Conversations with Colin Partridge - Literature Teacher
It was a fascinating exchange of emails,not only about the school but about teaching and literature and his life story. I present them here for those who would be interested to read them.
Colin Partridge was an English teacher extraordinaire at the City of Coventry boarding school -sometimes likened to keating in the Dead Poets Society film by Robin Williams.
Here is a link to the post already on this website..
Colin produced Boarder Magazine in the late 1950's - here are the the links to copies we have and some of the material he provided for the site.
Boarder Issue 1 Pdf
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-boarder-issue-1-school-magazine.html
Boarder issue 4 Edictorial etc.
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/02/boarder-july-1961-editorial-and-various.html
Boarder Issue 4 PDF
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/01/boarder-issue-no-4-july-1961-magazine.html
A Dialogue with Colin Partridge
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/04/dialogue-with-colin-partridge-teacher.html
The Literature Club
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/02/literature-club-colin-partridge.html
Staying Alive
https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/02/staying-alive-by-colin-partridge.html
Geoffrey Leech
Professor and Specialist in Stylistics - Cleobury Days.
December 2011 email from Colin Partridge to Trevor Teasdel
 |
| Geoffrey Leech |
"Trev Teasdel: Greetings from Canada! Thank you for email address and invitation to communicate.
Here is a piece of school history you may not be familiar with:
In summer term 1960, when the weather was glorious and the School was closed for approximately three weeks after a pupil was diagnosed with jaundice, a young post-graduate student from London University taught English alongside me at the school. As a young scholar in Linguistics, Geoffrey Leech was interested in all forms of speech, including the speech of the students... Slightly shy, he was best-known among them for his amiable manner and sparkling piano-playing.
Geoffrey Leech became the world-renowned Professor Leech, specialist in Stylistics and contributor to the new English Dictionary under the editorship of Randolph Quirk. Through him the School modestly contributed to the study and re-making of the English language.
(GOOGLE: Geoffrey Leech for fuller information)
Best wishes - Colin P.
Here is a piece of school history you may not be familiar with:
In summer term 1960, when the weather was glorious and the School was closed for approximately three weeks after a pupil was diagnosed with jaundice, a young post-graduate student from London University taught English alongside me at the school. As a young scholar in Linguistics, Geoffrey Leech was interested in all forms of speech, including the speech of the students... Slightly shy, he was best-known among them for his amiable manner and sparkling piano-playing.
Geoffrey Leech became the world-renowned Professor Leech, specialist in Stylistics and contributor to the new English Dictionary under the editorship of Randolph Quirk. Through him the School modestly contributed to the study and re-making of the English language.
(GOOGLE: Geoffrey Leech for fuller information)
Best wishes - Colin P.
(I did a blog around this on the site here https://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2011/12/geoffrey-leech-professor-and-specialist.html )
Trev's reply
It looks fascinating. I've done an initial bit of Googling on Geoffrey Leech and will look to do a post on Geoffrey.
I'd like to do a post on your work too. You have some interesting publications to your name.
 |
| George Gissing |
I have asked the guys to pass your message on to the Choppings (They are not online but sometimes view the site via their daughter!).
Your material is interesting to me as I taught Creative Writing for the Workers Educational Association and Leeds University Adult Education in North Yorkshire for many years.
I don't know if any of this will be of interest to you but the Yorkshire born Gissing reminded me of some of my own research -
I was involved with creating a Literary history site for the Teesside /North Yorkshire area in conjunction with the University of Teesside.
The area is usually portrayed as a 'literary desert' but we found evidence in the archives that the area was associated with the beginnings of English Lit - via Caedmon, the legend of Beowulf, Gower the Moral (Chaucer's mentor) and the Celtic bard Aneirin who wrote Y Gododdin.
A main source was George Markham Tweddell (who died the same year as George Gissing). In a link up with a Tweddell descendant (who was in Toronto at the time) we put the Tweddell history and work on line. This included collecting his poetry from journals and papers from Britain, USA and Canada etc.
Tweddell was a 19thC Printer / Publisher / Poet / Author / Chartist / People's historian / Freemason and much more from Stokesley, North Yorkshire.
I wrote an introduction to the poetry. Here is a link the introduction in case anyone you know
 |
| George Markham Tweddell |
A fuller history Tweddell - http://www.tweddellhistory.co.uk/
And the poetry can be found here as a free pdf file http://www.tweddellpoetry.co.uk/
(there is a further volume to come)
While Tweddell's books were confined to antiquarian shops and archives. Many are now downloadable on Google books and his Shakespeare and his Times seems to have been discovered in the States, now republished and on some University Literature syllabuses.
Thanks again Colin - appreciate the information you sent.
Trevor Teasdel
From Colin Partridge 27th Dec 2011
Trevor: It is wonderful to achieve contact with you! I came on the School site about three years ago but, as the comments were all from past pupils, I refrained from intruding. However I did send several emails to Michael McAvoy in New Zealand as he provided an address in his early posts. I recall him well and always admire his youthful integrity. But the system returned the emails saying they were not deliverable...I read your introduction to GMT with great pleasure. It brought back memories of my interest in provincial Victorian writers. My work on Gissing is the only printed expression of that early intellectual commitment. When I left Cleobury Mortimer on a scholarship to study at an American University 1961-62, at the first meeting of a graduate class at Johns Hopkins University, I met an attractive young woman. She was planning a career in Renaissance Studies, but I converted her to Victorian Studies. We became the closest friends. Her name
Back to Cleobury: I know little of what happened in the 1960s except for the tragic deaths of the headmaster and (later) his daughter. Mike Chopping wrote to me early in 1962, but there has been no communication between Mike and myself since. Do you know anything about Mr Elkins-Green? (He left school-teaching and tried professional soccer coaching but my attempts to get an email address from one of the teams he coached have been unavailing.) And John Cox: did he stay on through the 1960s or return to the North (Leeds) when he married delightful Eileen? What happened to Mr Oxendale and Mr Lambley? I still remember them all as they were, fifty years ago...
I kept a journal of my years at the School. I have no idea what is in it, but I know where to find it among voluminous papers. My major problem is eyesight which limits the time I can read paper... illumined screens are easier!
I sense in you a Fellow Spirit...and am delighted to meet you via the internet. Congratulations to you and colleagues on making a wonderful site for the world to enjoy.
WEA: My last teaching job in England was a week-long summer school course for WEA at University College, Bangor. The course ended on a Saturday early in August 1968; the next Tuesday I was aboard ship out of Liverpool for Montreal, an eager emigrant, disillusioned with Sixties Britain! But I walked into the most radical student unrest in all North America here at the University of Victoria... I wished for the discipline of the City of Coventry Boarding School!
In my previous email to you I wrote that a pupil was diagnosed with jaundice. CORRECTION: I think it was a member of administrative staff and the students were not allowed to return to "campus" for several weeks in April-May 1960.
Thank you for sharing GMT with me. I envy your lively writing style! (My prose rhythms are older and tireder!) - Best wishes, Colin.
I kept a journal of my years at the School. I have no idea what is in it, but I know where to find it among voluminous papers. My major problem is eyesight which limits the time I can read paper... illumined screens are easier!
I sense in you a Fellow Spirit...and am delighted to meet you via the internet. Congratulations to you and colleagues on making a wonderful site for the world to enjoy.
WEA: My last teaching job in England was a week-long summer school course for WEA at University College, Bangor. The course ended on a Saturday early in August 1968; the next Tuesday I was aboard ship out of Liverpool for Montreal, an eager emigrant, disillusioned with Sixties Britain! But I walked into the most radical student unrest in all North America here at the University of Victoria... I wished for the discipline of the City of Coventry Boarding School!
In my previous email to you I wrote that a pupil was diagnosed with jaundice. CORRECTION: I think it was a member of administrative staff and the students were not allowed to return to "campus" for several weeks in April-May 1960.
Thank you for sharing GMT with me. I envy your lively writing style! (My prose rhythms are older and tireder!) - Best wishes, Colin.
..................
Trev's reply
Thanks for your comments on GMT and the writing.
David partridge, who remembers your teaching methods fondly, has said you are welcome to email him......
He is more likely to remember some of the teachers you mentioned as he was in his 5th year when I joined in 1962.
I have contacted Keith Ison who visited the Choppings recently to see if i can get a direct contact for them. It may well be snail mail!
The post about Geoffrey is now on the blog. Paul Williamson remembered the lively piano playing!
I was quite interested in semantics and linguistics back in the 70's, although not to anywhere near the extent that Geoffrey is! I wonder if I read one of his books at the time. It's quite possible but I would have no idea of his connection with the school.
I haven't read his book on the language of the advertisers but I was quite interested in Liverpool poet Adrian Henri's idea that his language was the language of the Ad men. Copywriters use the techniques of poetry to entice us to buy and poets and lyricists (especially in the 60's) use the language of the ad men to create new meanings, word combinations and sounds. I always encouraged my students to experiment with different vocabularies, that of a workplace, news media, sociologists. It to break them out of their notions of what the language of poetry is or can be and play around with word combinations and meaning.
I'm surprised I haven't read Martha's book. I was very interested in Broadside ballads and printing etc around the mid 70's and read books like a Touch on the Times. I will try and get hold of it.
As for the journal - would scanning it solve the problem as then you'd be able to read it on the computer and, depending on the programme you use, create edits from it.
I was involved with the WEA for many years, as a regular student in the Coventry during the late 70's and as a tutor and branch secretary in Middlesbrough for about 15 years and more recently I worked as a Development Worker for WEA until the European funding dried up and we were made redundant!
Much of its work was curtailed when the Learning and Skills Council took over its core funding. Courses had to be more vocational and a lot of its funding allocated to teaching basic skills to post 16 years olds!! Quite what schools are doing if all that core funding for adult education and liberal studies is going towards basic skills for post 16 year olds!! My development job was to work in deprived communities and enable people with little or no qualifications to take up non threatening basic course and try and progress them into further education.
Thanks for all the information Colin
Trevor
.....................
To Colin From Trevor January 2012
Hope you had a decent Christmas and New Year.
Lots of developments on the blogging!
Paul Williamson has sent me a copy of The Boarder from July 1962 and I hope to receive a 1958 edition from Michael Billings on Saturday.
I've noted your involvement in the magazine and what a brilliant time-capsule it has proved! I am most impressed with the range of information, the reportage and creative writing in it. It's a great shame it didn't continue after you left.
I have added it as a pdf file for people to download and I'm busy constructing articles using the information therein. it really has provided a great insight into the range of activities at the school back then - some which never continued after some of the key staff left. I note also the mention of the Literature club.
I'm looking forward to seeing what gems the 1958 issue has to offer!
The daughters of two headmasters have started to supply information - Alison Rowland and Aileen Parker. Aileen has put me in touch with Pat Bryan of Neen Savage, who, I think was involved in the war period along with her husband. I'm not quite sure how as yet but it will be another learning journey in regard to the school's history.
Alison Rowland said this of her father, which is interesting I think
" I find the whole social history aspect fascinating, particularly the development of a local authority version of a public school education. I think it was part of the whole post-war 'leveling' process, and something my father was very interested in. He was from a very modest background, but had (I think) won a scholarship to Solihull School, and went on from there to build a successful academic career. He was passionate about learning (and couldn't pass a bookshop, whether new or second-hand, without buying something), and wanted a good education to be available to all, although I'm not sure, from some of his personal writing, that he was convinced that boarding was really the best option."
From your information, I've written a piece on Geoffrey Leech - if there's anything I should add or change - let me know. http://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2011/12/geoffrey-leech-professor-and-specialist.html
I hope to do a post on you if that's ok. I haven't found a photo of you so far though but I have found the Fond's and some links to your books.
Thanks for all your help and support so far and all the best for the New year.
Trevor
...
From Colin
Hallo, Trevor: I wanted to write you but have had difficulty reading following the cataract surgery. This is just a note to say I was attracted to working at the school because it was one of (allegedly) two state-financed boarding schools. The 1944 Education Act made provision for these throughout the country but the provision was never implemented in the decades of postwar austerity. Somehow Wyre Farm School mutated into a version of the state-financed boarding school!!! Headmaster Morris was probably the key-figure in this transition.I will reply more fully to you when my eye "settles" - the verb the ophthalmologist uses... Apologies, Colin.
.....................
Follow on from Colin
Please let me know specifically how I can help you.
We have intellectual interests in common... I mentioned some after reading your research work. In addition, advertising was a keen interest for me when working at the school (I'd spent three months in film advertising after coming out of the army in 1955); and "reading" landscape was a hobby which I tried to introduce in some classes. A major influence on me then was an Observer journalist named Ian Nairn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Nairn) who, like Mr Rowland, died too young. "Learn to see how a wrongly placed telephone pole defaces an entire landscape..."
I've been reminded of Ludlow by the BBC television series on Towns by Nicholas Crane. I recalled taking some of my V form literature class in May or June 1961 to a performance of Macbeth, which we were studying for O levels, at Ludlow castle. The experience has always remained an "event" in my life - on a beautiful sunny spring day seeing a Shakespeare play about seizure of power in a castle, near an area in the grounds where English administrators had governed my native Wales for several centuries... And, returning to school for a late meal, the students seemed visibly impressed after hearing the dark words and seeing the grim deeds against the grey walls and towers of a real castle. . . But I can't remember how we travelled: did I drive a small group in my car or did somebody else drive us to Ludlow and back in a larger vehicle?
Enjoyed your piece on Geoff Leech. Keep writing!
Reading Michael McAvoy's article in The Boarder brought back memories of editing the magazine at the small desk in my room in Mortimer House in the warm spring of 1961. I had completely forgotten... (see the links for copies of the school Boarder Magazine)
My thanks to David Partridge for his kind reminiscences. I read them aloud at a party with former university students here in a pub at christmas. Nobody could guess what a "conkerbonker" could be. I think the word was directed from nature to a teacherly instrument by a young student with a satirical eye and a gift for writing superb English - Neil Blackford. Whatever became of Neil...?
Best wishes and thank you for your patience - Colin.
............................
This next email is the autobiography Colin Partridge sent to me for the School website on which there is an illustrated version - see the above links for 'staying Alive'
I started school in my native Cardiff in 194O walking with a brown satchel over one shoulder and a plain cardboard box dangling from a white string over the other. Inside the box was a gas mask. Arriving in class, excitedly practicing for an air-raid, we would try speaking through the tight black rubber. We laughed at our nasal voices or peered at each other through the eye-holes astonished by the laboured sound of our own breathing. Staying alive in a gas-mask demanded effort.
When the light bomber planes came in 1941 women and children rushed from redbrick Victorian houses to arched steel air-raid shelters erected in the gardens. Men held candles or torches, guiding them before going back to the street to stand in doorways near buckets of sand or water. The gantries and tall cranes of a steelworks dedicated to armaments production loomed over the area. It was the objective for enemy pilots. The works had been built on firm ground; the terraces of workers housing stood on marshier land. Water seeped into the scientifically designed shelters rendering some useless and forcing neighbours to share. In candlelit darkness squatting on small chairs or a bunk-bed, conversation rose and fell, interspersed only by an occasional “Jesus save us” from an aged female voice. The increasing roar of approaching aircraft engines usually brought louder prayers and, after an explosion, tangible silence.
One night several bombs struck the primary school at the end of the street. As children we were delighted. But the middle-aged husbands and fathers acting as civilian firefighters did an efficient job. Only the third level of the school was destroyed – and never rebuilt. Classes resumed within a week and the school functions with extended facilities to the present day.
In 1944, during the last raid on the city, an incendiary bomb almost annihilated the street. But instead of hitting the slate roof of the next-door house and setting alight the wooden rafters, it fell onto the pavement inches away from the brick front-wall. My father – a middle-aged gantry-crane driver at the steel works and volunteer firefighter at night – told me it protruded like an arrow stuck in stone. He had grabbed the fizzing bomb and pressed it into a bucket of sand provided for such a purpose. The perfect round hole made by the incendiary in the stone pavement remained, ignored by all, until the whole area – works and houses – was demolished in the 1970s to turn the factory land and working-class suburb into an industrial estate. (The few surviving streets of the area and the squat school, deprived of its third storey) can be seen on Google map: Moorland Road Primary School, Cardiff, UK. I was born and lived in a house on the street which led into the school. It has vanished and the land of the former street has become part of a small park.)
By the 1970s much had changed in my life. I had completed military service receiving wonderful training to become a Russian translator, studied English and American literatures at Nottingham University, taught English at Cleobury Mortimer, attended graduate school for a year in the United States and another year at London University, obtained a doctorate, lectured for five years at Manchester University, decided that academic opportunities were limited in Britain and emigrated from Liverpool to Montreal on a liner filled to capacity with mostly British emigrants including 450 female teachers. The crossing held moments of high interest, especially as we approached the Canadian coast sailing at night through massive icebergs, trying not to think of the Titanic and yearning for human warmth.
It was summer 1968. Most migrants had planned to settle in Ontario but my destination was far-away Victoria, British Columbia, on the West Coast of Canada. I had to travel for days by train across country.
I was moving from insular confinement to vast space. And unknowingly, I had taken a job at a new university where students were vibrant with American pop-culture, intoxicated with political causes, experienced in the use of marijuana and anxious to administer the university. Small groups were vociferous, bringing forth ever larger demands for recognition of their rights. Leaders wore Che Guevara berets. Followers shouted eloquent slogans. Crowds assembled outside lecture-rooms and invaded faculty meetings. But, although the students claimed they were socially repressed, I had never met so many young people who already enjoyed so much freedom…
They were part of a larger movement which was not understood at the time.
Over the following decades it led to student empowerment. Young people were seen to have human rights. They need not be foreordained to live by institutional rules. They could assist in governance and share adult responsibilities.
If bureaucrats in Coventry in the 1970s had understood this international democratizing trend, the City of Coventry Boarding School might have become the scene of a great educational experiment. But the school was closed and an opportunity irrevocably lost.
In Canada by 1975 student challenges to university governance had diminished. A newly elected provincial Labour government in British Columbia had given students, elected by their peers, seats on the Senate and the right to attend and vote with faculty on administrative committees at universities throughout the province. The system remains and the University of Victoria has benefitted from student presence and commitment.
Victoria, like Harrogate and Cheltenham, is known as a retirement town. From all over Canada, the retirees come seeking peace and quiet. After seven years of student unrest, when the protesters gained what they wanted, quiet returned.
And in this more sedate post-1975 environment I slowly climbed the academic ladder publishing articles and books, mostly on literary subjects. As a side-line, I attempted creative writing but with no financial success.
The university has grown; its reputation is established.
And I, now old, feel happy that, in a small way, I have contributed to its life.
But staying alive, even without a gas-mask, still demands effort.
Colin Partridge
............
Colin, this is an evocative sail through the times, detailing your story and making some good points along the way. I know Sarah Williams (daughter of Ken Williams - deputy head from 1964) will love this one. Thank you so much for taking the time and trouble to write this.
I will try and get some location shots of the places you mention to illustrate it.
Oh, the recent photo of you never arrived though.
Thanks again Colin, enjoyed reading this. in a way it reminded me a bit of Liverpool poet Adrian Henri's Autobiographical poem which was written in a stream of consciousness style and evoked the senses about growing up in Birkenhead.
I think that piece works on its own so I may create a second but associated post with information about the Literature club and your authorship etc.
Trevor
Trev's reply to the article
I will try and get some location shots of the places you mention to illustrate it.
Oh, the recent photo of you never arrived though.
Thanks again Colin, enjoyed reading this. in a way it reminded me a bit of Liverpool poet Adrian Henri's Autobiographical poem which was written in a stream of consciousness style and evoked the senses about growing up in Birkenhead.
I think that piece works on its own so I may create a second but associated post with information about the Literature club and your authorship etc.
Trevor
....................
From Colin
Thank you, Trevor, for your kind words. I appreciate association with Adrien Henri and am flattered.I have no copy of the recent photograph. It was taken in his apartment by a 90-year-old friend who prides himself on his computer skills. He tried very hard to please me and I haven't the courage to tell him things didn't work...
Can you download images from Google Map? If so, bring up street level view of
36 Aberystwyth Street, Splott, Cardiff, UK. That house was exactly behind the house (now demolished) where I spent my childhood. It is an almost perfect replica. Aberystwyth is the ONLY street that remains of the demolished suburb of similar terraced workers houses that extended, row after row, about a mile in depth.
Cruise up Aberystwyth Street, number 36 on your right, and you will come to The Old Library in Singleton Road. (If blocked, type in Singleton Road.) Here I gained my love of reading and literature. Although dilapidated, the single-storey old library is still a handsome building matching the architecture of the primary school.
Backwards, Singleton Road intersects with Hinton Street. Cruise along Hinton Street and read carefully the houses on the left facing the park (and invisible primary school). Distinguish between old houses with elaborate doorways and newer ones which are more functional. The newer ones, 1948-ish efforts, replaced houses that were bombed. (The site provided a bomb-patch playing-ground in my post-war childhood! More importantly it will give a sense of the extent of the bomb-damage which extended to larger houses in adjoining Marion Street where the difference in building styles can also be read.)
If you can upload a selection, they should prove photogenic and attract readers.
Thank you for your kind interest. This sort of history is vanishing. - Colin.
...............................
Trev's reply
Have downloaded some of the pictures from Google street view. I think I've located them right and found some supplementary material. Will have a go at uploading your piece now.
Meanwhile attached are excerpts from Adrian Henri's Autobiography poem. The stylistics
 |
| Part of Adrian Henri's Autobiography poem |
I used these pieces, taken from Abbs and Richardson's - Forms of Poetry - Cambridge University Press in my beginners creative writing courses. I would put them in pairs and get them to interview each other about their earliest memories for ten minutes and then they'd feed the memories back to the class to evoke more memories (generating raw material and life experiences). Then I'd read them the Adrian Henri piece. They would note the use of the senses in Henri's piece and note how the most vivid memories were linked to strong emotions like fear or joy. Then we'd start the writing process in class, in a stream of consciousness style, not stopping to correct or think about it so the critical mind didn't inhibit the creative mind or undermine confidence. Criticism and spell checking could come later. They would read some of it out.
Having generated some raw material they would work it up into a more developed piece for homework and group discussion the next week. Most of the students had been made redundant from the steel or chemical industries on Teesside or were retired or housewives with little or no formal education beyond school. It seemed to work and we got some great pieces out of the classes.
...
Colin's Reply
Thank you, Trevor, for your research. Hope you enjoyed exploring a part of Cardiff! It's possible, if you reproduce photographs, to omit the sentences in parenthesis in my evocation. You decide, if you haven't already.
I finished translating a poem from the Roman Empire this afternoon. I came on the poem yesterday, by chance, and it haunted me. Some images from the original have been omitted; the poem has life without them; including them would make it stumble or stagger... Thought I would share the effort with you. Email sent separately.
You are right in thinking creative writers must find images. Your teaching method seems admirable and the students were lucky to have someone willing to venture (with them) into their secret past. In those spaces, people can quickly become afraid.
Henri is good although some lines could be cut without loss to the total recollection. I like his mention of collarless shirt always with stud... - authentic, priceless information! The old men often wore `mufflers``, usually black, over their collarless shirts and parrots were part of many a household in 1930s.
Thank you for your kindness and encouragement - Colin.
I finished translating a poem from the Roman Empire this afternoon. I came on the poem yesterday, by chance, and it haunted me. Some images from the original have been omitted; the poem has life without them; including them would make it stumble or stagger... Thought I would share the effort with you. Email sent separately.
You are right in thinking creative writers must find images. Your teaching method seems admirable and the students were lucky to have someone willing to venture (with them) into their secret past. In those spaces, people can quickly become afraid.
Henri is good although some lines could be cut without loss to the total recollection. I like his mention of collarless shirt always with stud... - authentic, priceless information! The old men often wore `mufflers``, usually black, over their collarless shirts and parrots were part of many a household in 1930s.
Thank you for your kindness and encouragement - Colin.
..................................
H O R A C E ODE 3. 15
Abandon now your wanton ways
- Wife of poor despised Ibycus -
Give up now and utterly
Your disgusting notoriety.
Mounting years bring death much closer
Than intimate games of yearning virgins:
What’s appropriate for daughter Pholys
Does not suit you, Mother Chloris.
Leave your daughter to assault
Young males’ frontal freshness;
Sex-crazed by a beating drum,
She’s the goat now wild with heat.
Spinning wool expertly shorn
Now suits you better, mother dear,
Than throbbing harp, a virgin’s rose,
A dreg-dry wine-jar.
...
Trev's reply
Trev's reply
I agree that there is quite a bit of repetition in Henri that sometimes gets in the way. I got to see them many times both at the Uni in Coventry and the arts centres up north. I also interviewed Roger McGough and Brian Patten for a local magazine. They were always very approachable and mixed in with the audience.
Brian told a story on stage about one of his early poems that made it to the O'level syllabus. I can't remember the poem or the word but it sounding very obscure and the examiners had built a question around it. Something like "Why does Mr Patten use the word ....... in line....". Brian explained to the audience that far from being a 'special word', he was just 'a lousy speller' and the editor had picked up his mistake!!
As for Horace - I haven't read much Horace before although I certainly know of him. I remember we did a history of Ideas module on 'The Greeks' for the Humanities degree. I think everyone was quite surprised to read Lysistrata by Aristophanes and realise the ancient Greeks and employed the same kind of innuendos and jokes as well as being people of great philosophical ideas!
The subject matter reminded me a bit of Martial, although he wrote in an epigrammatic style. Martial was also a surprise and brings it home that classical writers are human too!.
I have found some of Horace's work online and will now have a read through them. As I'm not familiar with Latin, I can't compare them to the original and I understand translation can be difficult, especially where poetry is concerned with it's metaphor and shades of meaning, so I admire anyone who can do that.
The version of 3.15 on this site http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceOdesBkIII.htm#_Toc40263860 indeed does seems to employ more imagery but not knowing the original, I'm not sure how much has been put there by the translator. I did read that it's the rhythm rather than the rhyme scheme that's important in the original but i do like both the rhythm and rhyme of the first two lines in that version
O, dear wife of poor Ibycus,
put an end to your wickedness,
and I do like some of the touches of alliteration and assonance in lines like suited to storming the houses of lovers,
but whether this effect is in the original I can't say. There must be a lot of decisions a translator has to make eg to convey the meaning and stick closely to the original or to present the poem according to the mores of English poetry. The anthology of Arthur Rimbaud's poetry I had juxtaposed the original next to a prose translation - perhaps losing it's symbolism or metaphor. I have since read poetical translations on line but still wonder what has been lost and gained in translation.
You've certainly made me think about translation and I will have a read through the poems by Horace. But first to publish your article!
.......................
From Colin
Please CHANGE my birth date to 1934. (The Fond people got it wrong.)
It you wanted a contrast from Google Map you could get a photograph of scraggly hedge and house roof of my present home (Victoria, B.C.).
As for books you might add (if you choose):
- Senso, a translation of the novella and discussion of the film
- Tristana, a translation of the novel and discussion of the film
- Yuri Trifonov: the Moscow Cycle
- Moonshine Sketches of a Small Campus
They are usually available second-hand - some at preposterous prices, some as giveaways! The easiest reference to most of my books is Library of Congress. Type in: C.J.Partridge (Colin Partridge 1934- ) But Library of Congress has mixed me up with a Partridge from Guernsey who writes about the island during the occupation years... Not me!
Translation is a fascinating subject. Ezra Pound was a great literary hero, introducing me to translation, when young. (I recall struggling to translate Russian poems in the small room in Dudley house but lacking a dictionary to check meanings!) This translation from Horace is in Pound's style. I left out a few images to keep the poem moving and to make sharper contrasts between NOW and THEN. There are many English versions of Horace, one of the greatest of all poets, but he is so evocative it's impossible to establish an exact translation. And he also uses a technique of overlapping meanings - adding further complex meaning before a reader has fully absorbed meaning from a previous word or phrase. You are right: Martial learned a lot from Horace's satires - and diatribes, like the one I translated. The real or imaginary woman the poet is urging to adopt housewifely ways (through the imagery of wool) was probably aged 30 - 40. The Romans on average lived into their forties or, at most, fifties. But they packed into those decades a lot of living...
Thank you for everything. I read some more of The Bulletin over the weekend. Memories return and - yes - the students' creative contributions are very worthy. I can't remember how they were gathered though I seem to remember asking for some from particular students.
Best wishes - Colin.
...........................
From Colin
" Jim is still with us – and in reasonable health, as far as I know. He was a minister in Brighton & Hove for many years, before retiring to Sidmouth, where he and his wife, Angela, still live. I would guess that Jim is about 81/82?"
Although I got a Google Maps shot of the school, it had scaffolding or builders around it so I Googled the picture and I think the one I blogged was on a site about John Humphries!
Will make the changes and find the picture. Sounds like your neighbourhood has changed just a bit then!
Great shame your books are out of print although they seem to working towards making all books available (for free if out of copyright and for sale if in) on Google books. Many of the Tweddell books are now available after years of only being available from antiquarian shops. Previously his Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham cost £50! I noticed on amazon your novel Thunderbird was going for £35 second hand.
Talking of Ezra Pound, I used to use some of the Imagist poems as examples in my teaching as a follow on to Japanese syllable count poetry.
Right, I'll have a go at the amendments now.
Trevor
..............
Hi Colin,Have put together a post for the Literature Club http://wyrefarmed.blogspot.com/2012/02/literature-club-colin-partridge.html
In the Boarder article Neil has the Female of the Species as by John Wyndham. I'm not aware of it being by Wyndham only Kipling and have added his name. I checked on line and can not find it in Wyndham's book lists. was this a mistake or have I missed something. I couldn't find an author for the The Fly or the Inn.
Trevor
..............
From Colin
Thank you, Trevor, for the queries. Yes, I was puzzled by some of the entries on the blog page. I think Neale (this may be the correct spelling) Blackford confused some material.
I've just found in my library here one of the anthologies I used: The Mystery Book, editor H. Douglas Thomson (1934). I had relished this book, after finding it in a used bookshop as an adolescent in the late 1940s, and delighted in sharing my reading-thrills with pupils a decade later.
I recall using Wilkie Collins' classic Victorian story "A Terribly Strange Bed" and that had an impact on the listeners. Other stories from the anthology possibly used were Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", Lord Dunsany's "A Night at an Inn", Bram Stoker's "The Judge's House."
H.G.Wells' novel "The Island of Dr Moreau" was the most popular of all presentations but I can't remember if I abridged and read it in class, or at the Literature Club, or both. (Dr Moreau was made into a film around 1979 and I've often wondered if former pupils recalled the reading and went to see the film.)
"The Fly", possibly French in origin, was the original story on which the horror film "The Fly" with Vincent Price was based. Can't recall the author but the story was appreciated perhaps because the film was not then available to young audiences; it's now a cult movie. It may have come from the First or Second Pan Book of Horror Stories, published around 1960.
Can't recall "The Female of the Species". Kipling invented the phrase in a poem but I would not have used the poem. I remember working on something by Wyndham who was very difficult to edit/shorten/dramatize - so difficult I didn't present him a second time. Maybe something from the Pan Book of Horror Stories...? My copies of the books have not survived.
I certainly read a great story from world literature which brought gasps of fear in candlelit wintry darkness. Again, as with Collins and Dunsany, the setting was an inn. (Did listeners identify the boarding school with a country-inn?) The story is a classic in Romanian literature - I.L.Caragiale's "The Easter Torch" - still superb to read and ruminate upon. And I was planning to use Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" as a follow-up but for some reason kept deferring and never read it.
CORRECTION. I yesterday learned that Shirley Bassey was born and brought up at 132 Portmanmoor Road. This was the main road onto which all the lesser streets, like Aberystwyth, opened. On Portmanmoor Road the houses were larger. The photograph you posted of the road and the girls with the skipping rope startled me. The image was so familiar, including the head of a watchful grandmother poking out of the front door. Even the outlines of the bomb damage are a part of my consciousness. I waited for many a bus to town standing nearby staring at that gap in the road...
Yes - my neighbours are very different these days. Of course I have no social contact with the power-elite at Government House but I've been amused to know that, on a few special occasions, Royal Heads were sleeping within two hundred feet of MY bedroom! As I write, the sun gleams on the grey stone of Government House dominating the hill behind my house. The trees are still leafless. But soon much of the estate will be hidden in decorous spring green... - Best wishes, Colin.
I've just found in my library here one of the anthologies I used: The Mystery Book, editor H. Douglas Thomson (1934). I had relished this book, after finding it in a used bookshop as an adolescent in the late 1940s, and delighted in sharing my reading-thrills with pupils a decade later.
I recall using Wilkie Collins' classic Victorian story "A Terribly Strange Bed" and that had an impact on the listeners. Other stories from the anthology possibly used were Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", Lord Dunsany's "A Night at an Inn", Bram Stoker's "The Judge's House."
H.G.Wells' novel "The Island of Dr Moreau" was the most popular of all presentations but I can't remember if I abridged and read it in class, or at the Literature Club, or both. (Dr Moreau was made into a film around 1979 and I've often wondered if former pupils recalled the reading and went to see the film.)
"The Fly", possibly French in origin, was the original story on which the horror film "The Fly" with Vincent Price was based. Can't recall the author but the story was appreciated perhaps because the film was not then available to young audiences; it's now a cult movie. It may have come from the First or Second Pan Book of Horror Stories, published around 1960.
Can't recall "The Female of the Species". Kipling invented the phrase in a poem but I would not have used the poem. I remember working on something by Wyndham who was very difficult to edit/shorten/dramatize - so difficult I didn't present him a second time. Maybe something from the Pan Book of Horror Stories...? My copies of the books have not survived.
I certainly read a great story from world literature which brought gasps of fear in candlelit wintry darkness. Again, as with Collins and Dunsany, the setting was an inn. (Did listeners identify the boarding school with a country-inn?) The story is a classic in Romanian literature - I.L.Caragiale's "The Easter Torch" - still superb to read and ruminate upon. And I was planning to use Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" as a follow-up but for some reason kept deferring and never read it.
CORRECTION. I yesterday learned that Shirley Bassey was born and brought up at 132 Portmanmoor Road. This was the main road onto which all the lesser streets, like Aberystwyth, opened. On Portmanmoor Road the houses were larger. The photograph you posted of the road and the girls with the skipping rope startled me. The image was so familiar, including the head of a watchful grandmother poking out of the front door. Even the outlines of the bomb damage are a part of my consciousness. I waited for many a bus to town standing nearby staring at that gap in the road...
Yes - my neighbours are very different these days. Of course I have no social contact with the power-elite at Government House but I've been amused to know that, on a few special occasions, Royal Heads were sleeping within two hundred feet of MY bedroom! As I write, the sun gleams on the grey stone of Government House dominating the hill behind my house. The trees are still leafless. But soon much of the estate will be hidden in decorous spring green... - Best wishes, Colin.
..................
From Trevor
There was a period at FE college in the 70's when I got into pre-revolutionary Russian literature. It was a social studies course and for Social Psychology we looked briefly at Phenomenology and was asked to read Crime and Punishment. - it's a bit dark but a novel that made a big impact on me. Dostoevsky seemed to freeze-frame human psychology some how. His description of how Raskolnikov felt when he was on the way to do the deed, and how he noticed everything that he would normal ignore or not be conscious of reminded me of how it felt on the the last day of the summer holidays before returning to the school. Suddenly things that didn't matter had meaning as you were leaving. You suddenly became attached to them as you were leaving. Sartre would probably have something to say about that - attachment - if not the Tao de Ching!
For A Level literature, at the same time we were studying the New men - CP Snow and Portrait of a Lady - Henry James. After reading Crime and Punishment, I found it really hard to get started on CP Snow. Dostoevsky had me hooked with his drama and depth and insights into the human psyche where as Snow seemed superficial in comparison. I had a similar problem with James although his brother coined the term stream of consciousness.
The O Level books were better - James Joyce Portrait of an Artist - although set in a Catholic boarding school, rang true in many ways.
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was another book on the O level list. I did the CSE at school but the O level at college.
.............
From Colin
Trevor: You were lucky to encounter Dostoyevsky at an early age. Yes - he makes his work stick with you - figures of guilt or figures of obsessive commitment. Trouble is there are no English equivalents for some of the Russian words he uses to analyze these states of mind. So a Russian reader gets something different from his texts. Of course, "Queen of Spades" is a precursor to "Crime and Punishment". And, in trying to recall Cleobury days, I think my reluctance to present the Pushkin story was that I didn't want to introduce to a closed community the notion of a young man murdering an older woman. The school seemed to have a reverence for the few women visible (the Matron, Secretary Dilys (later Mrs Plaice) and the maids. Mrs Webb, Mrs Oxendale, Mrs Lambley were rarely seen.) It seemed inadvisable to invade that space with the slightest hint of violence. C.P. Snow is crap. Henry James offers a rarified world difficult to enter. He brought form to the serialized victorian novel, adapting techniques from Turgenev and Flaubert. But then he became verbose...and the old distinction has some truth:
As a novelist he wrote like a philosopher and his brother, a philosopher, wrote like a novelist.
In the mid-sixties, I became briefly an examiner for O level exams. Although the papers arrived in an anonymous bunch I was amazed to discern the distinctly different impressions made by teachers on pupils. Suddenly teaching was visible! One could instantly tell when one was shifting from a group taught by Teacher A to a group taught by Teacher B. Bad teaching, usually a form of indoctrination, abounded. But good teaching had allowed the pupils' characters to appear and produced some exam-answers memorable to this day.
But now that's all long ago and far away - best wishes, Colin.
.................
From Trevor
I probably wrote more about the links with James and Turgenev in the exam which was probably not what the examiner was looking for. I don't think I had a serious attitude to exams at the time, I was doing the course to widen my knowledge and improve my writing skills. It wasn't until I did my degree and needed the piece of paper that I conformed a bit more.
Sarah Williams (daughter of Ken Williams who replaced Mr Lambley) has asked me to thank you for your notes on texts studied by the Literature Club. Sarah, now a retired social worker, is using her new found leisure to do some creative writing.
Trevor
..........................
No comments:
Post a Comment