What an absolutely fabulous conference on contemporary reception of the classics and whether contemporary reception signifies a democratic turn.  We covered a wide variety of topics, including contemporary performance of Ancient Greek Texts, poetry, political culture and notions of democracy, Nietzsche as educator and appropriations of Cicero and Cato plus lots more.

It was a real privilege to be poet-in-residence for the conference and I very much enjoyed giving my poetry presentation based on Ovid and Horace and receiving so many interesting questions about my process.  It was most encouraging to have one audience member say she had always disliked Horace but that having heard my versions she would look at him again with new eyes and a more open mind!

I also wrote a little poem to celebrate the conference itself and read it out at Saturday evening dinner.  I reproduce it below, along with some photos of the weekend.

http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/Conf2010/confpage2010.htm

On the Turn

It was clear from the start that things would get hot,
in minutes the talk was of truth and translation,
democracy, turning, inclusive embracing;
we became what we are and not what we’re not.

I jumped on my hobby-horse, Beauty-v-Use,
I didn’t have animus hostilis in mind,
(as your travelling bard that would hardly be kind).
Plurality, synergy dare I deduce
could make us reflective and set us at peace?
But my tongue was a-gallop and ready to burn,
’til Lorna, to calm me, threatened “poetry police”

Students and scholars and poets should learn
that collaborative effort will surely increase
our love of democracy; a swerve or a turn.

I am pleased to announce that I am to be poet-in-residence at the Classics in the Modern World – a Democratic Turn? international conference to be held at The Open University, Milton Keynes 18 – 20 June, 2010

See Link below

http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/Conf2010/confpage2010.htm

Horace’s Odes have been through the proverbial mill.  Scholars, poets and schoolboys have all had their pop, translating and reinventing and bowdlerizing, from Pope to Byron to Rudyard Kipling’s illatinate ‘Beetle;, whose translation of the ‘Regulus ode’ proved the last and quite possibly most testing ordeal of that Roman hero.  Two thousand years down the line and counting, the forty nine poems in Maureen Almond’s ‘Chasing the Ivy’, all but two of them parallels or responses to poems in Odes I, offer up a Horace still very much green and kicking, and for once being given a few good kicks in return. In proud Horatian tradition this is very firmly the poetry of the individual.  It matters for a reading of these poems that they are written by a ‘down-to-earth’, gritty female from Teesside’ (her description), and the poetics, the politics, and the poetic politics are of Almond’s time and place, not Horace’s.  Her canon is inhabited by ‘;those certain, sexy women, ‘ Your Shapcotts and your Duffys and your Olds’; for her double-edged demon, fatale monstrum, she transposes Cleopatra with Maggie Thatcher.

Ode to 22 November, 1990
(after Horace Ode 1.37 Nunc est bibendum)

At last we breathe a huge sigh of relief.
Now let’s sit back and watch the fun and games.
Time to stock committee rooms with claret:
till lately just one glass was out of reach,

the birch-keen crazy woman saw to that.
Power-mad, she tanked-up on the Falklands
then with her rotten cronies took our capital,
and poll-taxed poor pensioners and poets.

Now she’s brought to heel: (though having once
survived like Cleopatra and her ships),
rejected by her own, a sober thought,
she sees the proper battle on her hands.

While in the wings the hawkish Michael waits
to peck this honourable monster carcass clean.
But the Carlton Club’s most honorary member
stares her crushed society in the face.

She chose her poison, took it like a man
enjoyed defeat and didn’t do a U-turn.
The media didn’t march the Iron Lady
before us as a rusty washed-up has-been.

Among her most marked ongoing anxieties Almond refers frequently to the modern British poetry scene, its covert infighting and its ‘poet dog-eat-dogs’, the dreaded lure of ‘poncey southern culture’ and the virtues of New Writing North.  It’s perhaps the details that are most telling; if anyone thought Horace’s choice of tipple had no real significance, they should try the semiotics of Almond’s pint of Newcastle Brown. Almond is, of course, a woman, and Horace was never the archetypal proto-feminist.  How to deal with the procession of one-night-stands?  Almond’s solution is to give Glycera, Chloe, Lydia and the gang voices of their own.  And they sure aren’t shy; ‘I’m no more interested in the long term / than you are, pet,’ says Glycere, ‘…Don’t you recognise a “come-on” when you see it?’  ‘You were wrong,’ says Lydia, rejected for her wrinkles, ‘I’ve not aged, I’ve matured. / I’m rounded, fuller-bodied with a fruity whiff.’  No space for pity here, and it’s worth noting that it’s the ladies who get thew last word in this volume. Almond’s voice comes as a stimulating addition and kickback to the Horatian afterlife, and the man from the banks of the Aufidus would no doubt chuckle to hear the resounding echo of the Ultima Britanna and her ’speechless Tees’. (Elizabeth Mitchell)

March and the beginning of April, 2010 have found me in a very black place because of family matters.  I look forward to climbing out.

This was the first of my ’special’ birthday celebrations(More to follow) We had a great start to our stay when the owner of the hotel brought complimentary tea and two fabulous pieces of chocolate cake up to our room – he’d even iced ‘happy birthday’ in chocolate onto the plate.

The hotel is said to be haunted by the ghost of Dorothy Forster, wife of the first Lord Crewe and there were people at the hotel last night, with little meters and other gadgets trying to track down poor Dorothy while my friend and I sat in the bar chasing different kinds of spirits!

The food was delicious, though we did panic a bit when we saw the snow start to fall again around ten in the evening – we had visions (not really!) of being trapped for days up on the fells with only sheep and ghostbusters for company. Even the parked cars joined in by spasmodically letting rip with their alarms. Quite a wild and weird night to say the least.

Had a really great day at the Bowes Museum today and I’m very much looking forward to my residency in March.

 

Bowes Silver Swan

I’m going to be working with various school groups during March, but today was a research day. You could feel the excitement building as the clock ticked towards 2.00 pm. Nearly everyone in the museum made their way to sit in the company of the magnificent silver swan as she gave her 30 second performance.

Drawing of Me by Ollie

Another two drawings presented to me today as gifts from the children. Makes my 5.30 am start worthwhile!

Drawing by Amelia (Part 1)

Drawing by Amelia (Part 2)