Dorothy Parker - Writer (1893 -1967)

I've recently purchased (on one of my meandering through the local Chatsworth Market) a second copy of Dorothy Parker's biography "What Fresh Hell Is This?" by Marion Meade. I have just started reading it, but I can tell already I'm in for a treat.

I do not know much about Parker's life at all - apart from the bohemian lifestyle which became part of her legend; and of course her sharp wit and melancholic cynicism at life's many disaventures.

I thought it'd be nice to share some of the wit for which she became renowned for and synonimous of. Her writing was a clear verbal portraiture of the carelessness and dissatisfaction of the times she was living in - the 1920s - the days in between the ravages of the WWI and WWII, when the former needed to be forgotten and the latter was seemingly unforseen.




A Certain Lady (1924)


Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.
And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.
And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.

Search (2008) - Video by Luciana Francis (nee Saldanha)

Video by Luciana Francis (nee Saldanha).
London, 2008.
See more Luciana Francis' videos on Vimeo.

Andrea Arnold's film version of Bronte's classic novel

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Poet (1892 - 1950)

An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Bjork on Biophilia - BBC Radio Interview 2011

Broadcast on BBc Radio on the 13th 0f July 2011.

The exceptional Krystle Warren

I must confess I haven't heard of her immaculate performance at Jools Holland in 2009,nor have I heard of the concert at the Soho Theatre last year.

So I was in for a very special introduction to this extraordinary singer and performer as she entered the stage - in her shorts and plimsoles, carrying her estimated acoustic guitar - at the Shepherds Bush Empire prior to the eagerly anticipated performance of Joan as Police Woman that evening.

The voice, ladies and gentleman, this lady has it. And as with the late and much missed Jeff Buckley, dare I say, it's not only the earnest poetry of the lyrics but the way she delivers them; it's her singing that gets you. She sings with her face, her throat, her lips, her nostrils. And she cracks good jokes in between songs too. A talent that makes you feel at ease in her presence, not intimidated by it. Refreshingly inspiring, to say the least.


Krystle Warren performing Circles, on later with Jools Holland in 2009.

For the Love of Joan!

If you were at one of the gigs on the current tour you will know what I am talking about. If you were not, I urge you to catch this lady live.

Joan Wasser (aka Joan as Police Woman) is, unashamedly and generously, emotional and equally dignified and kick ass in her performances. Her concert (accompanied by Tyler Wood on his magic keyboards and Parker Kindred on his understatedly talented drumming) in London last Friday (Sept 09th 2011) was pretty much the most complete; the best performance I have ever seen - and I've seen a few.

I will do a separate mention to her mate, the exceptional Krystle Warren, next.

Gwyneth Lewis - Poet and Writer (b. in Wales in 1959)

SEA VIRUS

I knew I should never have gone below
but I did, and the fug of bilges and wood
caught me aback. The sheets of my heart
snapped taut to breaking, as a gale
stronger than longing filled the sail
inside me. To be shot of land
and its wood smoke! To feel the keel
cold in a current! To see the mast
inscribing water like a restless pen
writing a fading wake! It’s true,
I’m ruined. Not even peace will do
to keep me ashore now. Not even you.


Lewis delivering the Wales Millennium Center key source: www.gwynethlewis.com

Please click on the link that is this post's title to listen to the "Great Lives" programme of today (16th August 2011) on BBC Radio 4 where Lewis has chosen Emily Dickinson as her "Great Lives" topic.

Nancy Wake (1918- 2011) Resistance Fighter

As read on The Independent on the 8th of August 2011.

Australian Nancy Wake, who as a spy became one the Allies' most decorated servicewomen for her role in the French resistance during World War II, has died in London, officials said today. She was 98.

Code named "The White Mouse" by the Gestapo during the war, Wake died Sunday in a London nursing home, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.

"Nancy Wake was a woman of exceptional courage and resourcefulness whose daring exploits saved the lives of hundreds of Allied personnel and helped bring the Nazi occupation of France to an end," Gillard said in a statement.

Trained by British intelligence in espionage and sabotage, Wake helped to arm and lead 7,000 resistance fighters in weakening German defenses before the D-Day invasion in the last months of the war.

While distributing weapons, money and code books in Nazi-occupied France, she evaded capture many times and reached the top of the Gestapo's wanted list, according to her biographer, Peter FitzSimons.

"They called her the 'la Souris Blanche,' 'the White Mouse,' because every time they had her concerned ... she was gone again," FitzSimons told Australian Broadcast Corp. radio on Monday.

"Part of it was she was a gorgeous looking woman," he said. "The Germans were looking for someone who looked like them: aggressive, a man with guns — and she was not like that."



France decorated her with its highest military honor, the Legion d'Honneur, as well as three Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance.

The United States awarded her its Medal of Freedom and Britain, the George Medal. Her only Australian honor did not come until 2004, when she was made a Companion of the Order of Australia.

Born Aug. 30, 1912, in the New Zealand capital of Wellington, Nancy Grace Augusta Wake was the youngest of six siblings. When she was 2 the family moved to Sydney, but her father left the family soon after and returned to New Zealand.

Wake became a nurse before an inheritance from a New Zealand aunt enabled her to run away from home in 1931 and fulfill her dream of traveling to New York, London and Paris, she said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in 1985.

After studying journalism in London, she became a correspondent for The Chicago Tribune in Paris and reported on the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. A 1933 trip to interview Hitler in Vienna led her to become committed to bringing down the Nazis.

"I saw the disagreeable things that he was doing to people, first of all the Jews," she told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in 1985. "I thought it was quite revolting."

When World War II broke out in 1939, she was living in the French city of Marseille with her first husband, French industrialist Henri Fiocca. She helped British servicemen and Jews escape the German occupying force.

Her husband was eventually seized, tortured and killed by the Gestapo. But Wake managed to escape in 1943 through Spain to London, where she received the espionage training before helping to lead the French resistance in its final days.

Wake continued working for British intelligence in Europe after the war until 1957, when she moved back to Australia and married British fighter pilot John Forward. She moved back to Britain in 2001, four years after Forward's death. She never had children.

According to her wishes, Wake's body is expected to be cremated privately and her ashes scattered next spring at Montlucon in central France, where she fought in a heroic 1944 attack on the local Gestapo headquarters.

Pernille Fischer Christensen - Film Director, Writer, Actress

Born in Denmark in 1969.


trailer from Christensen's 2006 feature film "A Soap"