Monday 26 January 2015

26/1/15

Another of my very occasional musings:

Thoughts on my university attendance:

After Maryann's Maryann Corbett sentimental FB post yesterday, I went for a virtual tour of my old University Residence at Queen's University today (through this technology undreamed of when I was there). It has altered so little in appearance really since I went at 17 as the youngest student there, and Dean Bryce followed me with hawk eyes and I was gated before Easter.
I shared a double room and Fanny Hill raced around our innocent floor in timed loan-outs. But I also saw Leonard Cohen and Margaret Atwood while they were still poets, and went to an early concert with Seiji Ozawa conducting. The serious women still look down from walls --for some reason I remember also one of Ella Fitzgerald -- and we felt we had to live up to them somehow, while the birth control pill arrived and registration was computerized in third year (two things that would revolutionize our world). 
I studied here for four years, and joined the International Students Association, the Peace Movement (SUPA), the NDP, demonstrated against Vietnam and for US Civil Rights, and organized and went on a Community Poverty Project in second year summer where we lived in the local community of ex-cons and their families (Kingston was also the home of the Federal Penitentiary) and other under-privileged people, and tried to help empower them. The CBC did a TV program on us where their camera was more interested in my face than what I said! In other summers I worked for the English Dept. doing research.
Oh the angst (Erich Fromm), the passion (Simone de Bouvoir), the anger (Camus, Sartre), the vows (to fight against all war) --ok, what's new.! But we threw off pill box hats and lived in jeans, sloppy sweaters, mini -skirts; and the best music ever, in folk, blues, rock, soul, protest, classical, just kept coming. We chucked out irons and all other housework, made angels in the snow (winter is the dominant season), and danced. We lost our virginities with speed and pride (and little knowledge), fell in love (mostly with the wrong people), and pigged out on art, poetry, great literature, and politics and philosophy, and had so much hope. 
A science friend told me they'd discovered soap suds could harm your health, so always rinse dishes....which I've done since; we also had nuclear sirens practising and worrying us all the time (always had had); we had hard histories some of us. But we believed in the health of democracy (I went up to listen to Parliament debate in Ottawa --just walked in and sat in the Gallery one afternoon (as two years later I would wander up Downing Street and through Westminster Hall), and on Canada's centenary, danced and sang in a massive crowd around the Houses of Parliament.  
And since we knew the oil sands could never be developed --they were not viable, economically  --life still seemed full of endless possibilities.....
I also watched Kennedy's funeral in this building, though, very very young, silent and shocked. 
I knew I'd be dead before the millenium; would have to be; would be too old and useless after........hmmm.....

residences.housing.queensu.ca

Wednesday 14 January 2015

14 January, 2015

My new book, The Wilding Eye, New and Selected Poems, will be published by Worple Press the first week in April. Very pleased.

Monday 12 January 2015

12 January 2015.

I've just been told I'll be reading with Martyn Crucefix at Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 24 April. I love Martyn's work. Really looking forward to that! 8--)

Saturday 10 January 2015

9  -10 January 2105 London Trip

9th. January. 2015

Sitting in a tiny room on the fifth floor ( if you include the basement) of a Kensington Upstairs/Downstairs house, now a hotel, listening to sounds of London in what would have been a maid's bedroom, I guess. Thinking of 19th century British Columbia and the smallpox epidemic that wiped out half the first nation people. So a strange spiky woman decided to draw and paint their art, and works before it died. Her name was Emily Carr. In time she found her way to San Francisco, London, and Paris to study. But returned after, to her woods and solitude. She's here again at Dulwich Gallery and I'm so lucky to have seen her work today. Her defiant and defensive eyes in her self portrait reached out to me. She and her wonderful work are my Companions tonight. 8--)

10th January 2015
Two of my favourite London things:

1.The most touching war memorial, to animals. It's on Park Lane.
2. Chelsea Bridge, the most absolute jewel, lit up at night.

Today I managed to see the William Morris Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, briefly, because Saturday morning is full of crowds.
It was fascinating to see how he was known as a thinker and poet more than an artist and designer in his day...linked up with all sorts of people. And his arts and crafts movement, of small, local groups of makers and creators appealed to the guild element of the Union Movement. Helped move us away from communism into social democracy, the nascence of the Labour Party, and influenced the garden city movements inter-wars, our green belt movement, and even the festival of Britain designs and the designs of new cities after the war.
He is relevant today because of his ethos that we make things, value their beauty, and value nature.
I looked at contemporary pics after that. The Postlethwaite was terrific, and Olivia Coleman is beautiful. The Judi Dench was lovely. I actually flinched away when I saw Blair.

After that I walked up to China town and went to a little restaurant full of Chinese (always a good sign!). They were lovely to me and I had crispy duck with pancakes.

Having taken the Tube Underground in this morning I decided to get a black cab after, back to Marble Arch and the bus to Oxford. He told me all about 'The Knowledge'. It takes three years -- they have to know every street, building, monument, famous place, etc. by heart. They have to know the shortest quickest routes in a 12 mile radius. Their licenses are holographed to stop fake black cab drivers. Those who do best own their own black cabs His costs £10,000 a year just to maintain!

The guy in the mini-cab last night was great to discuss politics with but had failed his 'knowledge'. He said it didn't matter now we have sat-navs. This black cab guy showed me in five minutes how that was rubbish. Wherever a road was blocked he just zipped around it. Last night the man was dependent on his sat-nav and we were stuck in a jam for an hour and a half.
I think that is linked to the William Morris story.

If I can get less stress now, I now feel confident about traveling to Canada on my own again, and travelling distances to read. What a wimp I'd become with all the years of injuries, and illness! I, who once drove across Canada and back, twice by myself; and flew back here to Blighty alone to live, with only a 6 year old child, two suitcases, a small bag of toys and a kid's bike!