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Culture

That Szirtes lecture

George Szirtes’s TS Eliot lecture is now available online at The Poetry Library. The Paterson lecture he comments on can be read here.

Categories
Me

Baby hair

I got my hair cut today, and not only did the barbress repeat the comment she made last time about how I obviously didn’t smoke; this time she commented that my hair was ‘like baby hair’.

This is not a picture of me:



Bed Head

Originally uploaded by HapaKorean.

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Other

Overheard in New York

Overheard in New York is always worth a look. Some recent faves:

Teen boy #1: So the other day I was watching TV and I said out loud, “Fuck, I wish I didn’t just eat all those Doritos.” And then I was like, “Wait, I didn’t just eat any Doritos.” And now I’m like, “Maybe I had one wish and I blew it on Doritos.” You know?

Teen boy #2: Damn, dawg. That sucks.

Girl: I mean, I was rivaling Mary Tyler Moore in her peak for cuteness, and he didn’t even look at me.

Guy: I would totally freeze-frame you, if it’s any consolation.

– Washington Square Park

Queer: I didn’t go to the Roxy on Saturday night; that’s way too many gays in one space. Plus I heard the disco balls were falling on people’s heads.

– Silver Building, Waverly Place

The only London version I know of, Tube Gossip, is less consistently amusing, which is a blow to local pride. Overheard Lines looks to have some good ones. Oh, and I’ve just realised that OiNY has a partner, Overheard in the Office.

Categories
Culture

T S Eliot Lecture – George Szirtes

I went to the T S Eliot lecture given by George Szirtes today. Having been to Don Paterson’s lecture last year, it was interesting for me that Szirtes decided to pick out some of the things Paterson had said and disagree with them.

In all such disagreements between poets, the terrible temptation is to think that one of them must be right. Even worse, that the other must therefore be wrong, and that it’s necessary to decide which is which. But they both write fine poems, so they must both be right. Or rather: Paterson has come to a way of thinking about poetry which he finds fruitful; Szirtes has come to another way which he finds productive. Not only are neither of them ‘right’, any more than Wordsworth or Hopkins were right, but there is no one right answer at this level of debate.

That’s not to say there are no universally applicable truths about poetry, just that they are rather limited in scope.

~~~

The Paterson lecture can be found here, for the moment at least. The Szirtes one will apparently be put on the web tomorrow. I’ll post a link to it then.

Categories
Culture Nature Other

Fairy rocks

The Times reports today that a property developer in Scotland has had to come up with new plans for a housing estate to accomodate a large rock after locals protested that digging it up would disturb the fairies that lived there. Or possibly because Pictish kings had been crowned on it – their stories seem to be a bit mixed, but they seem to have agreed that moving the rock would be bad juju.

Given my general scepticism about all things New Age and supernatural, you might expect me to be exasperated by this. But no, I think it’s great. One of the things I really liked in Japan was that, when you went walking in the country, any prominent landscape feature – a big rock, a waterfall – would usually have a little shrine on it or by it. The shrines were extremely rudimentary – often just three bits of rock arranged into the rough shape of a torii gate, like a little tiny dolmen about a foot high – but just enough to indicate that the spot was important. This picture gives you some idea of the shrines I’m talking about, although it’s taken at Kamakura, a big temple site, not just some random bit of the Japanese countryside.

In Japan, the shrines would be to kami – Shinto nature spirits – but really, kami, fairies, it’s all the same thing. Now I don’t believe there are actually fairies or spirits living in every prominent rock or ancient tree; but the practice humanises and enriches the landscape. Just the fact that it picks out striking things and says ‘look at me’ gives a focus to the landscape. When we talk about respect for nature, it tends to be in an environmental context; respecting whole ecosystems. There’s a lot to be said for respecting your local big rock.

My uncle had a cottage in Wales. In one of the fields nearby was a standing stone. I’m not talking Stonehenge here; just a long thin rock sticking about two feet out of the ground. For all I know, it was actually put there by a couple of bored locals as a gag, but it doesn’t matter, somehow; the fact that it’s there makes the field a special place in a way no functional building would.

I think a lot of Andy Goldsworthy’s work has the same appeal – it’s the non-destructive, respectful engagement with the landscape, to give it a human aspect without de-naturing it.

Categories
Nature Other

Vatican Starman Slams ID!

“The Vatican’s chief astronomer said on Friday that Intelligent Design Theory isn’t science and doesn’t belong in science classrooms.”

The ‘Vatican’s chief astronomer’? I wonder if CERN has a head priest who can be consulted for a theological perspective on particle physics.

I don’t suppose the Vatican astronomer is empowered to define the Catholic Church’s theological stance on all scientific issues, even though he *is* an astronomer. So why is this news? Because the media prefer a story with an obvious hook, however fundamentally pointless, to a subtle but informative one.

The link came from Claudia.