Barbara Cooke, "Evelyn Waugh's Oxford"

 

Dr Barbara Cooke is a senior lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She worked in publishing before completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is Co-executive Editor of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh and the author of Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford.

About Evelyn Waugh's Oxford, by Barbara Cooke, with illustrations by Amy Dodd

Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford is a site-specific, creative-critical biography focusing on Waugh’s emotional and creative connection to the city. It begins by looking at Waugh’s Oxford through the lenses of invention, memory and imagination before exploring locations in the city that are particularly significant to his life and work. Waugh was a visual thinker, and the book includes reproductions of archival objects alongside specially commissioned images by Amy Dodd to create a dialogue between words and pictures, the imagined and the real.

You can read more about Evelyn Waugh's Oxford on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from one of the book's location vignettes. 

From Evelyn Waugh's Oxford

Hall Brothers

When Waugh was at Oxford, all dapper undergraduates bought their suits from Hall Bros. The tailors were a city institution, and in the 1920s traded from a mock-Tudor building, replete with Elizabeth I’s coat of arms, at 94 Magpie Lane. 

…

In the 1920s they became the city’s foremost purveyor of ‘Oxford bags,’ very wide trousers first popularized by Waugh’s friend Harold Acton. Oxford bags really took off after Waugh had left, but they belonged firmly to a period when he still thought, talked and dressed like an undergraduate and became one of those – as he put it – ‘who cannot at once sever the cord uniting them to the university and haunt it for years to come.’ Like his student friends, Waugh teamed his bags with a high- or ‘turtle’-neck jumper which, he observed in November 1924, was ‘rather becoming and most convenient for lechery because it dispenses with all unromantic gadgets like studs and ties. It also hides the boils with which most of the young men seem to have encrusted their necks.’  

…

Waugh’s appreciation of the turtleneck jumper was typical of his pragmatic approach to fashion at the time .… As his financial situation eased, however, Waugh raised his sartorial ambitions. His brother Alec introduced him to Anderson Sheppard of London’s Savile Row,  whose suits made him feel, for the first time, not ‘the worst dressed person in every room.’  Being well turned out satisfied more than just Waugh’s vanity. For a man of his relatively humble origins, the cut of a seam could be the difference between social acceptance and rejection.

Illustration by Amy Dodd

Linda Gask, "Finding the True North: The Healing Power of Place"

 

Linda Gask trained in Medicine in Edinburgh and is Emerita Professor of Primary Care Psychiatry at the University of Manchester. Having worked as a consultant psychiatrist for many years she is now retired and lives on Orkney. She maintains a popular mental health blog, Patching the Soul, and contributes to Twitter as a mental health influencer @suzpuss. She is the author of The Other Side of Silence (2015), which was featured on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and serialised in the Times Magazine. In 2017 she was awarded the prestigious President’s Medal by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

About Finding True North: The Healing Power of Place, by Linda Gask

Finding True North grew out of my desire to try and recover from depression, coming to terms with being diagnosed with a chronic illness, and moving to live, part-time at first, in Orkney. It’s not only about trying to put into practice all those things I spent my life telling my patients to do, and failing to do myself, but also trying to understand what ‘recovery’ from depression means. Struggling to find a way forward meant I had to revisit the past. Gradually, I began to realise that, in my many years of travelling around the world as an academic, I had really been seeking a place where I could feel much more grounded in myself. 

The following brief excerpt describes a scene from my return to Haida Gwaii, a remote forested archipelago off the North-West of Canada which is home to the Haida people … and what I learned about myself on that journey’.

From Finding True North

It is early September and Orkney’s dark autumnal skies are filled with geese in transit, flying in their familiar V formation, which I always imagine is led by a bad-tempered senior with the flaps of his leather hood trailing as he turns to shout ‘keep up.’ Sitting at my desk, I am writing about the climax of the Canadian expedition.

After two days, we reached our furthest point into the wilderness: the world heritage site of SG̱ang Gwaay and a row of totem poles that has stood for over a hundred years, since the inhabitants moved to the modern settlement they live in now. The only audible sound came from the waves as they breached the shore, and a watchman, a celebrated modern Haida artist, who told us the story of each carving.

‘The poles of the houses are slowly being absorbed by the forest. Doesn’t that make you feel kind of sad?’ one of our group asked.

‘Everything goes back to the earth eventually,’ he said. ‘One day each of these poles will fall. It is what is meant to happen.’

We walked back over the crest of the island to the boat, through virgin temperate rainforest of red cedar, spruce and hemlock, drunk with the heavy scent of dark earth and damp, lush vegetation spread with a seamless down of moss. More hung from the trees like tinsel on a Christmas tree and unfamiliar fungi colonised the stumps. Even the light which filtered through the canopy was tinged green. This was exactly as I have always imagined the underworld. It was eerie, not of this world, and I felt disappointed when we emerged into the light because in that other place time seemed to be suspended.

During those few days I began to feel more optimistic than I had since receiving my diagnosis of kidney disease. Having recovered from sepsis, a life-threatening disease, I became more at ease with the future. I have the freedom to make of it what I choose, but the anxiety that has been with me all my life still exists and will probably never leave.

However, there was something about Haida Gwaii that reminded me of the Buddhist concept of the flow of life. Like the forest plants all around them, the remains of the villages will be recycled by nature. This is the reality of our existence. We make the most of the lifewe have, however brief, but the outcome is inevitable. 

What are we going to do with our time? 

What really matters to us?

There is something about caring for others in extremis that touches the core of who we are. It can enhance us through reflection on the profound questions of what it means to be human, but it can, in equal strength, damage us and leave us less capable of responding with humanity.

It is very hard to separate ‘me’ from the doctor I trained to be. My ‘self’ has become altered by being entwined both with my professional persona and the lives of my patients, and it is difficult to tell my story without recourse to the clinical tales that illustrate it. Now, the stories filed in my memory are those of people I meet along the way.

Pete Green, "Hemisphere"

Pete Green is a poet and musician who writes about place and identity, finitude, coastlines, cities and landscape change, trains, birds, and sleeping on someone's floor after playing a gig in another city. Their new short book Hemisphere and pamphlet Sheffield Almanac are published by Longbarrow Press, and their poetry has also appeared (or is scheduled to) in Under the Radar, the Fenland Poetry Journal, Stand, Anthropocene and elsewhere. Pete was longlisted in the 2020 National Poetry Competition and shortlisted for the 2019 Brotherton Poetry Prize. They live in Sheffield on the side of a very steep hill. Visit Pete's website at petegreensolo.com and follow @petenothing on social.

About Hemisphere, by Pete Green

Hemisphere is a long poem in a short book, telling the story of a circular voyage which proceeds from the Hebrides around the north Atlantic, Alaska and Siberia, then finally back to Europe. Along the way the protagonist visits a doomsday seed vault, a giant qwerty keyboard, a boundary between Tuesday and Wednesday, the world's largest island on a lake on an island on a lake on an island, two pubs and an Arctic coffee bar. 

These are all real locations on an impossible journey. Ultimately Hemisphere is a sort of meta-travel narrative which poses questions about who has permission to practise place writing, and explores the power of imagination to push back against our ongoing personal lockdowns. 

You can read more about Hemisphere on the publisher's website here. You can watch a short trailer for the book here:

Below, you can read an excerpt from the book.

From Hemisphere

Vladivostok

43°06’43”N 131°52’55”E

Was it a crash or a signal failure? Was it

the whim of some fastidious ambassador

that bore you here? Was it that metallic

clang, unexplained, that rang out between

the islands at the Bering Strait’s midpoint

like the song of a valley floor steelworks?

A deleted vault at the radar’s perimeter

fence? Whatever. Your hand is returning

to your jacket’s inside pocket, where your

ticket radiates assurance. Steel blue-clad

officials have already trooped the length

of your carriage several times; their gaze

interrogates the space you occupy, as if

you are not there. Across the aisle, though,

a woman’s complexion is fresh snowfall;

her eyes are feline, opalescent, much like

Kate’s, and they watch you checking out

the space. Your seeming aplomb prevails.

Your research’s thoroughness outweighs

all the Transsiberian-based thrillers where

naïve westerners are doomed to succumb

to menace or the mere threat of menace,

but you were caught out by the railways’

adherence nationwide to Moscow time

which, at this longitude, gave seven hours

to contemplate the famous hipped roof

of the station, the massive red characters

of its Владивосток sign, their unwieldy

ornateness, the earthenware flagstones

brought from Japan, painstaking mosaics

of berries, fruit and horsemen – all of it

biography of Russia, layered narratives of

regimes, of reinventions and revisionisms,

the wool that’s tugged down over eyes,

the emollient layers of pearl that cancel

disagreeable grains. You know the power

of opalescent eyes, of vodka, of people’s

own readiness to swallow what is served.

For you the cracks appeared back when

the bankers tanked the whole shebang

and chancellors and governors discreetly

summoned bailout billions from the ether

with mouse clicks and commands while

the clinic closed its doors on you during

that fragile first trimester. The ticket man

comes through from the first-class coach;

with him the notion of an upgrade, using

a little quantitative easing of your own.

You imagine requesting the kitten-eyed

woman to join you, knowing full well

that for better or for worse you will do

no such thing – and that’s one more life

thrown under one more cancelled train

of thought. So was it a crash or a failed

signal? Was it one more hardware glitch?

Your vigilance will bear you on through

Khabarovsk, Irkutsk, the room’s perishing

cold account for Omsk, Novosibirsk, and

the frustrated force of all your bloody-

mindedness can see you through the rest.

About "An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester," edited by Jon Wilkins

By Jon Wilkins

I love writing crime fiction. I also love reading crime fiction and this is the story of how reading about a Parisian private eye led to an anthology about Leicester.

Cara Black is an American Francophile who introduced detective Aimée Leduc to the world seventeen or so novels ago. Aimée has developed from a chic woman about town beating men off her to a chic one-parent mother beating off her baby’s sick and changing nappies. Her best friend Rene was relaxing and reading a book in the sixteenth novel, written about Paris by Georges Perec. Rene was intrigued by the book and so I investigated his An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris further. What a wonderful work.

I sat at the local Deli in Kirby Muxloe, trying out Perec's technique, writing about everything I saw, and found it strangely compelling - and then I too began to wonder: how can you wring everything out of a city in a creative writing sense? Is it possible to write about a place and exhaust every avenue so that there is nothing left to write? Can you fill a book about Leicester and then be left with nothing, a void?

This was what I wanted when I asked writers to offer me a piece showing me their love of Leicester, to be produced in an anthology of creative writing: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Leicester.

I was overwhelmed by submissions, well over a hundred, and so the answer was clear: you can never write everything there is to know about a place, as you will always find something new to write. What was exhausting was the selection process - to whittle it down to a manageable project, the best of the work offered, and the end result of 68 contributors.

Among the contributors, there is a wide age range, from 12 to 72, a fairly balanced gender range, as well as contributions from all over the world - including the USA by a Leicester ex-pat, Poland, and Finland from someone who was over here for a university semester. There are poetry and prose poems, non-fiction and fiction, ghost stories, dystopian tales, memoir, futuristic dreams, as well as lots of nostalgia for a well-loved and well-remembered city. And it wouldn’t be about Leicester if King Richard didn’t pop his head up in various guises. We meet the Vikings and Oscar Wilde, both visiting Leicester for the first time, and take a trip down the Golden Mile and the River Soar. There is an amazing street art piece journeying through the city landscape as well as poems all about places we know and love in Leicester. Charnwood and Bradgate Park are explored by an intrepid young reporter as well as some well-known Leicester poets and we have an acclaimed writer honouring The Curve in a poetic piece. Among the highlights are the pieces by unknown writers, young and old, as well as schoolchildren working on the Colonial Countryside project, who wrote about Calke Abbey, which has been claimed by Leicester for this anthology.

Illustrating the book is the work of that wonderful local artist Sarah Kirby, who shows the beauty of Leicestershire alongside the words.

Here is an extract from my own piece:


Yellow hatted man
Black Merc parks on Market Street
Illegally
Black Ford SUV blast horn at him
                                                   Pink haired woman wandering
                                                   Wondering?
Diet conversation continuing
Stop drinking seems to be the message
Beggar back
As is sleeping bag
Silver Toyota passes
                                Asian women chatting
                                Sikh man in yellow turban
                                Woman in Blue 60s mod cap
Asian couple, one bald
Purple VW
Girl with “Fight Animal Testing” bag
Older couple pass, then they split up walk in different directions

Black Merc now flashing warning lights
               Deliveroo down Horsefair Street
               Cyclist down Gallowtree Gate
               Cyclist towards Market Place
Yellow bin lorry into Market Place
                                                                                              Pigeons
                                                                                So many pigeons
White Enviropest van
Woman on bike passes me by
Pipe Centre lorry on Granby Street
White Uber taxi
                                                                                                88 bus
Older couple in pink and grey puffer jackets
Young Asian girl walks towards Gallowtree Gate
Man with vape
First vape of the day
Road sweeper slowly cleans the gutters of Granby Street
Boy with subway
Silver VW
                                2 Asian chaps in conversation
Painter in spattered dungarees passes down Horsefair Street
Asian couple chatting
I get up and stretch to the sky
Sun shining
I pack away my notebook
                                           My pens
                                                           Finish my cold coffee
                                                                                              Make my way home


There is something in the anthology for everyone. The book is available at Visit Leicester, to order from local bookshops, on Amazon or lulu.com and it will be formally launched at the end of this month.

Events are being held all over Leicestershire to celebrate publication, look at our Facebook page or the Eventbrite ticket site. All events are free and you will have the chance to purchase the book at a discounted price as well as books written by the many contributors.
The wonderful thing is that there will always be something else to write and hopefully this anthology will encourage you to do just that. Why not write a poem or a story, a blog or a script about a place you love? Write it and keep it. You never know when I might be asking for contributions to volume 2!


About the author and editor
Jon Wilkins is 64 later this month. He has a gorgeous wife Annie and two beautiful sons. He is a retired teacher, lapsed Waterstone's bookseller and former Basketball Coach. He taught PE and English for 20 years and coached women’s basketball for over 30 years. He regularly teaches at creative writing workshops in and around Leicester. Latterly Jon has been taking notes for students with special needs at his two local universities.

Jon has always loved books and reading. He has had a few pieces published and exhibited and has his writing on various blogs. He enjoys presenting papers at crime fiction conferences - it keeps his mind active and is a great way to meet new people and gain fresh ideas for writing. He also loves writing poetry. 

For his MA from DMU, he wrote a crime novel set in Utrecht. It is part of a series of murder mysteries planned based in the Dutch city. It’s great to wander the streets of Utrecht or drink coffee next to the canal, watching and listening to people for his book. Jon is also writing a crime series set in the Great War and the early 1920s. The first part, Poppy Flowers at the Front, will be published by Brigand Press in February 2020. He feels it is a pity that he can’t retreat back to the Roaring Twenties!