The Complete Poems by Leslie Norris

It is for well over a year that I have had this collection on my bed side and been reading it, at intervals, a few poems at a time, it now feels a little odd not to have him as my companion.

Here are a few of the poems which I marked up, I think the melancholic character of my selection is not completely representative of the complete body of Leslie Norris’ work.

Last leaves by Leslie Norris

Late last night, the moon in puddles, I walked the lane

North from my gate up to the small wood where,

Stirring and trembling from the sentient trees,

The last leases fell.  I heard them in the still air

Snap.  And almost saw their sifting passage down

To join their squelching fellows on the ground,

All glory gone. I tread on the black wreck

Of the year. Well, it is over.

Here, in the arboreal summer, struck

By the squinting light, I took for a hawk

No more than a flapping pigeon. I’ll not make

That mistake in valid winter. No, I’ll see

Each full-eyed owl stir not a breath

Of frost among the visible twigs as he pads

On air; and remember the owl’s truth

For the vole, the silver frog, and the

Soft-bellied mouse, her summer breeding done.

Stone and Fern by Leslie Norris

It is not that the sea lanes

Are too long, nor that I am not

Tempted by the birds’ sightless

Roads, but that I have listened

Always to the voice of the stone,

Saying: Sit still, answer, say

Who are you.  And I have answered

Always with the rooted fern,

Saying: We are the dying seed.

A Dying Hawk by Leslie Norris

She stoops and drops

through a straight

funnel of sight

into falling air.

She folds gravity

to her heart, and dives

Behind her eye.

The one purpose

of her gaze

will not let her see

the clear windscreen

moving to kill her.

She spread too late.

Her wings, her talons

set against air.

She dies at the roadside,

her hollow bones

are splintered

in the rags of her feathers,

and her brittle gape

is open and broken.

Before her head falls

what is left

stares from her yellow eye.

The Quiet-Eyed Cattle by Leslie Norris

The quiet-eyed cattle

Are nervous and heavy

They clumsily huddle

And settle together

The mists of their breathing

Are wreathing and twining

And wisp to the window

And fade in the moonlight

Out over the meadow

Where cattle tomorrow

Will amble in pasture

And always remember

Will always remember

The King in their stable

The Child in the manger

Whose name lives forever.

First Class: A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps by Chris West

This book is clearly going to mostly appeal to Philatelitic geeks, however they might be a little disappointed as it is not, and never claims to be, a history of the stamps.  It includes only brief commentaries about the 36 which are the starting point of the chapters.

These chapters give us little snap shots of social history, and the format of beginning with a object, in this case a stamp, as a good way to tell an engaging story.   There are no great revelations, it is for the most part a common place history, but it is well told.  I have dipped in to it reading a chapter or two at a time over the best part of a year.

As we come to the latter chapters there is perhaps a shift across that blurry line between the historian’s and the journalist’s art – as 2012 might be seen as a little too early to have written a “history” of 2012 – however it is of no great consequence.

The account is conservative, albeit with the smallest of ‘c’s, in the sense that it tends toward an emphasis on the continuity across the 170 years with which it deals, while other histories might want to focus instead on ways in which contemporary Britain differs from that of the early Victorian era when the Penny Black was first issued. 

Life on the Golden Horn by Mary Wortley Montagu

One of the Penguin Great Journeys series this is a collection letters written by Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, during their journey across Europe and, what turned out to be, their fairly short time in Constantinople. 

From my school boy history the Ottoman Empire appeared as the “sick man of Europe” in the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, but here in the early 18^th Century it is still in full health. 

That it takes Mary Wortley Montagu the best part of a year to cross Europe gives you a sense of the epic nature of the journey while the bright and lively style of her letters perhaps acts to conceal the same.   These are really engaging letters full of personality.

Her attitude to the Turkish culture is highly enlightened, and in most of the letters from Constantinople and other places within the Ottoman Empire she is deeply critical of most other western writers who have reported on life and culture there before her.  In particular her account of the lives of women act to over turn all that has been said before – the former writers being male would have had no access to the private spaces of Turkish women and so their reports were hear say or simple fabrication.  The contrast could not be clearer than that between the public veiling and the “private” nakedness of women in there bath houses.

The status of women within Islamic cultures remains contested, and this gives these 300 year old letters a real contemporary feel.  The wearing of the veil is often a flash point, as much, if not more so, in modern Turkey as in the “West”. 

Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands by Richard Woolley

Having read and enjoyed Richard Woolley’s book Back in 1984 I decided to also get hold of this one.  I am not sure the order in which these will have been written as he appears to have had his 3 novels all published in March 2010. 

In common with Back in 1984 there is a mix of “standard” novel and diary entries to delivery the narrative.  However here while the diary entries provide a parallel time line to the novel they are woven together as we encounter the diary as the main character of the novel reads or listens to it. 

Sex and sexuality play a part in Back in 1984 but they are much more central in this work, including incest and bondage, which might render this not to some people’s taste.    

It is interesting that in the opening prologue the novel is set up as a period or historical piece even though it is set only 20 years ago (in the mid 1990s).  This prologue draws your attention to various events that have happened since and therefore separate us from the world in which it is set.  Most important perhaps is the internet – as so much of angst of the characters about sex and fantasy exists in the way it does because the are living in a pre-internet age – that is not to say that the internet would be the answer to the angst, just that it would fundamentally reformulate it.

I don’t feel that I had the same kind of personal connection with any of the characters in this story as I found in Back in 1984 and so it is in some ways hard compare the two as pieces of writing.  That I found this a less engaging story does not equate to it being an inferior piece of writing.  It had a similar claustrophobic sense to it, and to have conjured that within the open setting of the Dutch landscape displays a definite skill. There is a strong whodunit pull through the novel and the final unravelling of the events tells you “what” happened but still leaves you wondering “why” and I think that is a good place to have been left. 

I am planning to go on and read Richard Woolley’s other novel and I am interested to see how the that throws further light onto the themes which have clearly run across the first two that I have read.