owes a great deal of its humour to its lively supporting cast, including Arabella’s bitchy cousin Miss Glanville, and Arabella’s hapless servant Lucy, who has to deal with her mistress’s odd whims and requests.

Though you are entering into another time and world, it was interesting to see how human and emotive the characters are, which surely demonstrates how good a writer Lennox is.

In conclusion, a farcical look at fiction, full of interesting insights into 18^th century gender politics, that does occasionally allow its jokes to run on too long – however it generally made me glad(stone)!

Final Verdict: Glad(stone)!

Things I Should Have Said

So, recently (very recently- like an hour ago in fact) I recorded an interview for Words at Play festival about winning the Axis Poetry Slam on Tuesday. Don’t worry about where to find the interview- I’ll link it below. There are plenty of awkward moments ahoy in it not least when Ciarán asks me what it feels like to win a slam. I had given absolutely no thought to how I felt before he asked me, and my mind went blank, and what you can hear are the sounds of me thrashing and dying in an interview, and generally sounding like an ungrateful knobhead.

Here’s what I should have said. That winning the slam was an honour. That it was amazing. That it was a moment that I didn’t think would ever happen to me, because I still don’t think of myself as a performance poet, least of all a good one. I always thought of poetry as being incredibly deep with many layers of meaning and metaphor, and to think I won first place screaming BATS! is humbling. I listened back to my poetry and I know there were better poets than me there, who recited stronger poetry, and that I won anything, let alone first place, is a miracle.

And there are some people I need to thank. Firstly, Ciarán Hodgers, who is truly my poet mentor- from the moment I grudgingly recited the Black Woman’s Burden in second year, he’s been at me to write poetry, and he’s always been supportive, and he’s seen things in me that I really don’t think are there. And he never gets quite enough thanks for the effort he puts into Poetry in Motion.

Secondly, I want to thank Tess Cooper for recording the interview, for watching me eat pie on Tuesday evening, and for being my partner in crime at the Treasury Club. You are awesome. I think you should have edited out all my twat moments on the interview, but you’re still a legend.

Thirdly, I want to give a HUGE shout out to my beloved Kerry, Kerry my wife, Kerry my best best friend, Kerry who one day wore a batman hoodie to poetry and the end result was me winning a poetry slam with a poem called Bats. And I love Star Trek Voyager, I don’t think I made that clear enough last night.

And obviously I need to thank my parents (this is turning into a right little academy award ceremony, isn’t it?) who I never read my poetry to because it has swearing in it and sometimes its a bit rude and I always think you won’t be proud of me if I show you my poems- well there’s one at the bottom of this blog, and its called Bats- there’s a little bit of swearing in it, but its from the heart, and I hope you like it almost as much as I love bats and you.

https://soundcloud.com/#words-at-play-mmuc/sounds-at-play-raps-bats-and

Link

You may have remembered me banging on about my play, Some Paradise, which finished its run in the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre yesterday. Well, here is a review of the play by the Chester Chronicle, so you can learn what a real bona fide critic made of it! Have a gander, learn about the characters and the AMAZING cast and crew that brought them to life, and be all like ‘d’aw, if ONLY I’d gone to Chester and seen it!’. Seriously, weep. It was the best thing since Shakespeare.

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/whats-on/theatre/review-paradise-grosvenor-park-young-5754051

Thanks to the folk at Chester Chronicle and Michael Green for being so supportive of the project, and as ever thanks to Chester Performs, Grosvenor Park Company and co for being the brains behind it!

Some Paradise

This summer, whilst everyone else was living it up and enjoying heatwaves, I was working on a play for the Grosvenor Park Young Theatre Company. The play’s called Some Paradise, it’s my debut play, and it is currently in rehearsals with a phenonomal cast and crew headed by amazing director Elisa Amesbury. It’s going to be performed in the fantastic Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre this Sunday and Monday. There’s more info on the website, which is here: http://www.chesterperforms.com/youngtheatre/ and if you’re in Chester this weekend, well, you know what to do! Come down and see it!