Things Connecting Up - Again….. More From The Sherd-Nerds…..
by Bernie Bell - 09:25 on 24 October 2025
Things Connecting Up - Again…..
I’m reading ‘To The River’ by Olivia Laing – and liking it.
It’s similar in theme to Roger Deakin’s ‘Waterlog’……
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=16675
………but it’s her own story, told her own way.
She has a strong interest in Virginia Woolfe – in her way of seeing and responding to the world around her. Olivia quotes from Virginia’s diary…..
“Bees shoot whizz, like arrows of desire: fierce, sexual; weave cat’s cradles in the air; each whizzing from a string; the whole air full of vibration: of beauty, of the burning arrowy desire; and speed: I still think the quivering shifting bee-bag the most sexual and sensual symbol.”
This brought to mind ‘Big Poppy’ by Ted Hughes…
'Big Poppy’
Hot-eyed Mafia Queen!
At the trim garden’s edge
She sways towards August.
A Bumble Bee
Clambers into her drunken, fractured goblet –
Up the royal carpet of down-hung,
Shrivel-edged, unhinged petal, her first-about-to-fall.
He’s in there as she sways. He utters thin
Sizzling bleats of difficult enjoyment.
Her carnival paper skirts, luminous near-orange,
Embrace him helplessly.
Already her dark pod is cooking its drug.
Every breath imperils her. Her crucible
Is falling apart with its own fierceness.
A fly, cool, rests on the flame-fringe.
Soon she’ll throw off her skirts
Withering into vestal afterlife,
Bleeding inwardly
Her maternal nectars into her own
Coffin – (cradle of her offspring).
Then we shall say:
She wore herself in her hair, in her day,
And we could see nothing but her huge flop of petal,
Her big, lewd, bold eye, in its sooty lashes,
And that stripped, athletic leg, hairy
In a fling of abandon – ‘
Troubled, creative people – seeing - feeling- connecting but maybe not sure how to live with that connection.
Just some thoughts, connecting writers.
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More From The Sherd-Nerds…..
https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/sherd-nerds-2/
My tuppenceworth re. prints….
https://theorkneynews.scot/2021/10/29/prints/
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