I was terrified by Susan HILL’S The Woman in Black. My Boxing Day was frosty in every way! So when I bought The Mist in the mirror for a week… Read More »Susan Hill's The Mist in the Mirror: the dangers of a neutral narrator?
I first read The Master and Margarita at Liverpool University when I was studying Russian Studies with English. My tutor Professor Arnold McMillin found my reaction slightly bizarre. as I… Read More »Waking up with the Master and Margarita-Bulgakov's helter skelter tapestry of fantasy and pantomine.
JUST FOUND THIS POEM OF MINE – WRITTEN IN 1980 – 31 YEARS AGO – AGED 23 – UNTITLED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE IN LIFE FROM EVERY WALK AND STATION FROM EVERY… Read More »Cath Corri: An untitled poem.
The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that… Read More »D H Lawrence's Odour of Chrysanthemums by Cath Corri!
My life so far stilted, Duty bound. Wondering if that once,untamed energy Would ever be found. A longing to learn, To have knowledge, To be bright To put pen… Read More »Lorraine Farrimond:Ahead
Cath Corri What novel/novelist has inspired or touched your life most and why? For me it is Toni Morrison’s BELOVED ………… unique in its style and works with history, language… Read More »Cath And Jen Corri talking about Toni Morrison's Beloved.
Halted against the shade of a last hill, They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease And, finding comfortable chests and knees Carelessly slept. But many there stood still To… Read More »Wilfred Owen's Spring Offensive: a healing pause.
Raynard Corri was the bastard offspring of Captain Africa (the lard mogul) and Tracy. The captain disappeared without Tracy, who perished alone , along with her diamond collection, the victim… Read More »Bern Corri by Cath Corri
I’d done it before (and doubtless I’ll do it again, sooner or later) woke up with a head on the pillow beside me -whose? – what did it matter? Good-… Read More »Salome by Carol Ann Duffy: the ‘soul-lessness’ of cliche?
NOvel is about more than a haunting. Beloved enters the narrative as a fully grown woman , but in fact is a pre-mature child (murdered by her mother to be… Read More »Cath Corri: Beloved by Toni Morrison
The English Patient ‘If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn’t you?’ Set in post-war Italy, The English Patient focuses on four survivors coming to terms with… Read More »Cath Corri: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too… Read More »Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting part one.
She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless… Read More »E M Forster Howard's End-only connect!
One Good Turn is the second novel in which Kate Atkinson featured her private detective, Jackson Brodie. Brodie is attractive, compassionate and flawed. Appealing of course, with the added attraction that he… Read More »One good Turn by Kate Atkinson; ‘A jolly Murder Mystery’ for Bolton, Bury and Manchester!
A NOISELESS, patient spider, I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament,… Read More »Soul adventures with Walt Whitman!
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— Success in Cirrcuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation… Read More »Emily Dickinson’s view of truth!
Yesterday I was fascinated by a pest controller telling me about cockroaches and their two brains. I do think Dr Who should maximise upon this enthralling fact! Today, I picked… Read More »Michael Morpurgo: A Elephant in the garden.
Below the surface-stream, shallow and light, Of what we say we feel – below the stream, As light, of what we think we feel – there flows With noiseless current… Read More »Why reading poetry helps us know ourselves better?
The trees rustled encouragingly as she hurried towards the familiar destination: another meeting at Spicer’s bar. She did not, absolutely did not, allow herself to imagine the figure waiting for… Read More »Another Misssion by Anna McNamara
Daphne Du Maurier – “The Old Man” Being unfamiliar with Du Maurier’s work, I didn’t know what to expect from this short story, and, having scanned the contents page of… Read More »Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Old man' with Alison Ridyard
Carol Ann Duffy – “You” – The Volatile Nature of Love In a characteristic adaptation of the sonnet form, Duffy expresses the contrasting emotions of passion and passivity, and the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's You: The Volatile nature of Love by Alison Ridyard.
Daphne Du Maurier – “The Birds” “There were robins, finches, sparrows, blue tits, larks and bramblings, birds that by nature’s law kept to their own flock and their own territory,… Read More »Daphne du Maurier's The Birds by Alison Ridyard
Carol Ann Duffy – “Havisham” Adopting the persona of Charles Dickens’s infamous spinster, ‘Miss Havisham’, and delivered in the form of dramatic monologue, Duffy offers an insight into the disturbed… Read More »Carol Annn Duffy's Havisham by Alison Ridyard
Sometimes days become more fluid than chocolate milkshake! The other week I had the Emily Dickinson phrase, ‘started early, took my dog’ in my head in connection with the latest… Read More »Kate Atkinson and Jackson Brodie.
When You Are Old WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, … Read More »GCSE, A Level English Tuition: W B Yeats' When you are old.
This poem, ‘You‘ begins Carol Ann Duffy’s sequence of love poems, unambiguoulsy called Rapture! Aliosn Ridyard’s commentary on this blog is excellent and discusses the techniques by which Duffy communicates… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's You from Rapture: Commentary
CAROL ANN DUFFY (1955–present) In Mrs Tilscher’s Class You could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery. Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum.… Read More »In Mrs Tilscher's Class
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at… Read More »Dylan Thomas 'Do not go gentle into that good night' Analysis : Sometimes only rage will do!.
Duffy’s “Crush” One of the consequences of the publication of Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture has been—at least so far as I’m concerned—to review her early love lyrics. The reception… Read More »Crush by Carol Ann Duffy reviewed by Barry Wood
