(US figurative expressionist painter Renée Radell, The Tide, 1966)
It’s been a long time since I last did a gallimaufry of links... I don’t seem to have as much time, or perhaps inclination, to wander around the internets as before. But here are some things I found interesting, and you might too.
After a group of students wrote to Cambridge University asking for a more diverse English literature syllabus (and more power to their elbow!), the Guardian published writers’ ideas for how this might be achieved. I’m particularly keen to lay my hands on a copy of Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali. Amit Chaudhuri writes of it:
[It was] published in 1928, two years after Mrs Dalloway, and [was] as much a departure in narrative technique as Woolf’s novel. It’s a portrait of village life in Bengal, but is as distant from the dutiful social realism such a project would normally entail as Mrs Dalloway is from a 19th-century-style study of upper-class society. Pather Panchali is an experiment in exploring how narrative might follow the momentary transitions of our consciousness of the world.
(French hair designer Tresse Agoche weaves locks of hair into complex sculptures; from Highness, photographed by delphine diaw diallo)
Friday is always a joyful day in Gallimaufry Towers because it is my day off. And now I can start my happy day with a poem, emailed by Picador. The selection has included poetry that is recent and old, famous and less well-known, and has introduced me to new writers. In the last few weeks I’ve read work by Gillian Clarke, Jackie Kay, William Shakespeare, Lady Catherine Dyer (no I’d never heard of her either) and Robert Frost. If you’d like to wake up to a poem every Friday morning, then you can subscribe here.
And if you’re keen to discover new things, WomensArt1 on Twitter posts artwork by women – photographs, paintings, sculpture, craft – the range is amazing. And in particular, look at this!
(Rock carvings, Stone and People (1993) by Greenlandic artist Aka Høegh)
Another new thing (to me, anyway): I am not very music-minded and had never heard of Laura Cannell before a friend kindly gave me Simultaneous Flight Movement, and now I can’t stop playing it, it’s completely addictive. It was recorded in Southwold Lighthouse and every time I listen to it I’m transported to the Suffolk coast, it is wide skies and lonely marshes turned into music. You can listen to it here.
Finally, I hate to think about Christmas before December but when I saw Polly Whistle’s beautiful angels I couldn’t resist buying a couple from her Etsy shop. They are exquisite. Look!
(Angels by Polly Whistle, anxious to fly on to my Christmas tree as soon as possible)
Artwork and captions in this post are all taken from WomensArt1 on Twitter except for the last photograph.