Books List – Sunday 16 September and Thursday 20 September. In the City . A Subalterns Love Song by John Betjeman Read This If You Want To Be A Great Writer by Ross Raisin The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It by Jessie.
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- Auckland Writers Festival
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- New Icelandic Crime Fiction Prize Created
- New Icelandic Crime Fiction Prize Created | Iceland Review
But when she arrived in London, Krakauer found a new mission for the program. The concert was a smashing success. There was no … sense of competition or who was better than who. It was just these amazing British writers and these wonderful British actors singing their music. Well, British actors and me! Bridge the Gap aims to open a channel for artists and audiences to access new musical theatre in a different culture. For tickets and more information, visit 54Below.
To do that I thought I needed to try to at least learn an instrument, so I took piano lessons. What are you working on right now? I have been writing plays and songs from a very young age. I created lots of little plays as a youngster before writing, directing and producing my first two-act musical [at] age 14 at the local theatre. For me, the initial drive was the whole act of making theatre. I would write, direct, act, stage manage and produce. Now it is a long process of working out which elements of that I want to step back from and which I want to focus on and hone as a craft.
I am currently experimenting a lot with my process and am working on a couple new musicals which are starting off as devised projects, getting a bunch of actors and artists into a room to begin generating material. From there I will then go onto craft a script and songs inspired by what we have created in the room.
I am working on a new musical, Plots , which tells the story of a group of amateur gardeners who unite in a battle to save their soil from developers. It is an actor-musician show, inspired by interviews from allotment gardens, the British term for urban community gardening spaces, I have undertaken across the U. The music is inspired by Scottish traditional and folk music and sung by the Tellers, a group of storytelling characters who assist the Young Man in the narrating of his tale. My parents always loved listening to musicals.
Maddie and Spend Spend Spend , two new British musicals that opened in town during my early teens, inspired me so much that I decided I wanted to learn how to write professionally. Even with the rather terrible material I had to share [at] age 17, he took me absolutely seriously and was rigorous about the craft and graft behind writing music and words that could work theatrically.
I am forever indebted to Clive for taking me under his wing. Lia Buddle and I have started work on a new children's musical based on a series of Czech stories. My mother is Czech, so I grew up on them. And with Sue Pearse, I am adapting a fascinating British play from the s about the aftermath of the first World War. I've been songwriting since the age of Although, I did write a little song [at] age six called "Let Peace Be on Its Way Soon," which was every bit as exciting as the title suggests!
I wrote my first pop songs highly influenced by my very uninspiring teenage love-life and angst. My writing relationship with Judy continued for a decade or so, and I also began writing with actor Pete Gallagher U. More recently, I have been working closely with another genius and inspiring actor and author, Alex Scott Fairley. A new musical called Sweet with Alex Scott Fairley. Sweet is a twisted steampunk symphony of enchantment and entertainment, horror, heroics and happy endings, based on the Grimm Brother's Hansel and Gretel.
I've always written, although [I] started out as an actor. This is the geologist, this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician. And more the reminders they of life untold, and of freedom and extrication,. And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipt,. And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the cur- rent and index.
I will accept nothing which all cannot have their coun- terpart of on the same terms. And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,. I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,. If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,.
Root of wash'd sweet-flag! Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you! Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you! Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be you. I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,. Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friend- ship I take again. A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the meta- physics of books.
Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising freshly exuding,. The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,. We found our own O my soul in the calm and cool of the day- break. With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Come now I will not be tantalized, you conceive too much of articulation,. My knowledge my live parts, it keeping tally with the meaning of all things,. Happiness, which whoever hears me let him or her set out in search of this day. My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am,. To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,.
Auckland Writers Festival
Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night,. Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals,. The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick,. The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronoun- cing a death-sentence,. The heave'e'yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters,. The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streak- ing engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color'd lights,.
The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,. The slow march play'd at the head of the association marching two and two,. They go to guard some corpse, the flag-tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violoncello, 'tis the young man's heart's complaint,. It wrenches such ardors from me I did not know I possess'd them,.
It sails me, I dab with bare feet, they are lick'd by the indolent waves,. Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death,. If nothing lay more develop'd the quahaug in its callous shell were enough.
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To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand. My flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself,. Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture- fields,. They bribed to swap off with touch and go and graze at the edges of me,. I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, I and nobody else am the greatest traitor,. I went myself first to the headland, my own hands carried me there. Blind loving wrestling touch, sheath'd hooded sharp-tooth'd touch!
Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb prolific and vital,. And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,. And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,. And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,. I find I incorporate gneiss, coal, long-threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots,.
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,. In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,. I follow quickly, I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,. Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,. Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,.
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession. Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms. A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,. Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving. His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return. And again as I walk'd the beach under the paling stars of the morning. By the city's quadrangular houses—in log huts, camping with lumbermen,. Along the ruts of the turnpike, along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,.
Weeding my onion-patch or hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips, crossing savannas, trailing in forests,. Scorch'd ankle-deep by the hot sand, hauling my boat down the shallow river,. Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead, where the buck turns furiously at the hunter,. Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, where the otter is feeding on fish,. Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tail;.
Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,. Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters,. Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax,.
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest,. Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;. Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs,. Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush,. Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve, where the great gold- bug drops through the dark,. Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,. Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shud- dering of their hides,.
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, where andirons straddle the hearth-slab, where cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;. Where trip-hammers crash, where the press is whirling its cylinders,. Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes under its ribs,. Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating in it my- self and looking composedly down,. Where the life-car is drawn on the slip-noose, where the heat hatches pale-green eggs in the dented sand,.
Where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water,. Where shells grow to her slimy deck, where the dead are corrupt- ing below;. Where the dense-starr'd flag is borne at the head of the regiments,. Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance,. Upon the race-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,. At he-festivals, with blackguard gibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking, laughter,.
At the cider-mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice through a straw,. At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings;.
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps,. Where the hay-rick stands in the barn-yard, where the dry-stalks are scatter'd, where the brood-cow waits in the hovel,. Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, where the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen,. Where the heifers browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks,. Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,. Where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near,.
Where the humming-bird shimmers, where the neck of the long- lived swan is curving and winding,. Where the laughing-gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near-human laugh,. Where bee-hives range on a gray bench in the garden half hid by the high weeds,. Where band-neck'd partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads out,. Where the yellow-crown'd heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs,. Where the katy-did works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well,. Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,.
Through the gymnasium, through the curtain'd saloon, through the office or public hall;. Pleas'd with the native and pleas'd with the foreign, pleas'd with the new and old,. Pleas'd with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,. Pleas'd with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preach- er, impress'd seriously at the camp-meeting;. Looking in at the shop-windows of Broadway the whole forenoon, flatting the flesh of my nose on the thick plate glass,. Wandering the same afternoon with my face turn'd up to the clouds, or down a lane or along the beach,.
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends, and I in the middle;. Coming home with the silent and dark-cheek'd bush-boy, behind me he rides at the drape of the day,. Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print,. By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,. Nigh the coffin'd corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;. Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,. Walking the old hills of Judaea with the beautiful gentle God by my side,. Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring, and the diameter of eighty thousand miles,.
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly,. My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. I go hunting polar furs and the seal, leaping chasms with a pike- pointed staff, clinging to topples of brittle and blue. Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,.
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them, the scenery is plain in all directions,. The white-topt mountains show in the distance, I fling out my fancies toward them,. We are approaching some great battle-field in which we are soon to be engaged,. We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment, we pass with still feet and caution,.
The blocks and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,. How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm,. How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faith ful of days and faithful of nights,.
And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you;. How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up,. How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves,. How the silent old-faced infants and the lifted sick, and the sharp- lipp'd unshaved men;. All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well, it becomes mine,. The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch, burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on,.
The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blow- ing, cover'd with sweat,. The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the mur- derous buckshot and the bullets,. Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marks- men,. I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn'd with the ooze of my skin,.
Taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip-stocks.
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person,. Heat and smoke I inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my com- rades,. I lie in the night air in my red shirt, the pervading hush is for my sake,. White and beautiful are the faces around me, the heads are bared of their fire-caps,. They show as the dial or move as the hands of me, I am the clock myself. The fall of grenades through the rent roof, the fan-shaped explo- sion,.
Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general, he furiously waves with his hand,. He gasps through the clot Mind not me—mind—the entrench- ments. Retreating they had form'd in a hollow square with their baggage for breastworks,. Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy's, nine times their number, was the price they took in advance,. They treated for an honorable capitulation, receiv'd writing and seal, gave up their arms and march'd back prisoners of war. The second First-day morning they were brought out in squads and massacred, it was beautiful early summer,.
Some made a mad and helpless rush, some stood stark and straight,. A few fell at once, shot in the temple or heart, the living and dead lay together,. The maim'd and mangled dug in the dirt, the new-comers saw hem there,. These were despatch'd with bayonets or batter'd with the blunts of muskets,.
A youth not seventeen years old seiz'd his assassin till two more came to release him,. That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men. List to the yarn, as my grandmother's father the sailor told it to me. His was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be;.
On our lower-gun-deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Ten o'clock at night, the full moon well up, our leaks on the gain, and five feet of water reported,. The master-at-arms loosing the prisoners confined in the after-hold to give them a chance for themselves. The transit to and from the magazine is now stopt by the sentinels,. We have not struck, he composedly cries, we have just begun our part of the fighting. One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main- mast,.
Two well serv'd with grape and canister silence his musketry and clear his decks. The tops alone second the fire of this little battery, especially the main-top,. The leaks gain fast on the pumps, the fire eats toward the powder- magazine. One of the pumps has been shot away, it is generally thought we are sinking. Toward twelve there in the beams of the moon they surrender to us.
Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquer'd,. The captain on the quarter-deck coldly giving his orders through a countenance white as a sheet,. The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curl'd whiskers,.
The flames spite of all that can be done flickering aloft and below,. Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves, dabs of flesh upon the masts and spars,. Cut of cordage, dangle of rigging, slight shock of the soothe of waves,. Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors,. Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan,. For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,.
Not a mutineer walks handcuff'd to jail but I am handcuff'd to him and walk by his side,. I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips. Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced. Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,. My face is ash-color'd, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat. Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,. Give me a little time beyond my cuff'd head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludg- eons and hammers!
That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,. I troop forth replenish'd with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,. The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years. They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and ema- nations,.
They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes. And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,. And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,. And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so. In my portfolio placing Manito loose, Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved,. They bore mites as for unfledg'd birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,. Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see,.
Putting higher claims for him there with his roll'd-up sleeves driving the mallet and chisel,. Not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair on the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation,. Lads ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars,. Their brawny limbs passing safe over charr'd laths, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames;.
By the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple interceding for every person born,. Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagg'd out at their waists,. The snag-tooth'd hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to come,.
Selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery;. What was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me, and not filling the square rod then,.
New Icelandic Crime Fiction Prize Created
The supernatural of no account, myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes,. The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious;. Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on the reeds within. Easily written loose-finger'd chords—I feel the thrum of your climax and close.
Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,. Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn'd thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,. Ever the vexer's hoot! Tickets buying, taking, selling, but in to the feast never once going. Many sweating, ploughing, thrashing, and then the chaff for pay- ment receiving,. Whatever interests the rest interests me, politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools,. The mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stocks, stores, real estate and personal estate.
The little plentiful manikins skipping around in collars and tail'd coats,. I am aware who they are, they are positively not worms or fleas,. I acknowledge the duplicates of myself, the weakest and shallowest is deathless with me,. This printed and bound book—but the printer and the printing- office boy?
The well-taken photographs—but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms? The black ship mail'd with iron, her mighty guns in her turrets— but the pluck of the captain and engineers? In the houses the dishes and fare and furniture—but the host and hostess, and the look out of their eyes?
Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern,. Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years,. Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun,. Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis,. Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist,. Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,. Walking the teokallis, spotted with gore from the stone and knife, beating the serpent-skin drum,.
New Icelandic Crime Fiction Prize Created | Iceland Review
Accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine,. To the mass kneeling or the puritan's prayer rising, or sitting patiently in a pew,. Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me,. Looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land,. One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey. Frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, dishearten'd, atheistical,.
I know every one of you, I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. How they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood! And what is yet untried and afterward is for you, me, all, precisely the same. Each who passes is consider'd, each who stops is consider'd, not a single one can it fail. Nor the little child that peep'd in at the door, and then drew back and was never seen again,. Nor the old man who has lived without purpose, and feels it with bitterness worse than gall,. Nor him in the poor house tubercled by rum and the bad dis- order,.
Nor the numberless slaughter'd and wreck'd, nor the brutish koboo call'd the ordure of humanity,. Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,. Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,. Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them,.
The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate? Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister? I am an acme of things accomplish'd, and I an encloser of things to be. On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,. Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen,. Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employ'd to complete and delight me,. Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night,.
Crying by day Ahoy! Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine. Old age superbly rising! O welcome, ineffable grace of dying days! Every condition promulges not only itself, it promulges what grows after and out of itself,. And all I see multiplied as high as I can cipher edge but the rim of the farther systems.
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.