Songs for George

'Valerie' by Amy Winehouse

'The Two Fatherlands' from Holst's planet suite

'There is an Isle' Munster rugby song

'An bhfaca tú mo Shéamuisín'  Irish traditional song

'Vogue' by Madonna

'Starman' by David Bowie

'Remember Me' from Dido and Aeneas (sorry puthwuth!)

'Sympathy with the Devil'  The Rolling Stones

'Loveshack'

'Don't Let it Bring You Down' (Neil Young) as sung by Annie Lennox in the film American  Beauty and on her album Medusa.

(with apologies to Harry White)

 

Ignorant Knowledge

    The literary tourist in Birmingham will find a few lines from T.S. Eliot's 'Burnt Norton' carved on the rim of the fountain in Victoria Square. The lines are attributed to Eliot, but the source is not cited. I had to shuffle through Four Quartets to find them.

And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,

And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,

The surface glittered out of heart of light,

And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.

Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.

    One of the unfortunate traits inherited from teaching is that, as soon as you find out something new, you want to impart it. In other words, you are always disguising your ignorance as knowledge. (This does not usually apply to things you already know, such as that A. E. Housman came from nearby Worcestershire, and was not, in fact, ever, a Shropshire lad.)

   In literary exchanges, one of the conditions of the game tends to involve demonstrating what you know, comparing authors, citing examples, quoting phrases, etc. Just as interesting, I imagine, is how much you don't know. For example, in Stepping Stones, Heaney admitted to Dennis O' Driscoll that he had never got very far with Pound's Cantos. That might rate as influence, the fact that you haven't read such and such. Following that principle, my influences of the unread would include Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Jerusalem Liberated, The Kalevala, and the novels of Gerald Griffin.

Another related topic here is the operation of memory. I count myself among those whose powers of recall are patchy. In literature and life we all know people with tremendous recall, such as Beckett. 

If you use a phrase which you read somewhere else  once, and then forgot until it reemerged in your writing, is that plagiarism or influence? 

   

A Dream Secretary's Nightbook

Alice Oswald, A Sleepwalk on the Severn (Faber, 2009), 40 pp., £7 stg

Birmingham

Ten things to do in Birmingham:

make your way to Selfridge's in the Bull Ring Centre and ride the escalators; they are truly futuristic (I'm assuming you're curious about the future)

go for coffee at Costa Coffee in New Street (best coffee in Brum)

visit the Birmingham City Gallery and Museum. I like the paintings by Edward Burne-Jones. He's also famous as a stained glass artist. A short detour will take you to

St Philip's Cathedral, where you can find some of his best stained glass windows. The cathedral has glass side walls. Religion light.

By now you have noticed how obese the midlanders are, so you should resolve to eat lunch in a low carb Japanese restaurant such as Wagamama or Mount Fuji or Woktastic (yuk). Stonechat recommends the sushi in Mount Fuji, just downhill from the central Bull Ring area, near Borders bookshop

If you have outstanding book requisites, you should remedy that after lunch at Waterstone's. There are two Waterstone's on New Street: the branch at the end of the street has the best poetry section, on the fourth floor, with chairs to rest on.

Go to the Mac store in the Bull Ring centre and sit at the maintenance desk (try to look cool and Maccie); you will discover that Macs and iPods break down just like cars and dishwashers and that their owners have to bring them back to the store to get them fixed

In general, check out the feeling of being part of an ethic minority. Yes, folks, Brum is now officially 51% ethnic (whatever that means).

Go to a football match at the highest stadium in the league (the Baggies' ground, the Hawthorns is at altitude)

Get the bus to Handsworth and walk down Soho Road. You'll be overwhelmed, but not intimidated, by the ethnic majority. Watch out for P.J.'s mini bus announcing 'Gaillimh Abu' on the front. You can eat for free in one of the Sikh temples.

Patrick O'Brien (1889-1914)

Patrick O'Brien was my grand-uncle on my father's side. He died in Rome as a student and was buried there.

Il diavolo vestite Prada

Charybdis

In Greek legend, a dangerous whirlpool off the coast of Sicily, featuring in the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, and in that of Odysseus on his voyage home from Troy. In Irish legend, a commotion in the same stretch of water as seen by Stonechat on the ferry between Messina and San Giovanni, March 29th 2009.

Italian Police Forces