One Hundred Words About The Poetry Challenge

The last challenge was in 2001.

At the end of this July we begin our second poetry challenge.

Each week for one year my cousin Jeff and me will post to each other a poem a week. It can get quite stressful and competitive.

We will meet four times during the year to read, discuss and judge each quarter’s poems and at the end of the year we will meet to judge and proclaim the winning poem.

I wrote 56 poems for the last challenge and I worked on one quarter of those and now consider 12 of them good.

One Hundred Words About The White Castle

Amazon.com: The White Castle : A Novel (Vintage International): Books: Orhan Pamuk

It is Orphan Pamuk’s first novel. Set in seventeenth century Turkey. A Venetian scholar is captured by Turks and sold into slavery. Hoja – meaning master - buys him because of his learning and thus begins the tale of a relationship characterised by envy and competition. Almost identical the pair are bound together in an obsessive attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe. But the more they strive for external knowledge, the deeper, more complex, cruel and claustrophobic their relationship becomes.

Against a backdrop of Turkish decline and European cultural and economic accent Pamuk explores issues of east and west.

Film Review The New World

The New World (2005)

The New World

This is the story of Pocahontas and John Smith but this is not Disneyland. It is a harsh and powerfully realistic demythifying – yet beautiful retelling of the Pocahontas story.

The film follows Pocahontas’s life as she chooses the settlers over her people. It follows her marriage and family – not to John Smith; and journey to England and a royal audience with the King at Hampton Court. Then finally, her mysterious death soon after her final meeting with Smith; the man she truly loves.

This latest film uses and develops many of the techniques Malick has used in previous films. The most impressive of these is his cinematography. Beautiful sweeping landscapes are caught at twilight. Malick, I think like Bergman has a real feel for the quality of light. The land is presented as green and lush; there is a freshness and clarity in the settings. He pays special attention to the natural world and focuses on the little details of a rich and unspoilt America just as the Europeans begin to settle the land.

And then the familiar narrator – this time the voice of John Smith – like Private Wit in The Thin Red Line, Malick has adopted an adult male voice, reflecting on what he sees describing thoughts, actions and plans. We see the film from Smiths’ perspective. Yet because he is absent from at least half the film the voice over is far weaker. It is also more prosaic, thinner and flatter than his other films –especially Badlands and Days of Heaven - even the hardened voice of Linda in Days of Heaven conveys poetry in its gritty and earthy strongly accented monologues.

Surprising is the treatment of the Europeans in the film. Their life is presented realistically and sympathetically as they struggle to survive and establish themselves in the New World. The native American’s treat them suspiciously. At first befriending them but later attacking them once they realise they are plan to stay.

Yes there are the usual symbols of colonial rule. She, the native American representing the spirit of the land which is ancient, fragile, beautiful, full of life and fertility, the other. As Donne puts it, “Oh my America/My new found land.” And Captain Smith the male, European settler, seduced by the land and her beauty and vitality. But these traditional images are perhaps undermined by Pocahontas’s dominance of the film and Smith’s fading away.

I think the film lacks a strong and dynamic conflict. The tension between white men and native American’s smoulders and never really sustains our engagement. The relationship between the lovers is dramatic but soon turns to loss, melancholy and longing that takes up much of the film. Malick just manages to hold our attention in this 150 minute epic.

One Hundred Words About Anger

It happened about twenty-four hours ago and it still dominates my thoughts. It becomes a pain at the back of my throat and I feel sick. If I can be distracted then the pain eases a little, for a while. But it’s never far away and easily exposed.

This anger is deep. It touches something inside me so raw, painful and strong I can barely cope with it. It is about control. For a year I had little control of my life or even my body. To survive I accepted that powerlessness. Now I find any loss of control difficult.

One Hundred Words About A Birthday

 

Thirty-three years ago today I bought my first LP.

It was June the first 1973, my fourteenth birthday and I asked my father if he would buy me Aladdin Sane the new record from David Bowie. I had already bought two singles by Bowie, Starman and John I’m Only Dancing. And had only recently realised they were by the same singer. And then Radio One previewed his new LP.

There was something delicious and different about this music. But more than this, this music was mine. I drenched myself in it for months until it became part of my soul. 

One Way Of Posting My Photograph Into My Profile

  

One Hundred Words About New Malden

The soul of my New Malden cannot be seen from the high street.

But New Malden’s face is the high street. Its late Victorian backdrop of shops, red London brick, with sand stone arches, covered with plastic laminated shop façades. Nothing special. The usual chain of names, like Boots, Woolworth and Waitrose and then the occasional independent shop like Tarmal’s – ironmonger, Pengilies – cobbler and Tudor Williams – a family department store. Recently Korean shops have sprung up, a travel agents, supermarkets and restaurants. And charity shops have filled the gaps where small businesses have failed.

Trees line the renovated high street.

One Hundred Words About Oxted, Surrey

We visited friends in Oxted yesterday. We had lunch and then walked down to the green. At one end a cricket pavilion and ground. At another corner a section fenced off – a playground, “for the enjoyment of all.”

On all sides of the green, the small town seemed to radiate out. On the playground side, the ninth century church with a clock tower that tolled the hours. At another corner the high street filled with small independent shops, a cinema and theatre.

Hills rise up on each side of the town.

I can see why they came here to live.

One Hundred Words About Joy And Fear

It still does not feel like our home.

Sometimes when the children are busy in the garden or in their rooms, and Katy is in the study, and I’m reading in the sitting room, I become aware of the wonder of our home. And I am filled with a sudden joy, a tingling excitement.

At the same time, falling like a shadow in happiness’s wake is dread. The family scattered through the house appears like a beautiful dream that is out of our grasp. It fades as fear begins to spiral into panic. I have to keep myself in check.

One Hundred Words About Holiday's

Being busy is easy.

I don’t have to think. Life has meaning.

Twenty students in a class, sixty in a workshop, students calling from the team room door, colleagues wanting to talk, emails and memos, lessons to prepare, work to mark, lessons to teach, meetings to attend, paper work in order.

On holiday time works differently.

The first day is always busy with urgent or left over jobs. But then the gaps start appearing. And all those buried thoughts and fears I didn’t have time for rise up.

It’s the sudden silences and the empty days that feel so difficult.

One Hundred Words About Silence

I am making peace with silence again.

It is never easy. At first I have to convince myself that silence is precious. I sit impatiently, looking for a distraction like the television, the phone, radio and the CD player. I can feel my computer calling me.

Mostly I give in.The house is a trap of sound. In every room it waits for me, I struggle against it.

But sometimes silence becomes a gift.

I become still and just focus on the moment. I become aware of a great thirst, hidden by all the noises.

Only silence can quench it.

One Hundred Words About Tiredness

It feels as if I have lead weights in my pockets that tempt me off balance. I feel like a tent straining against guy ropes, pegs and poles and long to collapse in a heap. I stumble through the day tripping up over my words and sway as I walk. I stand in the classrooms and avoid the chairs. I drank two cups of strong coffee today. I cannot concentrate my thoughts keep drifting in a mental blur. When I lay down I cannot lie still, in the distance I hear the television and there are things still to do.

One Hundred Words About A Busy Term

The mock exams for my six A level classes have been marked and handed back to the students. Feedback lessons on each question they answered have also been done. Timed essays have been marked and handed back with extensive feedback lessons. A Hamlet revision workshop on Hamlet’s soliloquies was prepared and delivered to over fifty students. Revision lessons have been given on Hamlet, Frankenstein, American Poetry, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Spoken Word. I’ve co judged a creative writing competition and co hosted the prize giving.

I have three classes of communications portfolios still to compile, manage and assess.

Three Haikus With Knots

Here are three Haiku's inspired by the comments on One Hundred Words About Knots.

I

almost asleep
the smooth thread of your body
twisted into mine

II

harbour rope holds
the stinging smell of the sea
wind bitten splices

III

on the granite cross
ancient double stranded plaits
woven into worn stone

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About The One Hundred Words

Welcome to 100 Words

I’ve been reading through the One Hundred Word project entries recently.

I started the project almost a year ago inspired by a website – one hundred words.

It has been quite an amazing year for the family and my one hundred words chronicle some of the dramatic events of the year.

But the entries are more than a diary for me.

I’ve tried to use the entries as notes for new poems.

Only a handful of entries have become poems and some of those poems have become one hundred word entries themselves.

It is often good to put feelings into words.

One Hundred Words About Knots

Barbican - LSO Chamber Ensemble

The first knot were the essays I had to mark this morning a knot of ink and thought and paper.

The second was an argument that flared up just before I left the house and gradually frayed out to a fragile peace as I left.

The third, were the long and tangled roads of the city that eventually drew me to The Barbican.

Then finally a fourth knot, a constant unravelling of sound that untangled all the other knots in my head. Different strands, overlapping, sometimes running, or plunging, was pulling towards or against each other out into the night.

One Hundred Words About A Party

Until early Saturday morning our party only partly existed in Katy’s mind and partly in mine. It also existed in all the people’s minds that were going to come, but nowhere else. We had not made any plans or preparations.

At eight we had a plan. In a hectic whirl we did supermarkets, prepared food and organized the house.

By six o’clock I was shattered. Then the first guest arrived.

It was a great evening. I welcomed people while Katy disappeared into the kitchen.

At one o’clock I sat on a sofa with Katy and my second glass of wine.

One Hundred Words About Fear

At first fear hangs in the air, I breathe it in. It is an ache in my stomach. It is heavy, screwed down and locked tight. I don’t want to let it out. I know what it’s like and I’ve felt it before. It is a wild blind thing that has no thought; it speaks in screams. Speed and action are its limbs. It destroys everything in its path. It feeds on ignorance. Time contracts.

I feel it stir inside me. Tonight I will sleep in it and when I wake tomorrow it will still be there, clawing at me.

One Hundred Words While Drinking Coffee

I am sitting in a Starbucks in Border’s Bookshop, drinking coffee. All around me are people sitting at tables alone or in pairs. A mother and daughter, a retired couple, single women surrounded by shopping bags, and a few men, brief case or rucksack beside them.

All of them are busy either talking, reading newspapers or new books, a woman is fidgeting with her mobile phone. A man in his twenties is fiddling with his i pod. Two women are sharing a joke.

I take a book of poetry from my bag and open it, reading, I slip silently away.

One Hundred Words About Escape

I used to be able to escape but not any longer. When I was a child time was like a great cloak that I could wrap myself up in and hide for hours.

But now I am always visible to the world and the world is always visible to me. Time is no longer a cloak but a constant light that exposes me.

Sleep is a temporary refuge. And films have reduced to a thin flickering veil.

Sometimes I rush for the stairs where I work, each slow step lifts me out of sight, a cloak that barely hides me.

One Hundred Word Poem For Good Friday

"Mercy"

A fragile cry
struggles free
into the parched night.

Then silence
except the low drone
of the wind
through bare winter branches.

Until the cry rises again
splits open the darkness
with a long low moan
strong and insistent,
falls to hard wrenched sobs
then to sudden silence.

Heartbeat.

Again.

Now raw and wild,
gouged out of fractured breath.
Throat muscle and tongue
sculpt air
to a single word
that hangs trapped
in cold moonlight.

In the darkness
I imagine
a naked thing
cowering in the dust
red faced
twisted limbs
blood stained,
torn bandages
searching the darkness.

(c) David Loffman

The poem is inspired by different sources. The most important one being Prayer of the Heart a piece of music by John Tavener - which I comment upon in an earlier post.

One Hundred Words About The Troubadour

The Troubadour - 50?s coffee house in Earl?s Court with a deli, gallery, club and garden.

I read at The Troubadour last Monday. Despite being exhausted, it is always a warm and friendly place to be. I always come away from an evening feeling strong and positive about my writing. When I get home it always takes awhile before I can relax.

At the end of a season Anne Marie organizes a poetry party. Poets come up and either read one of their own poems or someone else’s on a theme. This season ended with the theme of coats.

I read At Penmon Point. (see 19 February post)

When the evening finished I just wandered around chatting to Troubadour friends.

One Hundred Words About An Anniversary

Today we celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. It feels like yesterday. It feels like a lifetime ago. Last night we ate at an Italian restaurant just round the corner. It was a gorgeous evening.

Our wedding day was a fragile spring day. It hailed in the morning but the afternoon glittered with low dazzling light. Pam was in Africa and sent us a telegram. I walked in on Katy – her sisters sewing flowers to her dress. I wanted the day over and the two of us driving away. Our car decorated inside and out with balloons, beer cans and confetti.

Another One Hundred Words About Joy

Despite the pain and the morphine that dripped periodically into me, in the recovery room, after the last amputation, I felt a joy already surging through me. What I felt was a deep and fundamental sense of wholeness and completeness.

At that moment I was for the first time in years healthy. The disease that had rumbled inside my body and had so spectacularly erupted in February 2004 was no longer active.

I know it was not the drugs that gave me that feeling, because in the days and weeks and months that followed, that feeling is still with me.

One Hundred Words About Praise

People’s praise is overwhelming. Wide smiles full of shock and surprise, sometimes mixed with pride, or sympathy or wonder and disbelief, terrifies me.

Praise is like a mirror in which I see myself through others eyes.

It is a false reflection.

Belief in it would destroy me.

Even writing about it maybe dangerous.

In those looks and words of praise, I see my tightrope walk each day and the bottomless chasms that open up on either side of me. I’m frightened of losing my balance and falling far to earth.

It’s the feeling of vertigo that recurs in my dreams.

One Hundred Words And A Poem About Joy

Once when I was failing, I'd come outside and sit in the graveyard beneath a church. The deer park and the Hall shimmered in late summer heat. I watched the strong clotted green of ancient oaks, the drone of lorries carrying grain from the fields and watched House Martins gathering along high cables.

And from this, a deep glorious joy stirred and rose up through me. In these moments, every afternoon, I felt angels were beside me, feeding me. The earth was holy and as this joy pulsed through me I felt lifted up and made strong and holy.

House Martins

Late summer
and the harvest almost over.

Each late afternoon
I closed my books
and left a room
that reeked of defeat,
where each word I read
joined the liturgy of failure
I was reciting to myself.

So I came outside
to sit beyond the church
among the grave stones.
The sky poured light,
the dark lines of clotted oaks
framed distant stubble fields.

I watched house martins gathering,
perched on long lines of cables
then scattering like seeds
into the wind.

Then I closed my eyes
listening to their high pitched whistles,
sharp, metallic, tuning in and out,
tearing my books apart.

The house martins reeling,
arcing the sky
low sunlight catching
their quick wings.

And further off the heavy drone
of lorries for miles
down winding country roads
carrying grain to empty silos.


22 October 2002

David Loffman

One Hundred Words About Joy

Joy is like a jewel. A precious stone I keep close by. It is so bright I have to keep it under cover. Sometimes it ‘s so strong I feel as though it shines through me. I have to hold it close to myself.

The summer I had my legs amputated I spent everyday in a wheelchair in a bamboo garden beside a tree, under the sun. I felt an overwhelming joy rise through me. I watched the bamboo shoots, high white clouds and ants scuttling along broken paving stones, with only the sun to hide this strong insistent joy.

One Hundred Words About Memory

We played music today I’ve not played since we moved in, in June – eight months ago. The children wanted to hear Laurie Anderson’s Big Science, then Eva Cassidy’s Field’s of Barley and something by Nora Jones’s.

The children balanced themselves on the sofa and danced to Anderson’s wolf howl, which startled them when I first played it to them, when they were two or three years old.

Then they quietened down. Iona curled up on my lap as we listened to Cassidy and Jones – memory filled the room. She knelt against my shoulder – remembering what we were and have lost.

One Hundred Words

Sometimes I can hear the suffering in people’s lives. Sometimes their pain is so overwhelming it is difficult to hear anything else. It feels like storm clouds are gathering around us as friends and family struggle with enormous difficulties.

A family dog has been run over and may have to be put down. Reluctantly a friend took her son and slept away from her husband on Thursday night for the first time. While a friend was being violently sick and had to be taken to casualty, his wife was undergoing a caesarean operation they now wonderfully have a second son.

One Hundred Words About Prayer of the Heart

John Tavener - Prayer of the Heart from John Tavener A Portrait

The first time I heard a piece of music that started with a heartbeat it changed my life. That was in 1973, thirty-three years ago.

The second piece of music I heard that starts with a heartbeat I heard for the first time today. I wonder where it will take me.

I listened, unable to move.

A girl’s voice emerged from the tangle of heartbeat and strings, then struggled free and climbed in a wild, raw, painful, fragile, insistent spiralling chant, sometimes so thin I thought it would break and in a moment a voice so strong, deep and rich.

At Penmon Point

We've had a week's holiday. It's been quite a busy time. Lots of jobs needed doing and I had saved up a few hospital appointments for the week. However I did manage to work on last week's entry a little. Hope you like it.

At Penmon Point

After the funeral we came

to Penmon
in fragile twilight,
in the unformed year
because she loved the place.

We came past

ruined Priory and dovecote
to a broken sea line
scoured by hard winds
and a grey Viking sky.

There we poured ourselves
onto this abandoned headland

wandered unsteady along
a rough uncertain track
to face the raw, bitter wind
that beat me to tears.

I remembered her here
in a summer blue dress
and an easy smile.
Looking out to Puffin Island.

This keeps me warm.

And all that time
a bell from the lighthouse
rang, slowly announcing
an end to something.




© David Loffman

One Hundred Words and A Picture of Penmon Point

We came to Penmon Point after Kathy's funeral. She loved this place.

We drove past the ruins of the Priory and the domed dovecote.

It is an isolated headland, especially in January. There, a grey sea scoured by winds from the north opened to us.

So we emptied ourselves out onto the raised beach. The children and dogs seemed to be lifted up into the arms ofthe wind, scattered among rocks and puddles, searching the sea towards Puffin Island and beyond The Great Orme.

And a bell from the lighthouse rang slowly announcing the end of something. 

One Hundred Words About Another Sunday

So far this has been a classic winter Sunday. Before church I had a little quiet reading time – an Austin novel. The children had baths and tidied their rooms. Then church and after the service brief chats with old friends. Then home to make a roast dinner. My mother came for the afternoon. We had coffee and After Eight. After dinner she spent time with the children and I had a nap, then read a bit of the paper and listened to a little music. Then tea, apple flan and chocolate fingers; we played cards until six, when she left.

One Hundred Words About APOD

APOD: 2006 January 15 - The Sombrero Galaxy from HST

It is about time I let you know about Astronomy Picture of the Day is one of the best sites I have found on the internet. It is a jewel of a site.

I visit it almost daily to catch up on the new photographs. I’ve always had an interest in astronomy. I even took a module in the first year of my degree on astronomy.

Each photograph comes with an explanation and each explanation comes with hyper links to other sites and pictures in the APOD archive.

I watch transfixed by patterns, colours and distances in time and space.

One Hundred Words Without You

Without you the house feels cold.

My thoughts return empty.

I leave the radiators on all night
and forget to turn a light off somewhere.

I buy too much food
to comfort us.

I don’t know when to go to bed
and wake with a jolt.
The radio whispers all night.

I wake the children early.
Hold them a little tighter,
give myself up to their
playground tragedies
and classroom news.

But the days are smooth and easy.
We slip in and out of them
without difficulty,
because you are out there
holding us
in the quiet of your mind.


(C) David Loffman

A Womb of Stars

 

One Hundred Words About Self

A Book Review

Self by Yann Martel

Self is very easy to read. It’s a compelling story. It’s part autobiography, part fiction, and it conveys a vivid experience of adolescent loss and discovery.

On page 89 the narrator’s parents die. On page 108 aged 18 the male narrator becomes a woman. Between 108 and 282 the narrative focuses on her developing sexual relationships with women then men. This culminates on 282 when she’s raped. On 313 she becomes a man, again. He’s a vagrant, has a number of same sex sexual encounters. The rape destroys his life.

At the end he meets Cathy. She wants a baby.

One Hundred Words About The Leopard

The Leopard is a great book. We follow the measured, careful and self-conscious stride of Don Fabrizo a Prince of a province of Sicily in the 1860’s. He presides over a declining aristocratic way of life at a time of struggle for a unified Italy.

But whether political struggle, religious debates or domestic concerns this is a delicate and intensely sensitive portrait of an aging nobleman. We see him from the inside, poised, struggling with competing emotions, duties and responsibilities. A man imprisoned and yet completely at ease in his role as patriarch, father, husband, uncle, master, lover and Prince.

One Hundred Words About Boubacar Traore

Amazon.co.uk: Kongo Magni [Import]: Music

I first heard Boubacar Traore ten years ago.

His voice has an extraordinary depth to it. It is a weathered, beaten up voice, burnished through personal hardships and suffering. It seems to reach out to the listener with an unassuming and surprising emotional intensity.

But that is not all. He sings his own songs. They seem simple and unsophisticated but the melodies are haunting and seductive. They draw you in to his world where he sings of life in Mali, celebrating its vitality, independence and hope for the future. There is dignity and integrity in everything he sings and plays.

One Hundred Words About Shylock

The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Michael Radford’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice is stunning. And Pacino was born to play Shylock.

The play reverberates through our racist society.

Shylock, the moneylender Jew, seeks revenge disguised as justice against Antonio who has broken his bond. In return Antonio must give up a pound of his flesh to Shylock.

In court Shylock is tricked. He loses everything, even his religion. But the Christian court and its fashionable nobles are seen as bigots taking their own revenge.

The storyline of Bassanio’s – funded by Antonio – courtship and love for Portia shrivels under the harrowing fate of Shylock’s tragedy.

One Hundred Words

We’ve just returned from Anglesey after a four-day trip. We went up for the funeral of my mother in law and stayed on to spend time with the family. I think it was the first time we’d all been together for years.

Despite staying in a hotel it is hard being there. Away from the home we’re enjoying, it’s a long drive, its colder up there and being on the coast the land is quite steep and hilly for me.

But it was very successful. At the lunch I knew most of the people there and I talked non-stop.

One Hundred Christmas Words

Not an easy Christmas but successful. My wife’s mother died on the twentieth and my wife left to help her father. They returned on Christmas Eve. We had invited seventeen and had to slim this down. Twelve came.

I spent two early mornings – day six and five - buying presents and took my time. The children were still at school. Day four I spent sorting the house out. Day three I did the main shopping. Day two more tidying with help from my mother. On Christmas Eve the children wrapped presents and prepared vegetables. Our Christmas Day worked very well.

One Hundred Words

In the midst of death there are still Christmas presents to buy.

Katy rang me when I was in Kingston on my second day of Christmas present hunting. I had just spied my prey on a bookshelf in Waterstones when she rang to tell me her mother had died.

I let the book go. Took a step back from the tables full of books and piped Christmas music. Another step back from growing crowds and the unspoken urgency in the aisles and in the queues.

Christmas that seemed clearly in my grasp a minute ago slipped out of my hands.

A New Poem

Here is a recent poem. I posted a draft of this a few weeks back. This is as close to being completed as I can get. It contains about 10% of the original impulse to write it.

New Home

Occasionally we get a glimpse
of our new home.

It rises up
fractured, vague, unfocussed
like rippled glass.

Until for a moment
clear and sharp,
it shines at us.
A promise
within our grasp.

And we stare
in silence,
unspoken hope
impatient longing,
from the margins
of our living rooms.

Yesterday we stopped
at a new shelf -
and a single saucepan, gleaming
nestled, settled in

until home slipped away again
lost under the grey skin
of masonry dust
and packed boxes.

But today at dinner
I felt it surge suddenly
in our open smiles
and easy talk

across the table
warm and sweet -
a kind of food
we have craved.

© David Loffman

A Book Review Frankenstein by Mary Shelly

I've read Frankenstein recently. I'm studying it with a first year literature class. So here is my review.

A novel in three volumes in which we read the journal of an arctic explorer whose ship is trapped by sea ice. He encounters Victor Frankenstein on a sleigh, close to death, chasing another sleigh navigated by an unknown but huge man.

When he has recovered a little Frankenstein tells his tale to the explorer. It is a moral tale warning against obsessive ambition and international fame.

Doctor Victor Frankenstein first fascinated by the work of alchemists and natural philosophers undertakes a degree at Ingolstadt during which he decides to create a living creature out of the dead limbs and organs of a dead person.

Eventually the creature is brought to life.

Immediately Frankenstein is revolted and disgusted by what he has created and falls ill under the strain of what he has done. A friend and fellow student called Henry Cherval looks after Victor.

Frankenstein recovers and continues to study at the university but under Henry’s example studies other languages.

Before returning home to his father, his bride to be and his two brothers he receives news that his younger brother has been murdered and an adopted sister has been blamed for the crime.

He returns home certain that the murderer is the creature - after cqatching sight of him in the mountains. The adopted sister who Victor had never met is found guilty and is executed. Two deaths.

Victor is filled with guilt, anger, revenge and disgust. He retreats to the mountains to escape his feelings and meets the creature. This meeting is explosive and Frankenstein wants to kill it. The creature persuades him to listen to his tale and journey, his struggle and defeat at being accepted by society.

Rejected by people it tells of a family who he watches secretly from a hovel he has made and develops loving and affectionate feelings towards him. He eventually makes himself known to them and they are totally repulsed by him. This final rejection is to much. He vows to be an enemy of humankind and to destroy his creator.

Searching for him he kills William – Victor’s brother and frames the adopted sister.

It demands Victor creates a female companion for it. And vows to kill Victor if he does not. Eventually Victor agrees and travels to a secluded area on Orkney, Scotland, accompanied by Henry Cherval. However Victor refuses to continue his work. He is sickened by it and fears what a male and female creature could achieve together as enemies to humanity.

On destroying his work he sails out to sea and lands in Ireland where he is arrested for the murder of – he later discovers – his friend Henry Cherval. He knows the creature killed him. He is freed, returns home and marries Elizabeth his long waiting bride to be. She is murdered on there wedding night and Victor devotes the rest of his life to hunting and destroying the creature. His father too dies broken hearted and weakened by the tragic events that have surrounded his life since the death of his wife of Scarlet Fever when Victor was still at home.

His chase leads him to the barren white wastes of the arctic ocean where he dies in the arms of his friend Robert Walton the polar explorer.

Walton witnesses the creature in Frankenstein’s cabin. It tells Walton he will travel to the Pole and there make a fire and destroy himself.

Walton returns south on a melting ocean with his crew and no longer seeks to discover the north pole. Here the tale of Frankenstein come to an end.

This is generally a badly written book. But is rescued by some engaging features.

Something different happens on every page. It is a page-turner and I genuinely wanted to know what happened and how it was achieved.

The creature’s character is interesting. A beautiful mind and sensibilities corrupted by Victor’s disgust and humanities prejudices against the unknown, the alien.

Some of the descriptions are beautifully realized for example, the setting of the novel, the Alps, Scotland are stunning.

However the book is over written. It could have been a third less in length at least.

Characters are not well drawn. They are superficial and uninteresting. Relationships are stereotyped, sentimental and gushing.

Much of the story is unrealistic and impractical and there are so many questions that the narrative just does not answer or address in any satisfactory way. For example how does the creature travel from Geneva to Scotland? How does it learn to speak, read or write so eloquently? There are many questions.

And yet what perhaps is the most successful feature of the novel are the moral and philosophical themes and issues it raises. For example, the novel asks, what is it to be human? It also discusses our responsibilities in science. And Frankenstein raises lots of issues around, parenting, paternity, individual identity, developments in artificial intelligence and genetic technologies.

One Hundred Words About Remeberance Day

Remembrance Day. I turn on the television and call the children down at ten thirty to watch the parade and wreath laying at The Cenotaph. We listen to David Dimbelbey’s commentary and the music of military bands. Dead leaves rustle and fall from the trees in Whitehall.

On that first stroke of silence tears begin to fill my eyes. The children keep silence with me, watching, curious, silenced also by the grey uniforms and the pale sombre expressions of all those remembering. Elgar’s Nimrod seems still to hang in the air, dark, weeping, smoulders like smoke from an autumn bonfire.

One Hundred Words About One Hundred Words

I’ve decided I’m a writer. I’ve come to this page several times over the week and almost got to the end of a line – then scrapped it. But here I am again wondering if I can carry it off this time.
Simon Hoggart usually manages to write three or four paragraphs each week in his column so why shouldn’t I? There are some simple answers to that but that would be something like making excuses for not writing anything and to even mention him in the same sentence as me is assuming far too much about my abilities. So there!

One Hundred Word Poem

Dear Pam

Here is a little variation on the one hundred words theme. Hope you like it.

D

New Home

Occasionally we get a glimpse
of our new home.

It rises up to us
fractured, vague, unfocussed
like rippled glass.

Until for a moment
clear and sharp,
it shines at us.
A promise
within our grasp.

And we stare
in silence,
unspoken hope
impatient longing.

Today we stopped
at a new shelf -
and a single saucepan, gleaming.

Then it slips away again
lost under the grey skin
of masonry dust.

I look out
from the margins
of our living room.

All the pieces
of our broken lives
slowly emerging whole
out of a black, lifeless deep.

(c) David Loffman

One Hundred Words About Wind

It feels as if we are travelling. Thick dark grey cloud has been surging in from the west all day. And then it thins to bleached grey, then white. There have been stretches of blue, clean and spotless but the cloud smothers in on high winds.

Last night the rain kept waking me. The sudden sharp slaps of water hit windowpane and guttering. Water knocked hard against the wall wanting to get in. I worried about it for a while.
Outside trees twist and shake under the furious weight of the wind whipping them. Branches fling themselves at the sky helpless.

One Hundred Words About A Desert

It is four O’clock in the morning. It is dark and the air is biting. Either the sky has begun to brighten or I have got used to the dim predawn light.

I can only hear our sleepy, dry voices. Out there in the thin light is silence and beyond that the broken wall of rock that drops down into the canyon, hundreds of meters below.

Then the sun comes like a knife over the mountains. And I stand in the shadow of the earth. Soldering light scolds the cracked rock. I watch my own shadow forming – in an instant.