Shall I Compare Thee to the Great Pele?

After the years of Andrew Motion being poet laureate, him whining about it and his "official" poems going "Better stand back / Here’s an age attack, / But the second in line / Is dealing with it fine", it is a relief to have Carol Ann Duffy in the seat. Somehow she seems to understand the job better and is able to find poetry in the small things that fill our everyday lives (which, I would argue, is what poetry is all about) and the news story flickering on our screens. Recently she wrote a poem about David Beckham's injury which sees him out of the England World Cup squad.

Achilles (for David Beckham)

Myth's river- where his mother dipped him, fished him, a slippery golden boyflowed on, his name on its lips. Without him, it was prophesised, they would not take Troy.

Women hid him, concealed him in girls' sarongs; days of sweetmeats, spices, silver songs... but when Odysseus came,

with an athlete's build, a sword and a shield, he followed him to the battlefield, the crowd's roar, and it was sport, not war, his charmed foot on the ball...

but then his heel, his heel, his heel...

The poem was originally published in The Daily Mirror, a tabloid, which employs Duffy as a regular columnist. Meanwhile, The Guardian, my newspaper of choice, looks at the poem approvingly but the comments section is where I found the biggest thrills. I particularly enjoyed FinneyontheWing, IantovonScranto and tw*tbeak but I strongly recommend the entire section. It is filled with limp poetry, bizarre imagery and iambic pentameter.

Mad, Bad & Orange To Know

Being ill has its benefits. Last time I was stuck in bed for more than two days in a row, I ploughed through Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I had previously failed to get into (the plot starts unfolding one-third through the novel). This time around I am knitting whilst listening to podcasts on John Milton (interesting) and Ezra Pound (dull and I even mouthed 'WRONG' at my ipod at one point). I'm knitting with my bright orange 2-ply baby alpaca (yes, the colour is accurate in the photo). It is underspun, rather fragile and almost angora-like soft. And I'm knitting Percy, a pattern which I have previously attempted to knit. I'm now halfway through my second repeat of the dastardly Chart B and I might add in another repeat before doing the edging chart, just to make the shawl a bit bigger. It almost seems a shame to knit an intricate pattern in fuzzy yarn, but the process knitter in me actually Does Not Care. It'll be a mad, colourful and warm shawl - and I will have conquered Chart B. That is all that matters.

I am still ill, alas, but I think today I will actually get dressed!

And here's a little news story which may cheer you up:

Rumors of a city of 25,000 lesbians have led hordes of men to contact Swedish tourist authorities and swamp the nation's Internet providers. Chinese media especially have spread the tale of “Chako Paul City,” supposedly founded in 1820 in northern Sweden by a man-hating widow who banned males, reports Australia's Daily Telegraph. Inhabitants then turned to lesbianism “because they could not suppress their sexual needs,” goes one recent account in China’s Harbin News service. Swedish tourist authorities are baffled. “I've no idea where this came from, but it's not true," said a spokesman. “At 25,000 residents, the town would be one of the largest in northern Sweden, and I find it hard to believe that you could keep something like that a secret for more than 150 years.”

(I cannot remember how I came across it - if it's via you, please let me know so I can credit)

Two Steps Ahead

The Guardian is running a series of semi-humourous columns called This Column Will Change Your Life and I hit upon It's Not Easy Always Being Right the other night. I don't think I'm always right - I live in  shades of grey - but I know that I often feel like I'm outsmarting people (mostly myself) which is a bastardised form of Always Being Right, of course. Unfortunately this "outsmarting people" is not particularly useful. I am not outsmarting bankers in order to make hefty profits, for instance. My brain is far more useless than that: I'm always two steps ahead of whatever I am supposed to be doing. A typical example of a telephone conversation would be: "Yes, you have misspelled my name, but I would like to address the legal issues surrounding .. okay, it's K. A. .. can we just look at section 7 befo .. yes, K.A. R..." and when I type I miss out words because my brain is always three or four sentences ahead of whatever I'm typing.

Now imagine how I read. I read very fast and can wolf down a book in a couple of hours. About ten years ago I decided that I needed to start poetry because you cannot wolf down poetry. You have to work at making meaning. You have to be patient with a quiet mind or the poem will not open up. I spent years working with poetry before I felt ready to go back to reading prose. And I still wolf down prose instead of savouring every little punctuation mark. I cannot remember characters' names nor minor details, but I can tell you if I enjoyed the read or not in very fancy terms.

I am not a New Agey person but I do wish I could live more in the present and focus on what is Right Now. Instead I'm always two steps ahead and outsmarting myself while I'm at it.

A few links that have grabbed me over the last few days: + Madeleine Albright: Read My Pins. When costume jewellery went political. + The $3,000 Scarf - or why crafting isn't necessarily a cheap hobby. + Cross-dressing in the 20th Century - a series of photos. Thanks, Alex. + The Ultimate Bauhaus Dog House - or how to produce a quintessential Ms Bookish link. + Take A Weird Break - some very odd headlines from a British women's magazine. "Spirit Mum Sends Me Elastic Bands" sums it all up. + Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (youtube). I love her forthcoming single - it's exquisitely poptastic in a super-cheesy Eurovision-goes-gay-bar-circa-1986 way. I could see Sweden offering this in a perfect Eurovision world. Other Half hates the song. Pffft.

Wednesday Linkage

An assortment of various links for your pleasure.

• Dicey knitting - for the ones among us who like to throw dice when we need to make a decision. "Start with the Ivory Cube -- it will tell if you you knit, purl, slip, increase, decrease, or cable/twist. This is where you Impose Chaos". Thanks, L.
• Golden silk from golden orb spiders: "A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, "milked" for silk, and released back into the wild." The links are not for the faint-hearted, but they are incredibly interesting. I say this as a arachnophobe.
• This has been mentioned a lot on various literary blogs, but it bears repeating: An Open Letter to the Federal Trade Comission. There is a difference between being a lit blogger receiving freebies which may/may not be reviewed and a corporate shrill. The FTC has apparently not noticed the difference.
• Most of my adult life I have been looking for the perfect Bauhaus teapot. I now know why it'll never be mine.
• Glasgow Guerilla Gardening. What it says on the tin. Sometimes they include knitting.
• The house of my nightmares. And probably also of the assigned estate agent..
• The 56 Geeks. Which one are you? And yes, you will be one because you are reading a blog. Brownie points for guessing which one I am. (thanks, Emme)
• The continuing saga of Amazon, their Kindle and the concept of "Fail".
• Hilary Mantel won this year's Man Booker. I can't even pretend to be mildly interested. Sorry.
• One of Dave's online buddies have started a parenting blog. Normally the words "parenting blog" strikes fear into my heart, but when it's called When Should They See Die Hard and the first post made my day: "The first stage is what I'll call "The Minion Stage". Essentially having a little tiny henchman who does as their told and will make Manhattans for you."

Enjoy.

Saturday Link Dump

I haven't done one of these in ages. Also: insomnia has struck.

• This is my new favourite cartoon. Strong words lurk within, beware.
• Robert Barclay Allardice - The Celebrated Pedestrian: "His most famous feat was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809."
• Fancy Fast Food: "Yeah, it's still bad for you, but see how good it can look!" This one is particularly disturbing.
• How To Speak With A British Accent (youtube) is a series of educational videos teaching non-Brits how to perfect their British accent. Well, except that the videos are unintentionally hilarious. I've linked the "Unique Words" video but there are several other gems.
• My mum's local paper had a "best summer photo" competition. This is my absolute favourite entry. Nothing says "Danish summer" like a wheelie bin.
• Via John, the Armenians may be taking Eurovision a tad too seriously..
• The Beauty of Accidents. When a potentially ruined photograph turns out to be strangely beautiful and even better than what you had in mind. Something to keep in mind in these Photoshop days..
• Finally, it took a long time while for Casa Bookish inhabitants to notice but now we're all about Plants vs. Zombies. Pole-vaulting zombies! Dolphin zombies! Pea-shoots! It's maddeningly addictive.

Knitters' Picnic - Worldwide Knitting in Public

This year's Worldwide Knitting in Public event in Glasgow is going to take place on Saturday the 13th of June in the Kelvingrove Rockery, Kelvingrove Park at 1pm. We'll be having a picnic, so bring blankets, water, sunscreen(!), knitting/crocheting projects and something to nibble on.  In case of rain, the tentative backup plan is to meet in the main hall of Kelvingrove museum. Non-knitters are encouraged to show up and be assimilated.

Facebook Event link

(The other week I remembered Glasgow knitters idly chatting about a picnic months and months ago. I revived the topic on Ravelry and, yes, I've somehow ended up "hosting" this event. Let that be a lesson to you all)