Lizzie Speller
@l1zz1e
Tutor CW Cambridge. Ex Classicist. Love poetry, water, ruins, churchyards. Author,The Return of Captain John Emmett; At Break of Day, memoir, lyrics. Short-listed Forward Prize. Judge International Hellenic Prize. Live Suffolk & Greek island.
Couldn’t get tickets at Almeida for Ava Pickett’s play,1536, but bought the play to read. It was brilliant on the page, witty, dark, gripping. As a writer of fiction it made me think again about ways of story-telling. What can be stripped out and yet make the mood more intense. Brilliant!
When people one loves die, what stays behind is a sort of wonder, especially if they were micro- hoarders. Today: shaving brushes (late owner had a beard!). Badger hair but not ivory handles. I’m now involved to the degree that I have a favourite (smallest with case). But what to do with them now?
July 4th 1916, death of Alan Seeger, an American who enlisted with French Foreign Legion as US had yet to join the allies at war. www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45077/...
Bought two children’s books at Oxfam: a 1920’s Angela Brazil school story, and the Lambs’ ‘Tales from Shakespeare’. Inside, I found a programme for a 1931 school play.So much unexpected history in old books!
I send my daughter (a grownup) a photo of my her cat under insect-eaten leaves. No story. Somehow, AI decided to assist: ‘Mummy has sent you a picture of a black bear in the shade.’ In Suffolk this is unlikely. #thesuffolkbear
Wake up in England on Greek clock. No doubt I’ll fade out by lunch. Last night we chose the winner of the International Hellenic Prize from a short list of seven. An exciting discussion, a terrific book. Title to follow.
Working working. So made supper of feta, fig, loukoumi, tiny sugar-dusted apple pie. Still very warm at 9.17 pm but distant rumbling of thunder and across the straits other islands disappearing in haze and purple clouds.
The sound of early morning on a Greek island. No cicadas yet but it’s very competitive.
Evening, and the light is fiery as night approaches. I can see sunset 1000 times and still feel wonder. Still working plus swimming, but now eating gigantes, with freshly baked bread and grilled fat tomatoes, feta cheese and sliced red onion with a little oil. Greece, 9pm.
Sunset, and mountains turn to mist “The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! Eternal summer gilds them yet, But all, except their sun, is set…“ Lord Byron
In Greece I have a tiny cottage, very simple but, like bibliophile home in UK, a chaos of books everywhere. But over 20 years friends and family and writers and artists have borrowed the cottage so the mix is exciting and irresistible,
Morning has broken. Reading 1946 classic, The Lonely Skier, eating orange from ‘my tree (not that I planted, or ever nurtured it). Acanthus under the lemon tree, the sky is frontdoor blue. My promise to self: in 30 minutes I will work on laptop. Yes. Definitely.
Early evening from my window: ancient olives, yucca and orange trees, then the sea and faraway mainland mountains. By night the brightest of stars and a lighthouse on the north point of the island projects its rhythm on my bedroom wall. Somehow reassuring.
www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/mametz... The moving and powerful, memorial to the 4000 dead and wounded of the 38th Welsh Division in July 1916 who fought, repeatedly, for Mametz wood on the Somme. The Welsh dragon fights on but its feet are trapped in barbed wire
poppies and pods droop smudges of lichen darken rain and petals fall #vss365
Back in the Cotswolds. Figtree may soon devour house but then plenty of fruit ripening nicely. Tit for tat.
Meanwhile the spirit of drystone walling: Marley’s ghost has a rural outing.
It’s Paxos in the Ionian archipelago. It’s just 10 km long. In spring all kinds of wild flowers, then fireflies, and, in summer, wonderful stars. And the sea is every shade of blue - almost a cliché.
In three weeks I should be under my lemon tree, writing or reading in the scent of the fruit and delicate waxy flowers, with a constant rasping of cicadas. Meanwhile, I am rehearsing in warmer tiny Suffolk garden in the shade of a Corsican pine and the company of combative squirrels. #greece
Boulge Church, hidden across fields, through woods and wild flowers. Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubayiat of Omar Khayyam, is buried here but not in the family vault. A cutting of a Rose from Khayyam’s tomb in Iran (then Persia) was brought here in 1883.
Teaching a weekend course in creative writing at C16 Madingley Hall, Cambridge. Perfect weather, lush grass, tender young leaves, wild spring flowers and gossamer clouds.
Not taken by me, but by a companion. I like the pink tongue #india #rajasthan
The early afternoon in Udaipur, Rajasthan. After a night flight, this bedroom ( only two days here!) is space and brilliant colours are the trees and flowers in the garden my room opens on to. Brilliant too, the feathers on birds I cannot name.