Janet Lewison

‘We all tell the stories of ourselves all the time and this is part of the experience of life,not simply a secondary reflection of it…’ ( Elspeth Graham,  Her own… Read More »Echoes of Passion: All Passion Spent?

We all need our dreams. We have all fallen in love. Dickens’s susceptible hero Pip believes that the ‘star’ of his dream is the beautiful Estella, because she had been… Read More »Another Passion?!

‘For feedback to be effective, students also need to be motivated to act on it. Offering to respond to a draft can be a good way of achieving this. Better… Read More »Feedback

Spades Called “Pallas” on the French deck, possibly after the Greek goddess Athena. She faces left, and is seen in profile. On the English deck, she is the only queen… Read More »The Queen of Spades- Winterson's secret date with Pushkin's gambler?

Whilst playing the sassily brilliant ‘Back to Black’ checked out Amy Winehouse on google. What a Virgoan stereotype?!!! ‘I cheated myself, Like I knew I would, I told you I… Read More »Amy Winehouse, DHLawrence and Jeanette Winterson: The Wonders of astrology!

‘But Briar crept on me. Briar absorbed me. Now I feel the simple weight of the woollen cloak with which I have covered myself and think, I shall never escape!… Read More »Another passion two!

Help Yourself When I walk in your shoesI understand a man confusedThere must have been but I don’t careI feel the way your soul does thereDarling they empathiseLooking through your… Read More »Still the best Amy Winehouse? 'Besides nobody can be that wise..'

They tried to make me go to rehab I said no, no, no. Yes I been black, but when I come back You wont know, know, know. I ain’t got… Read More »Rehab: Amy Style

Two English teachers changed my life : Judy Hatton weaned me off my dad’s Alastair Maclean and Erich Von Daniken one library period at Marple Hall High School and suggested… Read More »Kate Bush : Them Heavy People – With many thanks!

Never for everBabooshka She wanted to test her husband. She knew exactly what to do: A pseudonym to fool him. She couldn’t have made a worse move. She sent him… Read More »Kate Bush and HBL : Happy Birthday 17th January

  What does this picture suggest ? What feelings does it evoke in the reader?   Imagine using it in a journal or as basis for an essay/ seminar.   Shadows… Read More »

One of the one frustrating experiences of learning occurs when the great/unusual/ wacky/surprising question that occurred to you in the middle of some activity disappears over the horizon as soon… Read More »Why a thinking writing Note-book will boost confidence and marks!

Absolutely certain this corresponds to blog on beckoning! What a wild story and one that resonates! Legend has it that the roots of graveside yews reach into the mouths of… Read More »The Yew Tee and the Beckoning

Why are so many texts riveted by idea of ‘beckoning’ in that they are concerned with a  form of resurrection or a return to life in its most ‘lived’ sense? Do… Read More »The Beckoning- after Love Actually and Harry Potter and the Prisoner!

Her mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught from the inn-window tones that strangely riveted her attention, before the old man’s words, “Mr. Henchard, the Mayor,” reached her… Read More »Chapter 5 Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge: Spectacle and Spectatorship? Who's Zooming who?

‘Bridges join but they also separate.’ “I like the collision between different realities”, she says, as she prepares two mugs of Irish tea. “It’s exciting at the level of the… Read More »Winterson's Webbed footed narratives

Mr Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only… Read More »Guess who's coming to Dinner!

‘That’s my Last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive…’   So begins one of the most and chilling poems in the English Language. The seemingly… Read More »And another thing! Robert Browning's 'My Last Duchess' and Elizabeth's 'Lord Walter's Wife.'

Good essays anchor themselves to a succinct and provocative idea. This anchoring ensures that  the essay has a real spine or back bone and does not wander off into woolly… Read More »Barrett Browning Lord Walter's Wife:'Where do you go to my lovely…?'

Critics have cited the writing of Rossetti in Goblin Market to create an ‘aesthetics of overflow’. Now aside from its obvious appeal in sensory and even erotic terms, this ‘aesthetics’… Read More »I am the resurrection and the life saith Elizabeth B Browning

‘He was austere with himself; drank gin when alone, to mortify a taste for vintages…’   If Utterson spends time alone resisting his taste for vintages with the displaced pleasure… Read More »A glass of wine with Dr Jekyll and Robert Louis Stevenson

‘A voice comes to one in the dark. Imagine.’ (Samuel Beckett, Company)   Explore the creation of character in the dramatic monologue.     Robert Browning: ‘The Laboratory’; ‘My Last… Read More »The darkness of Browning and Friends!

Lord Walter’s Wife                         I ‘BUT where do you go?’ said the lady, while both sat under the yew, And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath… Read More »What can I do with this poem? How do I start to discuss it?

‘There is something else not quite right about night life, something shadowy in every sense. However efficiently artificial light annihilates the difference between night and day, it never wholly eliminates… Read More »The Dark Night of the soul: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Oliver Twist

Years ago I was lucky enough to work with Elspeth Graham at Liverpool John Moores’ University on a course entitled ‘Literature and Madness’. We both were keen to teach contemporary… Read More »The Perfect Passion?