tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40937861757322503092024-03-23T10:14:52.947+00:00Books, Time, and Silence"We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts. We need books, time, and silence. 'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever."
Philip PullmanAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.comBlogger399125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-42160040045163223832016-03-05T00:07:00.001+00:002016-03-05T00:09:49.766+00:00Building Conversation <p dir="ltr">Today I sat in a room with people I know only a little, and had a 90 minute Conversation Without Words. A strange experience. I found I had a conversation mostly with myself about how I am in a group and what I look for in communication. I could so easily have sat quietly watching. I felt no great compulsion to reach out and make connections. Such pleasure in just watching. </p>
<p dir="ltr">When I chose to make eye contact, I found it hard to hold at first. I didn't know how to move on from that first warm feeling to a narrative conversation. So I sought activities to share to precipitate connection. It felt like when toddlers play alongside each other rather than together. I built a tower of cups and yearned to start a silent game of charades. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Come the end I found I enjoyed the pleasure of simply looking someone in the eye without need to communicate anything other than the joy of smiling at someone, and noticing things about them I never had before. It felt calm and restful and ever so filling. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As everyone left I stayed there to see what the space might feel like without anyone else in it. Immediately it turned from a place of comfort to a strangely lonely and empty room. For someone who loves solitude, perhaps that was the biggest discovery of all. </p>
<p dir="ltr">I loved Building Conversation and I'm so pleased to have tried it out. Can't recommend it highly enough. Will be booking onto all four conversations at Norfolk & Norwich Festival in May. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><u>S</u>ee you there! </p>
<p dir="ltr">You can see more about it, and book tickets at http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/festival/classical_music/<u>building-conversation</u></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAERgiQOSbLL9iLe4d9SISg_EW5gh-gJXIGvhmtrjAY2cqqSCb8fKS1BL_0vy_8k_Hu7CO9w3jhAnZl7QQUkA8GVz8ozgSr-UoiQIX5sMXRwPisCn6yD_gdFAmNH-bREXGBPpDwpFIzgs/s1600/NNF_Building_Conversation_credit_Willem_Weemhoff_USE_ME_FOR_WEB_452_280_c1_center_center_0_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAERgiQOSbLL9iLe4d9SISg_EW5gh-gJXIGvhmtrjAY2cqqSCb8fKS1BL_0vy_8k_Hu7CO9w3jhAnZl7QQUkA8GVz8ozgSr-UoiQIX5sMXRwPisCn6yD_gdFAmNH-bREXGBPpDwpFIzgs/s640/NNF_Building_Conversation_credit_Willem_Weemhoff_USE_ME_FOR_WEB_452_280_c1_center_center_0_0.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-70266144630242589332015-09-14T10:06:00.002+01:002015-09-14T10:06:57.231+01:00Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
'Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the<br />
same way, each time it begins it's the same.'<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Remarkable and sustained fury. I have not read a book that more tangibly captures the othered experience than this. The impact is as a bludgeon knocking you into another shape, yet the writing is as fine and crafted as a blade. Every word of <i>Citizen</i>, every image, beats you round the head saying 'this is my world, this is my world', challenging you to overlook it. There is no ignoring Claudia Rankine's <i>Citizen</i>. This is what literature is and can be.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'Words work as release - well-oiled doors opening and<br />
closing between intention, gesture. A pulse in a neck, the<br />
shiftiness of the hands, an unconscious blink, the conver-<br />
sations you have with your eyes translate everything and<br />
nothing. What will be needed, what goes unfelt, unsaid -<br />
what has been duplicated, redacted here, redacted there,<br />
altered to hide or disguise - words encoding the bodies<br />
they cover. And despite everything the body remains.<br />
<br />
Occasionally it is interesting to think about he outburst if<br />
you would just cry out-<br />
<br />
To know what you'll sound like is worth noting-'Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-61407623798749593172015-05-29T09:21:00.000+01:002015-07-06T11:55:43.805+01:00Wilding the Tame: Two Encounters with WolvesWolf's Child, Wild Works in association with Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Felbrigg Hall<br />
<i>The Wolf Border</i> by Sarah Hall (Faber, 2015)<br />
<br />
Two (artistic) encounters with wolves over the last couple of weeks have got me thinking about our relationship with the wild in ourselves and in nature, and whether there is a difference between the tame, and the domesticated. And just how easy it is to romanticise the wild from an urban lifestyle, without really experiencing it as it is.<br />
<i><br /></i>
Wild Works new site-specific immersive story, produced at Felbrigg Hall in partnership with Norfolk and Norwich Festival, takes us on a fairy-tale adventure that mirrors the Greek myth of Calisto - the nymph turned bear - and the unusual life of Peter the Wild Boy, an eighteenth century boy found living wild in the woods of Northern Germany and brought back to live in the UK.This is what Wild Works do: they set up camp somewhere, meet people, uncover stories, and produce theatre that has that place and those stories at their heart.<br />
<br />
In this one, we begin with a warning: do not stray from the middle of the paths - wolves are about, and our safety cannot be guaranteed. Nor can it be for Rowan, mute orphan and heroine of this show, who plays her wobbly fear with strained abandon. We first meet her amid the orphanage of Mother, a prim and austere woman who has dedicated her life to creating civilised order and ladylike manners in a manicured house on the edge of a dark forest. But Mother likes to scare her orphans into propriety. and when Rowan is sent out into the woods with a shotgun, she begins an odyssey that takes in an erotic encounter with some sort of wild stag-man, a pack of wolves, a child, and an inter-generational conflict with Mother and her harem of order.<br />
<br />
We're guided around the forest by a murder of crows: they narrate the story and entertain us on the long walks between scenes. The female crow, with her esturine squarking runs away with the show, so fantastically does she capture the playful inquisitive intelligence of the crow.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJ1L5lokaZymBbBNxKikCXEYHjHP_z9kABjaTTybcaW2jcA2VDDJQWwBcrMjriSGQhBzSK4ERGV4Euz7UkOER-NpW4MUi6wWLX3aNg959DIdWCjpX_5zxtsSkveIWrEq_21vrw6H1Gd4/s1600/Wolfschild1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimJ1L5lokaZymBbBNxKikCXEYHjHP_z9kABjaTTybcaW2jcA2VDDJQWwBcrMjriSGQhBzSK4ERGV4Euz7UkOER-NpW4MUi6wWLX3aNg959DIdWCjpX_5zxtsSkveIWrEq_21vrw6H1Gd4/s1600/Wolfschild1.jpg" /></a>There are other triumphs, too - a puppet of a young daughter taking her first steps in the wolf pack; the image of mother riding upright on her horse before the great grandeur of National Trust's Felbrigg Hall; and the way that an hour in we realise we have left the path and are totally lost in the woods with no idea which direction lies civilisation. The sun has sunk, the sky is a blueish grey, lighter than the treetops shadowed against it. There are candles lighting our path, sometimes a blue tinge to our destination, but either side is darkness and unknown.<br />
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If there is a criticism, it is that of many large-scale site specific works - the shepherding of an audience takes time and, for all the efforts of the crows, breaks the intensity of the story. And while the story they tell feels wild and unrestrained, following a line of theatre goers doesn't. I found myself taken out of the story too often to fully immerse, which after the intensity of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing the night before, was a shame.<br />
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There's also a sense of romanticising the wildness. This feels like a story for an urban arts audience. Perhaps I just wanted some proper danger and uncertainty! But its an amazing spectacle nonetheless.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4KPqjGVD2h6E9NKb4ES9VJGkH_r2nC9zeqStVFmdc4bO_laloW0PEtBn4PblFFNVQraCdhUhYz3CQ5JNdPVkPuJASIFa57UvFZEt07OZH1dt6QhnVArn0wAZaTYlXxG0ZYs6Uji6msw/s1600/wolfborder-uk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd4KPqjGVD2h6E9NKb4ES9VJGkH_r2nC9zeqStVFmdc4bO_laloW0PEtBn4PblFFNVQraCdhUhYz3CQ5JNdPVkPuJASIFa57UvFZEt07OZH1dt6QhnVArn0wAZaTYlXxG0ZYs6Uji6msw/s200/wolfborder-uk.jpg" width="131" /></a>What Sarah Hall does in <i>The Wolf Border</i> is simultaneously less dramatic, and more creative. The novel is about transition and change, mutability, and an interaction between the tame and the wild, voluntary, changeable, permeable. Rather than looking to a mythical past for her story, she sets it the UK today, telling a story of rewilding a tame landscape as the old-order begins to break-down, and wild new possibilities open up in a newly independent Scotland. It's a cunning tale from one of the wildest of UK writers: Sarah Hall's oevre is packed with tales of altered landscapes and characters longing to throw off the shackles of conventional life for something altogether more elemental, physical, less governed by the mind.<br />
<br />
The heroine here is Rachel Caine, refugee from a bohemian mother, who has for years been working as a wolf expert in the US. But her life is in transition, and following her mothers death and an unexpected pregnancy, she decides to accept the offer of an Earl who has an eccentric plan to reintroduce the wolf to the UK landscape on his vast estate. In language that is scented to the earthy, metallic Cumbrian landscape, we almost feel as though Rachel is some sort of shamen figure, totemically running free alongside the pack, guiding them towards their natural home. If there is a philosophy underpinning this book, it is that we cannot escape our nature, that we are all part tame, part wild and both parts will get us in the end.<br />
<br />
This is reflected in the narrative of Scottish Independence, which sits alongside the main plot. But what starts as a naturalistic presentation of the UK over the summer of 2014, begins to become altered as the vote goes the other way, and the public schoolboy Westminster power-base is challenged. The portrait of Scotland is slightly one-dimensional; a rugged antithesis of ennobled England. But the border is both physical and metaphorical, a transition of mindset as well as of landscape.<br />
<br />
Sarah Hall's writing is swift and enthralling, the plot sucks you in and her very real characters enchant. She's one of my favourite British novelists, and her perspective that sits somewhere between naturalist and farmer is an unusual one in the often too bland middle-England literature. There's much familiar about this tale, in setting and atmosphere. It feels like <i>Haweswater</i> meets <i>The Carhullan Army, </i>and I flew through it in a couple of days - very quick for me! - starting on a train from Lancaster to London as I mourned the fading Cumbrian landscape behind me. There's a thrill in the wild, it calls to us like a romantic longling for something we feel we've lost. Something human, though. Governed, by our fantasies and imaginings. Wolf's Child taps right into this, and is limited by it. But <i>The Wolf Border </i>takes a step further, exposing that longing as an empty misunderstanding, and presenting a wilderness that is. It just is. That's Sarah /Hall's brilliance.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-50456881461303972142015-05-14T23:38:00.001+01:002015-05-14T23:38:08.566+01:00A Girl is a Half-formed Thing: The Play <p dir="ltr">Tonight's theatrical Norfolk and Norwich Festival adventure took in the stage adaptation (by Annie Ryan) of Eimear McBride's<i> </i>prize-hoovering novel <i>A Girl </i><i>is a </i><i>Half-formed </i>Thing. As with the book, it's a difficult to watch but impossible to look away masterpiece, a verbally instant and insistent barrage of emotion and experience. Guttural. </p>
<p dir="ltr">A Girl is a Half-formed Thing follows the inner narrative of a girl from the womb to twenty, her relationship with her sick brother, and search for herself. It has attracted 5-star reviews from nearly everyone who has seen it, and is performed as a one-woman show by Aoife Duffin who is simply mesmeric. Hers is a performance to shape a career. Duffin holds the stage without much movement or action, and conjures characters with a slight inflection of the voice of posture. She is utterly convincing and untouchable on an raised up stage. Sometimes, so embodying the role, it feels as though she is a child playing make believe alone in her bedroom. How she can go through that visceral performance night after night and not be a gibbering wreck is anybodies guess.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And for the audience a difference from the book. Because with a book you can always put it down, but here together in a theatre it is relentless. There is nowhere nowhere to hide. It's Excoriating. I came out tense and wordless. All around was stunned silence and soft checking each other was okay after it all. The impact and power of those words and that body and voice were written all over our faces.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is playing at Norwich Playhouse until Saturday 16th. Go and see it if you can. It is, it is, it is it<br><br></p>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-42947926298259816842015-05-13T22:46:00.000+01:002015-05-13T22:46:13.061+01:00What Will Have Been - Circa at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival<br />
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<img height="198" src="http://www.nnfestival.org.uk/images/made/images/events/Preferred_image_Circa_Darcy_Grant_452_280_c1_center_center_0_0.jpg" width="320" /></div>
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'Wisps, strings, ribbons, lace, <br />
capillaries, filaments,<br />
delicate networks...<br />
something sustains us <br />
in tension.'<br />
George Szirtes</div>
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Acrobatic pioneers Circa are currently premiering their new show at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. What Will Have Been is an intimate three person plus violinist piece with a particle physics core. We kick off with the voice of Robert Oppenheimer reflecting back on the first atomic bomb testing, and what follows seems to have at its heart the interaction of particles and physical forces: colliding, attracting, repelling, Newtonian equal and opposite reactions. At times it feels like the stage has been set up as a (small) hadron colider, where bodies are shot around the stage to collide, sparking further movement. </div>
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The show features three of Circa's ensemble members - three new faces to Circa's ever growing repertoire of shows and performances. It is accompanied by a single solo violinist playing Bach pieces interspersed with electrical music including The Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes. What Will Have Been is packed with Circa's archetypal enthusiasm for inverting gender stereotypes. Our single female acrobat often takes on significant heavy lifting work, while it is the relationship between the two men that I often found most compelling. There is a tenderness to all of the interaction, and for a show all about the drama of bodies, much of what I loved here was in the drama of the eyes. Circa mix death-defying circus performance with dance, movement, stillness, and theatre. Its the tension that enables and sustains, and I had poet George Szirtes's line above in my mind throughout the show. </div>
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What Will Have Been is on at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival nearly every night for the next 2 weeks. Tickets are sold out, but returns are probable. If you can get a ticket, a quiet spectacle is assured. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-84983744154229968272015-04-01T17:09:00.002+01:002015-04-01T17:14:47.891+01:00Book Review: Any Other Mouth by Anneliese Mackintosh<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDn_LzhzuogUFzlDp3Ziwk0qg7LD7s-OifTqc6V1oGODCOWGThOwe6dANI5hMmri_lmUqV0iCKYgZqiPnjiUGJItYRRc4jI3RGhdO_426kDlQCAwOJ2YhjB1j_cpzV_Ih8fN9Q0AYNj5M/s1600/9781908754578.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDn_LzhzuogUFzlDp3Ziwk0qg7LD7s-OifTqc6V1oGODCOWGThOwe6dANI5hMmri_lmUqV0iCKYgZqiPnjiUGJItYRRc4jI3RGhdO_426kDlQCAwOJ2YhjB1j_cpzV_Ih8fN9Q0AYNj5M/s1600/9781908754578.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a></div>
I love <i>Any Other Mouth</i>. In each word we inhabit the skin and see through the eyes of a young woman growing up, learning about life and her body, struggling with overpowering grief. She drinks, smokes, sleeps around, can't hold down a relationship, changes career at the drop of a hat, can re-write an entire PhD thesis in a weekend, stares for hours at a Google Map of her now dead father frozen in time on a deckchair in the back garden. She may have Borderline Personality Disorder. We experience some of what it is to be her. And it is both eye opening and a riotous adventure.<br />
<br />
In the epigraph, Anneliese Mackintosh states: '68% happened; 32% did not happen; I will never tell' and this teasing game of fiction and biography that she sets in motion parched my mouth with anticipation for what was to come. It doesn’t matter whether the work that follows is a searing and amazingly frank account of a life lived in the fast lane, or a cunning character study through fiction. The writing is first rate: quick, luscious, direct. Her approach to language mirrors her protagonist’s approach to life: she charges at a thing, she doesn't shirk, she tells stories full of heart that make the spaces between people feel less vast than they sometimes might.<br />
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One of the joys of reading is in discovering different ways of living life, different responses to the challenges and joys it throws up. We most often do this by reading about cultures other than our own, and at times the more harrowing the better in this sort of reading. (See the universal love of Khaled Hosseini’s pity-porn novels of Afghanistan for one example.) But we are sadly less willing to read books that present a different view of life in our own society, or that treat with empathy subjects we would rather believe did not happen. In this searing, unflinching book, we get a first-hand view of one experience of life with Borderline Personality Disorder. It is a book that asks us to reappraise our expectations for behavior, often uncomfortably so. And that, in my opinion, is one of the things that the arts should be all about.<br />
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In its nihilistic rejection of convention and vibrant lust for life <i>Any Other Mouth </i>reminded me of AM Homes brilliant novel Music for Torching. But much more than this exciting, blackly comic read, it feels important too. Important, as understanding perspectives on life different from your own always are. It may be a bit of a Marmite book, and will undoubtedly provoke some anger by some people who feel the content is not always 'appropriate' but perhaps because of this, it is a book that should be widely read. <i>Any Other Mouth</i> is engaging, unexpected, gripping, poignant, shocking and exciting. A great read.<br />
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(Note: One word of caution: the blurb for this book doesn’t really make any sense! How do you react when you discover your boyfriend is cheating on you with his dead grandma? You don’t. It’s doesn’t happen like that! Don’t be put off, <i>Any Other Mouth </i>is not as ridiculous as the blurb suggests!)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-89916335311089869532015-03-20T13:23:00.000+00:002015-03-20T13:23:06.510+00:00What is Literature? Thoughts from the International Literature Showcase<div dir="ltr">
This week I'm at the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/Www.internationalliteratureshowcase.org.uk">International Literature Showcase</a> in Norwich. It is a new platform connecting UK and international literature professionals, produced by the brilliant teams at British Council Literature and Writers' Centre Norwich. </div>
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The programme is fabulously spacious and diverse, and the other delegates thought-provoking, impressive, and inspiring. </div>
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Two things keep occurring to me. One is the power of a good question (thank you Sara Robinson) and I will blog about these tomorrow. The other is about what literature is, how we pin down something that is so vast and so many different people produce, and whether we need a language that explains this. </div>
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Words starting bashing at my brain, itching in my fingertips, and shouting to be released. So here they are, some thoughts on what literature is. </div>
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<br />
<strong>What Is Literature</strong></div>
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Literature is vast. It is multifaceted and multifarious and multiplicitous. It is specific and it can be held in the hands and it can disappear in the echo of a voice. </div>
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Literature is power grasped and directed and stolen from caverns of voicelessness or invisibility. It is voice shouted into the void in the hope of being heard or listened to. <br />
It is being listened to. And it is listening hard: opening the ear and the eye and the heart to that which has never been part of you, and that which has lain within you all along. <br />
It is itself. And this is enough. And it is incomparably bigger.</div>
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Literature is language. It is pre-concscious utterance. And it is the language of the body and of the deaf. And of the blind. And it is the language of silence, the between words. It is fast words schlocked out and insistent, that cannot be denied. And it is the non-verbal languages of ones and zeroes , of code and the words that command and demand action.</div>
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Literature is ink splattered on parchment, typeface stamped into paper, liquid congealing and separating on a screen. </div>
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Literature is received and it is created and it is eternal and it is in everything that has gone before, and it holds within it everything that has been before. And it is new as the cracking of winter. </div>
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Literature is writers and it is producers and it is readers. And it is listeners, and it is viewers, and it is connection. It is conversation. </div>
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Literature is important and powerful and instrumental. It is unreliable and unpredictable and shifting and shifted. </div>
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After all, literature, like nature, has never loved us back. </div>
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Literature, like digital, like society and like the atmosphere and outer space, and the void, literature is an environment. What we make of it is up to us. </div>
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Literature is the world. And it is life and it is taxidermy. And it is retreat and it is escape and it is splashing in puddles and it is diving in headfirst. </div>
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Literature is easy as joy, as difficult as life, as full-frontal as death and as fearful rushed into as sex.</div>
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Literature is you and me and them and us and someone alone in a forgotten house, </div>
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Literature is...and it isn't. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-39513231702947855062015-02-10T14:58:00.000+00:002015-02-10T19:22:43.167+00:00On Literature Festivals, Power, and Process – a week in South America<div class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sometimes I find it
hard to believe how lucky I am. Not only do I have a career working
with books and people that I love, but occasionally I get to travel
internationally as well. Two years ago I visited the first Lahore
Literature Festival in Pakistan, an amazing experience that showed me
just how unifying a force culture can be in a society starved of the
opportunity to meet in public. How important open discourse is to the
health of a society, and how art can be the catalyst for so much
discourse.</div>
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This past week I have
had the pleasure to visit two more international literature
festivals, this time in South America: Hay Cartagena in Colombia and
FLUPP in Brasil. They are separated geographically by half a
continent, but also by a philosophy and a purpose, as well as being
separated from me by two languages I can't speak very well! In these
ways they offered a fascinating comparison for my Clore Fellowship
learning, a point to further explore what I might wish to do in the
future. Indeed, the comparison was as stark as the landscapes of the
Sahara and the Amazon that we flew on the way there.
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First up was Cartagena,
a stunningly beautiful city on the Caribbean Sea. Historically
influential leader of the fight for Latin American independence from
Spanish rule. Home of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and setting for some of
his most celebrated works, most notably <i>Love in the Time of
Cholera </i>and <i>Of Love
and Other Demons.</i> Within 20 minutes of arriving in Cartagena I
had fallen in love with the city – or at least the Colonial walled
city in which I was staying. It's narrow lanes, painted buildings,
ornamental balconies, relaxed atmosphere. After three days I
regretted not being able to stay longer.
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And there: <a href="https://www.hayfestival.com/cartagena/en-index.aspx?skinid=5">HayCartagena, </a>the first franchise in the increasingly global Hay-on-Wye
success train, celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with an
appearance from Nobel Laureate JMG Le Clezio among a host of others
from around the world. I was there on behalf of Writers' Centre
Norwich, and our (Inter)<a href="http://www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/thenationalconversation.aspx">National Conversation</a> programme, curating and
delivering a debate about global writing and publishing in the
twenty-first century, and whether digital technologies are enabling a
challenge to the traditional dominance of the London/New York centres
of activity. With a particular focus on writing and publishing in
Africa and South America, it proved an interesting discussion on
where the power lies in global literature, and how individual
countries or regions can have relevant local conversations within
this increasingly global landscape. You can watch Binyavanga
Wainana's thoughts <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IohC6QcEVJ8">here</a>,<b> </b>in
which he talks about his desire for African writers to find new
routes to share their work, to reach local readers and create a new
impetus for writing across Africa. Essentially he argues that African writers need a new process by which to reach readers, because the current outcomes are stacked in the favour of publishers and readers in London and New York. It was the sort of high
quality discussion that excites the intellect, and felt
representative of the other events I heard while I was in Cartagena:
political, active, engaged. There were some good events, some packed
houses, and a remarkable feat of quality live English-Spanish and
Spanish-English translation. In so many ways it was a brilliant
festival and I loved being there.
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On the last afternoon I
met Jonathan Levi, and we spoke briefly with Ellah Allfrey about
reading, and about the challenges and value of encouraging widespread
interest in books and literature. Jonathan is a fascinating man with
a wealth of experience, and the way he talked about audience
development really excited me. This whole area is my main interest
and will form the core of my research during this fellowship, and it
was with this conversation in my head that I flew to Rio de Janeiro
for a trip that I knew would be a very different experience to
Cartagena.
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In Rio, I was due to
meet <a href="http://flupp.net.br/">FLUPP</a>, an annual festival and year round programme of activity
taking place in various favelas that aims to break down the barriers
between communities and encourage reading and writing for the many.
(It is named after the UPP - the military police who 'pacify' the
favelas; Festival of Literature of the UPP). FLUPP is led by Julio
Ludemir and Ecio Salles, whom I met for the first time as an evening
thunderstorm crashed around us. Julio came across as a forthright
conviction-driven man, eager to to speak clearly and exactly despite
having to do so for my benefit in English. And despite 24 hours
confusion in which I mistook his talking about 'slam poetry' for
'Islam poetry' – a very different kettle of fish that made far less
sense! – we were able to share ideas and learn a great deal from
each other.
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He challenged my
assumptions. Each time I referred to FLUPP as a festival – as I did
on at least four occasions – he repeated his mantra: 'FLUPP is not
a festival, it is a process.' At first I took this for a semantic
difference, but as our time together wore on, the significance came
to embody something important – the activity he does isn't one
directional, it is a collaboration and a deep relationship with
individuals and communities. It begins long before a festival starts,
and continues long after it has finished. The short festival that
takes place in November is merely the most public and prominent part
of this. But not the most important.
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The other aspect of
FLUPP that Julio was keen to convey was about quality as a
demonstration of power. When FLUPP was set up to directly rival the
more illustrious and international Flip festival in Brasil, he was
clear that it couldn't just be a small offering for local people, but
had to be big and professional and exceptional. FLUPP may be a
literature festival in deprived neighbourhoods, but it refuses to be
limited in its ambition and professionalism. Indeed, this commitment
to excellence is at the heart of its social message. 'How can we
change perceptions if we fall into them ourselves', said Julio. 'We
must treat these people as powerful and worthy of quality, because
they are, and the world needs to know that.'</div>
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Over the next two days,
Julio and another FLUPP collaborator, Toni Marques, showed me around
Rio, introduced me to their work, and took me to visit some of the
sites of their work. We talked at length, and I visited the favelas
of Cidade de Deus and Morro dos Prazeres, sat in on an event, and saw
for myself what Julio was talking about: how the process of building
trusting relationships with people drives everything that FLUPP does,
how it unlocked opportunities for a great number of people, and how
important that sense of power and quality was for the communities.
And how, rather than seeing the time spent with people as a
distraction from the terribly-important-work-that-must-be-done, it is
the site of the most significant work they do. I loved this approach,
it felt like a liberation.
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Over the last couple of
years, my work has often felt like a grand exercise in window
dressing, where being seen to be impressive and highly literary by
funders was more important than being of value for people, where the
finances of the art, and the intellectualism of that art for the few
were more significant than the many who create and consume it. As
such, Hay Cartagena was a natural and exciting place to be, that same
milieu in which I have operated for a while. Where valuable,
interesting things happen, but they happen in an elite place out of
the reach of the many. But it was in conversation with Jonathan Levi,
and with FLUPP that my heart skipped and my values entwined with the
work I saw. I'm fascinated by the impact high quality audience
development could have in challenging the perception of the arts as
elitist, in actively spreading access more widely, in encouraging
deeper engagement, and in creating social benefit for people while
also producing even more knowledgable, skilled, and confident
audiences for the exceptional artists we already have.
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Indeed, the more I
think about it, the less I can see the value of significant state
funding for art that doesn't have a distinctly social impact. At
least in music and literature, two art forms in which the production
of high quality art is perfectly well served by commercial
enterprise. I'm not sure exactly what will come after my Fellowship
ends in July, but I am committed that it will be about process first,
and that people and art together will be focus. I'm planning a piece
of research exploring best practice and the construction of a
coherent programme for audience development. This feels an exciting
place to be as I crack on with my Clore Fellowship.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-2060591021535696712014-12-06T00:24:00.001+00:002014-12-06T00:26:23.488+00:00In Praise of... <p dir="ltr"><b>Megan Serena Ruddock</b></p>
<p dir="ltr">Megan is my beautiful talented generous considerate hilarious kind wife. We have been together 12 years, and married for 10. We met when I was still a teenager and I fell for her immediately. Of course I did! She sent me an album that remains one of the best things I've ever heard and we talked endlessly. But what is remarkable is that she saw in my skinny lonely immaturity someone worth knowing. And every day since she has supported me in feeling that I could make anything of my life. She has made sure I felt loved, challenged me when I needed it, and ensured I never got too big for my boots. She is my best friend and the best thing that has ever happened to me. I don't tell her that enough. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Megan is the bravest person I know. She moved to a whole different country by herself and has built a life here. And she has the bravery to stand up for what she believes in regardless of what it costs her. She's driven by this moral code to be considerate to everyone, to do no harm at all, and to support and empathise with those who need it most. She cares for everyone, from the snail on the pavement in the morning to the person pushing everyone away. She's a champion of the disadvantaged, the very epitome of what a good Christian should be. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Megan isn't afraid to be herself. She drinks absinthe at lunch on accessions. She often describes herself as simultaneously 10 years old (she just started collecting Sylvanian Families) and 70 (last year she took a course in Ancient Hebrew!). But she is also 21 and 39 and 47 and 53 and every other age there is. I can't list all the courses she had taken or signed up for. She is a polymath: everything interests her in some way or another. She is the self-development Queen, there is nothing about her she isn't prepared to interrogate, challenge and improve if she doesn't like what she finds. And she's quite probably the best quiz team player in the world! </p>
<p dir="ltr">Megan is also hilarious. No one I have ever known has such a sly, black humour, as she does. She is brilliant at word play, and she's self-deprecating and finds humour in herself at every turn. When she laughs her whole face comes alive and her eyes sparkle. She has this mini-smile wrinkle above her top lip that appears when she smiles - it never ceases to make me happy. I think her laughter is the best thing in the world. It is explosive and all encompassing and feels like freedom. </p>
<p dir="ltr">We have fun together. She is the creative genius behind Cheers (possibly the worlds most comprehensive stuffed animal society). She invented Dogwarts (stolen by Aardman as a joke in Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit), and basically wrote the penguin and lemur characters for Madagascar. To our cats she is the sporty chaser, the trick trainer, the treater. She scoops them up and gives them medicine. And they love her for it because somehow they know she would never do anything bad to them.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Sadly life isn't always as kind to Megan as she is to it. She's had a pretty tough time these last few years with people not realising how infinitely capable she is. With people treating her horribly. And that sucks for her, it really does. But what I find remarkable is that she has this amazing capacity to take a bad hand and keep fighting. Nothing lessens her belief in people, her hope that tomorrow will be better, or her desire to turn today around.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Megan shows me what goodness is. She's so much better than I am. And I would be nothing without her. I love her with all my heart. And I thought you - and she - should know this. </p>
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<p dir="ltr">1. On whose terms? I probably should have realised that a conference backed by technology and media partners Google and Bloomburg would be technology centred. Nothing wrong with that: I'm writing this on my Galaxy Note 3 while listening to music on the same device, and have been tweeting throughout the day. I like technology. But the traditional arts world felt sidelined. Almost everything that was discussed was through a commercial or tech prism, focusing on how technology built communities and reached wide audiences. It sometimes seemed that technology was being seen as the savior of art. That without it, art stayed behind locked doors in austere buildings. As though standing in a gallery or on a street corner admiring a painting, sitting forward in the midst of a play, reading a book, singing along to an album, or feeling that yearn to move in the midst of dance were not enough if they weren't somehow augmented by a screen. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Clearly this is problematic. Despite a day filled with words, it is the experience of reading Liz Berry's <i>Black Country</i> on the underground this morning that will stay with me. There has to be a place for quiet, calm reflection, or loud furious reflection in this world and the arts provide this. We don't always have to be doing things on digital and social media platforms to be producing great work. </p>
<p dir="ltr">As Fabien Riggall said: 'We want to use technology, not be used by it'. </p>
<p dir="ltr">How we in the arts articulate <u>different</u> values and challenge the profit-chasing bubble thinking of the technology world may be one of the challenges for day 2. </p>
<p dir="ltr">2. There is a world outside those ivory towers. Be they the towers of national arts organisations or multinational conglomerates, there was an absence of social responsibility today. The Barbican aside, no one gave any prominence to social deprevation or how technology, culture or entrepreneurship could work to improve the lives we live and reach those whose horizons are narrowest. We talked briefly about art for arts sake, and the whole day seemed to be technology for technologies sake, and while I admire and value this there also needs to be time for art, technology and culture that works with real people and changes communities. A deliberately provocative comment towards the end of the night suggested that art in the regions was basically just community theatre and all a bit naff and amateurish. This pissed me off! It is absolutely possible to produce excellent work that is made in and with communities and makes those places better to live in. It's time to end the dichotomy between excellence and instrumentalism. We can (and many do!) do both! </p>
<p dir="ltr">3. Stop telling me how great your work is. I thought this was a conference not a sales pitch. I'm not trying to silence good work, but some ideas, some perspectives, some challenges. All these would have made for a broader and more impactful conversation. </p>
<p dir="ltr">4. Don't over programme! It is something everyone who produces events should remember. That a good event is often the result of time to breathe, to ask questions and challenge thinking, to share and drill down. With 3 or 4 people often speaking in only a 40 minute event, time was squashed. At one point a speaker was interrupted, quite rudely, mid flow. There needed more space. Less is more. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Where an individual was given time to talk, they were worth listening to. Alex Poots from Manchester International Festival was fascinating on the importance of giving power to artists. Sir Nicolas Kenyon from The Barbican was equally inspiring on working with local communities and the subtle shifts technology can give to a wide range of different productions. And Fabien Riggall from Secret Cinema told stories and gave more than just a sales pitch, he presented a vision and a story and a call to action. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Sadly, and despite some interesting speakers, the panels were largely sales pitches mashed together. Which was a shame. </p>
<p dir="ltr">5. Hosting is a responsibility, not doing it well is rude. If you advertise an 8am breakfast start, deliver that, or at least apologise for keeping guests hungry and waiting an hour to be let in. And then make sure there is sufficient cups and sandwiches and teabags for everyone. It's basic stuff, sadly.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And to finish it off, my quote of the day:</p><p dir="ltr">'Those who aim to give the public what they want begin by underestimating the public taste. They end by debauching it.'</p><p dir="ltr">TS Eliot </p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr"><br></p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjG5FidNmxMo4SxXEOYPfob57GXwJkSzoWNV8bs0GwcqMSdzlepjC96rUTcalvCAcV2zK7FoQ7x49GoCGcpZhfLZ2Nd5S9YC6IGodOG4PTh9fGMvvUM_T3C_9vTH8dWYcQJSo75XDM8dg/s1600/20141202_101027.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjG5FidNmxMo4SxXEOYPfob57GXwJkSzoWNV8bs0GwcqMSdzlepjC96rUTcalvCAcV2zK7FoQ7x49GoCGcpZhfLZ2Nd5S9YC6IGodOG4PTh9fGMvvUM_T3C_9vTH8dWYcQJSo75XDM8dg/s640/20141202_101027.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQoE7BKB6ktbfGX8SSgIg6u2m9-ULaxpIVcLc98JSd__6BQbttX69GtcXf3Xz3i6gfYjmL2BclmaY4a8iR3kASJC1ucQM3G3q4kVoeQPRBEqVxhEbUpBdcRh9XPegkdP80Q7fFrMAzrZM/s1600/20141202_201757.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQoE7BKB6ktbfGX8SSgIg6u2m9-ULaxpIVcLc98JSd__6BQbttX69GtcXf3Xz3i6gfYjmL2BclmaY4a8iR3kASJC1ucQM3G3q4kVoeQPRBEqVxhEbUpBdcRh9XPegkdP80Q7fFrMAzrZM/s640/20141202_201757.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuMS673qg_EJTyVq5A-CkDZsk-tTgQ1eRWqFb_HlzmPBab__XUuLtQ2P_KVjm4uyGfE9uCZJZGEQv__xQsUoFxw50NRuxf5Bl6X5BqwPrAz-fjLM6dpJAXtCgzHppl1k-10bH1FwR5au0/s1600/20141202_123037.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuMS673qg_EJTyVq5A-CkDZsk-tTgQ1eRWqFb_HlzmPBab__XUuLtQ2P_KVjm4uyGfE9uCZJZGEQv__xQsUoFxw50NRuxf5Bl6X5BqwPrAz-fjLM6dpJAXtCgzHppl1k-10bH1FwR5au0/s640/20141202_123037.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-45859433801856082462014-11-10T19:13:00.000+00:002014-11-10T19:13:52.267+00:00What Price Peace? A Sunday Assembly 'sermon'<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="line-height: 1.5; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was asked to give the first 'sermon' at a new <a href="http://sundayassembly.com/">Sunday Assembly</a> in Norwich this last weekend. Given it was Remembrance Sunday, the theme What Price Peace? jumped out at me and I wrote a rather long and exhaustive essay riffing on themes of conflict and complication, silence, individualism and community. I'm hugel<span style="font-family: inherit;">y honoured to have been asked, and hope I <span style="font-family: inherit;">produced something interesting and thought provoking. The Sunday Assembly has a gre<span style="font-family: inherit;">at vision: <span style="font-family: inherit;">t</span>o live <span style="font-family: inherit;">better, hel<span style="font-family: inherit;">p often, wonder more. </span></span></span></span></span></span></i></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 1.5; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> For more information or if you are interested in joining <span style="font-family: inherit;">Norwich Sunday Assembly, <span style="font-family: inherit;">visit the website </span><a href="http://norwich-uk.sundayassembly.com/">here</a>, <span style="font-family: inherit;">or find out more </span>on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/sunassmeblynorw">Twitter</a> or <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sundayassemblynorwich?fref=ts">Facebook.</a></span></span></span></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 1.5; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I hate to break the silence... We get so little of it, don't we? </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes my life feels like a long search for silence. For stillness, and calm. I have a blog called Books, time, and Silence, the title of which I took from a quote by the author Philip Pullman, and at the time I picked it for its focus on books and reading and the importance of making space for them. But as the years go by I find it might be the other way, that I am trying to make space for silence, into which I might inject reading. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I probably should have been a Quaker or Buddhist. Or a monk! None of which I really know anything about and all of which would probably involve too many rules which might drive me crazy. But I want to know about them, and the ideas that drive them. I don’t want to judge without learning. And there is so much to learn. Which is why, right now I’m pleased to be here with you. <span style="font-family: inherit;">And </span>instead of further silence, I'm going to fill this room with my other great love: words.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpPkNvuSrKN5ZG6q1ZSc9mC3Rz_ObRIeX92QzP8f_RBogjcShsV1ahYnKszbO4-I6RPFrAD04ybXxUKCac-DfKT2Iln0N3sksaHNhDQQxZQtdX71WhfYAP2IbkmEa4sEKIh-feOoqcBg/s1600/natural-history-museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQpPkNvuSrKN5ZG6q1ZSc9mC3Rz_ObRIeX92QzP8f_RBogjcShsV1ahYnKszbO4-I6RPFrAD04ybXxUKCac-DfKT2Iln0N3sksaHNhDQQxZQtdX71WhfYAP2IbkmEa4sEKIh-feOoqcBg/s1600/natural-history-museum.jpg" height="200" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Earlier this week a group of friends and I went to London for a party in the Natural History Museum. Amidst the absurd excitement of drinking wine beneath the diplodocus in the central hall, and wondering whether the giant blue whale might come to life movie-style when we were kicked out at 10pm, I got to discussing the grandeur of the building. I hadn't been for a decade or so, and I had forgotten how dramatic the architecture is. I mean, really stunning. Every wall, every column and Romanesque arch is gilded or carved or decorated in some way. I asked a man I happened to be talking to about the origins of the building, and he happened to be an expert on architecture and public buildings – he works for Historic Royal Palaces in London. And he told me that it was a Victorian building, part of a trend to build cathedrals to the ideas of the age: evolution, science, and the public value of knowledge and learning.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That's great isn't it? The public value of knowledge and learning. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I respect the Victorian approach to creation. As a societal whole, they were riding the crest of the widest change in society. And this led them to conquer and impose and feel superior which aren’t very good. But it also led them to create. And they didn’t behave like Henry VIII or the 1950’s town planners, they didn’t destroy everything that came before them which they didn’t like: they simply added to it, repurposed it. They developed. They expanded. Many complain about the collateral destruction this did to historic buildings, but they weren’t just conserving the past, they were building something new on the back of great things of the past. Building a future. That feels admirable, to me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Although we are here today in slightly less impressive surroundings than the Natural History Museum, this Sunday Assembly too feels like a monument to the public value of shared experience and learning. We are here, perhaps, because we want to better ourselves, individually, together. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not at all religious. And I don’t much like ceremony either. What I have loved on the occasions I’ve been to a religious service is the sermon. Sitting there in a hard pew in an often cold church listening to someone talk to me. I find I would go from slouching to the edge of my seat, listening intently, as someone took the time to distil some of their thoughts about the week that has passed and bring them together into a coherent whole. To tell me a story or invite me to think differently. To teach or introduce me to something. Or just to comfort me with their words.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So it’s thrilling – and not a little terrifying – to be doing the same here this morning. My grandfather was a methodist minister and wrote sermons. So good was he that they made him tour the small rural churches of Suffolk. That sort of sounds like a punishment to me, but maybe not. Congregation size can’t be everything, surely. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Apparently, our family has kept all these sermons, and I’m fascinated to read them, to see what was on his mind and how he presented that on Sunday mornings to small congregations in Suffolk. I’m particularly intrigued because I’ve been on a bit of a rollercoaster journey this last couple of months. I recently started a year’s <a href="http://www.cloreleadership.org/fellowships.aspx">Fellowship</a>, which is essentially the biggest, boldest, most mind-bogglingly exciting and, again, terrifying things I’ve ever done. And already, one of the things that has become apparent as I’ve reflected upon my myself, is that I find it difficult to speak as though others want to hear what I have to say. I put great value in enabling others to speak, to share the limelight. And I had thought <span style="font-family: inherit;">this </span>was one of my biggest strengths (which is probably is.). But, it is also a defence mechanism, a way of hiding in the shadows. And so when Rachel and Pete invited me to speak this morning, it wasn’t only the honour to be asked and my vanity that ensured I would accept: I knew immediately, that this would be an opportunity to practice trusting in my own words. Challenging myself, and learning. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But old habits die hard, and so I'm going to quote other people liberally! First up is Thomas Paine, famous son of Norfolk. In </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Rights of Man </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">he declares: ‘Independence is my happiness, my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.‘</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These words have become my personal motto of sorts. And they seemed appropriate to share here today. For not only are we at the start of something, not only will many of us feel ourselves to be independent, global citizens committed to ideas of social justice, but it is also Remembrance Sunday, a day when we mark lives lost to war: present, recent, past, and ancient. And this Remembrance Sunday is particularly significant, marking as it does 100 years since the start of World War 1. The war that came to be known variously as The Great War. The War to End All Wars. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">During the silence, I made sure I thought about the non-British soldiers and civilians who have been killed or had their lives negatively impacted by war. Of the way Britain has used war as a way of imposing its will on the world. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But this week I’ve also tried to imagine what those British soldiers might have been thinking and feeling 100 years ago. I imagine that as autumn turned to winter and the temperature began to drop, it might have been around this time that the early optimism began to fade and the realities of the war became apparent. All that nationalistic bombast that saw young men rushing to recruitment centres in the belief that they’d be home by Christmas might have started to seem a little hollower. Faced with the realities of a war like nothing that had been seen before, that gap between what had been imagined and what was being experienced must have felt as vast as the trenches stretching from the North Sea into the heart of Europe. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not particularly imaginative when it comes to calling to mind the thoughts and feelings of other people; this is one of the reasons I love fiction. There is nothing I do in my life that so enables me to inhabit other skins and see the world through other eyes. It puts me inside the heads of other people, other lives, other cultures, other ways of thinking. It helps me see things differently, it makes me think differently,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it complicates my point of view.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYuE6oZ6oOuY9URJoUell4vm_hARC-2mKynjxWLLpC0TAGc3SY6VskvpWg9KCvuOjNLUir0d3tjUQ-h4YY0HXeMbdlLWfV00kKFlRyc1BloabQpOIqv8RLsKoxjb8G62f04yq9z5l0MU/s1600/poppies-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYuE6oZ6oOuY9URJoUell4vm_hARC-2mKynjxWLLpC0TAGc3SY6VskvpWg9KCvuOjNLUir0d3tjUQ-h4YY0HXeMbdlLWfV00kKFlRyc1BloabQpOIqv8RLsKoxjb8G62f04yq9z5l0MU/s1600/poppies-5.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On that same trip to the Natural History Museum this week, our group also visited the <a href="http://poppies.hrp.org.uk/">Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red</a> installation at the Tower of London. It is a moving tribute to the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">888, 246</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> British service men and women who lost their lives during the Great War, each of whom is represented by a single poppy until the moat is carpeted in red. It is visually spectacular and has captured the public desire to remember, and to be grateful. The crowds flocking to the Tower - so many that tube stations have been shut and £150,000 of extra staff brought in to shepherd them - have stood in silence to listen to the names of those soldiers read </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one</span><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by </span></b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">one</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It is theatre meets art installation, meets public ceremony all at once. And there is something immensely powerful about it. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I also feel <span style="font-family: inherit;">u</span>neasy about it. As <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/oct/28/tower-of-london-poppies-ukip-remembrance-day">Jonathan Jones recently wrote in </a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/oct/28/tower-of-london-poppies-ukip-remembrance-day">The Guardian</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, 'In spite of the mention of blood in its title, this is a deeply aestheticised, prettified and toothless war memorial. It is all dignity and grace. There is a fake nobility to it, and this seems to be what the crowds have come for – to be raised up into a shared reverence for those heroes turned frozen flowers. What a lie. The First World War was not noble. War is not noble. A meaningful mass memorial to this horror would not be dignified or pretty. It would be gory, vile and terrible to see. The moat of the Tower should be filled with barbed wire and bones. That would mean something.'</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m not sure I would criticise the installation for not being something different to what it is. That’s a horribly judgemental view the role of art criticism. But I love that Jonathan Jones was able to complicate our national thinking about the memorial. And he raises some valuable points about the way we remember war. It is notable, I think, to remember that in 1918 as the war came to an end, young men returning from the front got behind pacifism. There was a feeling of ‘never again’ across society, and many philosophers and thinkers took to championing the morality of peace and the utter monstrosity of war. It took a financial meltdown of unimaginable proportions, and the rise of a dictator bent on imposing his will on the world to break this determination for peace. And even then, before the fighting began, Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich waving a piece of paper proclaiming peace in our time. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whatever our view of the morality of war and peace, we shouldn’t forget how those who lived through the war came to view it. Not as glorious and noble. But as Jonathan Jones suggests: as barbed wire and bones, tangled together in a vivid, real depiction of hell on earth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a commentator I admire named <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/what-makes-america-so-prone-to-intervention/279393/">Stanley Haeuerwas</a>, who said recently that ‘war serves as the great event,...where we sacrifice the youth of the present generation to show that the sacrifices of the youth of the past generations were worthy. So war becomes the great ritual moral renewal of...society. Just think of all the language about sacrifice that is constantly used about the service people.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">War begets war. Pretending it is noble only makes future war easier to embark upon. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am also reminded of the words of 91 year old World War 2 veteran <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/poppy-last-time-remembrance-harry-leslie-smith">Harry Leslie Smith</a>, who, last year, wrote a piece in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Guardian </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">declaring that 2013 would be the last time he would wear a poppy. That after nearly 60 years of remembrance to a war so horrific ‘no poet of journalist could describe’ it, he would now mourn the dead only in private. ‘Because,’ he wrote, ‘my despair is for those who live in this present world.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, Harry has complicated the blood red waters. He has a particular perspective: that all the horrors of the second world war just </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">might </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">have been worth it given what followed: the creation of a new society built on principles of social justice and economic mobility for all. But that as that has been eroded over the last 40 years to its present paltry state, and that erosion has gone hand in hand with a ramping up of rhetoric and ceremony around war, he has been left to mourn what we have done to one of the greatest inventions of mankind. Something we have all lost. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s probably obvious! My natural stance is that no end is worth the blood and gore and waste and destruction of war. I am a pacifist. I don’t believe that any end justifies its means. Even if eternal peace were to be guaranteed by war, I would oppose that war on principal. Because I don’t really believe in ends. I mean, when does history ever end? What event doesn't leave ripples in all it touches? We can </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">live in the present, and do what feels right now. We live these means in everything we do, every day. For that reason above all others, I am a pacifist. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXewYs84a3zACk4bZlqN27hxjsJu59uW0RjcDZg-TFMpXZO9EFEKCXEFfUY2es3wHHxj2RCAJ_irsqdamQ9DQpfw0ll0NGmDiUz04_FFzlDRYxKmq74DBv6c_U2IGayq_R61Nh7T1ZIh0/s1600/9781848317260.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXewYs84a3zACk4bZlqN27hxjsJu59uW0RjcDZg-TFMpXZO9EFEKCXEFfUY2es3wHHxj2RCAJ_irsqdamQ9DQpfw0ll0NGmDiUz04_FFzlDRYxKmq74DBv6c_U2IGayq_R61Nh7T1ZIh0/s1600/9781848317260.jpg" height="320" width="206" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But reading <a href="http://www.harryslaststand.com/">Harry’s book</a> this week has been challenging my default position. And I love this. And being challenged has got me thinking about all sorts of other things, one of which is what might be my favourite line from literature. This line isn’t a grand opening sentence or a wonderful conclusion, its not got the exquisite sadness of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s opening line from </span><a href="http://bookstimeandsilence.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/love-in-time-of-cholera-gabriel-garcia.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Love in the Time of Cholera</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: ‘It was inevitable. The scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.’ And nor does it capture an entire book, as F Scott Fitzgerald does in the last line of </span><a href="http://bookstimeandsilence.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/great-gatsby-f-scott-fitzgerald.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Great Gatsby</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: ‘And so we beat on, backs against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, this is a mid-paragraph line towards to the beginning of JM Coetzee’s masterful novel </span><a href="http://bookstimeandsilence.blogspot.co.uk/2009/04/waiting-for-barbarians-jm-coetzee.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Waiting for the Barbarians</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In a tale about conscience and honour in a land where fear has replaced trust, our hero The Magistrate reflects somberly: 'I believe in peace. Perhaps even peace at any price.'</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">'I believe in peace. Perhaps even peace at any price.'</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why does this sentence so affect me? It isn’t just that it is a statement of the ultimate pacifism. There’s also something in there that is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">complicated</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I got to exploring it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It starts with a single letter. An I. A person. Vulnerable skin and easily spilt blood. A brain of synaptic flashes that create a consciousness that is so much more than electrical impulse. Could have been one of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">888, 246,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">or the 187 million people that the historian Eric Hobsbawm estimates were caused by or associated with war in the Twentieth Century. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I love the first person narrative voice. The I. Bang, we’re in another person’s head. In Western society, this I is dominant. Look at our movies, our books, our cartoons. So many of them are about a simple concept: the triumph of the individual. The individual who is different and who ends up benefiting or saving her society through her very difference. I was in China a while ago, and I picked up a picture book. I didn’t know what it was called or what it was about, but being a picture book I could follow the story pretty easily. There was an antelope and she wanted to be a zebra. She dressed up in zebra stripes and painted her flanks like a bar code. Her elders told her not to, that it was drawing too much attention to the pack. But she did anyway. And when the lions attacked they went straight for the animal that stood out. It escaped narrowly - this was a children’s book - but the message was pretty clear. Difference is dangerous. The We, is everything, the I, nothing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I was amazed at this vast difference between the two cultures. The West and the East .The ‘I’ and the ‘We’. Are they polar opposites? Isn’t love and sex about breaking down the barriers between one person and another, uniting physically and emotionally into something bigger than the I. And this gathering and all those religious gatherings happening every day around the world, aren’t they about finding how we as individuals relate to something more than just ourselves. Shortening the distance between people. Broaching the ‘I’ and the ‘We’. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I guess I am a product of western society, for I do believe that no matter how much we wish to change the world, or help others, no matter how selfless our desires, we can only ever be one person. I is all the power we will ever have. And it is all the vulnerability we will ever need. We can do amazing things together, but we have to value that I, nurture it, challenge it. Only then can ‘I’ ever hope to become purposeful to the ‘we’... And if the we ever leads the I, beware. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And aft<span style="font-family: inherit;">er the I<span style="font-family: inherit;"> we come to 'believe'. </span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Tricky word. Belief says a lot to some people, and is a wishy washy loose word to others. What excites me about it is the positivity. There is something slightly audacious about saying you believe something, especially when you don’t follow it up with any evidence. Sure, blind belief isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s really straight forward. But most belief isn’t blind: it is questioned, considered, and somehow emerges undimmed. When we assume less, we undervalue the rigor of our fellow man. I admire the person who, having thought about it, believes in a God just as utterly as I admire anyone. To me, and Arthur C Clarke, there’s very little difference between magic and science. At its heart belief is about wonder. I guess I believe in wonder. There is something wonderful to me about belief. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Going back to Harry Leslie Smith - might we have been able to build a the social conscious society without the destructive furnace of war? I hope so. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> so. Yet history sometimes suggests otherwise. This complication saddens me. But I choose to believe inspite of it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And what does our <span style="font-family: inherit;">Magistrate believe in? </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peace of course. Just like many people around the world. Probably the vast majority of us. But I’m intrigued by what this peace he believes in might actually be. I fear it isn’t as straight forward as it appears. Is the magistrate a moral pacifist? Or is he so scared of confrontation and change that he will do anything to retain his safe quiet life? Are they entirely different or two sides of a coin? Is The Magistrate embracing life when he says he believes in peace, or is he fleeing from it? We’ll come back to this in a minute for now that we reach the end of the first part of this quote, we come to the best word of the lot...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In those 7 letters lies the genius of this phrase. Uncertainty, exploration, learning, testing the waters. The Magistrate isn't sure, he doesn't know exactly what he thinks. He is human and he is uncertain. But he is brave too. He is willing to go out on a limb and express his belief, a belief that could make him vulnerable and slightly ridiculous. And having done this he is willing to take it even further, hesitantly, to stumble into something really profound. But he knows enough to know certainty is folly. My economics teacher once tought me that the answer to every question should be: ‘it depends,’ and perhaps the beginning of every statement should be, ‘perhaps.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">P</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">erhaps complicates. Even extends. Like belief, 'even' takes us further into something improbable. It signposts us that something dramatic might be about to be said.<span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span>And it is well used here. And with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peace</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we have the repetition of that keyword, driving the importance of it home. And in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">we have further extension. The word any is like having a breakdown in the trenches and being sentenced to death for cowardice, then </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">spreading your </span></span>arms wide and bearing your chest against<span style="font-family: inherit;"> the </span>firing squad. <span style="font-family: inherit;">Relatively pointless, </span>but symbolic nonetheless. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And we come to our last word: P<span style="font-family: inherit;">rice. And our theme for today: </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What price peace? For the magistrate in this book, the answer is ‘any’. His refusal to fight costs him everything. Everything but his principles, anyway. And true to his word, he pays it if not willingly, then with a stoic sense of necessity. In the ensuing battle with this faceless state, he is crushed. Tortured, shamed, displaced. And his peace is replaced by a fear of imminent war. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But when the forces leave, the Magistrate and the people remain. And they endure. And by the end of the book, war has not yet arrived. They are still waiting for the barbarians. Waiting...</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Might peace be defined as the absence of war just as some medical professionals define health as the absence of ill-health? Perhaps semantically not, in that the word war is so much more specific that the term ill-health. But is avoiding war a triumph for pacifism, in and of itself? I think the answer to that might possibly be yes. Peace often necessitates the courage to wait and to endure. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But waiting isn’t the same as not acting. Hauerwas again:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Commitment to nonviolence does not require withrdrawal from the world and the world’s violence. Rather, it requires [us] to be in the world with an enthusiasm that cannot be defeated, for she knows that the power of war is not easily broken...For what </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">creates new opportunities </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is being a kind a people who have been freed from the assumption that war is our fate.’</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps it takes the grim, vile, ugly realities of war to help us break this cycle of sacrifice and ritual. The casting off of red poppies. The filling of moats with bones and barbed wire. Let us all </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">take the briefest of moments to be silent </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">again, to extend our com<span style="font-family: inherit;">memoration of those killed in war<span style="font-family: inherit;">s<span style="font-family: inherit;"> and to think <span style="font-family: inherit;">about all the times pea<span style="font-family: inherit;">ce has been curtailed by war<span style="font-family: inherit;">, and </span></span></span></span></span></span>what it will take to <span style="font-family: inherit;">hold onto it this time, or next time. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps the question 'what price peace?' is a trick one. After all, we can never make a transaction that gives x in return for peace. There is no end of peace. We can only live our lives each day in a way that feels right. For me that means a way that does no harm...or as little as is possible in this complex world. I like to think I would do anything for peace, but if I’m being totally honest, the price I have paid until today is virtually zero. I am a man of words but few actions. I put posters in my window and talked incessantly about the folly of invading Iraq and the War on Terror, yet I didn't even join the anti-Iraq marches – like the Magistrate I was too busy looking after my own personal peace to join with a hoard of others and demand peace. I fear I would rather close the door and read. Or at least that is what my behaviour says. I don't like this about myself. It is embarrassing to admit. It is one of the personal challenges I wish to overcome.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But there are other challenges we all face: peace and war being two big ones. And smaller ones: what words to use and which not to; how to tell our own stories so that others will listen and hear them; how to turn words into actions<span style="font-family: inherit;">, brea</span>king down those barriers between you and me, your skin and my bones and our individual electrical flashes. There are some challenges we should embrace: the importance of pushing yourself, learning, and being brave, accepting own limitations and failings but not letting them stop us doing good. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And if we do anything, it must be to build new cathedrals to those things that matter: love and peace and learning and friendship and belief and complication and words and actions and individual autonomy and collectivity. To build on what already exists. To create, to create, to create.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I hope this Sunday Assembly will be that. For all of us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Individually, together. </span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com5Norwich, Norwich, Norfolk, UK52.6308859 1.297355000000038752.476717900000004 0.97463150000003873 52.7850539 1.6200785000000386tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-68344423062811011682014-11-07T16:21:00.002+00:002014-11-11T11:13:41.375+00:00On Creative Reading<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>I was recently invited to give a keynote talk as part of a symposium on creative reading and writing with young people. The following is the text of that speech. </i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My name is Sam Ruddock, and I am a reader. (And also some other things including a blogger, a book critic, a prize judge, a husband, a cat father, and a Programme Manager at Writers' Centre Norwich where I produce our events and reading programmes).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basically, I love reading. I love stories that take me on a journey I don't ever want to end, with characters it feels as though I have known for ever. I love reading that makes me think, that introduces me to new ideas, and that is all about the creative use of language. Reading is pure imagination.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know I’m a bit excitable. But I make no apologies for being over-the-top enthusiastic about reading. Especially where it comes to young people. Because literacy has never been so important. There has never in human history been so much reading and writing taking place as there is now. The mass spread of the internet and social media has changed how we behave: where people once interacted with the world predominantly verbally, we now do so more and more through words on a screen. A young person’s life chances today depend on literacy: if you cannot read or write, you cannot succeed in this world. Literacy is to be the single most important thing we do for our young people.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading isn’t a tool for anything, but if it is, its a basic tool for literacy, which is a basic tool for life. But one of the ways that we will best encourage literacy, is to focus on reading for pleasure. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(When we talk about reading for writing, we essentially create a hierarchy where everything leads to writing. I’m not sure it is this way around. The Booker Prize winning author Eleanor Catton recently set up a fund in New Zealand to grant young writers money to cover time to read. It’s an amazing initiative – imagine being paid to read! But it has a serious and laudable intention, too. She felt reading was getting forgotten in the drive to write, to create, and to express oneself. And she felt that writers who didn’t read were likely to produce less interesting work than writers who did read. I share this as a challenge for us all – reading should be at the heart of our engagement with young people, not as an afterthought.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is only one way we will get people reading: if they enjoy it. If it gives them something they want or need. If it is rewarding. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; white-space: pre-wrap;">I read to relax. And to escape from myself and the world around me and all the interconnectivity of technology. And I read to dive headfirst into the world, to learn about other people and the world around me. I like to read in the bath. It is a sanctum if you will, where technology frazzles and drowns and my imagination can billow steam-like around me. About 5 years ago I decided to rename our bathroom ‘the pub’ so that I felt less anti-social about the time I spend reading and now when I go home in the evening and say to my wife ‘I’m going to the pub’, it makes reading feel cool. And I like that, for even an enthusiast like me sometimes feels apologetic about reading. I need to read. If I don’t find time to read, I get stressed and frantic, I get grumpy, and I get self-involved. And what is interesting is that research increasingly shows that this is the case for many people.</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a series of reports and studies over the last decade, reading has been shown to be of huge personal, social, health, and economic benefit. Reading has been shown to have all sorts of impressive qualities including:</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enhancing people’s life chances, civic and social engagement, employment prospects, and quality of life;</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Busting stress and providing real health benefits such as delaying the onset of dementia;</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reducing cases of reoffending in prisoners and those on parole;</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Improving theory of mind, a common measure of empathetic ability.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the things that interests me most about reading is that it is both retreat from the world, and the most active engagement with it. There is nothing I do in my life that so enables me to inhabit other skins and see the world through other eyes. Reading matters to me because it puts me inside the heads of other people, other lives, other cultures, other ways of thinking. Reading helps me see things differently, it makes me think differently, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it complicates my point of view</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. I am a far better person for reading. Why not be enthusiastic about something like this? </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m also fascinated by what reading does for people. So fascinated in fact that earlier this year I set out to interview readers across the UK about their experience of reading, what it gives them and why they do it. I want to get beyond the scientific research to uncover the personal stories about readers and reading, and I want to give readers a voice to tell their own stories.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a campaign I admire called 53 Million Artists. Like all great campaigns its mission is deceptively simple: to 'unlock the creative potential of everyone in England.' I recently spent some time with the founder of 53 Million Artists, a ridiculously talented woman named Jo Hunter, and asked her whether she considered reading an artistic activity. She thought for a minute and I could see her wondering how to say that no she didn’t. We kept talking, and she eventually set out the four linked activities that they encourage people to do when being artistic.</span></div>
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<li style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first is having an idea.</span></li>
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<li style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">The second is doing something. Reading is doing something. In reading we are co-creators of a story. But now it gets interesting...</span></li>
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<li style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Number 3 in the approach to being an artist is thinking about what you are doing. This is really important. Thinking. Reflecting. An artist isn’t just someone who creates. An artist is someone who thinks about what they create. A reader artist is someone who thinks about what they read.</span></li>
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<li style="line-height: 1.5;"><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 1.5; text-indent: -18pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the fourth is sharing it with others.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I turned to her at this point and said: ‘okay, so readers are artists when they think about what they read, and share it with others’. And she agreed. When we think about creativity we often instinctively think about making things. We so rarely think about consuming something. But I believe absolutely that reading is active and creative engagement in the art of literature, and that great reading is an art to be developed. It is an art so long as we think about what we read, and share that with others.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So how do we get young people reading? It starts with how we think about and talk about reading. I have three tips:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be enthusiastic. Break down that inner critic who says you need to call the bathroom ‘the pub’ in order to make reading cool. If you are that apologetic about reading, no-one is ever going to enjoy reading. John Waters has a great suggestion and language for this, he says: ‘If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them. Don’t sleep with people who don’t read!’. A little judgemental, perhaps. But interesting. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a quote I love from Roald Dahl’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My Uncle Oswald</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a not particularly successful novel he wrote in between </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Enormous Crocodile</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Twits</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Useful advice at any time and for anything you love! But even more so when it comes to reading, an activity that society and formal education strives to tell young people is dull, boring, and only for school. Too often we are embarrassed to talk to young people about loving reading. We fear it may lose us their interest. We think it is easier to give people a pen and piece of paper and ask them to express themselves. That they will find that more fun. But this is our fears being projected; our failing not theirs. We cannot hope to change other people’s perspectives if we don’t change our own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t try to control reading. Reading is freedom. It is an adventure, and no adventure is any fun if you know where it will end. It doesn’t matter what a reader is reading now, only what they may go on to next. The best reader engagement projects don’t lecture readers about what they should and shouldn’t read, they create the space and framework and let readers run with it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This is what Writers’ Centre Norwich has done with Summer Reads (in partnership with Norfolk Libraries) over the past 6 years. Each year we recruit a jury of everyday readers (this year there are over 90!). We give them a longlist of books (this year there were 150) and ask them to read. They read the books and review (ie THINK ABOUT) them. We gather all the reviews together, hold meetings for them to discuss the books (ie SHARE WHAT THEY HAVE DONE), and slowly work the longlist down. At the moment there are 60 books we are considering. Come January we will select the 6 that we promote during the programme. It is amazing to see how reading habits change given this space and encouragement, and in an environment where reading is cherished. We will receive more than 1000 reviews this year. In some ways, it is a more rigorous process than the Booker Prize.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So successful has Summer Reads been that we were recently awarded a large amount of money to evolve and grow in partnership with libraries in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve long harboured ambitions to run a similar programme for young people, working with school libraries and English teachers to build a network of engaged young readers. I’d love us here today in this room to consider whether there is a way of making this happen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was a great project that the Orange Prize ran a few years ago, to celebrate its fifteenth year. They wanted to conduct a poll to find the ‘best of the best’ of the previous 14 winners of the Orange Prize. But instead of employing the usual collage of writers, critics, and academics, they turned to young people. Six teenagers were recruited through Penguin’s Spinebreakers website, an online book community run by teenagers, for teenagers that has sadly recently closed. Those readers met, discussed the books, and eventually chose a winner: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fugitive Pieces</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Ann Michaels, a truly brilliant book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And this brings me on to my third suggestion for getting people reading:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Never ever undervalue readers, young or old. Never assume people don’t read and don’t want to read. Never talk down. Encourage up. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Had you asked me before this to guess which of the 14 titles would have most appealed to a younger audience, one of my last choices would have been </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fugitive Pieces</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It is lyrical and non-linear, it is challenging and distressing. But when you put your faith in people, when you give them the opportunity to try and to think and to share, they so often surprise you. This has happened again and again in my experience of Summer Reads.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And if you want to make reading fun, make it dangerous! There’s a great story I once heard about a mother who, when she was pregnant, built a shelf in her bedroom and placed all her favourite books there. When he daughter was young, she told her that she could read any of the books in the house, except for those books on that shelf. That was all. Years later, when the daughter was fully grown they were talking about reading, and the daughter said to her: ‘of course you know I read all of those books I wasn’t allowed to?’ and the mother turned to her and replied: ‘Of course! That was the point all along!’ She had succeeded in making great reading dangerous!</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love that story.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, in summary:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading is fundamental to modern life. More reading is done now than ever before. Never forget that when people say that reading is no longer cool.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading is fundamental to writing. But it is valuable enough, enjoyable enough, in and of itself. Never try to squish reading into other outcomes lest you lose what is great about it. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don't think it is easier to give people a pen and paper and encourage them to write than it is to give them a library card and encourage them to read. And if it is, think about what that says about how you are talking about reading.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be passionate. Otherwise, why should anyone believe you?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support exploration. Take a journey together. Reading is an adventure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Don’t dictate, empower.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Never ever underestimate people.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Reading is not elitist. Great reading is and should be for everyone. And it is creative and artistic. Do not hide from your responsibility to share the joys of reading with others.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And share it with me too. For there’s a dirty secret at the heart of this talk. This year has been my worst reading year since I’ve been an adult. I’ve really struggled to find time and space to read. I need you to tell me about the books you’ve loved, to recommend to me, and then to recommend to everyone else here today.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thank you for listening. And happy reading.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now... come with me..</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SVi3-PrQ0pY" width="560"></iframe> Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-9327290452595576212014-10-06T17:07:00.002+01:002014-10-06T17:09:27.691+01:00Clore Fellowship Reflections: days 8, 9, and 10 <div dir="ltr">
And so we come to the final days of our first Clore residential. Those days were characterised by increasing exhaustion, heightened emotion, and lots of creative thought. It felt that we began to break through to some really important conversations about diversity and the way we fund/subsidise/invest in the arts and culture.</div>
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1: On diversity. Wednesday dawned with a session of reflections and the usual meandering series of thoughts. And then, from nowhere, bam. Sandra Shakespeare - a fellow Gainsborough Primary school student we realised - knocked us all dead with a description of exactly why a diverse pool of leaders matters. Not just for the arts, but for everyone. I didn't take notes, sadly, and can only pretend to capture the contents here. But essentially it was to do with change and how if you always get the same narrow spectrum of leaders you can only get the same narrow spectrum of ideas and people involved. Most of us left with a sense of needing to learn more, and to act to improve the diverse pool of leaders. The next challenge, of course, is how!</div>
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2: On storytelling. Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery and Chair of the Clore Leadership Programme, spoke on our penultimate day about the importance of always telling your story. He spoke about writing the press release to announce your appointment before any job interview, as a way of thinking about how the job fits into your narrative and why you are the perfect candidate for the job. As someone who loves stories but tends to see my own life in disconnected segments, this has encouraged me to think more actively about the narrative overview I am telling about myself and my life. </div>
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3: On freedom from bricks and mortar. John McGrath from National Theatre Wales spoke about their model of theatreless production in and with communities across Wales. Working in an organisation that is currently involved in a capital project, this was an interesting counterbalance to how I've might do about creating a nationally significant organisation. It reminded me in a strange way of the debates around the building of Wembley stadium and whether the England team being itinerant might not have better served fans and enabled greater creativity by not shackling a team to bricks and mortar location. John was keen to point out that it was just one possible solution to the specific situation of theatre in Wales, but there are interesting themes that it raises about how to be responsible to and for and with the people you are meant to be serving. </div>
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4: On Flu.That is, Freedom, Laughter, and Uselessness, the guiding principles that Kevin Jones uses to run St John's College School. A flu I can't help feeling more schools should adopt. Boredom as a currriculum item seems entirely useful to me. Uselessness too. It is in these times when learning and creativity and innovation come to the fore. And Kevin should know, he won a National Best Headteacher award in 2013!</div>
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5: On quiet vulnerability and the power of silence. Even more than Kevin's FLU policy, I was struck by his style of speaking. By the end of his half hour talk on childhood and learning, nearly everyone in the room had tears running down their cheeks. And it wasn't just because some of what he was talking about - the challenges facing children in a test, test, and test again culture - but the way he delivered it, the space he gave to every one of his words. Teachers of public speaking might question the way he read a script word for word in a flat monotone voice, or the way he spoke in long sentences. But it was his breaking of conventions that so appealed to me and made him so affecting. Most of all, he was comfortable sat in the middle of a room with 30 eyes on him, being vulnerable and letting things happen at their own speed. We listened in to hear him. We filled in his silences with our own thoughts. It all reminded me of Tracy Chapman singing at Wembley Stadium during the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday concert in 1988 - the power of one person quiet and vulnerable and completely without bravado inviting everyone to join them in their own space. Like Tracy, the act wouldn't have worked had the content not been so spectacular. You can read more about Kevin Jones <a href="http://www.nationaleducationtrust.net/ShapingIdeasShapingLives054.php">here </a>and <a href="http://www.nationaleducationtrust.net/ShapingIdeasShapingLives125.php">here</a>. I think he should do a Ted Talk - he'd have hits by the million! </div>
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I want to learn to do this, to eschew the act and embody myself on stage, with exceptional content of course!</div>
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6: On what comes next. Matt Peacock, founder of Streetwise Opera and a Clore 1 Fellow, spoke on our final morning about the way that they work with the homeless to improve wellbeing and provide a bridge back into the community. It is a fabulous looking programme and Matt speaking a little of his introversion and the problems he found on the residency chimed with me. But what really stood out was his dedication to what comes next and the afterlife of a project. He spoke about the most important day of a project being the day after the final project. </div>
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7: On standing on the shoulders of giants. One of our Fellows from Hong Kong had a way throughout the programme of coming up with visual images to sum up what we were doing. On the last day, completely without realising that she was paraphrasing Isaac Newton, she painted the picture of us as fellows clambering onto the shoulders of all the people who have gone before us, all the experts and leaders who had come to talk to us, and glimpsing horizons we wouldn't otherwise have spied. It was a great image to leave with. The responsibility to look to the distance and dream big. The humility to remember we were only here thanks to the amazing generous work of the Clore Leadership Programme, and all those who had supported us. But that we are all citizens, and that it is everyone's responsibility to act to build the world we want, however small we feel. </div>
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So, to the giants, thank you. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIUrm9F18B-sCBhf-aOGyyqkz-v_o2ZcMuUrMjrUjaDQu537ixtSImrBZDajeO12-_Vv8HhyphenhyphenHen94jhe0Rt9s9YQttMx4ckGI3ltcK6LIcg7mRa8w9RN0xb6inWk-Jeyz9qIJZgjPQ2gs/s1600/20141003_100100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIUrm9F18B-sCBhf-aOGyyqkz-v_o2ZcMuUrMjrUjaDQu537ixtSImrBZDajeO12-_Vv8HhyphenhyphenHen94jhe0Rt9s9YQttMx4ckGI3ltcK6LIcg7mRa8w9RN0xb6inWk-Jeyz9qIJZgjPQ2gs/s640/20141003_100100.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-XVaEhC07o1BgDySrtjwcWCTFllgPsabuE2Mf1Qh-ygHYSnzaKQgYaRCJrM-MiJD_eX0Uvm56rFCyfmttpaE_PegAcMu6_Drs76kUvzC_7GH90KXBqjk10MhUGigk-RZkO6OHSnsDIs/s1600/20141002_090254.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-XVaEhC07o1BgDySrtjwcWCTFllgPsabuE2Mf1Qh-ygHYSnzaKQgYaRCJrM-MiJD_eX0Uvm56rFCyfmttpaE_PegAcMu6_Drs76kUvzC_7GH90KXBqjk10MhUGigk-RZkO6OHSnsDIs/s640/20141002_090254.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-22445483689497918612014-10-04T11:08:00.001+01:002014-10-04T23:03:11.560+01:00Clore Fellowship Reflections: days 6 & 7<p dir="ltr">I've now left the Big Brother hou...I mean first Clore residential at Bore Place and am now stopping off at the Cheltenham Literature Festival where we are running an event with Will Self on the changing landscapes of digital reading and writing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So, from a chandelier lit, cream leather sofa strewn, celebrity packed Writers Tent (Caitlin Moran is being interviewed at the next sofa, Michael Rosen is taking New York with The Fonz, and Malorie Blackman just walked in!) here are the latest reflections for the week. </p>
<p dir="ltr">1: On body language. Picture the scene: im full of cold, languishing in a comfy chair and trying not to slip into a fever induced snooze, when Wayne MacGregor - dancer, choreographer - starts his talk by commenting how quickly he judges people based on the way they inhabit their bodies. Needless to say I sat a little straighter. And couldn't help admire the fluidity of Wayne's body language, and his ear if presence. I'm now wondering whether some of my training budget might be spent on a dance class or body language for leaders type class. Could be very interesting. </p>
<p dir="ltr">2: On the building blocks. We had a session on the history of cultural policy with Robert Hewison in which he took us on a whistle-stop journey through 250 years of cultural patronage and censorship by the state. Some of the key repeating features appeared to be a see sawing between instrumentalism and aestheticism, between national and local, and between bottom-up and top-down. Interestingly in 1940 a precursor to the Arts Council was formed, the Council of the Encouragement of Music and Arts was all about encouraging people to make art, but was replaced postwar by the Arts Council of Great Britain, a Bloomsbury set organisation that believed in standards and wished to propagate professional, exceptional art. And very interesting 6 years that seems to me significant to a lot of the major debates still taking place. History holds us on the palm of its hand, whether we realise it or not. (not only was this session hugely informative, it reminded me how much I enjoy a lecture, some facts on which to build perspective, and the stories of history.) </p><p dir="ltr">3: On freedom. A session on start ups provided an insight into some different ways working and encourages us all to think outside the funded art subsidies. More than anything else though I was struck by the huge beaming smile on the face of Tilly a she spoke about being so happy to be working for herself. I saw it and I wanted it for myself. </p><p dir="ltr">4: A provocation for us all. What are the responsibilities of being a Clore Fellow? Are we comfortable with being considered 'experts'? And how can we ensure the world - not just the art world! - benefits from the investment that had been made into us? </p><p dir="ltr">5: On great leadership in action. Michael Day of Historic Royal Palaces took is through 10 years in the transformation of the organisation and having visited some of the places (Hampton Court and Tower of London particularly) over recent years this was a fascinating insight into the inside of the story. His 8 points towards great leadership gave a glimpse of rigorous, principled, responsible leadership, and I was particularly struck by his assertion that we have more choice than we often realise. That we can choose what we do to further our ambitions and that there is often a choice. Even spending a morning emailing is a choice we take. I might just try to remember this and try to take a couple of half days per week away from emails. </p><p dir="ltr">6: On companionship. Look at us! Aren't we an attractive bunch! </p><p dir="ltr"><br></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYuUIoF1f6TTUamwY2Qi7sBp4SMaI8HBc1wwS7lW-B77AoadgsAQCKobwHBSbocd_jHD0w_f5pI6p4BYjGqkFSrLynr1nGcJCHW6Ub67PFQkiriu_PQHPhBXaIGm0JtVPwnKdEb2GPORk/s1600/57f68032-59c1-4e03-85a9-afa911b4641c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYuUIoF1f6TTUamwY2Qi7sBp4SMaI8HBc1wwS7lW-B77AoadgsAQCKobwHBSbocd_jHD0w_f5pI6p4BYjGqkFSrLynr1nGcJCHW6Ub67PFQkiriu_PQHPhBXaIGm0JtVPwnKdEb2GPORk/s640/57f68032-59c1-4e03-85a9-afa911b4641c.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-91121330368384147252014-10-01T18:39:00.001+01:002014-10-02T20:24:31.366+01:00Clore Fellowship Reflections: days 4, 5, and the weekend <p dir="ltr">I'm already hopelessly behind on my Clore Fellowship blogging, and the almost total lack of mobile coverage here in the wilds of Kent can only be blamed for so much. Fortunately, the input here is so incessant that I have a notebook of thoughts to distill and share. And so here are some quick thoughts from the middle weekend of this residential. (and geek alert, they also had his Nobel Prize for Literature there: major excitement!) </p>
<p dir="ltr">1: On artistic practice. A visit to Chartwell (the home of Winston Churchill) was a fascinating counterpart to all the talk of leadership that has been going on here. Of course Churchill's oratory prowess and clarity of mind are impressive and inspirational factors in themselves. But I was also intrigued by how painting was central to his life, provided time and space to gain energy from everything else that was going on, and as a sandbox in which to play and to try out. There was a great quote I photographed (naughty naughty, there should have been no photography in the house!) which I attach below. </p>
<p dir="ltr">2: On working smarter, not harder. And in sacrifice and commitment. Ariane Koek spoke about the artistic programme she set up at the Cern large hadron collider. Amazing project with unbelievable outcomes. And Ariane is one of the most driven people I've met. But I was struck by her admittance that to do it, she worked 20 hour days for 2 years and neatly totally burned out. In the words of Ije Nawokorie from Wolff Olins last week, she was the 'doer in chief.' The person who made great things happen. But it reiterated to me how sensible and appealing it is to me to look at how you create a leadership culture in an organisation so that your hard work is sustainable. There is always going to be a question of volume and speed as being useful in their own right, but for me quality and sustainability are more important. </p>
<p dir="ltr">3: On quiet attention. One of the most interesting aspects of the first week here was at dinner each night where our facilitator Fearghus O'Conchuir would have a conversation, almost always 1 on 1, in depth, and that the person her was speaking to would look like they were having just the most amazing conversation. All the while, with people to meet and thoughts to think, I was getting caught up in wanting to talk to everyone and not miss anything. But I realised the great power there is in quiet conversations in a corner with one person. In giving complete attention and talking openly. I want to be better at this. </p>
<p dir="ltr">4: On group dynamics. One of the best things about Megan (my wife) is her endless championing of the quiet. Of the cake of observing the knock on effect of how we behave, not just in the obvious ways people respond but in what it does to them. We had a session in which there was lots of tearful, open sharing of thoughts and emotions. It was a wonderfully open and human outpouring of feeling. But alongside sharing and responding to the people who were bearing all, I was also looking around the room at the people who weren't saying anything, and I saw some closing off as well. Of course this is natural, but only by being aware to look for it was it visible. I'm not generally very good at this, but awareness in all directions is something that I want to be better at. And watching groups form and develop is always interesting to me. </p>
<p dir="ltr">There is lots more, too. There was an interesting discussion on how we analyse success and what excellence might look like for the arts and culture. It raised questions of production, consumption, and who gets to judge quality in art. These are all things I think about a lot and will return to in a number of reflections in the next blog on week 2.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In 48 hours I'll be back in the real world! Eek! </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiyOCZnpQJ7PlltGP70ERPEYR18A803Ln5RYHzU0kw_xpte4bxo7kI6bCoGk7Nrd5fha6n0VWFJCp_jptX2QKFk6QdWnxw-OUkzYakwnv13TuLTU7VccOEa4f_WPb6poX4r86trLbuZtI/s1600/20140928_122210.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiyOCZnpQJ7PlltGP70ERPEYR18A803Ln5RYHzU0kw_xpte4bxo7kI6bCoGk7Nrd5fha6n0VWFJCp_jptX2QKFk6QdWnxw-OUkzYakwnv13TuLTU7VccOEa4f_WPb6poX4r86trLbuZtI/s640/20140928_122210.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwLH2EHmVsy6WZ7xoeiVc9xwP-NDfDHhrcB_yD5yj4SQfuPnIqZcrnMImBieUo1eF95KtEef8vQteqB1jssllRvQ215Wlx5Tjt3EqLmqTB70gqqgFMHsD_99PNGmkC4TJs0aZ4gwsrngA/s1600/2014-09-28%25252012.30.48.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwLH2EHmVsy6WZ7xoeiVc9xwP-NDfDHhrcB_yD5yj4SQfuPnIqZcrnMImBieUo1eF95KtEef8vQteqB1jssllRvQ215Wlx5Tjt3EqLmqTB70gqqgFMHsD_99PNGmkC4TJs0aZ4gwsrngA/s640/2014-09-28%25252012.30.48.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRT8YYLrbqrHJFtvg0tZjchG1X3MHOjW8aATzo3QvnRYeQ4i_xtyrxyKVKJ0wKL9g9N_L7xxcUf4M_jyEJ9RL_CrBX2HIzJG6JaAQCtX_6c8WQ0k1W0-qDFTUL95ue7TmJFYceyopUols/s1600/20140928_115644.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRT8YYLrbqrHJFtvg0tZjchG1X3MHOjW8aATzo3QvnRYeQ4i_xtyrxyKVKJ0wKL9g9N_L7xxcUf4M_jyEJ9RL_CrBX2HIzJG6JaAQCtX_6c8WQ0k1W0-qDFTUL95ue7TmJFYceyopUols/s640/20140928_115644.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-19027258685763564172014-09-23T09:58:00.001+01:002014-09-23T11:42:47.485+01:00Clore Fellowship: reflections on day 1<p dir="ltr">It is a beautiful misty cool morning here at Bore Place and I've been reflecting on yesterday's learning. To start with, I have 4 reflections. </p>
<p dir="ltr">1: An interesting reminder. Sue Hoyle (Director of Clore) spoke of leadership from the side, and leadership that makes things happen rather than leadership that places you at the centre. It reminded me of a leadership video that has been inspirational to me. The First Follower is a study in making things happen and is a model of leadership I admire and strive for. http://youtu.be/fW8amMCVAJQ</p>
<p dir="ltr">2: A direction for research. Marcus Davey (Director of The Roundhouse and former Artistic Director of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival) spoke about his key inspirational being how to build a truly civic - ie useful to people and communities - organisation. I'm currently (finally) reading a book called The Gift Relationship, which is a study of ultruism as sec through the blood donation service in the UK and the US. I'm drawn to how the arts can impact, nurture and bring about better societies and think this may well be a direction I seek to explore through further study. </p>
<p dir="ltr">3 - A challenge. For me personally. How do I reconcile the practice of arts creation with the administration side. Can I be a leader without being a creator? Or are there other sides of creation that I need to build info my perception of the leader I want to be? </p>
<p dir="ltr">4 - Action. Sitting listening to Marcus Davey I started to think about expressing my values. Also started to jot down the start of some thoughts on what my core beliefs/values/thoughts are. </p>
<p dir="ltr">So some first day thoughts. And now for some self indulgent pictures of the site here. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZpBptq_tmZMNHSV-c072riYrPcolzllLOVtNqxMpDzO2uPYdJu_Rz2WnM9k4o7qUAVWJbtwqXf22ijCPzmlFTnlT8bjtkjp2oEIgcVVBS5H7onGvHTcYY3A23CGG20z5C2aXm9DvsFY/s1600/20140922_163341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZpBptq_tmZMNHSV-c072riYrPcolzllLOVtNqxMpDzO2uPYdJu_Rz2WnM9k4o7qUAVWJbtwqXf22ijCPzmlFTnlT8bjtkjp2oEIgcVVBS5H7onGvHTcYY3A23CGG20z5C2aXm9DvsFY/s640/20140922_163341.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgcH0uNPupa4lq1ydvRDzNr-pKEkyr1Czwjm7G_tNFPlnToOWv-TEcGrXhxVbbhmZeqLu7xImMHTWVGwKvJTXxcZQgNhpc3wXVtXlqRK9iKCRYB0_DmWk3Z5G6DIyXtF4brsleX702YE/s1600/20140922_175221.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgcH0uNPupa4lq1ydvRDzNr-pKEkyr1Czwjm7G_tNFPlnToOWv-TEcGrXhxVbbhmZeqLu7xImMHTWVGwKvJTXxcZQgNhpc3wXVtXlqRK9iKCRYB0_DmWk3Z5G6DIyXtF4brsleX702YE/s640/20140922_175221.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuFJipWw_-WugAP1dmf3SIgC4UrQsDOU3G8aTxliiGbSYyCLQ-gpIEHxWu29P2_cKLTcUAKUhc5cAcAFjLQPA3JDAw0m3CO_34PjbA7eGsZsbUv0itYxvRjiCs-i84cnsnJJWAQIONMLE/s1600/20140922_183217.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuFJipWw_-WugAP1dmf3SIgC4UrQsDOU3G8aTxliiGbSYyCLQ-gpIEHxWu29P2_cKLTcUAKUhc5cAcAFjLQPA3JDAw0m3CO_34PjbA7eGsZsbUv0itYxvRjiCs-i84cnsnJJWAQIONMLE/s640/20140922_183217.jpg"> </a> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2lU6jN5LnElwOhyphenhyphenLl5HnSZi2RZ2kSuTJYKRw5wWXTcj4ck7AYsWO2LbyjGxmrjvsseqhYdWRnZWeYFyuXNikVR4uydXv6gZH1fYghr0GyNw4jiBdcpqaM69U2Xwxyjwv43Lq4iYggw8/s1600/20140922_182535.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> <img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2lU6jN5LnElwOhyphenhyphenLl5HnSZi2RZ2kSuTJYKRw5wWXTcj4ck7AYsWO2LbyjGxmrjvsseqhYdWRnZWeYFyuXNikVR4uydXv6gZH1fYghr0GyNw4jiBdcpqaM69U2Xwxyjwv43Lq4iYggw8/s640/20140922_182535.jpg"> </a> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-12414244740940910942014-09-17T23:19:00.001+01:002014-09-17T23:19:06.358+01:00Yes Scotland<div class="_5pbx userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">
Tomorrow,
Scotland, I hope you manage to take a step towards a society built on
values of social justice and progressive politics, to a society free of
nuclear weapons and which puts people before profits.<br />
<br />
I also
want to say thankyou. Through this exemplary democratic exercise you
have challenged the Westminster elites and placed liberal politics
firmly on the agenda. Whatever the outcome, this is a victory.<br />
<br />
There's a quote on the outside of the Scottish Storytelling Centre in
Edinburgh. It reads: 'work as if you live in the early days of a better
nation' and is attributed to Alasdair Gray. I hope you get to find out
what this is like. <span class="_58cl">#</span><span class="_58cm">indyref</span> <span class="_58cl">#</span><span class="_58cm">YesScotland</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-59453374263029331782014-08-05T08:52:00.001+01:002014-08-05T08:52:08.878+01:00Emerging from a CocoonI wrote the following blog for <a href="http://www.cloreleadership.org/item.aspx?id=91">Clore Leadership</a>, reflecting back on my experience of the Emerging Leaders course I undertook in 2013.<br />
<br />
<br />
This week, one year ago, I was in Cheshire attending a Clore Emerging Leaders course. A year on, I still feel immensely privileged to have attended that week-long residential programme, and am struggling to cram all the ways the course impacted on me professionally and personally into such a short piece.<br />
<br />
That week has acquired an almost surreal quality in my memory: ensconced in a hotel with 20 other amazingly creative, articulate, generous, and fun people, cut off from the outside world, and ending with a 3am walk in the freezing cold as a snowstorm began to whip itself up. Clore felt like a cocoon in which I grew wings and emerged believing that I could fly.<br />
<br />
But enough of the extended metaphors. Clore provided a space for reflection and learning, for trying new ideas and ways of behaving, for focussing on myself and understanding my skills and abilities and what I needed to work at. It opened my eyes and ears to the wider world of the arts and culture and enabled me to gain a broader picture of how other people work, what drives them, and what success has been like for them.<br />
<br />
It was the people I met that have had the biggest impact on me. A spirit of camaraderie and shared trust existed throughout, and extended beyond the group itself to our fantastic convenors and the people who came in to talk to us, too. I was fortunate, too: in the very first session I met someone who I realised was challenging in just the way I needed. Someone who asked difficult questions and listened harder to my answers than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ve been lucky to have been able to continue to collaborate in a mutual mentoring type of way ever since. We have hesitantly enabled each other to explore creative ideas to the stage where they increasingly feel ready to become a reality.<br />
<br />
I’ve also benefitted from mentorship from a Clore Fellow who, despite my hesitation and propensity to change my mind, has been patient and pushed me and helped me believe that I have a good idea that could work.<br />
<br />
I am afraid I have become a bit of an evangelist for the Clore Emerging Leaders course. I loved my experience and, quite simply, I wouldn’t be in the position I am without it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-42119073148759474062014-08-05T08:50:00.002+01:002014-08-05T08:50:32.585+01:00Talking with Readers: Choosing Summer ReadsI wrote the following blog post for <a href="http://www.vintage-books.co.uk/blog/Behind-The-Scenes/TWR-CSR/">Vintage Books blog</a> to promote <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/">Summer Reads</a> 2014, a reading programme I run at <a href="http://www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk/">Writers' Centre Norwich</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Last month I met a friend for dinner. We had some proper work to do, but as usual we got distracted and ended up talking about books. Two hours later we had discussed every winner of the Booker Prize since it launched. I came away with a reading list of books she had completely sold me on, vivid memories of all the Booker winners I have already read and loved, and all I wanted to do was get home and read some more.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I’m lucky. My job at Writers’ Centre Norwich means I spend lots of time talking to readers. Our Summer Readsprogramme is now in its fifth year and offers an annual guide to some of the most exhilarating writing and storytelling from around the world. This year we are featuring 8 fantastic and varied books: there are novels, short story and poetry collections, and works in translation. We will be going out and meeting readers in bookshops and libraries, hosting events, and supporting bold, confident and adventurous reading for everyone. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Through doing all this I’ve come to the conclusion that readers are the great untapped resource of literature. By involving readers not just as consumers of what is written, but as shapers of their own experiences, we could harness the incredible power of word-of-mouth recommendations, and create a movement for reading broadly.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">That’s why, two years ago, we decided to throw open the gates to Summer Reads. Anyone who wanted to help us select the books was given the opportunity to do so. We currently have a group of 50 readers of all ages, male and female, and with different levels of literary experience. These volunteer judges are in charge of what we choose.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Their task isn’t a small one! We had 129 books on our longlist this year, and 6 months to work it down to a final selection. More than 750 reviews were written, debate was intense, and our monthly meetings were standing-room-only with readers Skyping in from holiday to be there. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Only one book was easy to select: All The Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld. Every single one of the readers who read it fell in love with and heartily recommended it. Jake Whyte is an unforgettable character and Wyld’s gritty and brutal prose brings her sparse island-home alive. We’re by no means the only people to think Evie Wyld may be the next great British writer. ‘The Culture Show’ and Granta have each named her in recent lists of the best of young British novelists, while the Bailey’s and Costa prizes each identified All the Birds, Singing as one of the books of the year. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">The choice of every other book came down to a hotly debated three-hour selection meeting in the icy days of January 2014. Over spiced cider and mulled wine, we gathered to fight it out. I went in joking that I had two fists, each named after the books I was backing. But I was outdone: another group of readers mock-threatened suicide if their favourite book – Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami (translated by Allison Markin Powell) – wasn’t selected. We loved it too and decided not to test their resolve. Six other books joined the list, includingTenth of December by George Saunders (which later went on to win the fabulous new Folio Prize), and two collections of poetry because each was too good not to include!</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">And, through it all, what continued to strike me most clearly was that readers were pushing us to be braver with our choices than we would have been otherwise, that these readers craved the new and the exciting over the familiar. And that they revelled in being able to influence the programme. Their contribution of time and energy and creative spirit amazed and humbled me. And it is to these readers, and every other reader who picks up one of these books, that Summer Reads belongs. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">Whether you are looking for a great book to read, eager to begin your next reading adventure, or want to join in with our events and online chat, Summer Reads is for you. Do check out <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/">www.summerreads.org.uk</a> for more information and to get involved.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">As for me, I’m about to embark on another project to travel the UK talking to readers and telling their stories, uncovering what reading does for us personally, socially, emotionally, and as a society, investigating different approaches to reading, and representing the insightful, inventive and committed reading that takes place everyday by articulate readers everywhere. </span></span></div>
<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; padding: 0px 0px 10px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 12px;">I hope one day I can talk reading with you too.</span></span></div>
<div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-69869000191054851772013-11-04T15:01:00.000+00:002013-11-04T15:01:03.437+00:00Guest Book Review - Raptors by Toon Tellegen (Translated by Judith Wilkinson)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLENX_p9CnEGMgMv2igynsJzDA29JslGlAe37468aHXrzoaYXJPBQFwF03p8Kv1zPbSO8Xl_lYqByvX5iCWUQKkp67ZR-QN8IpXBsMtWWUM4pA4RW3qade2vMgV2Os4IASepCis3QygU/s1600/Raptors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLENX_p9CnEGMgMv2igynsJzDA29JslGlAe37468aHXrzoaYXJPBQFwF03p8Kv1zPbSO8Xl_lYqByvX5iCWUQKkp67ZR-QN8IpXBsMtWWUM4pA4RW3qade2vMgV2Os4IASepCis3QygU/s200/Raptors.jpg" width="121" /></a></div>
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/" style="color: #d57629; text-decoration: none;">Summer Reads</a>. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here</i><span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">on Books, Time and Silence. </i><br style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.</span></i><br style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i><span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b>Guest review by Julia Webb</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i>Raptors </i>is the work of Dutch author Toon Tellegen. Tellegen is one of Holland’s most well-loved authors and has written a series of award winning children’s novels, as well as adult fiction, plays, and over twenty collections of poetry, although Raptors is only the second collection that has been translated into English. Until recently he was also a GP. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I read this book earlier this year after it was recommended to me by a friend who had heard the translator read from it at Poetry-next-the-sea festival in Wells. I knew I would love it as soon as I read the author’s preface – it is without doubt one of the best prefaces that I have ever read. It begins:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">'Years ago I invented someone whom I called my father.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"> It was morning, very early, I couldn’t sleep any more, I remember it quite clearly.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">My father didn’t seem surprised at having suddenly appeared out of nowhere and, in his turn, invented my mother, my brothers and myself. He even, that very same morning, invented the life we should lead…'</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">With an opening like that I knew I was in for something unusual and special and I was not disappointed. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i>Raptors </i>is one long poem made up of a sequence of poems, each of which can also stand alone. Each poem begins with the words “my father" and each poem also starts off with a statement – like a small proverb, about the father, often using common sayings from popular culture: e.g. “My father did not let sleeping dogs lie…” Each poem is like a miniature portrait or a small scene in which the father is the pivotal character. It quickly becomes clear that this fictional father is a tyrant, but that he is also a complex and multi-faceted character. Individually the poems might be short but each has many layers, and as a whole they build into a kind of verbal crescendo. I found I needed to read just a few of them at a time, and then digest them for a little while before coming back for more. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Tellegen is a master of language and plays with the reader in a very clever way. The poems work on our psyche on many levels. Tellegen uses the idea of the family as a framework and constructs and deconstructs it. He tells us stories, and those stories often conflict with one another. In effect each poem in the sequence is recreating the family stories of the narrator in the same way that we recreate stories of our own families in real life. Speak to ten members of any family and they will all have different memories and opinions of particular family events, or of family members − and who can say which, if any, version is true? Perhaps there is an element of truth and fiction in all of them. Or like with most families there might be different layers of truth. Tellegen uses this premise to take us on an exciting and surreal journey, and one that often left me, the reader, with conflicting emotions. Sometimes I detested the Father, but at other times I felt sorry for him. It certainly made me think a lot about family dynamics – and, coming from a somewhat dysfunctional family myself, I could definitely relate to some of it. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Tellegen has managed to make the language both emotionally loaded and playful, which is quite a feat to pull off. He also juxtaposes the everyday with the surreal to marvellous effect:</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">'My father,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">there was a gaping hole in him</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">in which my mother and my brothers</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">entertained themselves</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">they sat at a table,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">they laughed, played dice</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">and cheated</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">and the hole in my father grew bigger</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">and bigger,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">and shots were fired in my father,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">people screamed</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">and were arrested</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">a car stopped on the edge </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">of my father,</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">my mother and brothers got in…'</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">The playfulness and surrealism of the imagery put me a little in mind of poems in <i>Homage to the Lame Wolf </i> by Serbian poet Vasko Popa or the work of Charles Simic, but there is something almost Biblical about this collection too. This is also a very masterly translation. I imagine it would not have been an easy book to translate and Judith Wilkinson has done a great job. I found this book moving, disturbing and inspiring all at once. It was a joy to read and it reconnected me with my love for language. Reviewer George Messo said “It takes a book like this, seemingly hurled through the ether, to crack us on the head and wake us.” I couldn’t agree more − I imagine this is a book I will come back to again and again.</span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b><i>Raptors</i> was first published in the UK by Carcanet in 2011. ISBN: 9781847770837; 96pp</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">Julia Webb is graduate of the MA in Creative Writing at The University of East Anglia. She is a poetry editor for <a href="http://www.gatehousepress.com/posts/lighthouseblog/">Lighthouse literary journal</a>, has had poetry and reviews published in journals and online, and in 2011 she won the Poetry Socity's Stanza competition. She lives in Norwich and teaches creative writing.</span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-61099782352962630272013-10-25T09:34:00.003+01:002013-10-25T09:37:11.025+01:00Guest Book Review - The Dinner by Herman Koch (Translated by Sam Garrett)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3goNZ7lZn7jKluwDRzLolPEaEToPnU-A59QQhWd8EnmfMkBUQcTGdHbHvWBFKRzHzJRZV3_9hHTA5lQMOustTt8WGvoxt2MlOX27y_KJztCwYB6F6Zipazsv8tpBK9HIcUA1G-Fmd-c/s1600/The+Dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP3goNZ7lZn7jKluwDRzLolPEaEToPnU-A59QQhWd8EnmfMkBUQcTGdHbHvWBFKRzHzJRZV3_9hHTA5lQMOustTt8WGvoxt2MlOX27y_KJztCwYB6F6Zipazsv8tpBK9HIcUA1G-Fmd-c/s200/The+Dinner.jpg" width="130" /></a></div>
<i style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/" style="color: #d57629; text-decoration: none;">Summer Reads</a>. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here</i><span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">on Books, Time and Silence. </i><br />
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.</span></i><br />
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b>Guest review by Lara Narkiewicz</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i>The Dinner</i> describes an evening meal between two couples, bound together by the two men who are brothers. It initially seems like a dark tale of a brother’s resentment towards his sibling. But soon it becomes clear that the couples have not come together to discuss themselves, but instead to attempt to agree on how to deal with the fallout of a horrific act committed by their two sons.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I read this book a year ago and, at the time, felt that my enjoyment of the novel was overshadowed by my shock at the harrowing description of the actions of the two boys. Indeed, this isn’t a novel to be enjoyed, but one that asks difficult questions of the reader. How far would you go to protect your child, no matter what he or she had done? Would you betray your partner rather than your child? How well do you know those you feel closest to?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">These are questions that have stayed with me every time that I have thought back to this story. They, and the quality of Koch’s humour (at times wholly dark), have rendered this tale as vivid in my memory as when I turned the last page. And it is very much a page turner. I felt compelled to find out what the boys had done and then exactly how their parents were to deal with it- or whether that was the real issue at hand.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Those who might compare <i>The Dinner</i> to We Need To Talk About Kevin are not highlighting the very different relationships between the characters. This is a novel that examines why people are compelled to do what they do, rather than Shriver’s examination of the nature versus nurture question. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">This is not a story for the faint hearted but for those who persevere, there is plenty within these pages to consider and discuss. And despite it having been a best seller in the author’s native Netherlands, and its imminent development into a major film, I wouldn’t let this deter a more adventurous reader. It is a hugely rewarding novel. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b><i>The Dinner </i>was first published in the UK by Atlantic Books in 2012. Edition shown is the paperback edition, published 2013. ISBN: 9781848873834; 311pp</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b>Lara Narkiewicz</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">As a young girl, my dream was to move into my local library or bookshop and live amongst all the books. Although this dream never came to fruition (much to my disappointment), I am in the very lucky position to work in the literature sector. I co-produce Summer Reads, Writers’ Centre Norwich’s reader development programme and love the winter months when readers help us to select the books to be promoted over the summer. With an undergraduate degree in languages, my passion lies in translated fiction and short stories. I know that my understanding of others and of the world around us has been helped immensely by my love of reading and I always try to read new books that will challenge me. This is what Summer Reads is all about- encouraging readers to try something new. I’m really proud to be a part of it.</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-47258174500090641232013-10-22T09:37:00.000+01:002013-10-25T09:11:16.164+01:00Guest Book Review - The Crumb Road by Maitreyabandhu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEsUgzpKWb8Cr4rlKYbNXjY8zAkprnxNDMx-Z1nxexxPVM4R_aEEBf5iW-mXvdAsO9XB7lkTlkMYy0MPaD6Nf5qs74OQsnYWJbKJg68GIjvMME1oDLqTE9aG1GJtAQCydDws90AzOiXMk/s1600/The+Crumb+Road.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEsUgzpKWb8Cr4rlKYbNXjY8zAkprnxNDMx-Z1nxexxPVM4R_aEEBf5iW-mXvdAsO9XB7lkTlkMYy0MPaD6Nf5qs74OQsnYWJbKJg68GIjvMME1oDLqTE9aG1GJtAQCydDws90AzOiXMk/s320/The+Crumb+Road.jpg" width="205" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><i>Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/" style="color: #d57629; text-decoration: none;">Summer Reads</a>. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here</i> <i>on Books, Time and Silence. </i></span><br />
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.</span></i><br />
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i>
<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Guest review by Sue Badger</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">This is a collection of poems and prose-poems set in 3 distinct parts, lyrical reflections on existence and connections: the minutia of memories of childhood (part 1), observations of the wider world in relation to self perception (part 2), and emerging sexuality (part 3). </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The tone is set in the preface poem ‘This’, where the strident beauty of the thrush’s song is juxtaposed with the ‘common hell’ built by Man: “Whatever else there is, there’s this as well.” Existence, and the memory of past resonate through most of the poems: Maitreyabandhu, always modest and self-effacing, emphasises that while memories are imperfect or incomplete, it is the emotions evoked that are important. In Burial the strong recollections of his father unearthing skulls and bones are immediately tempered by “But that isn’t right, / .... I’ve mistaken/ my father’s story for the thing itself.” Both the pleasure and pain of childhood memories are explored in closely observed detail; occasionally in the observer’s 2nd person narrative, as in The Coat Cupboard, where the discovery of a keyring and grandma’s lipstick is far more profound than the emergence of a magical land such as Narnia; or the excellent prose-poetry of Copper Wire, where the evocative language describes a family outing to the seaside, and in which each parent and sibling discover delights personal to their desires: the mother a sunset, the father some buried copper wire... Suffering and embarrassment are recollected in Potato – a school child’s fear and humiliation, (sentiments alluded to over 200 years ago in William Blake’s ‘Songs of Experience’) : “Each little word got harder as the big word came along ...” culminating in the worst of punishments: “You’ll stand in front of class until you say it!” , or the cutting shame felt with the father expressing his disappointment in his son’s decision in Bottle Digging: “We drove in silence home.... And I’m still ashamed of what I did.”</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">In the 2nd part the poet explores the poignant acceptance of life’s existence in its simplest form, as in ‘Rangiatea’, (Maori for ‘the place out there’), but again recollection is obscured by confused memories: “He couldn’t decide if the island was real/ or just the interval between sleeping/ and waking, known only from the corner/ of your eye...”, and accepting that life cannot be measured by events that have occurred. Many of these central poems express an essentially Buddhist spirituality, as in ‘Letters on Cezanne’, where connections are observed, sometimes precise, sometimes obscure. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Particularly eloquent is the acutely observed relationship between him and Stephen in the final poems: emotional realisation is explored through gentle inference, where the need for secrecy and discretion is paramount and heightens awareness. An overwhelming sense of guilt pervades the poems, yet the yearning to connect – a look, a touch, a mutual recognition of urgency – drives the uncertain alliance on until Stephen’s early death lays realisation bare, and memories – always tempered by the ambivalence of truth and desire, are revealed to be as transient as Hansel’s crumb road.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b><i>The Crumb Road</i> was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2013. ISBN: 9781852249748; 79pp</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Sue Badger is a</span></span><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"> retired English teacher who has always enjoyed reading. She regards herself as a discriminatory (some may say intolerant) reader : with so many good authors out there, across the genres, why aim low?</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-40265146192435326732013-10-15T16:17:00.002+01:002013-10-15T16:17:16.212+01:00MAN Booker Prize 2013 - Who Will Win?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When the Booker Longlist was announced back in July my immediate response was of disappointment. I had read none of the titles on the list and felt particularly aggrieved on behalf of Mohsin Hamid and Evie Wyld, each of whom struck me as deserving recognition for genuinely brilliant novels.<br />
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As the MAN Booker Prize expands next year, there will only be more of this disappointment. And yet that strikes me as a brilliant thing. The Booker is all about celebrating great literature. While I don't agree with the idea that there is one 'winner' in literature, the Booker does an amazing job of getting people reading books they otherwise wouldn't try. The bigger the pool, the better the 'best' novels should be. I understand there are concerns about how the changes will make it more difficult for existing Commonwealth writers to win the prize. But as a reader, I just want the best books to discover.<br />
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Discover. That's what I've done this year. I'm not in a position to speak with authority on what should win having only read four of the six books but since when has lack of authority stopped anyone blogging online? From those I have read, I don't believe these are the six best eligible novels of 2013, but I do think they make an interesting collection. I'm looking forward to getting to NoViolet Bulawayo's <i>We Need New Names</i> and Colm Toibin's <i>The Testament of Mary, </i>but in the meantime, here are my thoughts on the four I have read.<br />
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<b>Eleanor Catton - <i>The Luminaries</i></b><br />
Wow. I mean, wow. Eleanor Catton is one of the most lovely people I've met in literature. She spent a week at the Worlds gathering of writers in Norwich in 2012 and for much of the final day she went around seeing whether she could predict people's Zodiac signs simply by looking at them. She'd been researching for her new book, she said, and found it all fascinating. We played along, enjoying the times she got right at least as much as those she got wrong.<br />
I find it amazing that all that time the book she was finishing was this one. <i>The Luminaries</i> is an amazing achievement that demonstrates a versatility of voice and ambition that is rarely seen in literature these days. I am only half-way through it so far, but what I've read is such a staggering feat of creative imagination that it rather blows me away. It is 1866 and a man arrives to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. He stumbles into a world of intrigue and mystery, a frontier community racked with corruption, jealousy, and petty squabbles. Structured around the movement of celestial bodies in the sky, <i>The Luminaries</i> is Victorian parody, a mystery novel told it pitch-perfect prose. Even at 800 dense pages, it is a rip-roaring read, full of intrigue and petty squabbles, history, and progress. That Eleanor is in her mid 20s shouldn't matter to judgement about the quality of her book. But that she has created a book so utterly different to her debut, <i>The Rehearsal</i> demonstrates just what a talent she is.<br />
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I'd love to see <i>The Luminaries</i> win. It's my tip and the one I'm supporting.<br />
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<b>Jim Crace - <i>Harvest</i></b><br />
Is it too simplistic to suggest that <i>Harvest </i>is the longest retirement note of all time? Probably, but that was the feeling I came away with as I finished <i>Harvest</i>. Jim Crace has said that it will be his last book, and as it goes on <i>Harvest</i> becomes more and more about one man's last stand in the face of change.<br />
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It all starts of imperiously well. Crace's prose is slick and yet profound, the voice he conjures for his narrator reads beautifully. Walter Thirsk is an outsider who has found a home in a tiny isolated village, which is lived around collective subsistence farming. As the novel dawns we see two fires burning in the distance. The first, a group of newcomers raising smoke from a newly built dwelling, hints at threat from outside. The second, a larger fire in a barn of the manor house, seems to suggest that everything may not be well inside the village either.<br />
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Walter's narration is delivered in a mixture of first person singular and plural, an intermittent grand 'we' that represents the communality of the village, its interdependency, as well as his status on the fringes of it. And as change comes and land reform threatens to make this the last harvest of all, the plurality of the village becomes divided, the community swiftly atomised. The events are dramatic but it starts to seem a bit like creating a drama out of a crisis. And as the community breaks up, the prose loses its gentle elegance and the story dissipates.<br />
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I couldn't help being reminded of Julian Barnes's <i>The Sense of An Ending</i>, another sumptuously written novel whose plot gets rather lost as it progresses. Crace spends a considerable amount of time considering what it means to have something and then lose it, and what it means to leave something one has loved behind. I felt it became a little bit self-involved. It is such a shame, because there's no doubting that <i>Harvest </i>is a finely crafted novel. But I don't think it is a great novel. is it a great novel - I'm not sure it is.<br />
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<b>Jhumpa Lahiri - <i>The Lowland</i></b><br />
Jhumpa Lahiri<i> </i>is one of those legions of writers that I've intended to read for a number of years, yet never found myself doing so. I'm delighted to have had this chance to read <i>The Lowland</i> which I thoroughly enjoyed. Lahiri's writing is assured and assuring; she is a writer for whom character is paramount, and tracing evolution of characters over time provides the narrative of the novel.<br />
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<i>The Lowland </i>follows the lives of two brothers from Calcutta, Subhash and Udayan. Inseparable as children, they grow apart as their different interests and beliefs take them in different directions. Lahiri tracks their lives, and the lives of those they are closest to, over 50 years of Indian, American and global history, seeing them excel and fail, all the time remaining surprising, passionate, believable characters in their own rights.<br />
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Perhaps one could criticise <i>The Lowland</i> as falling into a familiar trope in modern literature that sees characters escape drama in the 'Third World' to find safety and security in America. Its a recurring theme in recent literature and I find it overplayed and uncomfortable. There must be more to the immigrant experience to explore. However, Lahiri does it better than most and her writing is good enough that it doesn't impinge on the reading experience.<br />
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With the Marxist Naxalite movement at its heart, Lahiri cleverly manipulates the readers' response to the strong politics of the characters. Udayan is, for a long time portrayed as making a futile stand for something doomed to failure. But one of the brilliant things about this book is how the last chapter transforms much of what came before it. It's a great example of what novels do best: placing one inside the skin of another person and showing life through their experience. In finally seeing Udayan's motives, the reader quietly questions what came before, re-appraising in subtle ways much of what happens.<br />
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I loved <i>The Lowlands </i>and expect it to be a big hit with readers. It is epic and involving and character driven. I don't think it will win, and yet I do think it would be a great winner were it to do so.<br />
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<b>Ruth Ozeki - <i>A Tale For the Time Being</i></b><br />
I must be honest: I could not finish this book. It wasn't that it was bad at all, just rather dull. The concept is a great one: Ozeki is trying to write a book according to Buddhist (and Quantum Mechanic) principles of time and place. So we have two characters (particles) existing independently of each other in the same time but different places. The narrative moves back and forth between a Nao, teenage girl in Japan who is struggling with being bullied and turns to write a diary to fill her loneliness, and Ruth Ozeki, a woman who finds the girl's diary washed up on the shore of her rural Canadian home. Nao's narration is engaging, playful and full of interesting glimpses into her life. However, Ruth's is dull and plodding. As a view of writers block, it is effective, her frustrated, stuck, mindset bleeding into the reading experience.<br />
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Ultimately, I just couldn't break into this book. I would read 10 pages then fall asleep. I would make promises to get on with it and read more. But I would find myself not wanting to pick it up. And finally I just moved on.<br />
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<i>A Tale For the Time Being </i>didn't work for me.<br />
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There's little to get excited about. I read about half, and that took me 2 weeks. At which point, despite constantly deciding to finish it quickly and then falling asleep, I just gave up. I'm confused how this possibly made it to the Booker shortlist.<br />
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<b>Conclusion</b><br />
And there we have it! Six books. A real mixed bag of themes and locations and styles. Because of its ambition, scope, and sheer demonstration of writing prowess, I'd like to see Eleanor Catton take home the prize. But it doesn't really matter. It is a great book, and will be read and loved regardless. That is the thing about prizes: we talk about them all the time and they can change writer's lives. And yet, a great book rises regardless of victory and a weak winner doesn't last long in the memory. That is the way it should be.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-49251877198659953272013-10-07T14:11:00.000+01:002013-10-07T14:14:24.320+01:00Guest Book Review: Archipelago by Monique Roffey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><i>Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/" style="color: #d57629; text-decoration: none;">Summer Reads</a>. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here</i> <i>on Books, Time and Silence. </i></span><br />
<i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.</span></i><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; line-height: 18px;"><b>Guest review by Judith Lal</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">At first, I was unsure about <i>Archipelago</i>. A few pages in there is a mundane description of a father preparing some instant macaroni cheese for his young daughter and I thought it was all a bit tedious. But then suddenly it picks up and takes you on an amazing sea-faring adventure. In the process, it explores modern day piracy, politics and race, sex and grief, climate change and environmental degradation, and our complex currant relationship with nature. We also see a wonderfully moving portrait of father daughter relationships, often lacking in literature lately. I loved the girl child Océan who has all the resilience, vulnerability and charm of a six-year-old, and the nice descriptions of her various facial expressions and moods really animated her character. The rhythm of the prose seems influenced by Trinidad and is like the sea itself. The repetitions and easy rhythm seem deceptively simple and quick to read. The only thing that did stand out was the rather over used cliché of the sea as metaphor for woman with malevolent siren powers, but this small thing I could overlook.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">The novel reminds me of <i>Flight Behaviour</i> by Barbara Kingsolver which I also loved, both coming in the new genre of clim-fiction. But reading this may encourage readers to try <i>Moby Dick</i> which is referred to a lot and also Old man and the Sea. Lots to talk about with this book, there is one erotically charged scene that could make uncomfortable literal reading as a post-colonial metaphor, the subject being large white man visits beautiful and available black sex workers on the island, but the scene has more to do with human emotions of joy and grief than with commercial exchange. Having read Roffey's other work, <i>With the Kisses of his Mouth</i>, I feel comfortable that the scene that is not out of place in the narrative and the portrayal of hollowing grief afterwards puts it into context. I'm interested in the way the author researched the material by sailing herself around the islands, there seems to be a real sense of environmental concern for this fragile network of islands. Nature is wondrous and scary, appropriate that the story of evolution is connected to the Galapagos. Just as we are connected to paradise so we have a responsibility towards it. Paradise is not isolated, nor unaffected by us. A prefect and appropriate summer read that is not afraid to deal with big contemporary issues. Archipelago is a book I shall definitely remember reading in a couple of years time. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b>Archipelago was published in the UK by Simon and Schuster in 2012. Edition shown is the paperback edition, ISBN: 9780857203113, 358pp</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><b><br /></b></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">Judith Lal works in the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium library. Her pamphlet Flageolets at the Bazaar was chosen as a poetry book society recommendation. Her poems have been published in various magazines including Poetry London, Poetry News, The Rialto, Ambit, Magma, Mslexia, The North, and Aesthetica. They have also been published in the Indian anthology The Harpercollins book of English poetry.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com263tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4093786175732250309.post-69813197693121932102013-10-03T14:02:00.000+01:002013-10-03T14:02:24.520+01:00Guest Book Review: Maggot Moon by Sally Gardener<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><i>Each year I have the pleasure of working with a group of readers to collectively select the books that will feature in a reading programme, <a href="http://www.summerreads.org.uk/" style="color: #d57629; text-decoration: none;">Summer Reads</a>. Between August 2013 and January 2014, the Readers' Circle will work through a longlist of more than 150 books to find the 6 titles that we fall in love with and want to recommend to other readers. And throughout that period I'll be posting some of the reviews here</i> <i>on Books, Time and Silence. </i></span><br style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><i style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">*Thanks to the publisher for providing review copies of this book.</span></i><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fdfefa; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Guest Review by Pearl Crossfield</b></span></span><br />
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<i>Maggot Moon</i> is a young adult novel that has the potential to appeal to a wide range of ages. Sally Gardner dedicates her book to 'the dreamers / Overlooked at school / Never won prizes - you who will own tomorrow' and this pretty well sums up both the protagonist of the story and the plot line. Standish Treadwell is a teenager who appears to suffer from dyslexia, who 'can’t read / can’t write' and is bullied at school. For him the words on the blackboard are 'just circus horses dancing up and down', they mean nothing and he prefers his daydreaming life because it’s better than being 'worried sick' all the time. Yet Standish is clever, has imagination and courage and eventually achieves a great victory, albeit a bitter-sweet one.<br />
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The drawings scattered throughout the pages feature the life cycle of the fly and the death of a rat. The drawings are cartoon-like and offer a skillful way of holding a distracted children’s attention. The images tell a story of death and regeneration, a life cycle explored through decaying matter and the food chain. Sally Gardner and illustrator Julian Crouch cleverly draw a parallel with an infestation of maggots both in the natural world and in the society the characters are living in, and alludes to the title and the somber themes of the book.<br />
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Any reader no matter what age could appreciate this book on several different levels. It is imaginative, with a clever use of language, Standish may not be able to read and write but he has a broad vocabulary, saying 'I collect words - they are sweets in the mouth of sound'. He can use words in a humorous way too, when describing a teacher he says, 'Never would I have thought that the hard boiled Miss Philips had such a soft, sweet centre'. Despite the short, tight chapters (some only a paragraph), and the humour, it is not a light read at all. It is a fable, but a rather bleak and grim one. We never quite get a sense of the setting and I found myself wondering whether the characters were perhaps living in an alternative history, a kind of post World War Two totalitarian regime. There could also be historical parallels drawn here with the deception of the moon landing, since there have been conspiracy theories about moon landings, hoaxes supposedly staged by NASA. I’m sure that each reader will create their own idea of this world but you probably need to be older to appreciate the historical realism, and to see what Standish, as first person narrator, does not see at first, the gap between the appearance and the reality. The characterization is good, particularly Standish, and despite his oddness and the weirdness surrounding him he becomes a rounded, real person, a “crazy brave muddle” who we want to find freedom for himself and his friends and family.<br />
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This is an unusual book, a quick read but a thought provoking one.<br />
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<b><i>Maggot Moon </i>was published by Hot Key Books in 2013. Edition shown is paperback edition, ISBN 9781471400445, 279pp</b><br />
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Pearl Crossfield has recently retired after a career working for an Insurance Company and Local Government. She can’t remember a time when she did not enjoy reading and recently studied Literature part-time with the Open University. After all, there's little better than being able to discuss books with other like-minded people!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12140995911854334790noreply@blogger.com0