The Houseplace

The room where the Wordsworths ate, prepared for meals, the children played, knitting and sewing took place. It was called the Houseplace .It used to be an Inn, the house is about 400 years old, called the Dove and Olive and has flagstone floors. Hence the name became Dove Cottage, a surprisingly common name in England. Dovecotes were found in practically every village. We have kept doves in our two nearest villages here.
The day I visited there was a coal fire in the grate. Very atmospheric and the warmth was comforting on an autumn day.

Dove Cottage report

Tuesday evening at Dove Cottage, Wordsworth Trust, in Grasmere went very very well indeed.
There was a responsive audience and a warm interested atmosphere. Jackie Kay is really spirited and her reading was greatly enjoyed by all, I can safely say that!
I met old friends; Bill Gilson, Margaret and Peter Whyte, Pamela Woof and new ones too; Andrew Forster, Adam O'Riordan the resident poet, Nick Drake another poet and writer as well as the new Director Michael MacGregor. It was lovely and I had a wonderful time. Thank you all!
Afterwards the audience and participants can go to dinner across the road in an Italian restaurant and it creates a tremendous opportunity for people to meet one another and continue talking about either the event or move on to other subjects. I found myself talking about Northumberland where I live and longingly of Provincetown, Cape Cod where I used to live.
As a reading place it is unique in England. A consistently super attentive audience, a great environment, beautiful country and good company at dinner and delicious food. What else could one ask for?
In Person the 45 mins film version I think was appreciated and I heard some good responses where people had found it inspiring to hear and see the poets read as if to them individually.
The room in the B and B overlooked the surrounding mountains and I could even see a bit of Grasmere lake. Such a pleasant place to present work. I have to say Thank you again!
You can also go on a tour of Dove cottage itself and the Jerwood Center library and collections and special exhibitions. We saw the magnificent Turner watercolors when we came down with Moniza Alvi in the summer. This time I took the cottage tour again and a knowledgeable man named Peter took us around and told us many interesting facts and historic details from the Wordsworths life there. I found myself imagining a film set there in low light of course, fires and candles, and wondered what I would do to evoke the specialness of being there. If ever in Grasmere you must visit! I insist.
Today Andrew Forster the Literature Officer at Dove Cottage and organizer of the reading series is himself at an important event. He has been shortlisted for the Forward First Collection Prize and we wish him the best of luck!

Mushrooming

We have been having some lovely autumn days of late. Sunny and warm yet cold at night. First ice on the birdbath and frost on the pastures.
This weekend we are planning to go mushrooming! I used to pick mushrooms with my Swedish grandmother Mormor when I was a child. All kinds of them and she prepared them in a yummy way! "Stuvad svamp". Mmm...
We will be looking for chanterelles, field mushrooms, boletus, and if we are lucky morels!
Have a good weekend too!

Dove Cottage, Grasmere

Dove Cottage


Jackie Kay

On Tuesday October 7th, in the evening, we shall be at the Wordsworth Trust with Jackie Kay who will be giving a reading and we shall show a film from the In Person 30 Poets DVD book. It is a 45 min film with 20 of the poets edited together in a narrative "driven" by the work and the poets themselves.
I am really looking forward to it very much. Dove Cottage has one of the best poetry reading series in the country and I have enjoyed many of them over the years. We are almost neighbours living in Northumberland as we do and the drive to the lake district in Cumbria only takes a few hours.
Jackie is formidable and fabulous. She is a writer with a rainbow breadth; poetry, plays, novels, short stories, children's books and she is also a wonderful human being. I love her!
If you are anywhere near do not hesitate to come I think the evening starts at 6.45pm and takes place in the Waterside Hotel, or so I believe it is called. Afterwards there is a dinner in the nearby restaurant and we all go "Dutch".
Hope to see you there!

Quote 2

"When an old culture is dying, the new is created by the few, who are not afraid of being insecure." - Pema Chodron

Less is more

" Great artists such as Bacon and Beckett distil; lesser artists become self-referential and self-conscious as their work goes on. A personally defined landscape can easily become an enclosed and introverted prison, referring only to itself."

This is a quote from an article by Mark Ravenhill in Arts Comment in the Guardian G2 on Monday Sept 29th 2008. It is a well worth read.
It got me thinking about what I like about the work of Louise Bourgeois and what I find missing in the work of Tracey Emin for instance. Although I think it matters to know what an artist is hoping to accomplish before deciding whether it works or not!

Autumnal Equinox 2008

To celebrate this year I swam in Walden Pond.
A long swim out into the centre and there I remained enjoying the sky, the warm silky smooth water, the tree-lined shore and a few other swimmers who, like myself, were in heaven on earth.
I love swimming and I cannot swim enough when I am near bodies of water be they ponds, rivers, seas or lakes.
I grew up near water and swimming from an early age in the Stockholm archipelago.
I am happiest when I live near water. Cape Cod for instance, Hydra or Ibiza...I have been lucky to have such easy proximity to the sea.
Now I live inland and have a river nearby. Or rather a burn. We swim in a waterfall whenever the weather complies. Which is not very often.
It was the loveliest way to celebrate the Equinox.
Walden Pond is one of my special places. It is where Thoreau went to live in the woods for two years and he wrote the book Walden about the experience.

Walden Pond is situated in Massachusetts, near Concord, where Emerson, Hawthorne, and the Allcotts lived and worked. If you want to know more about the Transcendalists, read Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. They were the first hippies!