Connie Palmen: Du sagst es. (Original title "Jij zegt het", thank you,
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James Joyce gave June 16th literary immortality by choosing it for Ulysses, but to me, the main association is that in 1956, two literature obsessed young poets chose this date as their wedding day. They were Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. One of the poems addressed to her he published shortly before his own death, looking back at their life (and her ( Read more... )

I've posted two poems from Ted Hughes' collection Birthday Letters (the last poetry volume he published, a year or so before his death) before, my favourites - "Life after Death" and "Daffodils". One of the reasons why I love them best is that the beauty of the language and the emotional impact is there whether or not you know anything about Hughes ( Read more... )

Quote of the day: "If you could make the public understand that my father was not a jolly, jocose gentleman walking about the earth with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch you would greatly oblige me." Kate Perugini, nee Kate Dickens, to George Bernard Shaw about her father Charles.

Moving on to comics: Wil Wheaton blogs about favourite comic ( Read more... )

Two fanfic recs:

Sherlock/Harry Potter:

The case of the unwelcome owl. In which Sherlock gets invited to a wedding and gets outed as the squib of a magical family which explains so much. Best of all, there's a wonderful take on Luna Lovegood.

Doctor Who:

This was just recced at
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Jane Espenson talks about Torchwood season 4. Apparantly they write it British style - i.e. the entire season before shooting begins - not American style. You know, despite still thinking Children of Earth was the perfect Torchwood ending, I'm looking forward quite a lot to the next season. Can't wait to see Jane E. writing Gwen and Rhys! (Also, ( Read more... )

This is one of the Birthday Letters poems, which Ted Hughes wrote about Sylvia Plath through the decades and only published a little more than a year before his own death. Leaving the biographical background completely aside, this is also my favourite poem about daffodils (of which the English language offers several), or April in England (pace, ( Read more... )

As promised here in my report of the Frankfurt Book Fair, I've now collected the passages of Letters of Ted Hughes which for one reason or another struck me most.

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This year's Frankfurt Book Fair, so far: sparkling. Which is the thing about Frankfurt. Leipzig is more intimate, more cozy, and arguably the readings are far better organized, both for the authors and the public - but Frankfurt has the glitz and the sheer quantity. There are literaly more new books in one spot than anywhere else in the world, from ( Read more... )

Londoners on my list: how do I best get to Chalcot Square using the underground, or other public transport? (To the house where Yeats lived and Sylvia Plath died, to be specific.) I'm in London for an extremely brief visit on Friday, and only on Friday, and for reasons professional need to know ( Read more... )