Sailing

This evening I'm ruminating on the concept of sailing in the 21st century. Rewind a few hundred years and it was all fairly straightforward: body of water plus boat plus mast with sail plus a fair wind equalled sailing. But then along came fossil fuels and the wind was no longer requisite, nor the mast or sail - yet we still refer generically to boats or ships as "sailing" even if they are propelled by steam, coal, oil, diesel, electricity or nuclear power, and we call the people who man them "sailors". 

Wouldn't it be something to reclaim the terms sailing and sailors specifically for those who do things in the old-fashioned way, on craft with masts and sails which require wind to move them along? (You'll note that definition cleverly doesn't exclude sailboards, wind-surfers or even land-based vehicles.)

I imagine you thinking 'That's all well and good, but how then to describe all the rest and how they get about? The motorboats, ferries, cargo carriers, luxury liners, naval ships and submarines, cruise ships, oil tankers, and those giant container vessels?' 

Well, let me throw that back at you in the form of a competition. Have yourselves a little creative brainstorm. What words might serve as modern alternatives to sail, sailing and sailors for vessels that don't have sails? Post your suggestions in the comments below.

I've never sailed in the strict mast-sailcloth-wind sense. I've canoed in English and French rivers, punted countless times on the River Cam, rowed little boats on various rivers and lakes, voyaged as a passenger on proper big liners between this country and West Africa (where I grew up) but the closest I have come to sailing is reading about it in the novels of Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad or Erskine Childers - whose 'The Riddle Of The Sands', is my current engrossing bedtime reading.

At a time when spies and spying are making news headlines in the UK (and concerns over Chinese, Iranian and Russian attempts to steal state secrets), it's quite instructive to read 'The Riddle Of The Sands', one of the earliest espionage thrillers in a tradition that has given us John Buchan, Geoffrey Household, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John le Carré', Len Deighton and Stella Rimington.

I won't spoil the story for you. Suffice to say it involves two Englishmen in a small yacht sailing secretly off the North Sea coast of Germany to uncover infrastructure being prepared for a naval build-up in readiness for a sea invasion of Britain. Published in 1903, the novel was a sensation and did much to persuade the Admiralty to take seriously the possibility of the Germans readying for war, so that when hostilities began a decade later, the British Navy was in a much better state of preparedness.

For a poem on theme, I've chosen something quite famous by John Masefield. I've selected it for this reason: Arthur Ransome loved sailing and when he became literary editor of the periodical Temple Bar in 1905, he commissioned Masefield, who had some experience of sailing before the mast, to write a piece about sailing, shanties and sea songs. Masefield was happy to oblige, and Ransome was so taken with Masefield's article that years later he incorporated nine of the shanties referenced into various of his wonderful adventure stories, the likes of 'Swallows and Amazons', 'We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea', 'Peter Duck', 'Pigeon Post' and 'Secret Water'. 

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;

And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
                                                   

                                                                                         John Masefield, 1902

                                

Thanks for reading, S;-)

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Reading

Just the day for staying inside, away from storm Darragh, curled up warm with a good book. In my case its 'If He Hollers Let Him Go' by Chester Himes, his ground-breaking debut novel from 1945 about what it was like to be black in America during WWII. It was re-published in Penguin Modern Classics just last month, and I bought it (along with 'The Crazy Kill', same author, same imprint) from my local Waterstone's, when I ought to have been addressing other priorities, as will become clear later on.

Anyway, reading. I've covered this topic a few times down the years on the Dead Good Blog. Link here to the one where I recounted my memories of not being able to read and what prompted me to learn: Be More Book . It also lists my favourite twenty novels, if you're interested.

I devoured books as a child (we had no television until I was ten), loved English at school, took English Literature for A-level and went to Warwick University where I read English and American Literature. Professor Bergonzi in his inaugural lecture let it be known that the primary purpose of our being there was not to pass exams, get a degree and a good job, but to acquire a deep love of literature that would make us voracious (but discerning) readers for our lifetimes. Talk about preaching to the converted.    

I must confess I did read off piste quite a lot, like the complete works of Nabokov when we were only supposed to read 'Lolita'. Ditto Thomas Mann when all that was prescribed was 'Buddenbrooks'. The same with George Eliot when all that was required was 'Middlemarch'. And everything by Kurt Vonnegut, who wasn't even on the syllabus. I could go on... I ran with authors I enjoyed (Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Zola, Hardy, Huxley, Kafka, Pynchon, Updike, Austen) sometimes to the detriment of writers I should have been reading but didn't much like. It was probably the precursor of binge watching TV series (not that I do). I'm sure Bergonzi would have understood.

I haven't even mentioned poetry, but that was an abiding love over those three years as well, especially Keats, Blake, Donne, Yeats, Eliot  and of course Homer, Dante and Shakespeare...

John Keats enjoying a good read

In no time at all I had graduated, gone off to Exeter University to learn how to teach and then to a comprehensive school in North London where I set to, enthusing children to be as excited about reading as I had been at their age.

Those of you who've bought my recent poetry collection 'From The Imaginarium' will know from the foreword that I was shocked to find some of the kids in my classes were illiterate, fourteen and fifteen year olds who couldn't read. It's the reason why I'm donating some of the proceeds from sales of the book to the National Literacy Trust. For those few years that I was a teacher, I read a great deal of children's and teenage fiction that hadn't been around when I was young, by the likes of Richard Adams, Joan Aiken, Susan Cooper, Helen Creswell, Alan Garner, SE Hinton, Gene Kemp, Judith Kerr, Ursula Le Guin and Mildred Taylor. You might recognise some of the names if you have children of a certain age. Of course we read to our own children when they arrived and encouraged them to love books in the way we did.

Curiously, my father-in-law who taught English at Durham University made a proclamation on the day that he retired that he would never read another novel as long as he lived, which was a good few years and he stuck by his decision. I could never understand that. It seemed like such self-deprivation to me and there were so many great novels published in his retirement years.

After moving out of teaching, I worked for Kodak until I too retired. Along the way I picked up various long-service awards and for one I elected for a complete set of Arthur Ransome's classic  children's novels in hardback, all dozen of them from 'Swallows And Amazons' through to 'Great Northern'. I'd read them all as a boy and re-read them when my own girls were young. So now I'm reading them for a third time, one every year or so, and will pass them on to my grandson (who's not even one yet) in the hope that he may enjoy them in turn...

I suppose nowadays I read approximately a book a week. You won't be surprised to hear that I keep a 'reading record', have done for years, just the title, author and date when read. Some of my favourite books I've read several times, Hermann Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game' being a good example. 

The pile of books waiting to be read doesn't seem to grow smaller, but I don't have a problem with that, and I'm sure Penguin Books doesn't. Reading has been (and long may it continue) one of the greatest pleasures of my life, so Professor Bergonzi was spot on. Sadly he died in 2016. He wrote over thirty academic books, including one about his friend David Lodge (whose humorous novels I love), and he wrote one novel himself. 'The Roman Persuasion' which I really ought to add to the waiting pile I suppose.

there is no shame in piles of to-be-read books

Reading is such a wonderful activity to be able to engage in, almost anywhere. And what a communication process it represents - the ideas from the mind or imagination of one person captured in coded signs pressed in ink onto pieces of pulped tree (I don't do e-books) so that the experience can replicate and resonate in the mind or imagination of another person. Fabulous. If that's not a kind of magic, I don't know what is.

The other week I went into Blackpool town centre on a particularly frustrating shopping expedition to buy myself a new pair of jeans. It used to be so easy, lots of shops, lots of brands, plenty of choice and everything fit comfortably - not the case anymore, on any count. Walking back from town I thought that buying jeans was comparable in a sense to Eliot's measuring out life with coffee spoons - and this poem was the result. It's in here by virtue of it mentioning books, those novels of Chester Himes I named earlier. And just to avoid any ambiguity (because some were confused when I first shared it), the numbers refer to waist sizes, not ages.😉

In Which The Poet Goes Looking For Jeans But Buys Books
Just part of the index 

by which I measure life -
shopping for jeans.

I remember 30 

studious Warwick University
ditched the velvet loons
for some rivetted Lee Coopers
from C&A then coffee in the round
at the Lady Godiva café
nights of sex and essays

I can recall 32 

wedding bells impending 

fatherhood a decent job

high-waisted Hard Core denim
from that shop on the ramp
between the florist and vintner
days of wine and roses

I revisit 34 

cool black Levis
from an American store
in a US mall man of substance
wife and kids along
road-tripping California
evenings round the pool

Oh but 36 is a shock 

the weight sits on 

and nothing quite fits right
I end up buying an LP
(they call them vinyls nowadays)
and two new books instead
I may look for jeans online

I'll sign off with a musical bonus from 10,000 Maniacs, a song about illiteracy. Just click on the title: Cherry Tree

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Reclamation Of A People

Reclamation of a People – Women Creole Artists, Language, Dialect and Legacy

"We can take everything that English education has to offer us, but ultimately, we must reject the domination of her influence because we are not English, nor should we ever want to be."
So said Norman Manley, first Prime Minister of Jamaica, 1939, quoted from (p1) 'Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture' by Mervyn Morris

Black history month is surely the time to celebrate the legacy of Jamaican women who promoted their culture and aroused interest in it, through performing poetry, stories and plays in their native Creole dialect, known as ‘patois’ in the UK.

Before introducing them, it is worth sharing how the mother tongue of most Jamaicans is Creole and that 90% of Jamaicans are black and descendants of Africans forcibly taken to the New World as slaves. The language is made up of words originating from other languages, mainly English, combined with language structures from Africa. The literary heritage of this language is rich, consisting of songs, folk tales, proverbs, drum music and riddles. The most famous examples of Creole literature, are the series of Anancy stories about a cunning spider who, although no saint himself, reveals weaknesses in human nature.

One woman artist who made an impact in England through using Creole in performance was Pamela Colman Smith, an artist at the Slade School of Art, occultist, poet and performer. She captivated the 'Swallows and Amazons' author Arthur Ransome, whose father was a distinguished Lancaster Grammar School scholar and whose grandfather lived in Morecambe. Ransome wrote about this ebullient, vibrant young woman in his book ' Bohemia in London'. The two met before World War I. The first time they met, she treated him to the ‘It’ drink of the day, opal hush, a mixture of claret and lemonade, before launching into a song:

‘O the googoo bird is a giddy bird
No other is so gay.
O the googoo bird is a merry bird,
Her zingeth all day.
Her zooketh sweet flowers
To make her voice clear,
And when her cryeth, googoo, googoo,
The zummer draweth near.’

Pamela Colman Smith

She went on to tell Anancy stories, another about a singing turtle, then Chim Chim, the little bird and also the Obeah Woman, mentioned in a song by Nina Simone. Ransome, relates how she helped understanding of them with wooden toys she made herself. He writes (p64) 'Bohemia in London':
“To hear her was to be carried back to the primitive days of story-telling, and to understand, a little, how it was that the stories of the old minstrels were handed on from man to man with so little change upon the way.”

Ransome was a great advocate of preserving dialect and languages of minority communities or language that is marginalised by any society. An example of this is when he ingratiated himself with the Romany Gypsy community of Millom to the extent of learning their language. It is unsurprising that he should have befriended Pamela Colman Smith, whom he names, significantly, Gypsy in his account.

Another woman who was instrumental in promoting the Creole language and its dialect in the twentieth century and up to her death in 2006, was Louise Bennett, known popularly as Miss Lou. Born in Kingston in 1919, she learned Creole songs, legends, folk customs, proverbs and stories from her grandmother. A poet, actor, researcher and teacher, she fought to gain international recognition and respect for the Creole language. Bi-lingual, she spoke and performed in Standard English and Creole.

During her educational years in Jamaica, her biographer, Morris says that she gained the firm understanding that the colonial authorities around her thought that songs, stories and verses she heard on her grandmother’s knee (p26): “…ought to be despised and deplored as coming from the offspring of slaves who were illiterate, uncultured and downright stupid.”

She herself, along with other Jamaicans, felt that she was expected to have European tastes and to cultivate only art from other lands than her own. She felt that particularly, her African heritage was undermined and deserved respect. The opposition to Creole had its roots in prejudice, which she faced with humour and, according to those who knew her, humility.

She started the path to reversing this as a teenager, when she wrote her first poem in Creole. She identified with market women who had to carry baskets and had to sit at the back of buses. She understood their resentment when other people tried to take the back seats of the buses and expressed this in her poem On A Tramcar (p8) '
Miss Lou: Louise Bennett and Jamaican Culture', Mervyn Morris:

‘Pread out yuhself deh Liza, wan
Dress ‘oman dah look sey
She se’de li space side a we
An’ want foace herself een deh.

Translation:

Spread yourself there, Liza
A dressed up woman looks as though
She sees the little space beside us
And wants to force herself in there.

During her lifetime Louise Bennett gained a British Council scholarship to RADA, a scholarship to collect folklore in West Indian territories, had her own radio shows, acted in pantomimes, published and performed her own poetry in England, Jamaica and America, published Anancy stories, Jamaican songs, verses, recipes and folklore, gained an MBE for her services to Jamaican literature and theatre, became Ambassador and Special Envoy for Jamaica and took part in the film Club Paradise with Robin Williams and Peter O’Toole.

Louise Bennett

Children in Jamaica became, under her influence, like her, bi-lingual, learning Creole in addition to Standard English, in which she was fluent. Her influence endures in Jamaica today.

Louise Bennett challenged opposition to Creole and won. Her desire to preserve Creole dialect had its roots in preserving the spirit and soul of another country and asserting what was essentially the foundation of her island race, preserving what came from African culture. It was not like someone trying to preserve what came from England, like Lancashire or Yorkshire dialect. Unsurprisingly, she had support from her native country, Jamaica, in addition to support from the English-speaking literary establishment itself who admired her. She reached out to the English-speaking people by performing in Creole and in Standard English.

Is Creole a language, rather than a dialect? We have to ask where does this leave the British and their dialects?  Should we preserve our many dialects and what place do they have? It’s over to you folks!

What would be the likely outcome if English language schools taught sophisticated Asian businessmen Yorkshire dialect like "Put wood i’ thoile" (it means ‘close the door’ – ‘put the wood in the hole’) and making them pronounce it correctly according to ancient recordings of Yorkshire folk? What place does dialect, from the many regions of England, have in today’s society? What of the forgotten English Gypsy language Ransome learned?

One thing is certain in England; what would never be tolerated in mainstream English schools is teaching Standard English, which was taught to Miss Bennett. The reason is because of our society is so class ridden and because early publishers of books on how to speak Standard English, in my opinion, wanted crucifying and boiling in oil.

I remember when I took drama lessons, coming across the verse:

Father’s car is a Jaguar
and pa drives rather fast!
Castles, farms and draughty barns
We go charging past. (Long A sounds of course)

It’s awful, isn’t it? It is so class ridden and ‘those-with-money-centric' it is untrue! Even without being subjected to this, people, no doubt would soon get uppity and on the defensive about being made to talk posh, when the reality is, we live in an international community where English is a common language and many EFL students ask ‘how do you sound like an English person, and what is the correct pronunciation?' That is the purpose of Standard English; to have a general standard.

Teaching Standard German works in Germany, but then, their high and low German has nothing to do with indicating class or social status. Received Pronunciation, whether English, German or American, is merely a means of communication across countries and continents, especially across the second language world of today.

Thanks mainly to Oscar Wilde, I became totally sold on Received Pronunciation. Not many people know that he swapped his native Dublin accent for Standard English. I used to read out his poetry, which I loved, over and over again, noting how it seemed to suit Standard English. Now I know why! People I shared his poetry with gave comments like, "Amazing", "Wow!", "Sweet", "Really sweet" and "Very sweet". A favourite quote was:

And at Springtide when the apple blossoms
brush the burnished bosom of the dove,
two young lovers lying in an orchard
would have read the story of our love.

Would have read the legend of my passion,
known the bitter secret of my heart
kissed as we have kissed
but never parted as we two
are fated now to part.

So, it goes on….

What has been helpful for me through standing by my man, (Wilde), is that I have never had any harassment from anyone down south about how I speak. People do not notice this at all. If people have a strong accent they can be subjected to ridicule, particularly teachers by pupils in schools who are from another region of the country. A teacher who was a native of Poland complained to me that her pupils imitated her accent, which she did not like. Maybe pupils should not do this and it is rude, but they do and it a hassle people can do without.

Conversely, I received criticism and accusations of snobbery from people who came from native Lancashire where I grew up and was tackled by school students about this. I ignored them as I was doing nothing wrong and have profited as a result. In the Czech Republic in July 1997, I ended up going from unemployed to employed because a language school manager wanted a teacher who spoke standard English for the benefit of his students. He wanted me to give the students Standard English lessons, which I have no problem with and rather enjoyed giving, as each language has own music and it is great to share this with others. In the post-Communist world of Eastern Europe, of course, speaking ‘posh’ means nothing, something that generally goes over the heads of the British English.

It is worth noting that even if accent is used, as it often is, in drama, accent has to be standardized for performance. There is no point in people speaking with such strong accents that an audience cannot understand them, which can and has happened, resulting in viewer complaints from those who watched a TV serial set in the south west of England!

It seems appropriate to end this blog with a quote from the admirable and eminently sensible Miss Bennett, who did not reject Standard English, but promoted her native tongue (p12 ibid): 
“I think I speak for all Jamaica. I can’t feel that I belong to any class or that I write for any class.”

Anne Gaelan

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