http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/rss.php?w=new New Blogs in Tusitala - Teach! Teach! Teach. en-gb Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:36:08 -0400 Tusitala - Teach! Teach! Teach RSS mike@24-7easyweb.co.uk http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=816 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=816 The Artful was having a good morning. Grandma Isaac had whispered something deep down into her ear about the amber fountain being ready again...'ready again' she had drawled in that smoky voice , so that Artful started to text Demeter even before the ancient woman had taken her mouth away from her ear. Now there was something to say to Demeter and the Artful smiled. She always wanted to have things to say to Demeter, special things and now the amber fountain was reshaped. How they could travel again. All sorts of shapes  leapt into her vision drenched in amber light. What promises! Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=815 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=815 Samuel Johnson is Indignant:   that Scotland has so few trees.     Lydia Davis is mistress of the succinct! Everytime I read this I break out into a smile! The juxtapositions are so provocative and original. Bathos married intimately to the intensely subjective...and somehow this is SO believable. Almost as if we are gazing out of a carriage window with the great man, having an irascible morning and shutting out the landscape with a loud slam of the carriage window! Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=814 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=814   She had placed the three penny bit under the mat one morning when they had all gone out and somehow it had chosen to stay there, shiny and manageably small for months. Lynda had never had a secret before. She would walk across the mat and pause sensing the calm security of the coin's shape, even taking off her sandals sometimes, just to feel  a little bit more of its perfect form, its uncompromising hardness. Even on one of her  bad days, this little coin would reshape something in her head and things would begin to flow differently. And although it was odd, Lynda began to look forward to coming back home just to cross the mat, and touch again- barefoot if she was free, the shape of the coin her father had given her, when he stood looking at the perfect blue house with nothing left to say. Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=813 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=813 Lynda had been so very lucky that the bruising began to fade in a matter of days. The car had saved her everyone said. It had lived up to its reputation and what a blessing everyone close to Lynda informed her that was. Even those who only knew of Lynda joined in this wholehearted respect in the face of this near death experience, an experience which had made her stronger of course and yet circumspect too. How brightly one must smile each day she acknowledged to those women at the gate. Tony even promised to buy her another car and  assured her kindly that she could choose the colour this time. It was the very least he could do to show her how much he valued the safety of his family. Yet for all that, Lynda did not feel safe. The bruise dimmed that was true. But it was clover shaped and meant rather more than anyone knew. It was quite simply a dangerous sign designed for her by forces way beyond the community of Shackleton Close and Thornton's Bathroom Basics. . Lynda knew this and yet how she knew it was a secret that even she could not guess at- for she was not a woman given to imagination, yet something, and it must be her new imagination told her that something had changed and was changing and looking at the clover bruise just reaffirmed that everything had altered.Nothing could  ever be shaped the same way again. She began with a pair of shoes of course. They were not her shape. They looked geometrically spectacular with their triangular heels and diamond patterning. Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=812 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=812 Dedicated with love to the memory of UA Fanthorpe We first met when your last breathcooled in my palm like an egg;you dead, and a thrush outsidesang it was morning.I backed out of the room, feelingthe flowers freshen and shine in my arms. The night before, we met again, to unsayunbearable farewells, to seeour eyes brighten with re-strung tears.O I had my sudden wish -though I barely knew you -to stand at the door of your house,feeling my heartbeat calm,as they carried you in, home, home and healing.Then slow weeks, removing the wheelchair, the drugs,the oxygen mask and tank, the commode,the appointment cards,until it was summer againand I saw you open the doors to the gift of your garden. Strange and beautiful to seethe roses close to their own premonitions,the grass sweeten and cool and greenwhere a blackbird eased a worm into the lawn.There you were,a glass of lemony wine in each hand,walking towards me always, your magnolia treemarrying itself to the May air. How you talked! And how I listened,spellbound, humbled, daughterly,to your tall tales, your wise words,the joy of your accent, unenglish, dancey, humorous;watching your ash hair flare and redden,the loving litany of who we had beenmaking me place my hands in your warm hands,younger than mine are now.Then time only the moon. And the balm of dusk.And you my mother.   When this miraculous poem was published in the Guardian to coinicide with Duffy's appointment as Poet Laureate I made a promise to myself that I would write about this poem in the light of my feeling about all Duffy's most powerful poetry- that it is about Resurrection and  that Carol Ann Duffy explores resurrection again and again in her poetry. Demeter, Mrs Lazarus and Ann Hathaway all resurrect and reanimate relationships.They all strive to find an enduring language for persistent, immortal love.  They acknowledge the glaring power of memory and the tenderness ( and ambivalence) of  recollection. So very shortly I will begin the piece on Duffy and Resurrection using Larkin's 'The Explosion' which remains for me one of his most profoundly moving poems and David Copperfield's relationship with his mother and Steerforth. This is the power of summer leisure and the liberating experience of having time to think again!! Watch this space and Carol Ann Duffy's Sheer Poetry site for the new writing! www.sheerpoetry.co.uk   Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=811 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=811 June has turned blissfully warm and all my GCSE and A level students are on the best side of their examinations, now all enjoying the possibility of a long hot summer!  Each year I forget how hectic the focus on so many different texts and writing strategies becomes. But this year, perhaps more than ever before, I have realised the immense value of self-confidence in English Studies. After all, English more than any other subject is about being alive; being present to others and to oneself and no amount of sophisticated vocabulary can disguise the need for such presence in reading and writing about life. Remember David Copperfield's immortal words to his highly reflective lonely self whilst hiding from his  ghastly step-family, the Murdstones. 'Reading as if for life.'  This expression has always resonated for me and it underlines the salvation of reading and writing. Reading heals. It really can shift you from one place to another and thus completely reframe a situation or emotion so that a new response can be experienced or generated. And human beings are the archetypal regenerators of this planet.!!! I am also reminded of a superb and most powerful avowal quoted at the front of the Spring 2009 The Reader which is a marvellous magazine issued out of Liverpool University: 'People are dying- it is no metaphor- for lack of something real to carry home when day is done.' ( Saul Bellow, Herzog) Something is met when you encounter an image, a character, a phrase or even word which hits you. It is that AHA moment where we realise we are not alone on this lonely planet, that another has felt as we have and that words can save us. Words have power, they connect us to others and ourselves. Our world is made up of words.   In a month' s time I should complete my NLP Master Practitioner Training with excellenceforall. Peter McNab and Lynn Byrom have  been excellent tutors over the two years and I have found NLP a natural accompaniment to English Tuition. It encourages students to find greater resources within, it empowers students to think more confidently and creatively and it helps to shape and model behaviours which improve  understanding. Defintely an added WOW factor in tuition! So many students have told me that they felt better for tuition and I KNOW that a very good part of this relates to the fusion of English with NLP a 'marriage' I will be developing once qualified in July. I also have to thank the wonderful Moira Eribenne deeply  for her faith, care  and encouragement at Ladybridge ... the training I have delivered there has been invaluable and uplifting. ( For me!!) What a fabulous opportunity I have been lucky enough to enjoy. NLP and English are soulmates!!! Metaphors and anchoring are transformative and transportative(!) Telling stories enables and empowers...!!!    Janet Lewison, Tusitala Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=810 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=810 He had sat just over there when his Grandma told him sadly  he was the winter's child. 'Your heart is strong, but buried deep. Remember, you must always wait for the spring.' And she had given him this bear, a tiny bear, no bigger than a mouse, with black currant eyes to watch over him when they had sent him away to that school. Be strong, be brave and always wait for spring. You are the winter's child.  And he had waited, and was still waiting, all his life. '     Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=809 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=809 How it makes of your face a stone that aches to weep, of your heart a fist, clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice that can throw no six. How it takes the breath away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin, makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static, of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this – politics – to your education education education; shouts this – Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS Carol Ann Duffy's first poem as Poet Laureate published in The Guardian yesterday is a fiery, spirited denouncement of the obfuscation and duplicity of those who identify themselves as our representatives in parliament. The transformations of power and publicity are vehemently dissected here and how we recognise them all...politics is Faustian indeed..I especially enjoyed the serpentive sounds of the poem...a fallen world indeed without even the merest hint of redemption or Lamia -like complexity or compassion. The metamorphosis from human being to mechanised deceit is compressed..(or should I say crushed as this underlines the spiritual aridity?) into this short poem through a complete autopsy on the ironically self-less politician. A poem to be read out aloud and spat out...tonality is all! Once again I am drawn back to Shelley's wonderful Ozymandias one of the most visually arresting poems of power's corruption and seduction every written. Has the word 'desert' ever communicated such loneliness? Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=808 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=808 MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.   What a triumph of tone and punctuation! Dickens unnervingly resurrects Marley at the opening of his now near immortal Christmas Carol with this supremely creepy aside. How knowingly his narrator delivers the revelation of resurrection. And how cleverly the evidence of Marley's death piles up , strangely unconvincing  in the light or darkness of the opening aside. i love the slightly meandering style of the voice. We are being told a 'real' story but someone whose natural propensity is to meander and reflect and then return to the subject they first introduced. Losing one's way has never been such fun!   Sun, 14 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=807 http://www.tusitala.org.uk/blog/blog.php?bid=807 I MET a traveller from an antique land   Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone   Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,   Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown   And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command          5 Tell that its sculptor well those passions read   Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,   The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.   And on the pedestal these words appear:   "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:   10 Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"   Nothing beside remains: round the decay   Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,   The lone and level sands stretch far away.     Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400