Review: Two Birds Tweeting

The Owl and the Nightingale by Simon Armitage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this poem - Poet Laureate Simon Armitage's translation of one of the earliest recorded stories told in Middle English. The exquisitely rhyming verse (which I imagine must have been painful to update for modern readers whilst keeping the rhyme and staying faithful to the original text) follows an overheard conversation between the title characters.

As the birds argue about whose life and manner of living is more worthwhile and virtuous, the back and forth get very real, as heated as a Twitter debate and decidedly misogynistic in parts which for me sat a tad awkwardly with the fact that the birds are purportedly female.

Amongst other crimes, Owl blames Nightingale of encouraging licentious behaviour and extra-marital affairs with her saccharine song and all-consuming monologues. Nightingale in turn accuses Owl's screeching woeful dirges of striking fear into those unfortunate enough to hear. Peculiarly (or perhaps not giving the verses' human author) it seems important to them both to please and be of good service to God, the law, reigning King and humanity in general.

I read it over a few evenings, skipping over the more 'saucy' sections when my daughter was still awake! It benefits, like most poetry, from being read out loud, with specific voices for each bird if you please.

The illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins are colourful and stunning and add to the Middle Ages atmosphere. Overall the verse is very laugh out loud funny, sometimes shocking, outrageously chauvinistic and objectifying of women and their role in society (which no doubt mirrors the sad times in which it was written) and ends with great humour which our original author and current translator must have revelled in writing.

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Anyone But Me

Joy Crookes presents Anyone But Me.. - Episode #2 With Kate Nash | Part 1 

This conversation is very pertinent, highly intelligent, super real and oh, so moving. As well as discussing the potential dangers of our technological addictions and how global lockdown has affected creativity, Joy + Kate articulate beautifully what it is to be female in 21^st century ‘Western civilisation’ and how in a male-run world it can be so incredibly difficult to be true to ourselves, to express ourselves without being derided or damaged in some way, or to even come to the realisation that the self we are forced to project is not who we really are.

Despite huge obstacles both women have courageously risen to the challenge and here they share their experiences of overcoming trauma, getting back to themselves and the things in life that really matter as well as finding ways to live in a way that feels more genuine and meaningful.

An intelligent, inspiring and highly recommended listen for young women, older women, men who have daughters, men who have mothers / aunts / nieces / female friends in their lives – yes, that’s everyone.. 

Part 2 coming soon x

Prepare to roar, weep and feel the love in Part 2 here.

The Room, Part 1

I felt haunted by the maddening fever of Charlotte Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper from the moment I was handed the paperback book in sixth form English class. I can still remember the dusky faded lemon cover that seemed to emit dust and sorrow from every papery pore. The smell of sadness, hopeless entrapment, filled my school-girl nostrils and nothing ever felt or smelt quite the same after that moment. Perhaps, not so deep down, a part of me knew that one day I’d find myself in a room of my own – not expansive and freeing like the space advocated for so earnestly by Virginia Woolf, but restrictive and binding, as slowly suffocating as Gilman’s lonesome character’s room.

I am not trapped here by any supercilious, arrogant, self-righteous, ignorant or fearful man, or indeed by a patriarchal society that wishes me to remain silent and insignificant as all good women should do. Patriarchal suppression may be highly analogous of my situation, but it is not that, at least not directly that, which keeps me here.

On the screen-that-is-often-nearby, I watch Ben Whishaw play Ben Coulter, the unfortunate boy incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, or at least, we and he are fairly certain he did not do the murderous deed, but perhaps he simply cannot or will not remember what actually took place.

I find myself in similar situ, imprisoned for some deed or thought that I do not recall, and am most probably quite innocent of, and would remain so if it were not for the infernal, distinctly chiding voice that crows louder with each new dawn.

‘It’s all your fault

You are to blame

So, suck up your punishment

Accept your shame’

If there is always a cause for each effect as the tech-heads in Alex Garland’s DEVS proclaim, then perhaps somewhere along the pitiful line of my younger life something I did or failed to do, something I said or did not say, even perhaps a thought that entered my mind may have led to this particular set of circumstances. Perhaps a series of actions and inaction, or conversations had and silences kept, or thought processes that did or didn’t take place, allowed a portal between two (or more) multiverses to open up and one feed into another enabling this sorry state to begin to manifest itself, slowly but surely, painfully creating this extraordinary mess I find myself in.

Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, was decreed by the gods, ordained by the stars that I would one day find myself here. Perhaps it was always going to be thus, regardless of anything I said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do. Perhaps my wilful, desperate, pleading, bleeding thoughts had nothing to do with it – with this chaos. Perhaps I have no control whatsoever over this reality. 

The idea of a kind of fate or destiny offers a morsel of relief and acceptance at times of depletion. Mostly, however, I find it difficult to accept this as a valid, pre-ordained fate – a particular set of circumstances chosen by the universe or multiverse or by a divine being or even by my own pre-human-self to live through. And endure. If it didn’t kill me first.

I’ve always loathed the story of Job – his endless suffering on top of suffering seems so futile and wasteful. What is or was the point of all that pain? The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breaking of a human life? To what end? And for what purpose?

I feel the weight of sorrows – not all my own, lying heavily upon these bony shoulders. A weight far heavier than one human, one woman ought to bear. But we do, don’t we? Women have bourne the world’s weight on our shoulders, heads, and broken backs for time immemorial just as surely as we have born the next generation and the next and the next within our cruelly despised, scorned, and suppressed bodies.

Is it any wonder I found myself on the 5 mile trudge to school at the tumultuous and torturous age of 15 or 16, crawling along the pavement, dragging grazed knees after each all consuming push forward of an elbow, first one, then the other and hope that the legs will follow along behind..

I recall reading with shock and fascination about Clara from the Heidi stories who cried so much her tears eventually dried up. Or was it Helen Keller? I’m not sure now. But I do remember the tears. The flooded years of almost constant crying. Wretched, unbidden flows. Sorrow's salty sting covering my face, falling into my lap, saturating sleeves, exercise books, pillows and endless nights. The acres and acres of heart-breaking grief. The pull and pull of gut-wrenching emotions – confused, liberally churned out, more liberally stuffed and packed deeply inside – layer upon layer of sadnesses forming an unpalatable sky-high dessert of melancholy or an impossibly tall pile of mattresses all trying unsuccessfully to protect me from the pain of that one solitary, bright-green pea. The lentil sprouting in the darkness, taking root and multiplying itself like bacterium, sending spores out through the sleeping strata. As quickly as I discovered or imagined a new layer of duplicitousness to protect me from my self, the pea spores would pick their way through each make-believe layer, each over-thought barrier designed to cushion the blow but failing badly every time, consequently trapping me with their wily wicked ways. I was stuck, like Sandra Bullock, in the web. A matrix of numbers, indecipherable digits and figures closing in on my wild nature, suppressing any semblance of free-will, tearing down any illusions of freedom and choice.

Was it always this way? Have I always been nothing more than a single digit in an endless equation? A piece of code that I will never be able to fathom? I cannot believe that, not wholeheartedly anyway. And yet, here I am. A single being, maybe only a half-being, flashing away in analogue mode, thinking that I must be making a difference, effecting some form of positive change, when all the while, the truth is that I mean nothing more than a single grain of desert sand, one miniscule drop in an ocean more vast than I could ever imagine…