Writing a story under examination conditions can seem daunting. You have just half an hour in which to show to the examiner that you can write effectively. You want to… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip Two: Openings a short lesson with David Almond.
I have always believed that certain things are only ever finished never finished with and when I was reading Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Scheherazade’ poem in her new collection The Bees, I… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Scheherazade with a hint of Rapture's Give!
Even now If my girl with lotus eyes came to me again Weary with the dear weight of young love, Again I would give her to these starved twins of… Read More »'Black Marigolds' translated from Sanskrit by E Powys Mathews: A favourite Love poem of Carol Ann Duffy.
I do like this breadth and the looming intimacies made accessible perhaps through this breadth. Human beings are so perversely paradoxical that sometimes intimacy is most intensely experienced when we… Read More »The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy: Retrospect and Spots of time?
Bees Here are my bees, gold blurs on paper, besotted; buzzwords dancing their flawless airy maps. Been deep, my poet bees, in the parts of flowers, in daffodil, thistle,… Read More »Bees by Carol Ann Duffy in her latest collection: The Bees!
The UCAS Personal Statement is a very powerful means of revealing to the University Admissions’ Tutor just how YOU are the very student they want to see in a seminar… Read More »UCAS Personal Statement: Expert Advice and Help.
Promise: Katherine Mansfield’s Final Adventure. These pieces were scattered about on my blog and I felt they needed uniting with each other in order to make more sense and coherence… Read More »Promise: Katherine Mansfield's Final Adventure?
Rose’s mother was called Carol and she spent most of her day in a large airy office at the top of the house, guarded from her family by a stained glass… Read More »Refuge: Rose’s Mother.
I wrote The Face in The Wall as a sketch a few years ago on the Tusitala blog, under the category Writing Demeter. This category has a whole series of fragments… Read More »Reflections on Writing The Face in the wall and Katherine Mansfield too!
A courier knocked at my door just after midday and presented me with the slim parcel that revealed itself as Carol Ann Duffy’s brand new collection-The Bees. Hurrah for ebay… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees! New book of poetry from the poet Laureate.
So Many routines and rituals bring you comfort. Yet they throw the world of others into chaos . Everything is black and white. Right or wrong. You are protected… Read More »Living with autism by Lorraine Farrimond
Alfred was watching the smoke raise from his cooking. Surrounded by sand. He stood tall on his two legs, both paws deeply accustomed to the soft sand and the sea… Read More »Alfred's beach barbecue: Refuge
Father’s Bedroom In my Father’s bedroom: blue threads as thin as pen-writing on the bedspread, blue dots on the curtains, a blue kimono, Chinese sandals with blue plush straps.… Read More »OXFORD ELAT English Paper example: Robert Lowell’s ‘Father’s Bedroom’.
Three steps ahead of her lay an adventure. It just needed a shape. She set off down the lane towards the sea, pleased with her boots. Bees and wasps attacked the… Read More »English Tutor Manchester, Bolton and Bury: Rose meets the boy at the stile.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary… Read More »Cath Corri and Gillman's Yellow Wallpaper: A Nightmare Destined for…?
Here is the rubric from an ELAT sample paper: Select two or three passages(a) to (f) and compare and contrast them in any ways that seem interesting to you, paying… Read More »ELAT English Entrance Examination: Practical Criticism tests your close reading confidence?
I have just started reading David Almond’s new novel The True tale of the Monster Billy Dean.It’s windy outside as Bolton gets the ‘tail’ end of Hurricane Katrina. Oddly enough… Read More »Reading The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond.
English students at all levels, but particularly at GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate levels are faced by the challenge of close textual analysis or ‘Practical Criticism’ as it used to… Read More »Analysing a novel: Susan Hill's Strange Meeting.
Susan Hill’s beautiful and most affecting novel Strange Meeting ends with the word ‘ahead’- a very poignant conclusion to her tenderly composed exploration of friendship during the first world war.… Read More »Strange Meeting by Susan Hill: why the word 'ahead' lifts the novel out of despair?
Rose was watching the small rabbit who had been playing on the lawn for an hour. Rose wondered about the second rabbit from yesterday but closed her mind to its… Read More »Refuge: Prologue-part one!
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?
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
WANDERING THROUGH (mothering) – WUTHERING HEIGHTS! It has only just struck me, that if writing is inevitably about life/lives and living – the birth of the novelist, historical documentation and… Read More »Cath Corri:Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours The love that I have Of the life that I have Is… Read More »Leo Marks-Yours
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
