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Marge Piercy, ‘Some Things Return in Spring’
The brave spears of the garlic rustle in the damp hair of the wind off the marsh brushing them: a sound you will never again hear. The maple is waving little russet hands. Long brown scaled buds line the beech twigs. Spring explodes into hundreds of daffodils on the hillside that was yours. Tulips strut […]
Soundtrack to the spring of 2013
May 6, 2013
Albums The album of the spring has been Cat Power’s, Sun (2012). This is new ground for Chan Marshall – an electronic pop/rock album. It’s political and intense but feels upbeat and actually makes me want to dance, which is not something I thought I’d ever say about a Cat Power album. I can’t really pick a […]
Posted in: MUSIC, Soundtrack to the Month
Monster in Me: mental health & self-compassion
May 5, 2013
Content note: description of self-harming behaviour For a long time now I’ve felt deeply ashamed about some of the things I did during the time when I was experiencing the worst of my mental health problems. I’ve tried very hard to forget but I still find myself lying awake at night in a cold sweat […]
e.e. cummings, ‘Spring is like a perhaps hand’
April 22, 2013
Spring is like a perhaps hand (which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging a window,into which people look (while people stare arranging and changing placing carefully there a strange thing and a known thing here)and changing everything carefully spring is like a perhaps Hand in a window (carefully to and fro moving New and Old things,while […]
Posted in: LITERATURE, Poetry
Science Fiction/Double Feature, Part 1: How the Rocky Horror Show saved my life
April 2, 2013
I sometimes joke that The Rocky Horror Show “saved my life”, but that statement is not really so far from the truth. When I discovered Rocky I was a profoundly depressed, bullied, 15-year old Catholic lesbian, living in the kind of conservative small town where you could get away with stabbing a gay man in […]
Emma Donoghue, Life Mask (2004)
March 16, 2013
Life Mask is set in the world of late eighteenth-century British high society. This period saw economic crises, impending war, and the threat of revolution, but also an increasingly educated population and more social mobility. A few women were beginning to access careers, especially in literature and the arts, but they still lived in a […]
Daphne Du Maurier, Jamaica Inn (1936)
March 11, 2013
What strikes me most about Jamaica Inn is just how much Daphne Du Maurier’s writing improves in the novels that follow this romantic thriller. If she’d written nothing else, I suspect she’d have fallen into obscurity along with a lot of other popular women writers of her day. I read Jamaica Inn at the same […]
End of Winter Culture round-up
March 9, 2013
First some reading material, a list of 100 Books by black women and the impressive (if slightly daunting) prospect that is the The Lesbrary Good Reads Project. Some Writing wisdom from Toni Morrison and here she is again being completely awesome in an interview. I was pleased to see lesbian writer, Sarah Schulman, getting her latest book reviewed in a […]
Posted in: LINK ROUND UPS, Uncategorized
Mary Dorcey, ‘After Long Silence’
March 3, 2013
We regard each other awkwardly, speechless we who have so much to unsay to forget or at least forgive And then in unconscious diplomacy, with that old grace that so often came between you and your consequences You stretch your hand to mine and some ember of the me that I was to you, rekindles […]
Soundtrack to January 2013
February 3, 2013
Johnny Cash’s American Recordings (1994) is perfect music for dark, winter evenings. It’s a comeback record that marks the beginning of Cash’s immensely creative partnership with Rick Rubin. I think it’s worth getting for the cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Bird on a Wire’ alone. Steve Earle’s Transcendental Blues (2000) is an all-round brilliant folk album, featuring a diverse range […]
Posted in: MUSIC, Soundtrack to the Month
Maya Angelou, ‘Still I Rise’ (1978)
February 3, 2013
You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like […]
Judy Grahn, ‘Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum’
January 13, 2013
Ah, Love, you smell of petroleum and overwork with grease on your fingernails, paint in your hair there is a pained look in your eye from no appreciation you speak to me of the lilacs and appleblossoms we ought to have the banquets we should be serving, afterwards rubbing each other for hours with tenderness […]
Thoughts on Depression and Self-Support
January 13, 2013
Depression snuck up on me and took over my life these last few weeks. I had so many things I wanted to do, blog posts to write, books to read, people to catch up with. Instead, I just about managed to do the essentials at work and stagger home in the evenings to sit on […]
2012 Reading Round-up
January 5, 2013
2012 was more of a thinking and talking year than a reading year. I read less than I usually do and didn’t get around to writing about many of the books that I did read, though I’m still intending to write about some of them this year. My general preference leaned towards large works of […]
Books read in 2012
January 1, 2013
Links to the books I’ve written about. As you can see, I have a lot of posts to catch up on. Emma Donoghue, Life Mask Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars Adrienne Rich, An Atlas of the Difficult World Stephen Levine, A Gradual Awakening Celia Friedman, Black Sun Rising Clive Barker, Imajica Ursula K Le Guin, The […]
On Not Managing Grief
December 22, 2012
The second Christmas since my father died and I feel like all my attempts to manage the situation have come to nothing. I find myself plunged into grief again. I realise now that my mistake lay in imagining that I could “manage” the situation in such a way as to avoid experiencing painful emotions because, […]
Soundtrack to the Autumn 2012
November 11, 2012
I’ve been listening to a lot of folk music this autumn. I borrowed the McGarrigle Sisters’ early album, Kate and Anna McGarrigle (1975) from the library. Although they’re very different artists, something about the sound and the song structures reminds me of Leonard Cohen, who also hails from French Canada. Also in 1970s female folk singers I’ve […]
Sensitive but Flawed: Albert Nobbs (2011)
November 11, 2012
Albert Nobbs is a film which I found both impressive and disappointing. It’s unusually intelligent about gender but it also contains some of the weaknesses that often undermine the representation of LGBT characters in film and, ultimately, it left me feeling ambivalent. Set in nineteenth-century Ireland, the film centres on the figure of Albert (Glenn […]
Posted in: Abuse, FEMINISM, Feminist Culture, FILM, GENDER, Gender Theory, Lesbian, LGBT Film, LGBTQ, Queer History, Transgender
Autumn Culture Round Up
November 4, 2012
I haven’t done one of these link round-ups in ages, but I’ve been inspired to get back to it by the quantity of good stuff I’ve read recently. Let’s start with something for the lesbian and bisexual women. From Autostraddle, a gallery: 150 years of lesbians and other lady loving ladies. Also, from The Guardian, […]
Posted in: LINK ROUND UPS
Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother? (2012)
November 3, 2012
There were moments, while I was reading this book, when involuntary exclamations would burst from me. “Argh!” I would cry, and my partner, who had already finished it, would look at me sympathetically and nod her head. Are You My Mother? came as something of a shock to my system, inducing far more powerful resonances […]
Poem: Denise Levertov, ‘Living’
October 21, 2012
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer. The wind blowing, the leaves shivering in the sun, each day the last day. A red salamander so cold and so easy to catch, dreamily moves his delicate feet and long tail. I hold my hand open for him to […]
The Reason the World is in Chaos
October 21, 2012
Via Son of Baldwin [Image description: Black text on a white background. The text reads "People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used.]
Mary Oliver, ‘Dogfish’
September 30, 2012
Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing kept flickering in with the tide and looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, with a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin, which was rough as a thousand sharpened nails. […]
Soundtrack to the Summer of 2012
September 9, 2012
It’s been a challenging summer which has seen me facing up to some fears, having a bit of an existential crisis and going back into therapy – hence the lack of posting on any of my blogs. At times like this I like to play a lot of music and this summer I’ve mainly been […]
Anais Nin, ‘You have a right to experiment with your life’
September 2, 2012
You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a […]
Posted in: Quotes
Gardner Dozois (ed.), The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 21 (2008)
August 19, 2012
This is my first encounter with the acclaimed Mammoth Book of Best New SF and I can see why its editor has won so many awards over the years. The stories selected here are of consistently high quality and offer a balanced collection of new and established writers. On the downside, the content of issue 21 is […]
Patti Smith Live: 26.06.2012
August 4, 2012
Imagine, if you can, almost every lesbian in South Wales and a fair few from the South West and London, crammed into a small wood-paneled venue and you have something approximating the experience of seeing Patti Smith play at the Coal Exchange in Cardiff. Andy and I were quickly scooped up by a group of […]
Posted in: Live Music, MUSIC
Dorothy Allison, ‘When feminism exploded into my life’
July 30, 2012
When feminism exploded into my life, it gave me a vision of the world totally different from everything I had assumed or hoped. The concept of a feminist literature offered the possibility of pride in my sexuality. It saved me from either giving up writing entirely, or the worse prospect of writing lies in order […]
Posted in: FEMINISM, Feminist Culture, Feminist theory, LGBT Literature, LITERATURE, Quotes, Women's Writing
Public silence, private terror
July 29, 2012
Throughout my life somebody has always tried to set the boundaries of who and what I will be allowed to be: if working class, an intellectual, upwardly mobile type who knows her place, or at least the virtues of gratitude; if a lesbian, an acceptable lesbian, not too forward about the details of her sexual […]
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
May 28, 2012
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking”, (p. 9) Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin comprises six interlinked stories based around the author’s experiences of living in Berlin during the early 1930s. The book would be worth reading simply as a piece of social history documenting the lives of ordinary people during […]
This week’s culture round-up
May 8, 2012
From the Guardian, an interview with writer Toni Morrison. I really like her points about the importance of owning your feelings and the way the significance of female friendship has been neglected in literature. On a completely different note, what if George Eliot’s masterpiece Middlemarch had been conducted via the medium of Facebook? (Hat tip: @RohanMitzain on twitter) – […]
Posted in: LINK ROUND UPS
Poem: Constantine P Cavafy, ‘Ithaka’
April 29, 2012
I get the feeling that this is the kind of poem almost everyone has come across at some point, but somehow it’s eluded me until my counselling skills tutor slipped it into my journal last week with a note saying she thought I might like it. ‘ITHAKA’ When setting out upon your way to Ithaca, […]
Posted in: LITERATURE, Poetry
My eating disorder & finally, a breakthrough
April 29, 2012
Content warning: discussion of ED triggers and strong emotions I think I have finally had a breakthrough in my struggle with eating distress. This breakthrough has come about through work I’ve been trying to do on the relationship between anger and fear in my life. One of the most challenging realizations I’ve had to do […]
Posted in: Body Politics, Eating Disorders, MENTAL HEALTH, My Eating disorder, My mental health, PERSONAL
From Asimov to Banks: A Science Fiction round-up
April 22, 2012
Here, in chronological order of publication, is a round-up of science fiction books that I’ve read over the last few months, but which I don’t feel inclined to write about at great length. Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1951) This book contains almost no female characters and consists mainly of scenes set in rooms with egotistical male […]
Posted in: LITERATURE, Science Fiction & Fantasy
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This Wheel of Many Parts by http://purpleprosearchive.wordpress.com/ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
May 12, 2013
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