Indeed a week of ups and downs, news of illness and death, happiness and hope but I suppose that’s life. We must remember to appreciate what we have and those we love. I can’t help worrying about the ease of lockdown especially in England. With this Indian varient causing havoc and spreading like wild fire it’s a new concern and must be causing those making decisions a lot of angst. It’s heart breaking.
The Palestinian Israeli conflict brings television coverage of unbelievable trauma. Who can mediate?
In the midst of all this there’s Leister City and their FA cup success and the joyous celebrations. It was uplifting to see the camaraderie between the team, the management and the fans and a lesson for those greedy people who wanted to take Chelsea to a new league despite the supporters feelings. And the sunshine and showers which have graced us this week – someone said we are having Maypril showers! However the gardens are loving it.
And there was the shattering BBC two part play ‘Three Families’ not a play so much as a replaying of real stories of three women and their families facing Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion law before this was lifted in 2019. Despite your opinion on the subject you could not be anything but moved by the terrible personal experiences these women went through. Congratulations to the ‘real’ people who shared their stories, the actors, the production crew, the directing team and most of all to Gwyneth Hughes who wrote and created this important programme.
Remember at school how you had to learn a poem and then rhyme it off in the classroom? William Wordsworth was a favourite:
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’ve vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Singsonging it off pat doesn’t make for a very meaningful poem, pretty and easy to learn. Compare this with the writing style in her new book of poems, ‘This, Also, Is Mercy’ by Teresa Godfrey. Over 40 poems reflecting love and life, some disturbing, others funny but all compelling. On the death of her beloved rescue dog after 15 years, ’For Pepper’ voices her sadness.
I will carry you with mercy.
When you struggle to be free
I will set you down
by the side of the mountain
and trust you
to know you are well enough
to follow wherever I go.
When you have only pain left
I will loosen myself from you,
place you in a blanket,
carry you for the last time,
and trust you to know
this, also, is mercy.
‘Slieveahanaghan’, a mountain on the north coast sports ten wind turbines, ‘a merry-go-round of arms’. Where I see an unwelcome invasion into the countryside, Teresa sees something very different. It finishes:
But when the winter sun glides low,
and Slieveahanaghan rises heavy
out of a purple-dawn horizon
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black arms outstretched on a sacrificial hill.
The Words Flow
Teresa’s style is free verse, it tells a story in lyrical words and the rhythm carries you on from line to line. You want to read her stories which reflect all of our lives in one way or another. I asked her how much is inspiration as opposed to perspiration. A mixture!
“I like to walk and clear my mind and often ideas come to me so I make notes on my phone then I come home to my study and sit in silence; I shut the world out and if the mood is right I begin to write, by hand initially. It might take a week sometimes longer. I read each one aloud, I craft it before turning to the computer only then do I print it, leave it for a while then go back to it so I’m refining until I’m satisfied. As far as inspiration is concerned, yesterday I was out walking in Big Dog Forest here in Fermanagh with the primroses and bluebells and wild strawberries and it was strongly emotional, this will work it’s way into a poem!”
Teresa began writing poetry 20 years ago. She’d been working with the charity Extern supporting families and communities affected by social exclusion but all the time writing. Eventually she joined Margo Harkin in her production company Besom working with BBC Four and Channel 4, she wrote film scripts, became an award winning short story writer, established a youth theatre company when she lived on the North Coast working with young people discussing various subjects and then tasking them to write a script and act out their story.
Always Writing
Recently she wrote about her mother. “When I started to remember my early childhood a poem grew! It has ended up as a celebration not only of my growing-up but a tribute to my mother.”
It will appear in her Chat Book which is in the offing, up to 20 poems accompanied by old photographs. This is the thing about Teresa, her mind is racing all the time. Her novel ‘Wipe Out’, a sci-fi thriller will be published this autumn and she’s working on another book at the moment. But poetry is always in her heart.
At one time when Teresa Godfrey volunteered to work with Woman’s Aid, she was moved by the experiences she encountered. These are expressed in a powerful and important entry in the book, a piece that has been read many times at festivals and events. Entitled ‘Rape as a Weapon of Mass Destruction’, it’s an examination of this crime in all its forms all round the world and how …..they get away with it because we don’t look, it has nothing to do with us.
‘This, Also, Is Mercy’ is published by Summer Palace Press. £10. Available from No Alibis Books. More details at noalibis.com
FIZZLED OUT?
Curiosity got the better of me. I watched the last episode of Line of Duty. It meant nothing because it was the first time I’d met AC-12 but even I realised it was pretty inconclusive and had none of the spark I’d expected. Funny that the recent series Bloodlands, also filmed in Northern Ireland ended in the same way – some better qualified than yours truly say damp squib. Funny also that both are the brain child of Jed Mercurio. Seems to be his thing to leave the door open for another box of fireworks. If I was one of the 12 million viewers I’d feel short changed.
While we’re at it what about spiky words and round words! How about this for a piece of research – worth the money?
In English, Round And Spiky Objects Tend To Have ‘Round’ And ‘Spiky’ Sounds
……….. the authors of a new paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, who have found that the effect is also at play in the English language. That is, the components of made-up words that we commonly pair with a round shape tend also to be found in nouns that refer to actual round objects, and the same for spiky sounds and objects.
David M Sidhu, now at University College, London, and colleagues recruited 171 student participants in Canada. Each person was presented with 100 sets of six concrete nouns, and for each set, had to choose the two nouns that they felt referred to the “most round” and “most spiky” objects — so, for example, they had to pick the most-round and most-spiky objects from “unicycle”, “moon”, “balcony”, “pyramid”, “jet” and “driller”. From these results, the researchers generated a spiky/round rating for each word. (The top five “roundest” in order were : softball, ball, olive, pea and globe, while spike, fork, porcupine and scalpel led the “spikiest” object list.)
The team then looked at the phonemes, or distinct “units” of sound, which made up these nouns. They compared these results with those from earlier studies that have investigated which phonemes in made-up words are generally associated with roundness or spikiness.
Almost all of the phonemes previously associated with roundness were indeed present in the real words that participants identified as referring to round objects, and the same for spikiness.
…….
There were a few unexpected findings. For example, in this study, in contrast to some earlier ones involving made-up words, s and sh were more common in words for spiky objects. However, this result does fit with work linking certain phonemes to greater or lesser emotional arousal. We tend to perceive words with hissing sounds as being higher in emotional arousal — which is also linked to spikiness. The researchers also note that these phonemes, along with other consonants common in words for spiky objects, require the involvement of the tongue, whereas m, b, etc are made just with the lips.……
AND SO IT GOES ON. I OFFER NO COMMENT!