shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2018-11-28 04:41 pm
shewhomust) wrote2018-11-28 04:41 pm
Entry tags:
It is too late to begin
To the Lit & Phil on Monday to hear Nancy Campbell as part of the Books on Tyne Festival. The event was preceded by a frustrating visit to the Newcastle branch of Majestic; they had sent us a discount voucher as an incentive to resume buying wine from them (we stopped because they closed our local branch), and I wanted to put it towards ordering some wine to be delivered to the Bears, to make mulled wine for the carol evening. But as well as closing my branch, they have changed the tills, says the assistant, and now we have to phone an order through to the Holloway Road branch. So we spent our voucher on the Portuguese red with the wading bird on the label, and we might phone the Holloway Road, or we might phone the Wine Society... The event was followed, more satisfactorily, by dinner with S. We hadn't planned this, but since we were all there, we went to Mario's and S. told us about her recent holiday in Japan.
Nancy Cambell's event was linked to her book, Library of Ice (here's the Guardian's review). I had no idea whether I would like the book: there were things in the description that appealed to me, and things I thought I was likely to find irritating. Having heard her speak, I'm still not sure, but I will find out, because I was sufficiently intrigued to buy a copy. I enjoyed the talk, which started with her residency at the museum on Upernavik, a small island off the coast of Greenland, and went on from there to the scientists who are drilling deep into the ice of Antarctica (the resultant cores are the 'library of ice' of the title). I was going to call it 'beautifully constructed' until I realised that at one point she had realised she was overrunning, and apologised to someone in the audience for skipping a section which particularly interested them...
Rather than attempting to transcribe from memory my own highlights, I commend the author's website, which links to many good things. Here's a sample of her voice:
And here's the book I really coveted, a Greenlandic alphabet produced as an artist's book, twelve words (because only twelve letters appear in the initial position in Greenlandic) and twelve images:
Nancy Cambell's event was linked to her book, Library of Ice (here's the Guardian's review). I had no idea whether I would like the book: there were things in the description that appealed to me, and things I thought I was likely to find irritating. Having heard her speak, I'm still not sure, but I will find out, because I was sufficiently intrigued to buy a copy. I enjoyed the talk, which started with her residency at the museum on Upernavik, a small island off the coast of Greenland, and went on from there to the scientists who are drilling deep into the ice of Antarctica (the resultant cores are the 'library of ice' of the title). I was going to call it 'beautifully constructed' until I realised that at one point she had realised she was overrunning, and apologised to someone in the audience for skipping a section which particularly interested them...
Rather than attempting to transcribe from memory my own highlights, I commend the author's website, which links to many good things. Here's a sample of her voice:
'Ilissiverupunga,' Grethe muttered. I'd only recently learnt the word. It meant 'Damn! I've put it away in a safe place and now I can't find it.'
Mornings at Upernavik Museum: an endless round of kaffe and conversation as local hunters dropped by to discuss ice conditions. Wishing to make progress in my research into Greenlandic literature, I'd asked Grethe, the museum director, whether she knew of any poetry books. But the bibliographic collections held mainly old black-and-white photographic records of the settlements, and kayaking manuals.
'Illilli!' Grethe called an hour or so later, 'There you are!' She emerged from a doorway almost obscured behind a stack of narwhal tusks and proudly presented me with a 1974 hymnbook, its homemade dust-wrapper culled from an offcut of pink wallpaper.
[From the essay No more words for snow]
And here's the book I really coveted, a Greenlandic alphabet produced as an artist's book, twelve words (because only twelve letters appear in the initial position in Greenlandic) and twelve images:
no subject
Can I ask what things you thought you'd like and what things you thought you'd find irritating, and whether, when you heard her, it played out as you expected?
I like most everything about the book and her presentation, but I do feel rubbed the wrong way by the notion of "one word expresses a whole sentence," since where one decides to break up letters is arbitrary, and plenty of languages are agglutinative. But that's minor!
no subject
Can I ask what things you thought you'd like and what things you thought you'd find irritating...
It's a good question, and I was afraid someone would ask it!
Nothing as rational as your point about agglutinative languages, I'm afraid (I was wondering about that, too - she never mentioned the word, and I don't know whether she wanted to avoid technicalities...).
On the plus side, I'm fascinated by places on the northern fringes, and by life on small islands. On the minus (and this is about things that irritate me, not about there being anything wrong with those things) I'm old and grouchy, and I don't react well to bright young people who want to speak for those places on the basis of an artistic residency. Especially when they are described as writer and poet and artist: I've seen too much work from people who claim to be all of those things, and aren't very much of any of them.
The material about Greenland was as interesting as I had hoped, and the glimpse of her artwork (one slide in her presentation, plus the video linked here, which I didn't find until afterwards) appealed very much. I like her voice as a writer, though I still don't know anything about her poetry: but she made me want to read the book, which is a good sign.
Plus, as you say, she is clearly on the side of the angels...
no subject
It sounds from what you say as if in this case, the pluses of what the woman says and does outweighs the minuses, and I'm glad for that.