At the Barbican Centre last Saturday (5th October), a panel of writers convened to ponder the eponymous ‘bag of stars’, or The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Published in 1989, Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay still holds true today for Sophia Al-Maria, Irenosen Okojie and Tai Shani. The theory sets out that the first tool […]
Beginnings and endings are awkward. Like an opening chat-up line at a bar, or saying goodbye to someone you care about, it’s the connection between two people that’s at stake. Making the right first impression or getting everything out that you wanted to say is fiendishly difficult. In the first sentence of Sally Rooney’s Normal […]
With around 30 million visitors a year, Barcelona is swarming with hungry tourists. Demand has driven new eateries to spring up across the city, whole roads brimming with tapas bars good and bad. The capital of Catalonia, home to the works of Gaudi and currently shrouded in political uncertainty, Barcelona takes pride in its culture […]
via Best Bites: Food Not to Miss in Barcelona — Miriam Balanescu
Take a look at my new blog, on travel, food, fashion and book reviews coming up!
Sorry this space has been so quiet! Thought I would re-post this as an example of experimentation with form – bet you can’t guess who wrote it…
by Miriam Balanescu
Their anniversary at Primrose Hill –
8:32pm. A pin-prick star to sit beside its moon, that (moon) plate punctured into coppering blue. (The moon is a gape, or an armful.) Blinking at it, it wouldn’t blink away or slight or spittle down into the snail-trail of a plane. She imagines deflating it, with her nails, drawing out its last lunar breath. So fixed, so unlike the pink skin the jet will shed.
7:49pm. It was the same a year ago, the drive to Primrose Hill. But this time [they] are treading in their own shadows, reluctantly following the ritual. He hadn’t said a word in the car. Her friends were right – no, she would make him see.
6:54pm. Maybe they were wrong, after all, she had felt the same about him since their first night together. She had the same smile shaky as a child stumbling. The…
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A new cat poem in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats has been found! Very exciting!
When Henchard decides to sell his wife he not only degrades her but interferes with social class. The fact that he does this at the end of the market day lowers her to the level of ‘few inferior animals, that could not otherwise be disposed of’. An indirect consequence of this is that social order is further disrupted; when his wife returns with Elizabeth-Jane she is forced to become part, arguably, of a different social class. Though affluence works in her favour, Elizabeth seems to find it difficult to leave behind her past and is always too willing to help or serve others. It is possibly because of this disturbance of social order that the mayor’s fortune fluctuates and the four central characters continually switch positions in society and wealth. The first chapter, in which the mayor is nameless, leaves the ‘lurid colour’ of his mistake hanging over the other characters, and affecting the intricate chain of events that follows. Yet his mistake leads to the one truly good character in the novel, ‘that flower of nature, Elizabeth-Jane.’
Sorry I haven’t posted for so long. It’s been a busy year with A levels and preparing for university, but now I’m finally off to start my English degree I think it’s time to start up this blog again!
It was first hearing a recording of Heaney on Radio 4 in memory of him that really really made me love and seek out modern poetry. Since his death, his impact on poetry has been felt deeper and deeper and his importance rooted in society.
If you’re interested in Seamus Heaney a good place to start is the Radio website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01fxpr9
This is a great video on the detail behind the music for The Lord of the Rings films. Elvish and old English has been incorporated into the music.
Lady Macbeth sneaking around
Aristotle and tragedy:
Ididn'twantanyflowers 