Samuel Beckett- in colour

Tags

acrylics, Irish dramatists, portraiture, Samuel Beckett

Acrylics and charcoal by Candia Dixon-Stuart

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The Grinch

Tags

Cat in the Hat, children's literature, Christmas, Dr Seuss, Grinch

Moomin Xmas

Tags

Holy Family, Moomins, window display, Wise Men

 

Photos by Candia             Sacrilegious, or not?

Tintern Abbey

Tags

Autumn, Cistercian, Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth, Wye

 

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Following in Wordsworth’s Footsteps

 

Goldengrove Unleaving

Tags

acrylics, Autumn, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Goldengrove

 

Painting by Candia based on car park photo taken and published last Sunday.

Apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins!

Medlar Jelly (Kelmscott)

Tags

blett, culs-de-chien, jelly, Kelmscott, medlars, open-arses, poppering pear, Romeo and Juliet

Photo- and preserve!- by Candia Dixon-Stuart

 

So excited to find these at Kelmscott and then to allow them to blett, before making

jelly.  Supposed to be good with game, or cheese.

These are culs-de-chien, ‘open-arses’ and other scatologically named fruits from the rose

family.  Shakespeare and contemporaries loved exploiting double-entendre possibilities

in their lexical field- see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and references to poppering pears etc

I added a lemon and an apple to the simmering mixture and then raised some sugar to

a rolling boil- and voila!

Christ Church, Oxford Today

Tags

Alice in Wonderland, Alice Liddell, Christ Church, Henry Liddell, Lewis Carroll, Oxford, Peter Eugene Ball

 

Peter Eugene Ball’s Madonna and Child; statue of Henry Liddell

(father of  Alice, as in ‘Wonderland’)

Photos by Candia Dixon-Stuart

Mr Brocklehurst’s Catechism

Tags

catechism, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre, Mr Brocklehurst, orphanage, Paradise, Pharisee

I have always liked this dialogue from ‘Jane Eyre’

but I have put it into metre and expanded it a little.

 

Where do the wicked go when their death knell

has been tolled, you insignificant child?

Good sir, I believe that they go to Hell.

Describe this place reserved for those not mild,

nor meek.

Sir, it is a pit full of fire.

Should you like to fall into such a place?

(Then you would not join the Heavenly choir.)

I hope to reach Paradise, by God’s grace.

So, how might you avoid a dark decree?

I must try to keep in the best of health;

I must not listen to a Pharisee,

nor to those who slavishly amass wealth.

In short, I must take care never to die.

My God is Truth and yours, Sir, is a Lie.

George Bernard Shaw’s House

Tags

George Bernard Shaw, Hertfordshire, Shaw's Corner

 

Portrait is of his wife, Charlotte.  National Trust, Herts

 

                     House a bit gloomy.  Garden in last week’s post.

Stanley Spencer’s War

Tags

Burghclere, Ekiphrastic, Home Front, John Greening, Macedonia, quennet, Raymond Queneau, Sandham Memorial Chapel, Stanley Spencer, Ware Poetry Competition

A quennet- a form invented by Raymond

Queneau in 1975.

This is an Ekiphrastic poem, dealing with the

discussion of a visual work of art.  It was commended

in the Ware Poetry Competition, judged by John Greening

and appears (ed) in the subsequent anthology.

It was inspired by a visit to The Sandham Memorial

Chapel at Burghclere, near Basingstoke, which Stanley

Spencer decorated with murals, depicting the

ordinariness of war, on The Home Front and in

Macedonia, where he served as a medical orderly.

The formatting is not quite right as WordPress

doesn’t allow me to centre and retain the spacing,

with the short noun phrases being centred beneath

the long line of 3 noun phrases.  The 5 line interlude

with the syllable counts of  2-5 should also be centred….

Nevertheless, you’ll get the idea!

 

 

 

precious horses   scavenging boar   tortoise company

mosquito nets

protective firebelt   unravelled puttee   distant Christ

Kalinova katharsis

Macedonian map   heavenly tea   wounded convoy

smuggled kitten

hotwater bottle

frostbitten foot

jam sandwiches

magenta bathtubs

traumatised scrubbing

iodine painting

bilberry feast

unravelled company  Macedonian mosquito  precious kitten

wounded Christ