Issue 14

Issue 14, December 2010

www.dur.ac.uk/grove

ENGLISH WRITING • EVENTS COVERAGE ASIAN LITERATURE TRANSLATIONS STUDENT WRITING

XIV

THE TEAM’S PAGE Well, the snow may be blocking the path to lectures but it certainly hasn’t impeded on your ability to send in excellent contributions to the second issue of term!

As usual, we have English Writing, Student Writing, Centrefold, Events and Translations sections for your perusal. Our English section is themed around local writers’ work to launch our ‘Breaking the Bubble’ project, which we are setting up to encourage greater collaboration between The Grove and local creative writing ventures, so watch out for more on this next term. We also have an Asian writing themed Translations section with lots of exciting offerings.

This issue also sees the magazine branching out to work alongside various other student projects in Durham. In Centrefold, we have an informative and compelling article by Ed Massey about the ‘Kenya Collective’ film documentary made by Durham students over the summer; the film will be shown in the Assembly Rooms at 8pm on 12th December. In addition to this, we hope to work with The Afghan Appeal charity next term, and join forces with the excellent Vane Tempest Sessions (live bands from around the country every Saturday from 7:45, see the Facebook page for further details).

Once again, thanks to the team for all their support and hard work; we’ll also be recruiting for people to take over the exec next year, so if you’re interested in getting involved with the editing/production side of the magazine, please drop us a line at: grove@dur.ac.uk. This is also the email address for any submissions or queries, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Once again, thanks to everyone who’s supported The Grove throughout the year; have a wonderfully creative Christmas!

Enjoy!

-The Grove Team

THE GROVE IS FUNDED BY

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CONTENTS ENGLISH WRITING

EVENTS

“Swan Hunter Viking” page 4

by Keith Armstrong “Valentine” by Tom Pickard 5 “Briggflatts” by Basil Bunting 6 “Love in a Space Suit” 10

by James Kirkup “The Sound of Snipe” by Linda France 11

“Ian McMillan Interview”

by Benjamin Dory “Losing It to David Cassidy”

by Catherine Smith “Catherine Smith Interview”

by Rowena Knight “A Doll’s House Review”

by Emily Chester “The Loom” by Anne Stevenson “Anne Stevenson Interview”

by Rebecca Sheppard

STUDENT WRITING “Writing Poetry” by Bex Hainsworth “With Purpose” by Clare Davison “Birdsong” by Rowena Knight “St Girons” by Ralf Webb “Floor 11” by Ralf Webb “Last Cigarette” by Ettie Holland “Night Rain” by Jamie Baxter “The Nose Garden” by Gwen Kent “Post” by Tom Trennery “On Raindrops”

by Thirthankar Chakraborty “Timeless” by Jan Vincent Felix “Warning” by Bex Hainsworth

12 12 13 14 15 16 17 17 18 19

28 29 31 32 33

TRANSLATIONS “Chinese Symbology”

by François Cheng “Chinese Calligraphy”

by François Cheng “Bringing In the Wine” by Li Bai “The Silence of My Love”

by Han Yong-woon “Those who know the Buddha”

by Rukmani Devi “When I was a Child”

by Unknown

20 20

CENTREFOLD “Kenya Collective” by Ed Massey “Lament for Borders” by John Clegg “DSU Careers Fair”

by William Pilgrim Jr.

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22 24 25

36 38 38 39 39

EVENTS LISTINGS

41

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

42

THE GROVE TEAM ARE Editor-in-Chief: Emily Chester; Deputy Editor: Lyndsey Fineran; Acting Editor: Alex Mason; Deputy Acting Editors: Ettie Holland, Sasha Magill; Section Editors: John Clegg, Rebecca Sheppard, Kate Hutchings, Alexis Grigorieff, Lyndsey Fineran Sub-Editors: Ella Colquhoun-Cole, Will Hanson, Astha Sharma-Pokharel, LeeMey Goh, Louis Campbell-Stievenard, Emma Charles, Jamie Baxter, Laura Mosley, Jess Sorah, Sponsorship Officer: Tom Trennery Development Officer: Maxime Dargaud-Fons

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ENGLISH WRITING Over the coming issues of The Grove we are hoping to set up an exciting ‘Breaking the Bubble’ project in which we get involved with the local writing community beyond the Durham student population. In anticipation of this your English Language section have decided to give you a taste of some of the fine poetry that has been produced by writers who live or have lived in this beautiful region. Enjoy!

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Swan Hunter Viking I am more inclined to prowl the Jules Verne lanes of Amiens or the backstreets of a Brecht Berlin than shank the Black Mountains of the massive States.

My nose points dripping cold from Shields to Scandinavia; my battered cheeks reek of North Sea cod.

Instincts lead me to Munch and to Courbet, to Hasek and De Nerval.

This Geordie’s inspiration comes alive in translations of teeming Oslo streets or dark Prenslauerberg cobbles not from the vomit of the sprawling Bowery.

Baltic folk tunes still whistle in my ears.

I get the ghettoblaster belt of Smetena clearer than the wail of Dylan.

The sexy accordions of Montmartre are in my blood.

I face this way: my poetry sings with euro-balladry; my feet itch with traditional rhymes: border ballads in The Blink Bonny, fiddles leaping in Sandy Bell’s.

I am no modernist.

I see my footprints in the snowy past on the Old Tyne Bridge, or outside a bar in Reykjavik or on an icy lake of vodka.

Pushkin floats in my dreams, Verlaine is on my lips, 4

ENGLISH WRITING and Rimbaud hammers knives inside my brain.

I cannot swim in Atlantic water, only the German Sea will do.

I think my father built me Northern ships, a Swan Hunter Viking raiding the flooded dictionary of my soul.

I happily drift across the square in wintery Groningen, smoke myself silly on Prinsengracht and leap with light at Oeteldonk.

I once skipped school with boys in Heaton and licked the breasts of Ipswich Jenny.

At home I am always dabbling my naked feet in lovely sand, my fingers wet with new poems.

Think on Northumbrian bards, my fellow country gents, I tell you now that I would rather die dead drunk in a pool of Swinburne’s wine than in a frozen field of Bunting.

TOM PICKARD

Valentine simplicity say sleep or shall we shower have an apple you are as I need water

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Keith Armstrong

Tom Pickard

ENGLISH WRITING

shall I move? do you dream? shallow snow flesh melt this BASIL BUNTING

Briggflatts, from I Brag, sweet tenor bull, descant on Rawthey’s madrigal, each pebble its part for the fells’ late spring.

Dance tiptoe, bull, black against may.

Ridiculous and lovely chase hurdling shadows morning into noon.

May on the bull’s hide and through the dale furrows fill with may, paving the slowworm’s way.

A mason times his mallet to a lark’s twitter, listening while the marble rests, lays his rule at a letter’s edge, fingertips checking, till the stone spells a name naming none, a man abolished.

Painful lark, labouring to rise!

The solemn mallet says: In the grave’s slot he lies. We rot.

Decay thrusts the blade, wheat stands in excrement

6

ENGLISH WRITING trembling Rawthey trembles.

Tongue stumbles, ears err for fear of spring.

Rub the stone with sand, wet sandstone rending roughness away. Fingers ache on the rubbing stone.

The mason says: Rocks happen by chance.

No one here bolts the door, love is so sore.

Stone smooth as skin, cold as the dead they load on a low lorry by night.

The moon sits on the fell but it will rain.

Under sacks on the stone two children lie, hear the horse stale, the mason whistle, harness mutter to shaft, felloe to axle squeak, rut thud the rim, crushed grit.

Stocking to stocking, jersey to jersey, head to a hard arm, they kiss under the rain, bruised by their marble bed.

In Garsdale, dawn; at Hawes, tea from the can.

Rain stops, sacks steam in the sun, they sit up.

Copper-wire moustache, sea-reflecting eyes and Baltic plainsong speech declare: By such rocks men killed Bloodaxe.

Fierce blood throbs in his tongue, lean words.

Skulls cropped for steel caps

7

Basil Bunting

Basil Bunting

ENGLISH WRITING

huddle round Stainmore.

Their becks ring on limestone, whisper to peat.

The clogged cart pushes the horse downhill.

In such soft air they trudge and sing, laying the tune frankly on the air.

All sounds fall still, fellside bleat, hide-and-seek peewit.

Her pulse their pace, palm countering palm, till a trench is filled, stone white as cheese jeers at the dale.

Knotty wood, hard to rive, smoulders to ash; smell of October apples.

The road again, at a trot.

Wetter, warmed, they watch the mason meditate on name and date.

Rain rinses the road, the bull streams and laments.

Sour rye porridge from the hob with cream and black tea, meat, crust and crumb.

Her parents in bed the children dry their clothes.

He has untied the tape of her striped flannel drawers before the range. Naked on the pricked rag mat his fingers comb thatch of his manhood’s home.

Gentle generous voices weave over bare night words to confirm and delight 8

ENGLISH WRITING till bird dawn.

Rainwater from the butt she fetches and flannel to wash him inch by inch, kissing the pebbles.

Shining slowworm part of the marvel.

The mason stirs: Words!

Pens are too light.

Take a chisel to write.

Every birth a crime, every sentence life.

Wiped of mould and mites would the ball run true?

No hope of going back.

Hounds falter and stray, shame deflects the pen.

Love murdered neither bleeds nor stifles but jogs the draftsman’s elbow.

What can he, changed, tell her, changed, perhaps dead?

Delight dwindles. Blame stays the same.

Brief words are hard to find, shapes to carve and discard: Bloodaxe, king of York, king of Dublin, king of Orkney.

Take no notice of tears; letter the stone to stand over love laid aside lest insufferable happiness impede flight to Stainmore, to trace lark, mallet, becks, flocks and axe knocks.

Dung will not soil the slowworm’s mosaic. Breathless lark drops to nest in sodden trash; 9

Basil Bunting

Basil Bunting

ENGLISH WRITING

Rawthey truculent, dingy.

Drudge at the mallet, the may is down, fog on fells. Guilty of spring and spring’s ending amputated years ache after the bull is beef, love a convenience.

It is easier to die than to remember.

Name and date split in soft slate a few months obliterate.

JAMES KIRKUP

Love in a Space Suit Dear, when on some distant planet We, love’s protestants, alight, How, in our deep-space-diver suits Shall our devoted limbs unite You shall have those ruby lips In a helmet-bowl, inverted On your golden locks, enclosed: Your starry eyes shall be inserted In a plastic contact-vizor To keep out the stellar cold.

And your teeth of pearls shall chatter On a tongue too hot to hold.

Dear, those pretty little fingers Shall be cased with lead around, And your snowy breasts, my dove, With insulating tape be bound.

There your lovely legs, my sweet In asbestos boots shall stump; And a grim all-metal corset Shall depress that witty rump.

How shall I, in suit of iron Or of aluminium Communicate my body’s fire In love’s planetarium?

Darling, must we kiss by knocking Bowl on bowl, a glassy bliss?

10

ENGLISH WRITING Must we lie apart for aye, Not far, but not as near as this?

Nay! before I will renounce My lust for earth and love of you, I shall have us both, dear, fitted With a space suit made for two.

LINDA FRANCE

The Sound of Snipe A small motor hidden under a pillow on the other side of the room.

A stringed instrument from the steppes of Mongolia.

A she-goat in frost by moonlight.

The wind says its own name.

A horse dreaming of racing against the North Sea. The last word of an ancient ash.

The horse winning.

A wooden ladder leading nowhere.

An arrow zeroing through air just before it lands a bullseye.

How a cobweb’s heard by a spider spinning it.

Gallinago gallinago sung as a round by a choir of naked women.

A heart lit up with listening to another.

A man from Sweden swinging two tail feathers stuck in a cork on a string round his head to prove it’s a drum, skinless.

And, listen up, more than one is a wisp, thinner smaller

farther.

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James Kirkup

STUDENT WRITING Winter truly has arrived in Durham. With the cold days and dark nights, what better inspiration do you need to curl up and get scribbling as you watch the snow flurry by your window? So, this may be a slightly idealized scene but the principle remains; stay warm and stay writing!

As ever it is a pleasure to read your work so please keep writing and enjoy the last moments Michaelmas term brings. See you in the new year!

BEX HAINSWORTH

Writing Poetry I lay you down like a page, warm beneath the sun of a desk lamp.

Our bodies curve into vowels and mouths shape soft, exotic verbs.

These fingers are quills.

CLARE DAVISON

With Purpose There is an attic box filled With letters she thought she had burned, Letters that thought they were love.

But there is a basement box filled With letters that knew they were plans, And she has worn a cord of three strands On her left hand these three-and-twenty years.

It’s more than two decades since the dark-haired girl Entered their world and saw it was good; A little less since the fair-haired one came With worried brown eyes and uncertain smile; And not quite so long since the red-headed boy Made his appearance on Christmas Eve Eve.

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STUDENT WRITING Eighteen years now since she stood at the gate And learned the lesson that holds her heart still: That girl must be shared, and she’ll never look back.

The younger won’t try ‘til she knows she is able, But the elder, she’s heedless, and willing to fall, And the little boy runs With his arms stretched behind.

Now she lies on the bed, hands under her head, And he sits in the white corner chair, Makes her laugh ‘til she cries, and there looking on Their middle one stands in the middle of the room And knows they will never be broken.

ROWENA KNIGHT

Birdsong Back then, birds flew out my mouth all the time.

I refused to cage them with my teeth, chose instead to watch them flap against the blue of sky.

The looks I got didn’t matter, or the whispers about the feathers in my hair.

I’d let those creatures emerge from my lips, slick wings beating the space at the top of a classroom. Or watching from a tree as I ate my lunch, beady eyes curious.

Now there is silence where wings once fluttered.

My mouth has become a nest.

Each secret a smooth warm egg to hold on my tongue, to protect.

And when I can’t help but cough out something 13

Clare Davison

Rowena Knight

STUDENT WRITING

I don’t want to remember, I am surprised by its stillness, the smallness of the oval in my palm. Each freckled with a different time.

Soon the egg is shut away in a drawer, cold, robbed of its becoming.

My collection rolls around each time I open it, that hollow turning replacing the birdsong in my head.

RALF WEBB

St Girons Women gather, the sky is overcast muted uniforms weave thru stationary vehicles a man tosses coins into a bum’s dull black cap and the workers drink wine sharing stories and candid sensitivity smoke rolls perfectly from the tongue of a lady sipping coffee and ignoring strangers staring at her lips strangers speaking quietly to themselves sauntering thru archaic cobbled streets spending their money freely one-eyed men fish beside the lazy river and preach fat words untangling the mystery of life, casually gamblers cross the bridge to the Union café 14

STUDENT WRITING feather-capped and dusty lovers kiss warmly in the old stone square aware of their own mystery they lift eyes sky-ward and fresh, blooming emerge the sun the whistler emerges from the red-wood door and to the sky points his ivory gun.

Floor 11 They paint the walls with muted blues and greens, greys to wash away the foul foreign stench of optimism though all the needles shine and glisten.

The hallways dull endless unmarked dark labyrinth laced with the seraphic cries of territorial family happiness forced by the ennui of visitation rites where words fall dramatically into a dull whimper of exultation a whisper – speak slowly, softly – a golden whisper

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Ralf Webb

Ralf Webb

STUDENT WRITING

of salvation lost quickly in the tempest of ivory-faced ill the nurses hanging their heads up-down to heaven the elevator chiming FLOOR 11 the nurses hang their heads where the bald men wait to die.

ETTIE HOLLAND

Last Cigarette Smoke unfurls lazily, Lit by the dull glow of the lamp That keeps the dark, As well as the light, at bay.

It almost appears that The haze is sucking it in, Rolling it around In its glass-shard mouth, Spitting it out In belches of delicate cancerous fog That rolls, with ease, Towards the window and the night That’s too big to hold it.

A different tone, this cigarette, From the ones that came before.

Tainted with the residue of daylight’s laughter, And tender with caresses; A lover with their guard down, Spent, lingering haze of indifference Protects from the razor edges of the night.

Cruel mistress, Inhales and retains The billowing imprint of our last embrace, 16

STUDENT WRITING

Ettie Holland

Leaving memories that tiptoe Back into the hollow of your void While you lie, Lifeless, in the ashtray, A sullen reminder of the oblivion that we shared.

JAMIE BAXTER

Night Rain …suddenly your tongue like a mulled wine Slides fire, –I wonder what the point of life is.

Berryman’s Sonnets, 4 Once, in the rain, something caught me, it must have been her, such was that warmth.

And then, waking to the fall towards its own vacant sleep, I wondered the point – I must not cling to anything, must not cup my hands to stop its falling.

How can I depend on any kind of warmth?

Yet, how can I forget the rain, how immediate that night is, forever?

GWEN KENT

The Nose Garden Veera had a cold.

She went to the local surgery. The cold had stopped her sleeping and dark phlegm the colour of brewed tea shot painfully through her lungs. Also, she was lonely.

The doctor said: ‘with the latest scientific advancements, the common cold should not need to cause you worry. All you need is a new set of lungs and a new nose. All will be well.’

The operation was quick. When Veera woke up she could breathe perfectly. She was presented a mirror which showed her a sharp new nose, different, surrounded by stitches. ‘Where are my old nose and lungs, please?’

17

Gwen Kent

STUDENT WRITING

‘We’ve disposed of them for you. You won’t be needing them again.’

As Veera walked home she mourned for that loss of her own body, her old nose that had been with her, kept her alive, for over twenty years. Those lungs that had grown with her and given her her first laugh, her first words. Now she wondered at the last words they had given her, those words that demanded the partnership end.

That night, driven by sentiment, Veera broke into the surgery and located her lungs and nose, attached to one another still by the long, knobbly trachea, in the bin of the operating theatre. They were still breathing doggedly, hacking and spluttering, the last juices of Veera’s own body leaking from them into her own hands.

‘I’ve come back for you,’ Veera cooed, ‘I’ll keep you safe.’ She took the lungs and nose home. ‘I can’t keep you inside: people would talk. And if you’re outside I can’t let a fox get you.’

Veera thought of the perfect place. Lit by moon puddles and the neighbour’s sensor lights, she went into her garden and dug a pit. She placed the lungs deep inside of it, pushed earth around the trachea to keep it upright and the nose above ground, so that it could breathe. As she finished, watering the soil to ease the lung’s trauma, she heard the pace of the nose’s inhalation slowing. It was calm. It felt safe.

Its new body was the earth.

Veera wiped the phlegm that dripped from her old nose, night after night, until the cold passed and her planted lungs could breathe properly again. She mourned that the doctor had given her the power to make a bad decision. Humans will always make a bad decision when given the opportunity.

And then, as the winter came to an end, she noticed neighbours, friends, all with different noses, all with fresh new breath, phlegm free. She raided the surgery bins at night and found lungs piled on lungs, tracheas twisted and noses blocked, neglected and panting and dripping.

TOM TRENNERY

Post Yes. Now the blue moon inside brings mountains; I’m hidden in what I’ve given. There was this quote that made thought but not in me, instead I thought of potential futures. Right now, I’m less than a bundle of signifiers, I’m just a husk than remembers and regrets. Fantasising profusely and deeply on the future. Because, surely, that’s what catches and collects. split down lines drawn only for the purpose of looking back, present always. it’s important to think about all this as drying up, perhaps I am maturing. that’s concerning.

18

STUDENT WRITING

Thirthankar Chakraborty

THIRTHANKAR CHAKRABORTY

On Raindrops A Raindrop’s joy: To drop and splatter The heart’s content:

To love and shatter.

A joyful leap,

A headlong dive,

To grasp thin air

In vain, to strive.

Fleeting love

Does peep and fly,

As Raindrops fall Down the sky, To love and hope

For Earth’s embrace;

To hope till hope

Wins her grace.

But hope’s in vain, For Earth’s disdain

Turn each Drop

To woeful tears.

Yet Drops rain down, Rejoice in pain:

Filling Earth’s thirst

Fulfills their aim!

Loved or lost, Matters not, Having loved The end’s forgot.

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Jan Vincent Felix

STUDENT WRITING

JAN VINCENT FELIX

Timeless You have broken me open like a great clock; struck dumb, unorchestrated – at last, light can shed some curious insight to the obscure machinery, elaborate ruse of diminishing cogs, and to the nest of mice, long vacated, in the corner.

Some wheels and gears still idly turn; hands twitch, erratic like, towards dawn but you have taken from me that vital chink of red quartz and now time just flows from me and is not measured.

BEX HAINSWORTH

Warning The archaeologist, her hands red with earth, finds our words buried deep within dust and dirt.

They have slipped so far into the soil; they are almost archaic.

Carefully, she retrieves the fragments some sharp, glint like spears: words born of an unrequited love.

Others smooth - seem new - curved in (false) hope.

The shades of clay vary.

The darker, heavier pieces - mine.

Crushed smaller with the pressure; 20

STUDENT WRITING

Bex Hainsworth

but our passing was never going to be easy.

The lighter, larger ones yours.

You fought the agony admirably always the stronger one. You kept it together better than I ever could.

And so the pieces are fitted into poetry or something beautiful. Not pots or pans ... maybe patterned vases, coloured to the brim with our voices.

They are shipped off to a museum somewhere; because love does not change with time this mosaic of words needs to be heard ... our warning to the rest of the world.

The Nutcracker Tchaikovsky

St. Aidan's College Dining Hall

Egmont Overture Beethoven

Wednesday 8th December 8.30pm

Peer Gynt Suite No.2 Grieg

Includes free mince pies

A Selection of Christmas Carols

ÂŁ5 (ÂŁ3 DUMS)

hill.orchestra@dur.ac.uk

Durham University Hill Orchestra Christmas Concert 2010 21

CENTREFOLD This issue’s Centrefold is a free-ranging selection of essays taking in Kenya, the sadly departed Borders bookshop, and a somewhat cynical look at Durham’s Careers Fair. Next issue will be a Twilight Special, so if you have anything you’d like to get off your chest about the Robert Pattison and his cohorts please send it to grove@dur.ac.uk before the deadline.

ED MASSEY

Kenya Collective “My generation has the best opportunity to take this country, Kenya, into a future of greatness, prosperity and greater freedom. This is because we are blissfully unaware of the bitter scars that impaired the judgement of the previous generations, scars that allowed them to plunder the country in the same way it was plundered by those they fought: the colonialists.

But at the same time, it is my generation that has internalized the ideals that these old people fought for: freedom, justice, fairness, and a world of and united by its plurality.”

– Al Kags, Living Memories Independence in Kenya was declared in December 1963, putting to an end a brutal colonial history of almost a century. Almost 50 years later, mass tribal violence swept Kenya in the aftermath of a widely disputed electoral result in 2007.

Last June, my fellow filmmaker Duncan Proctor and I were commissioned to film a group of five Durham actors as they stayed in Nairobi for a month attempting to collaborate with Kenyan actors. The aim was to devise, rehearse and perform an original piece at a Nairobi theatre at the end of the month. The theatre troupe called themselves Kenya Collective.

A week before we arrived a new referendum was passed in Kenya, ensuring that our arrival coincided with a sense of optimism and renewed enthusiasm towards a now seemingly stable political system. Many of the early interviews we took with the Kenyan actors centred on this new wave of cheer radiating from the previously dank Nairobi streets. Lilian Olembo, one of the Kenyan actors, mentioned that she had bought her first Kenyan flag days before we met. Most actors showed a deep sense of patriotic remorse at the election violence two years earlier, in which almost 900 people were killed. When pressed for the reasons behind the outbreak of such extreme violence, the Kenyans struggled for a response. Tribalism had long been a problem, mentioned Joshua Muraya, but had at least remained below the surface.

The catalyst of a rigged election, it seemed, was enough to set a riotous atmosphere in motion, within which tribal war erupted.

Duncan and I attempted to structure the documentary with two parallel storylines. The first, a fly-on-the-wall account of Kenya Collective, capturing the joys 22

CENTREFOLD

Ed Massey

and stresses of putting on a show in a foreign land, as well as following the group on their journey outside of the rehearsal room. The second, an attempt to talk to the Nairobi people about the problems Kenya currently faced through a series of interviews with both the local actors and a series of charities located within Nairobi.

Kenya’s problematic national identity can be loosely described as follows: tribalism, corruption, education and AIDS. Though the tribal violence ended conclusively in 2008, the memories are clearly still etched into the minds of a young and impressionable nation – 70% of the Kenyan population are 25 years old or younger. Such a youthful population, and the lack of collective experience on show might account for the educational problems Kenya faces, though far more likely is the corruption prevalent in most figures of authority in the country. Despite the referendum, the rigged election is too recent a memory for trust to develop, while bribery of policemen is rife.

One by one we probed each issue, and while Kenyan responses when asked about corruption and tribalism were still raw and passionate, in contrast were the measured responses to the AIDS epidemic. One of the great misconceptions I had about Kenya before heading out was a widespread neglect of the disease. On the contrary, at almost every turn was another sign, lecture, or demonstration concerning the disease. Nick, a particularly promiscuous member of the cast, sauntered into one rehearsal with a familiar grin on his face – when asked lightly whether he had been ‘safe’, the answer came quickly and seriously. “Of course.”

In addition to rehearsing their own work, the Kenya Collective team lent their actors to a few performances of Al Kags’s work, Living Memories. Al Kags was a writer who compiled and wrote up a number of interviews he took with survivors of Kenya’s colonial period, forming the book Living Memories. The stories told within the book were brutal, with almost every tale filled with brutality, slavery and rape at the hands of the British imperialists.

There seemed to me to be a certain paradox in what Kags was saying in the foreword to his book (shown above). On the one hand, it seemed, young Kenyans were in a position to change because there was no underlying distress at past wrongs.

Their outlook was future-orientated. At the same time, Kags seemed to suggest, the new generation owed it to themselves to acquaint themselves with elements of Kenya’s dark past. Certainly, reaction to the performances, in which cast members would perform lengthy monologues while re-enactments took place backstage, were almost entirely negative. At one point a father in the audience covered his daughter’s ears and eyes as yet another rape scene unfolded onstage.

The necessity of such re-enactment is something the documentary seeks to question. While the memory of such monstrosities should not be diminished, I was left wondering whether the stage was the best medium with which to remind people of their past. Indeed, Kenya Collective’s original piece Spirit of the Nation, which was written entirely by the cast members, seemed to strike a fairer balance between topicality and entertainment. It occurred to me that the original material did not shy away from discussing Kenya’s problems, but nor did it beat the audience around 23

Ed Massey

CENTREFOLD

the head with them. At the premiere of the play, a comical scene about two children discussing AIDS received the greatest laugh of the night.

I left the five-week shoot with a sense of cautious optimism. From what I had seen, and from what Kenyan people had mentioned in the many interviews we conducted, Kenya seemed well aware of the problems it faced, as well as ashamed of its recent past. The actors we spent the majority of our time with remain the highlight of the project – interested, kind, generous and clever - I couldn’t help but feel that the future appeared bright, and that the enthusiasm we encountered was fully justified.

‘UKUMBI’ will be screened in the Assembly Rooms at 8pm on 12th December.

JOHN CLEGG

Lament for Borders (I wrote this exactly a year ago today, and then put it in the drawer and forgot about it.

It’s printed here as a reminder of what’s already been lost in the recession, a depressing sign of things to come.)

Despite the free bus which will take you most of the way, if you live in Durham it is very unlikely you will ever find yourself in Teeside Retail Park on the edge of Stockton, and for the most part I think you are wise to avoid it; especially since this morning, when Borders UK went into administration and the one reason for making the trip disintegrated with it. This article was originally going to be much more objective, but last night I sat until closing time in their coffeeshop thinking about what the chain had meant to me personally and I got so doggone lonesome. So this is a lament, or as Johnny Cash would put it ‘a slow, ballad-type number’.

I’d meet people in Borders before going to the pub, because it was the only bookshop in Cambridge which stayed open till 9 and it was a warmer place to wait than a doorway. Idling through the poetry section, I picked up a book by Charles Bukowski and for the first and only time in my life was complimented on my taste by a till assistant, beginning my ongoing journey down the endless road of literary pretension. I don’t know who the boss of Borders was and I won’t dignify him by looking him up on Wikipedia but it was the staff on the shopfloor who made Borders great; I was going to say the sales team, but for the most part they were cheerily uninterested in making any sales. The opportunity to browse is vital for a bookshop.

As that wise old bird Joe Brodsky wrote, ‘In cultural matters, it is not demand that creates supply, it is the other way round. You read Dante because he wrote the Divine Comedy, not because you felt the need for him: you would not have been able to conjure either the man or the poem.’

Borders sold me things I had never felt the need of; the experience of them created and filled a vacancy at the same time. When I was fifteen they sold me 24

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Alkaline Trio and Tom Waits and Radiohead. When I was twenty they sold me Kafka and Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath’s collected poems. It’s all cliché I know but it became cliché for a reason, and when I was making a final round last night in Teeside I saw one of those Our Staff Recommend… notes under Plath and it said She’s the real thing…taut and wild and kinder than her reputation, and underneath in different handwriting Read ‘Edge’, which I did this morning. ‘Her bare / Feet seem to be saying: // We have come so far, it is over.’

I was going to end the lament on that note, but I was talking to one of the assistants, whom I’ll call Regine for the time being. She knew perfectly well she’d be out of work

by Christmas, ‘but it’ll probably save me money’, she explained. ‘Everything I earn I spend here anyway.’

Goodnight Borders. Goodnight decent staff who knew what they were doing.

Goodnight UK bookselling everywhere except the internet. Goodnight the best selection of literary magazines at any chain shop ever. (Goodnight ‘Fantastic Man’, I always harboured ambitions of making your cover one day. Goodnight ‘Cowboy Décor’, you reminded me with every issue what I loved about America. Goodnight ‘Frosty Horse Warfare’, I’ve just made you up but I’m sure Borders would have stocked you in any case.) Goodnight Paul Muldoon and Daniel Weissbort and Charles Simic. Goodnight set texts. Goodnight Johnny Cash and Arcade Fire. Goodnight overpriced selection of DVDs. Goodnight newspapers you were allowed to take up to Starbucks, read, and put back on the shelves. Goodnight late opening hours, free wine at book launches, ineptly organised children’s parties. Goodnight to your administrators who will be very happy this Christmas I have no doubt. Goodnight Borders’ Day of the Grinch. Goodnight overcrowded poorly laid-out store in York and Goodnight brilliant store in Leeds and Goodnight everyone who introduced me to books or music or films, you were a credit to your trade and Goodnight to the girl who stopped the escalator when I got my scarf caught in the mechanism, you were an immense help, thank you and maybe I can do something for you one day.

WILLIAM PILGRIM JR.

DSU Careers Fair, 20 October 2010: Review The students wandering into the DSU, on a fine October morning when the trees are changing, the countryside is still sunny and there are really many better things to be doing, look more desperate than usual; and there is a new edge to the overheard tail-end of conversations, and perhaps a new smell too. Could it be fear? Since our government (under advice from that delightful robber baron Lord Browne) made it official policy to shit on universities from a great height, a million vague schemes of MAs and PhDs have been quietly expiring – and with a generation of students fencing off a little corner of their soul with crime-scene tape, perhaps forever, what’s left but that horrendous spectre of A Real Job? 25

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But the stalls set out today aren’t for real jobs. These companies aren’t companies – they’re gigantic cow’s stomachs, bubbling with horrendous half-digested profit and loss and producing nothing but ominous blasts of methane. As workplaces, they are probably not actually Hell, but judging by the vacant stares of the ill-suited and heavy-hearted characters behind the stalls, they can’t be far off. The woman at the Nestle stand has retained a manic energy and is encouraging people to build towers with Kit Kats. No-one asks about her company’s murderous powdered milk advertisements across the developing world. (Of course, I don’t ask either – because it would be such an unpleasant antisocial thing to do – but really, if you can’t defend it why would you work for them?) Nestle seems to be a place of much enforced fun and little everyday morality. Crooked gun-pushers BAE have invited some hulking thuggish villains to run their stall, which is unsurprising. If you choose to work there, may the fruits of your labour be visited on your children.

Free gifts and giveaways this year were in remarkably short supply. Still, the judges have decided to award prizes in the following fields: Pen. The award this year goes to Mercer for their sturdy, well-built ballpoint in a choice of colours (orange, purple, electric blue). It looks quite tasteful and it doesn’t fall apart if you bite on it. Runner-up is Marks and Spencer, whose combination biro/highlighter is a clever idea, but perhaps the flimsiest bit of kit our judges have ever come across.

Highlighter. Lloyds Banking Group run a very grumpy show this year, but their highlighter is delightful – a rich green tone in a pen of professional standard. The horrid slogan, ‘Underlining the Difference’, is at least printed in a very small font.

Notepad. Metaswitch Networks offer this year’s only whole-hearted notepad.

Spiral-bound, unfortunately with a logo on every page so no good for letter-paper.

They seemed quite a pleasant company, though, that makes useful real things not horrendous financial innovations no-one understands, so we don’t have any hesitation in awarding them this coveted honour.

Post-It Notes. A new category this year, with several contenders. Best of the bunch, it pains me to report, are serial incompetents Network Rail. The notes are sticky and have a decent amount of blank space. It’s nice to know this band of overpaid jaffartists can do one thing right.

Stressballs. Not many about – and none in exciting shapes. Morgan Stanley (no web address provided) offer the best in a field of one: it looks ugly, in unprepossessing blue with a prominent seam, and on squeezing feels hollow and unpleasant – like your life will feel if you work for them.

Honourable Mentions. Accenture, for their little packs of upmarket jelly beans – always welcome. Durham Careers Service, for the half-bottle of Vittel Water. I think if you stayed and listened to the crazy lady for long enough, you might have got a Kit Kat Chunky of your own, which would have earned Nestle a place in this list as well.

Bottom of the barrel is Sainsbury’s, offering free samples of their mediocre cheddar; you’d do better in your average Morrisons on a Sunday afternoon.

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EVENTS This past month has clearly demonstrated that the calibre of literary events in Durham is just as impressive without its worthy book festival! To celebrate the recent wonderful poetry readings with Anne Stevenson and Catherine Smith, this issue brings you interviews with both of them, alongside an exclusive, yet-to-be-published poem from Anne. We also have a review of Grey College’s production of A Doll’s House, as well as another interview with Ian McMillan, who presented Radio 3’s ‘The Verb’ live from Durham. Happy reading!

BENJAMIN DORY INTERVIEWS IAN MCMILLAN Do you feel like a full pack of eggs today?

Oh, yes, like a full 18-pack of eggs.

Having written that: all the books you got out of the library when you were young were written by people who lived in Surrey, not Yorkshire Coalfield. Do you feel that the literary atmosphere of the North of the UK has begun to rival that of the South?

I genuinely do. There are lots of great writers from the North writing about places like Lancaster and Durham, and there are a lot of literary magazines; one that I used to subscribe to is Poetry Durham. I think the North has been undergoing a kind of renaissance.

Have you found any literary inspiration from the city of Durham, such as when writing for Durham Mysteries?

Yes, a part of Mysteries was that I knew it would be performed in open air on the Sands, and so I had to write something that would reflect well within that big landscape. I’ve always found the city of Durham an inspiring place, as is the area, County Durham, and there are some wonderful villages such as Tow Law. Have you thought about writing about Durham?

I’m reading a book by a fantastic poet called Peter Riley, which is a book about Derbyshire and Staffordshire, where he has lived. I think maybe that’s what you have to do; you have to live somewhere at least for at a while to get a feel of it.

Otherwise you’d end up writing a kind of ‘tourist poem’ or ‘what I did on my holidays poem’, and I want to write resident poems.

One of the best aspects of your poetry is that regardless of how complex your ideas are, they 27

Ian McMillan Interview

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are often reasonably accessible. Does this mean that you would disagree with, for example, T. S. Eliot’s idea that ‘poets…at present must be difficult’?

I’m caught between two ideas really. The poems that I would read for pleasure are difficult American avant-garde poems or British poems of the Cambridge school.

But, on the other hand, I’m a populist and I like to entertain people, and somehow I try to tread the path between the two, and it is difficult.

Do you ever find being appointed as a poet who is attached to a particular organisation (through the role of poet in residence) either stunting or restrictive?

Yes it can be, because sometimes when there’s money involved that can cause changes. However, I always try to make those poems in residences more celebratory than anything else. For example, at Barnsley Football Club I would write each week about the matches, and they were meant to be celebratory and bardic. I see those kinds of instances as widening out the franchise and attracting people who wouldn’t normally be attracted to poetry.

I heard you describing yourself as a natural freelancer; do you feel that this makes your life more interesting and unpredictable?

It does for me. I’ve never had a regular job, so for the last eight years my only regular thing has been ‘The Verb’ which is normally recorded on Wednesday nights, and that’s the centrepiece for my week, and I think that keeps me stimulated. If I had a job where I had to go to the same place every day I would find that restrictive.

Some people are more suited to it than others.

CATHERINE SMITH

Losing It to David Cassidy That hot evening, all through our clumsy fuck, David smiled down at me from the wall. His ironed hair, American teeth. Eyes on me, his best girl.

And his fingers didn’t smell of smoke, he didn’t nudge me onto my back, like you did, grunting as he unzipped my jeans, complaining You’re so bony, and demanding, Now you do something – 28

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hold it like this. David took my virginity in a room filled with white roses, having smoothed the sheets himself, slotted ‘How Can I Be Sure?’ into the tape machine. And when we were done he didn’t roll off, zip up and slouch downstairs to watch the end of Match of the Day with my brother, oh no, not David. He washed me, patted me dry with fat blue towels, his eyes brim-full of tears.

ROWENA KNIGHT INTERVIEWS CATHERINE SMITH What is your writing process?

I don’t have just one process. Very often it starts with just one word, idea, memory or situation, and that leads to a few muddled scribbles and copious notes in a notebook… If I sit and call upon the muse to inspire me, absolutely nothing happens. I find dreams very fruitful with their surreal nature; I’m very interested in what the unconscious can give us. So my writing process is random and chaotic. I’m generally attached to handwriting…I think there is something in that process of an idea going from your head down your arm and out through the pencil and onto the paper. I seem to need to see the shape of the word in handwriting to make it more real than typed onto a screen.

A lot of your poetry seems very raw and honest. How important is honesty to your writing?

I think my poems are emotionally honest, but not always factually honest; I am very happy to change facts if it fits the poem. I do think that if you’re going to write about experience you should be true to the emotions you experience at the time. I don’t see the point of sanitising it and I think that poetry has a very direct relation to feeling, so I was inspired by Sharon Olds to just go for it.

Do you think, though, that poetry should have a narrative of sorts injected into it?

Well mine do, and I think that is because I came to writing poetry after short stories, so in a way my poems are very condensed narratives. But a lot of poets don’t necessarily have that narrative element and instead have a profound thought, although I don’t seem to be able to do that. What I like about poetry is that you can leave the action halfway through: in fact, it’s better if you do. I think some of the better poems are quite unresolved.

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Catherine Smith Interview

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Yes, I often find that the trick is to know when to stop.

You have to leave it at a point that is intriguing and also quite anxious, so the reader can carry on mulling the poem over in their head. There is a kind of transaction between the writer and the reader, and the reader can construct their own reading.

I’m always quite amused when people come up and tell me what my poems are about, because they’re probably right! I know what they mean to me, but I think once they’re out there in the public domain you don’t own them anymore. The meaning is constructed by whoever reads them.

Your poems vary a lot in subject matter. Is there a particular subject you enjoy writing about or one that you find recurs throughout your work?

I like writing about eccentric people; I’m very drawn to people who act strangely. I think a lot of life is quite absurd and it’s important to celebrate absurdity and not to get bogged down in the thought that life should go a particular way. So I’m drawn to the gap between somebody’s public persona and their inner life, and I think that derives from storytelling and writing fiction. The lovely thing about that is that you can describe what somebody is doing or what is going on in their head. I write about landscape as a character. I’m very interested in dark fairy stories and their surrealism.

Your erotic poetry is brilliant, but have you ever felt awkward sharing such intimate information?

It helps to have a glass of wine! I’m quite wary of accepting poetry readings in January because I know there’s no comforting alcoholic blur to give me courage.

But I think if sex and erotic fantasy are part of your life, and I should imagine they are part of many people’s lives, then they are part of experience. The British are still quite uptight and prudish about sex, and yet at the same time we have a lot of sexualisation of culture, even to the extent of sexualising children. And sex can also be quite funny!

Have you ever had any awkward family moments?

Well I sent my parents a copy of The Butcher’s Hands and they just didn’t comment, and then I sent them a copy of Lip and they claimed it didn’t arrive! But they are in their seventies; they are entirely entitled to their own reaction. I think their way of dealing with it is to ignore it, and my husband just shakes his head and goes and paints something. But I think that when you write you shouldn’t censure yourself or worry about people’s reactions because you can never tell what they’ll be. If you worry about them too much then it compromises what you want to say.

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Emily Chester

EMILY CHESTER

Review of A Doll’s House (Grey College) Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is the ground-breaking play of 1879 which documents the transition of Nora Helmer from docile and regimented housewife to the independence-hungry woman who leaves her husband and children in pursuit of non-vicarious experience, that is, experience beyond her societal role as wife and mother. Ibsen claimed that his play was not solely about women’s liberation, but rather “a question of human rights”, and, indeed, the Grey College production of the play accentuated this quest for an intrinsic sense of freedom by establishing a potent atmosphere of domestic claustrophobia from which Nora must necessarily escape.

A major strength of this production lay in the pace of Nora’s realisation of her desire to break away from her environment. A Doll’s House is often criticised for the ending’s lack of credibility due to a seemingly too sudden change from “domesticated Nora” to “rebel Nora”. However, Juliet Maddock is to be praised for the effective contrast between her frenzied asides and her staid demeanour when addressing her husband. Here, the subtle yet communicative tonal shifts seamlessly depicted Nora’s progressive state of mind throughout the play.

Also key to Ibsen’s theories on drama is the preservation of a naturalistic stage setting. In A Doll’s House, the traditional bourgeois home (specifically, the livingroom of the home) constitutes this naturalistic approach. Certainly, such a setting was apt for the period in which Ibsen was writing, and for as long as domesticity was the norm for women. However, it is arguable that such a setting needs to be rejigged in order to remain relevant to a contemporary audience. The director of this production claimed that it deliberately fuses elements of the modern and the slightly more antiquated naturalistic setting, but other than the use of an Ipod to replace the piano during the tarantella scene this fusion was not as apparent or effective as it could have been. In order for the play to transcend its original provenance its dramatic upholstery surely needs to be rearranged even if this means a lack of strict deference to Ibsen’s technical ideals. With regard to the staging and lighting, there was much more potential as modernisation of the dramatic setting was an explicit aim of the director.

There were powerful and well-sustained performances from all of the major characters throughout, but perhaps at more crucial points in the play a greater sense of dramatic tension would have been welcomed. Specifically, the tarantella scene could have worked towards a greater sense of dramatic climax, as this was one of the pivotal points in the play in which Nora’s self-actualisation became externally apparent.

Although there was nothing lacking in adherence to the text or stage directions here, the spontaneity of the dance seemed somewhat lost in the performance itself.

Similarly, the lack of a door-slam at the very end of the play inhibited that cathartic release that any connoisseur of the play has grown to anticipate. However, in spite of 31

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these minor points, the Grey College production of the play was engaging, credible and compelling, and highlighted the continued relevance of Ibsen’s portrayal of the ever-enduring quest for human freedom.

ANNE STEVENSON

The Loom I drowned in sleep.

And once my lungs were gills, I watched my liquid shadow, fathoms deep, Weave through a trembling warp of light and hope a weft that kills.

No working hand Had anything to do with how the sea Hurled itself in salt against the sand, or how unfeelingly The shore forgot to be land and mimed the sea…

Or how, under the dream, One tightening thread Gathered those crooked strokes of light into a beam Through which I rose – not quite from the dead – more from the blame Fanned out in Micro-shards of extinct species threatening my head – Motes that might have been curses, or killer faces, Had they not welcomed me, as I woke, with human voices.

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Anne Stevenson Interview

REBECCA SHEPPARD INTERVIEWS ANNE STEVENSON Although you were born in Cambridge, England, you were educated in America and you’ve written critical works on Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop. Would you definitely ascribe yourself to the American lineage of poets?

When I grew up I was certainly American, but since moving to England, I am not so sure. Really I am a mid-Atlantic. The poet who influenced me most, at least to begin with, was Robert Frost. But I also loved W.B. Yeats very much, and let’s not forget to mention the Romantics; Keats especially. However, the only contemporary poet that I was really affected by was Elizabeth Bishop, and then, when Sylvia Plath burst upon the world, I recognised in Plath a voice of my own. I think there was a frustration around that time that didn’t properly emerge in Elizabeth Bishop’s generation. Of course, the person who influenced Plath was Robert Lowell, who was a great friend of Elizabeth Bishop’s! So I do feel that, fundamentally, I come from that nest of poets at that time; I suppose they are my family.

Are you ever aware of yourself as a typical or atypical female poet?

No I am not. I feel that poets are poets; just as Elizabeth Bishop did. Of course you write as a woman, because you write from experience, but I don’t feel necessarily worried or affected by feminist issues.

There appears to be a tendency in your poems for their speakers to deconstruct both themselves and their speech. Is self-evaluation necessary in poetry?

Well I do a lot of questioning of myself, but it’s really not so much a genuine questioning as a being amazed that one has got this far! It’s much more surprise at existence in general. So I think this evaluation is metaphysical as opposed to personal; it’s detached. I hope that my poems don’t feel sorry for myself. They may be awful, but they are also cheerful and half laughing.

So do you not feel that you have to sacrifice any element of your personality to the poem in the process of writing it?

The funny thing is I couldn’t write a poem every day. In order to do it, one has to go and turn on a kind of personality; I call it the ‘quantum personality’, as in being two persons at the same time. If I begin writing a poem and I get into it then I really inhabit it and I don’t do anything else until it is finished. It is an experience quite different from living everyday life. So I tend to write my poems first thing, very early in the morning. In fact I get so far by breakfast time that often I can’t do much more.

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Anne Stevenson Interview

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Do you think there’s an underlying fear of getting older in your poems?

Oh yes; but you’ll find that in everybody’s poetry! Everyone wants to be remembered, and so you write poems that you hope will be read when you’re dead.

Though of course not everybody who writes poems is going to achieve that aim!

Do you feel that it’s hard to be an individual poet in this day and age?

I think it gets harder and harder to write poetry. There are so many poets, and people are always looking for originality. Well, there aren’t many original things you can do with a language except make it up all over again, and I strongly feel that poetry ought to be rooted in literary tradition. I very much follow T.S. Eliot when, in his famous essay ‘Traditional and the Individual Talent’, he says that you can introduce new phrases and linguistic patterns (and obviously language is changing all the time), but unless they have a connection with the tradition, they will disappear. So you want to both add to and change the tradition simultaneously.

In fact, I am chairing the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry this year, and I’m going to read an excerpt from ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ at the prize giving. So much poetry tries to start new as if language was something you could do anything with, but you can’t make poems unless you have somebody to understand you. Poetry has to communicate.

How difficult did you find selecting the books for the shortlist for the T.S. Eliot Prize?

Very! We had a hundred and twenty-three books to choose from, and there were already four collections selected by the Poetry Book Society. Two of those were by Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, and I don’t think anybody would have ignored their books! However, it was very, very difficult to say one was better than another.

There’s no criterion! There were many people whose names are very well known but didn’t make the shortlist, such as Derek Mahon, Paul Muldoon, Alan Brownjohn, Les Murray, Jo Shapcott… As we narrowed and narrowed it down, certain poets in their books – particularly the younger poets – just seemed to have something urgent to say.

Have you got another collection coming out?

Yes; at the moment I’m halfway through the title poem but I can’t seem to get it right… A friend of mine has suggested that I ought to call the book ‘The Password’, but I want to call it ‘Demeter’s Hourglass’. After all, it is about the year changing; the idea that if winter comes spring can’t be far behind!

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TRANSLATIONS We are very happy to have the Translations section focus for this issue on Asian poetry, with a whole range of different pieces translated especially for The Grove by Durham students! You will find for instance a text explaining the role of poetry in China, another one showing how to analyse a Chinese poem, as well as a translation of a poem by Li Bai, one of the greatest poets in China’s Tang period. You will also get the chance to read a poem from Korea, and a couple of songs from Sri Lanka. Hope you’ll enjoy!

FRANÇOIS CHENG (Translated by Alexis Grigorieff) That Chinese poetry is full of metaphors and symbolic images is what strikes any reader at first sight. Even in everyday language one can notice the abundance of metaphorical expressions which Chinese people will commonly use, even to express abstract ideas. One of the reasons for this can be found in the nature of the script itself. We have already shown that all of the ideograms, through the links that they create between the object and themselves, constitute a system both metaphorical and metonymical. Every ideogram is, in a certain way, potentially a metaphor.

This encourages the formation of numerous metaphorical expressions within the language, and the morphological structure of the ideograms facilitates this process: every ideogram is invariable and is a unit, and therefore enjoys a great freedom in its combination with other ideograms. Bringing two or more characters together (or the images that they convey) often provokes a striking contrast and creates rich connotations, in a way a denotative language would be incapable of.

We will give now a few examples of metaphorical “figures” very common in the language: a) Ideograms (or characters) made up of two elements: heart + autumn = melancholy, sadness heart + middle = loyalty, to be loyal man + tree = to rest man + speech = confidence, faithfulness b) Words made up of two characters which form metaphors: sky – earth = universe drum – dance = encourage, to urge spear – shield = contradiction hand – foot = brotherhood 35

François Cheng

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c) Phrases which form symbolic expressions: red dust: earthly matters, vanity of glory spring wind: success, satisfaction green pine tree or straight bamboo: uprightness, purity water flowing towards East: the flow of time wild-goose flying towards West: separation, regrets full moon: reunification of long-lost souls Poets commonly use such evocative expressions. However, the origin of these expressions is typically found in poetry. The poetic language and everyday language feed back into one another; and even though this is true for any language, it is particularly the case in China. From the start, poetry has had a sacred function, due to its importance in rites. In every celebration, feast or social exchange, poetry would be present. There wouldn’t be any banquets, walks or friends’ reunions that would not end in the composition of a poem by every participant, on a rhyming pattern normally established by mutual agreement.

In addition, from the Tang period onwards, poetic composition became part of the program of the imperial examination. Poetry therefore became a major part of Chinese society. It gave the language these metaphorical expressions, which are organised within a structured repertoire of symbols.

FRANÇOIS CHENG (Translated by Alexis Grigorieff) Calligraphers’ favourite texts are without any doubt poetic texts (verses, poems, and poetic prose). When a calligrapher tackles a poem, he doesn’t just copy it out. By using calligraphy, he brings back to life the gestural movement and all the imaginative power of the characters. It is a way for him to enter the deep reality of each of them, to espouse the physical rhythm of the poem and, finally, to recreate it. A different kind of text, no less incantatory, is a favourite of calligraphers: the sacred texts.

Through them, the calligraphic art restores to the characters their original function, both magical and sacred. Taoist monks judge the effectiveness of the talismans (or spells) that they trace by the quality of their calligraphy, which ensures a good communication with the after-life. Buddhists believe that they will be rewarded for copying canonical texts; the more beautiful their calligraphy, the greater the reward.

The poet cannot remain insensitive to this sacred function of drawn characters.

Just as the calligrapher who, in his dynamic act, has the impression of linking the characters to the world as it was at the time of creation, of unleashing a movement of harmonious or opposing forces, the poet doesn’t doubt that he steals some kind of secret from the spirits of the universe by combining the characters together, as exemplified by this line by Tu Fu: 36

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François Cheng

“When the poem is finished, both gods and demons are amazed!”

It is also from this conviction that stems, during the composition of a poem, the almost mystical search for a keyword called tzu-yen1 “word-eye” which would, by suddenly throwing light on the whole poem, reveal the mystery of a hidden world. Countless anecdotes recount how one poet kneeled in front of another, worshipping him as his I-tzu-shih “master of a word”, because the latter “revealed” to him the necessary word to enable him to complete a poem, thereby “completing the Creation”.

The pictorial aspect of the characters is reinforced by the act of calligraphy, which brings forth the different meanings present in each character, and is used fully and evocatively by the poet. Wang Wei, a follower of chan spirituality (zen in Japanese) describes in a quatrain a hibiscus about to blossom. The poet tries to convey the idea that, by watching the tree so intensely, he ends up forming part of it and experiencing the act of blossoming “from the inside”. Instead of using descriptive vocabulary to explain this experience, he prefers, for the first line of the quatrain, to align five characters:

木 末

芙蓉

花

Branch end hibiscus flowers which translates into: “At the end of the branches, some hibiscus flowers.” Any reader, even not well-versed in Chinese, can be sensitive to the way the visual aspect of these characters in succession fits the meaning of the line. When you read the characters in order, you have the impression of witnessing the blooming of a blossoming tree (1st character: a naked tree; 2nd character: something appears at the end of the branches; 3rd character: suddenly a bud appears, 艹 being the radical for grass or leaves; 4th character: the bud bursts; 5th character: a flower in its fullness). But behind what is shown (the visual aspect) and what is meant (the normal meaning), a reader who knows the language will not fail to notice, through the ideograms, the subtly hidden idea that man is getting into the tree in spirit and taking part in its metamorphosis. The third character 芙 contains the element 夫 “man”, which contains the element 人 “homo” (therefore the tree represented by the first two characters is now inhabited by the presence of man). The fourth character 蓉 contains the element 容 “face” (the bud bursts into a face), which contains the element 口 “mouth” (it talks). Finally, the fifth character contains the element 化 “transformation’ (man takes part in the universal transformation). By an economy of means, without any use of external commentary, the poet brings back to life in front of us a mystical experience, in its successive stages.

1 The idea of the eye is very important in Chinese art. Let us recall, in the domain of painting, the anecdote of that painter who wouldn’t draw the eye of the dragon. To anyone asking why, he would reply: “As soon as I add the eye, the dragon will fly away!”

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Li Bai

TRANSLATIONS

LI BAI (translated by Huang Ran)

Bringing In the Wine Don’t you see how the Yellow River’s water moves out of heaven? It flows into the sea and ocean but never returns.

Don’t you see how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers, although silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow?

Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases! Please do not tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!

I was born to be useful somehow and money is bound to return someway.

HAN YONG-WOON (translated by Olivia So Eun Ha)

The Silence of My Love My love is gone. Ah, my love, you are gone now.

Shattering the azure splendour of the mountains, you are gone along the narrow path that opens onto the autumn-tinted woods; you are gone, reluctantly but resolutely cutting off all ties from me.

The long standing bows, hard and shining as a golden flower, have turned into cold dust, blown away in the breath of a sigh.

The memory of the poignant first kiss, having reversed the compass needle of my fate, stepped backward and disappeared.

With your sweet-scented voice, I’ve become a deaf and with your flowery looks, I’ve become a blind.

As loving is also a human affair, the fear for ending seized me since we met.

Nevertheless parting still comes upon us unawares and my startled heart breaks with renewed sorrow.

Yet, since I know that to make our parting the cause of idle tears is to break our love, I have transferred the irresistible surge of this sorrow and poured it over the summit of a new hope.

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TRANSLATIONS

Yong-Woon Han

Just as we fear parting when we meet, I believe we will meet again when we part.

Ah, my love, you are gone, but I did not let you go.

The love song, too weak to sustain its melody, curls around your silence.

RUKMANI DEVI (translated by Namali Goonetillake)

Those who know the Buddha Those who have knowledge of the great teachings....

We can see them guarding the Buddha’s words by following in his Path In the ancient City of Anuradhapura There lived many many bhikkus who observed his precepts Leading holy lives Those who lived in this City.....

They led holy lives, and when they reached the place where the Gods lived They meditated.......

Meditating they were, and walking between heaven and earth.....

So many were they, They cast a shadow to shield the City below from the burning rays of the Sun This sacred City, of many water lilies, Blossoms of Manel, Nelum and Olu This sacred city where flocks and flocks of water birds swam among the water lilies Is the City I can see............ the City of Anuradhapura UNKNOWN (translated by Namali Goonetillake)

When I was a Child When I was a child on my mother’s lap I remember her rocking me, I remember the rhythm...

She held me close, and gave me her love so tenderly her love for me was not lean I bathed in the river of her teachings, 39

Rukmani Devi

TRANSLATIONS

I still remember the rhythm of her melodies Your wealth is your learning Weave together patience and kindness and let them grow...

Don’t touch deceit, pride and envy Such as these she taught me When I was a child on my mother’s lap I remember her rocking me, I remember the rhythm...

This tiny nation, Lanka is yours my son, (Her protection is in your hands, little one in your hands) Love your land and all things in it And protect her good name when your turn comes When I was a child on my mother’s lap I remember her rocking me, I remember the rhythm...

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EVENTS LISTINGS REGULAR EVENTS Mondays, 7.30-9pm at the Big Jug: Literature Discussion Group. This year, tutor David Crane will be discussing the poetry of Ezra Pound.

2nd Monday of each month: Leonard’s Café Book Group. 6-7.30pm, free. Past reads include How to Paint a Dead Man or The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

See www.northeastbookgroups.com/durham or contact durhambookgroup@newwritingnorth.com Tuesdays, 7.30pm: Creative Writing Society. Whether it’s overcoming writer’s block or getting feedback on your work, CW can help. Contact creative.writing@dur.ac.uk to find out more. Maths building CM107 at the Science Site.

Wednesdays, 7.30pm: Poetry Society. Alternate sessions discussing poems by established poets and poems written by members. Free. Venue: a living room near you. Contact them at poetry.society@durham.ac.uk Thursdays, 7.15pm: World Film Society shows a brilliant foreign film - one of Durham’s best societies. ER141.

UPCOMING EVENTS Wednesday 8th December, 7pm: Launch for Gordon MacPherson’s “Flight to the Finish: The life, poems and stories of an East Durham Miner”. Easington Colliery Club.

Sunday 12th December, 8pm: ‘Ukumbi’ - Documentary Film Premiere. Follows five actors from Durham University who travelled to Kenya in September to establish a collaborative theatre group. The Assembly Rooms Theatre.

Friday 17th December, 8pm: Colpitts Poetry Christmas Party! Night of live music and poetry, plus Colpitt’s famous Dead Poets Competition. Alington House: Free.

Saturday 18th December: ‘Cellar Door – an evening of open-floor poetry and storytelling’ at Empty Shop, Durham. If you would like to perform your poetry or short stories contact cellar_door_poetry@hotmail.co.uk £1 entry.

More events at www.dur.ac.uk/whatson For regular events and societies, see our website at www.dur.ac.uk/grove

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COVER IMAGE

CONTRIBUTORS

Infestation by Kit Griffiths

Namali Goonetillake is a 3rd year economics student from St Chad’s College.

ENGLISH WRITING

Alexis Grigorieff is a St Mary’s student and he is often outwitted by inanimate objects.

Tom Pickard, Valentine. From Hole in the Wall: New and Selected Poems (reproduced by kind permission of Flood Editions, 2002)

Olivia So Eun Ha is a third year Politics student at VM and sincerely believes pink is the true evil colour.

Basil Bunting, Briggflatts. From The Complete Poems (reproduced by kind permission of Bloodaxe, 2000)

Huang Ran is a LLM student at Hild Bede College, he is considering changing major to either translation or literature.

Linda France, The Sound of Snipe. From You Are Her (reproduced by kind permission of Arc Publications, 2010)

Benjamin Dory likes to attend the Union debates.

James Kirkup, Love in a Space Suit. From Frontier of Going: Anthology of Space Poetry (reproduced by kind permission of Panther, 1973)

Rowena Knight is an ex-Chadsian who juggles her life writing wonderful poetry, heading the university’s Poetry Society and working in a coffee shop.

John Clegg is a fifteen-year-old cello prodigy whose music has been featured on Last Night of the Proms, Last Tango in Paris, Last Bus to Woodstock (featuring Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis), and Last of the Summer Wine.

TRANSLATIONS Intellectual copyright of all the material in the Translations section is held by the translators.

EVENTS Catherine Smith, Losing It to David Cassidy.

From Lip (reproduced by kind permission of Smith/Doorstep, 2008) STUDENT WRITING Intellectual copyright of all material in the Student Writing section is held by the authors.

Contact: grove@dur.ac.uk without whose express permission no part may be reproduced.

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