13 Thursday May 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Day 12 – and all goes well.
In between teaching my writing course, rehearsing Alice, two editing jobs, and a dozen other things of a more practical nature, I’m happy to say that I’ve managed my twelfth story in a row, last night… Continue reading
06 Thursday May 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Tags
#StoryADayMay, digital maps, Gerogian London, John Rocque, Napoleon, rabbit holes, Richard Horwood
Well, not quite a full week, if you like, as today is just the sixth day… But I have to say: so far, so good. Last night, quite late (after the loveliest Alice rehearsal) I completed the draft of my fifth story, and took a few notes for things to come… Continue reading
29 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Yes, yes – I’m doing it again. Because I liked the jolt it gave me last year, and because otherwise, considering the writing course I’m teaching, and the looming Summer Season, and a couple of largish jobs I’ve taken, I might be tempted to push my writing aside for now… Continue reading
22 Thursday Apr 2021
Tags
Habla, José Luis Borges, La Memoria de Shakespeare, Mnemosina, shakespeare, Shakespeare's Memory
I stumbled across Borges’s Shakespeare’s Memory a few years ago, while on a quest for memory-themed readings. And I have to say, it was a rather intricate kind of “stumbling”, because I became aware of the story only to find that, for some reason, it was the one piece missing from my mother’s supposedly Complete Works of Borges in Italian translation… Continue reading
15 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
Oh, the joys of Freewriting…!
Or Timed Writing, or however you like to call it. The deceptively simple act of sitting down with a pen and a piece of paper (or perhaps a keyboard and white screen), set a timer or a goal, and then… just write. Never stop, never edit, never overthink it, never mind grammar of spelling, never go back. Just write, as fast as you can. Just let if flow – until the timer rings, or the goal is met. Continue reading
08 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Books
Tags
Anthony Burgess, Books, Bryher, Connie Willies, Dickens, Golding, Marguerite Yourcenar, Rereading, Robert Graves, Ronald Blythe, Selma Lagerloff
This began as part of one of those catching-up phone calls you do around the holidays: we started with the Plague, of course (who doesn’t, these days?) and at some point, mercifully enough, we found ourselves discussing To Read Lists instead.
And the sad fact that there is never enough time to read new things – never mind reread. And yet, the yearning is there – and, before we knew it, we were sharing two very different lists of rereading wishes.
And I thought, well, why not? So here is a very short version of my list: the books I’d love to read again, had I but world enough, and time… Continue reading
01 Thursday Apr 2021
Posted in Scribbling
There is always at least one pupil like that.
Whenever I teach a writing course, the first time I give a maximum wordcount for an exercise, someone will look puzzled: how do you even know how many words are in a piece? Continue reading
25 Thursday Mar 2021
Posted in Poetry
Here in Italy Dante Alighieri is very much The Poet – the fellow who took it upon himself to describe in poetry a journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven.
His Divina Commedia – the Divine Comedy – is the object of passionate study by hordes of scholars, and a staple of the school curriculum. As far as I know, no Italian kid is allowed to leave school without meeting Dante – more or less exhaustively (that depends on the kind of school), and more or less satisfyingly (and that mostly depends on the teacher).
Father of the Italian language or no, Dante is no easy read. His Fourteenth Century Italian, his rhetorically complex style, and the many references to his day make the Commedia less than immediate to our modern ears – and while some teachers really do their best to introduce their pupils to the power and beauty of it, some… don’t. A great pity… Continue reading
18 Thursday Mar 2021
Posted in Theatre
Yes, I’m a director now.
No longer an assistant, no – a full fledged director.
I won’t say it wasn’t in the air, because it was. Has been for some time perhaps. After the last summer season – which was a test I passed.
And now… Continue reading
11 Thursday Mar 2021
Posted in Books, Scribbling, Theatre
It’s a Dover Thrift paperback, thin, smallish, the pages rather yellowed at the edges, my initials embossed on the right hand corner of the frontispiece… and I can’t quite remember where I got it.
Published in 1997, the copyright note says – so it can’t have been in Cardiff, much less in Edinburgh. And it can’t have been London, because I know for certain that I already had the book by the summer of 1998 – and I wouldn’t move to London (however briefly) until a whole year later… No, my small collection of Crane stories must have come from Pavia, from one of several bookshops around the University that stocked books in the original language. Continue reading
