Poetry Workshops - News

My next Paris Lit Up writing workshop is on Sunday 2 June in the library at Shakespeare and Company when we will be Taking a Word for a Walk. Come and see what you can create from just one word.

On Sunday 7 June I will be leading a workshop at the Reading Poetry Festival in the UK from 10am-12pm at the Museum of English Rural Life.

Poetry in Translation

New poem I've translated and versioned today from Senegalese poet and diplomat Birag Diop (1906-1989)

Spring

(Translation and version of Vernale by Birag Diop, 1960)

Weeping summons

death from the scent of lilies,

a demon from yesterday’s perfection

tires my heart.

A little perfume

lingers on the faded bouquet

and my heart is sad, grim

like the hearts of the damned.

I had a beautiful dream,

today, a little love.

But like a burst bubble

my dream is fled.

The Hammam at the Paris Mosque

The Mosque in central Paris is right behind the Jardin du Plantes (left - poppies yesterday in full bloom) and is the perfect place to slough off your winter skin.

It's open alternate days to men and women (check the website) offering a variety of treatments. The basic package (not a basic price - 43 euros) includes black soap (savon noir), exfoliation (gommage) performed by very strong brillo pad wielding ladies, the use of the steam rooms and a ten minute massage with lavender scented oil. You can upgrade that to twenty minutes or longer.

I had a blissful time yesterday getting really clean and relaxed. It's not often you do nothing except sit and think, or chat quietly to a friend. Top tip is to get there early - as soon as it opens, if you want peace and quiet, as by the middle of the afternoon it was pretty full and noisy. Don't go if you are shy about public nudity (bikini bottoms excepted). Don't wear a bathing suit, you won't get clean enough and anyway no-one is looking.

Enjoy a mint tea and a pastry in the courtyard garden afterwards, look at the new leaves on the fig tree, sit in the sun, feed your crumbs to sparrows and when you're ready, get back into the slip-stream.

Rivoli Contemporary Art Museum ,Turin

The Italian royals always picked the best places to build. Now we can all experience their largesse. At Rivoli, set on a hill above Torino (that's Turin to you) with great views across the city and of the Alps  surrounding it, you can wander a sumptuous palace and enjoy contemporary art displayed in acres of space, room after room of it. You can even float out on a glass enclosed platform to take in the view. What an imaginative use of a building. A real indulgence.

There are so many things to choose from, but the highlights for me were Mona Hatoum' s Undercurrent and Richard Long's Rivoli Mud Circle (right). And it's always a pleasure to see Ai Wei Wei's urn dropping tryptich.

Italian artists I rather took a shine to were Mauricio Cattelan with his taxidermy hanging horse (left) and the geographical challenges of Luciano Fabro.

The current special exhibition is Ana Mendieta's She Got Love; a retrospective of the Cuban born American artist, who I have to confess I did not know (although I am acquainted with the work of her husband, Carl Andre - it's hard to forget the Tate brick purchase as every brickie in the UK will attest). Body work and a feminist perspective to the same in many different media are shown in one long gallery the entire length of the building. Fantastic. Of course, I couldn't help making my own contribution.

Ron Mueck at the Cartier Foundation

Hyper-realist sculpture lovingly crafted? Stunning building with woodland spring plants in full bloom? Must be an afternoon outing on May Day. I spent my day off (thanks international workers everywhere) dodging the showers in this stunning exhibition.

There are few pieces on show, but that's the point. You are not meant to be overwhelmed by the work of Aussie born Londoner, Ron Mueck. You're meant to take your time and really look at them.

My companion and I spent a good long while engaging with the narratives that each piece provokes.  Perhaps that's because we are both writers. Perhaps not. Some are tender and amusing, some shocking, some unnerving. All are beautifully observed.

Go see for yourself,. It's on until the end of September, but be prepared to queue, although to be honest we chatted the hour away quite happily.

Chagall at the Musee du Luxembourg

First really hot day of the year, let's stay indoors. Are we mad? No, just been meaning to go to the Chagall exhibition for weeks and haven't time until now. Luckily the queue was short and we breezed right in. The museum is relatively small by Paris standards, which makes the show seem cozy, rather too cozy in fact, as they let in too many people and we all know how good the French are at respecting personal space...

Enough groaning, I am naturalising clearly. The exhibition is packed with brilliant paintings. All the icons and imagery you'd expect, over and over, in different arrangements and colours.

I find the yellow-red-purple schemes shocking to the eye, but since these were almost all the war paintings, I am guessing that is the point, a visual assault. I prefer the more muted blues and greens and the first room of early paintings is a joy, as are the biblical illustrations and the final rooms.

I am confused by the mixed Jewish and Christian iconography, but haven't yet found a good explanation. I loved the pen and ink work and there is at least one stunning portrait in pencil. 

Go see for yourself whatever the weather, for after all what is life without a goat serenading the shtetl, a mermaid in the night sky over Nice, or a fish holding an umbrella. L'chei-im! and to that lovely cup of Darjeeling in Angelina's next door afterwards.

Stealing the Family Silver with Sylvia Plath

My next workshop at Shakespeare and Company on Sunday 5 May at 12h30 will be about using your family stories, real or imagined, to create new poems and pieces of prose. In advance of that I want to take a very brief look at one of Sylvia Plath's iconic poems and then set you a writing exercise.

Daddy, Plath's tirade against and exorcism of her father, is one of her most well-known poems. It starts as it means to go on 'You do not do, you do not do'  and ends 'Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.'[1] Plath is much criticised for the hyperbole and inappropriate metaphor in this poem usually on the grounds that whatever her father did to her it simply can't have been as bad as the holocaust. But as Plath herself explained in a radio interview; it’s complicated and created tensions for her as her father was a Nazi and her mother may have been partly Jewish.[2]

At its core, the poem is about power and powerlessness: the power exerted by her father on Sylvia from the grave (he died when she was ten) – ‘the black shoe/I’ve lived like a foot/ for thirty years’, ‘Every woman adores a Fascist,/The boot in the face’ and so on. It is also a personal narrative mentioning her first suicide attempt at the age of twenty. So, there is a lot going on here and much critical ink has been spilled on the subject.

I want to take one aspect of this work as a writing prompt – think of one of your relatives, or imagine a relative, someone with whom you have a close relationship, who influences or has influenced you in some way, good or bad. Write a little scene setting about that. Give us a context. Then imagine a secret past for your relative and write about what effect this has on your relationship when you find out about it, how you think about them, how you interact, what the future holds. It might totally destabilise things, or explain things, or strengthen things. You choose. Good luck and enjoy!

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[1] See Faber’s 1981 Collected Plath, pg 222-224.

[2]  Jo Gill, The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath, 2008, CUP, pg 62.