Itchy Feet
This month, after various columns recounting war, plague and Russian regicide, I thought I might list a few volumes of travel writing—always a favourite reading pleasure of mine. And where better to select them from then the renowned Eland Books. This small, independent publisher—founded by writer John Hatt in 1982 and named after a large spiral-horned African antelope—makes it their mission to rescue travel writing classics from undeserved obscurity. Their reappearance is enhanced in handsome paperback editions.
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy ($29.99, PB)
On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India. I’ve never forgotten the exact spot on a hill near my home at Lismore, County Waterford, where the decision was made and it seemed to me then, as it still seems to me now, a logical decision, based on the discoveries that cycling was a most satisfactory method of transport and that (excluding the USSR for political reasons) the way to India offered fewer watery obstacles than any other destination at a similar distance...However, I was a cunning child so I kept my ambition to myself, thus avoiding the tolerant amusement it would have provoked among my elders. I did not want to be soothingly assured that this was a passing whim because I was quite confident that one day I would cycle to India. That was at the beginning of December 1941, and on 14 January 1963, I started to cycle from Dunkirk towards Delhi. Legendary cyclist/traveller Dervla Murphy’s (b.1931) first travel book (originally published 1965)—25 more were to follow—recounts her solo journey riding her bicycle, which she dubbed Rozinante, after Don Quixote’s horse, through Persia & Afghanistan—with which she becomes completely enamoured. The Ghorband Valley—at the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush—is compared to the Garden of Eden and the ancient city of Herat is ‘absolute enchantment’. She continues on, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and then India. Among her equipment she carried a revolver, which was to prove most useful on several occasions.
A Dragon Apparent: Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam by Norman Lewis ($34.95, PB)
On the morning of the fourth day the dawn light daubed our faces as we came down through the skies of Cochin-China…With engines throttled back the plane dropped from sur-Alpine heights in a tremorless glide, settling in the new, morning air of the plains like a dragonfly on the surface of a calm lake. As the first rays of the sun burst through the magenta mists that lay along the horizon, the empty sketching of the child’s painting book open beneath us received a wash of green. Now lines were ruled lightly across it. A yellow penciling of roads and blue of canals....A colonel of the Foreign Legion awoke uneasily… and peered down. We were passing over a road that seemed to be strangely notched at intervals. ‘The defence towers,’ murmured the colonel, smiling with gentle appreciation. A few minutes later there was another moment of interest as we passed above that gauzily-traced chequer-board of fields and ditches. Down there in the abyss, unreal in their remoteness, were a few huts, gathered where the ruler-drawn lines of roads crossed each other. From them a wisp of incense curled towards us. To have been seen so clearly from this height it must have been a great, billowing cloud of smoke. There was a circle of specks in the yellow fields round the village. ‘Une opération,’ the colonel said. Norman Lewis (1908–2003) once described his style of writing as one that produced ‘revealing little descriptions; I think of myself as the semi-invisible man’. In 1950, he travelled to French Indochina and produced this subtle, elegant account of the twilight of European colonialism and of a land and people shortly before catastrophic change (originally published 1951).
The Living Goddess by Isabella Tree ($29.99, PB) Without warning, a child appears at an ornately carved window on the second floor. She could be six, eight or nine years old. It is impossible to tell. She gazes sternly down on the assembled foreigners, pouting slightly, looking mildly inconvenienced. Her eyes are huge, exaggerated with thick lines of kohl reaching all the way to her temples. She is dressed entirely in red, her lips bright red; her hair bound up tightly in a topknot; gold ornaments around her neck and bangles on her wrists. Her tiny fingers, their nails painted red, clasp a wooden rail across the bottom of the window with the command of a captain at the ship’s helm. There are awed murmurs and even some applause. The child’s expression does not falter. Lowering his voice, the guide explains, ‘She does not smile. If she did, it would be an invitation to heaven and you would die.’ Just as suddenly, the child is gone, reabsorbed into the shadows, leaving only a flutter of red curtains. The little girl is Nepal’s ‘Living Goddess’, one of the sightseeing landmarks of Kathmandu, the face in every guidebook and on every tourist poster. To Nepalis she is known as ‘Kumari’—the word for a virgin or unmarried girl. She is believed to manifest a powerful Goddess who protects Kathmandu and watches over the country and all its citizens. All-seeing, all-knowing, she is said to have eyes in the past and the future, and to see everything that goes on in the present. She has the power to cure illnesses, to remove obstacles in the way of happiness, to bestow immeasurable blessings on those pure of heart. She is said to punish the wicked with a single withering stare.
20
In 1983, Isabella Tree was an 18-year-old student backpacking through the Himalayas when she first sighted the Kumari. Two decades later, she began research into the centuries old Nepalese Kumari tradition and has produced a fascinating blend of history, culture and mythology. Stephen Reid
Blakwork by Alison Whittaker ($25, PB)
Poetry
A mix of memoir, reportage, fiction, satire & critique, Alison Whittaker’s follow-up to her award-winning debut book of poems, Lemons in the Chicken Wire, is an original and unapologetic collection from which two things emerge; an incomprehensible loss, and the poet’s fearless examination of the present. Whittaker is unsparing in the interrogation of familiar ideas— identifying and dissolving them with idiosyncratic imagery, layering them to form new connections, and reinterpreting what we know.
The River in the Sky by Clive James ($33, HB)
In this new collection we find Clive James in ill health but high spirits. Although his body traps him at home, his mind is free to roam, and this long poem is animated by his recollection of what life was & never will be again; as it resolves into a flowing stream of vivid images, his memories are emotionally supercharged ‘by the force of their own fading’. As ever James’ enthusiasm is contagious; he shares his wide interests with enormous generosity, sparking passion in the reader so that you can explore the world’s treasures yourself—because this is not just a reminiscence, it’s a wise & moving preparation for and acceptance of death. As James realizes that he is only one bright spot in a galaxy of stars, he passes the torch to the poets of the future, to his young granddaughter, and to the reader.
Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse (ed) Carol Ann Duffy ($19, PB)
From a basement of forgotten books to the shelves of a cramped Welsh arcade, from the poetry corner of the local bookstore to the last bookshop standing in a post-apocalyptic world, these are poems that pay tribute to all the places that house the stories we treasure. With poems from Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke, as well as Clive James, Michael Longley, Don Paterson, Patience Agbabi & many more, this anthology is a reminder of how books nourish us, save us & inspire us.
Faber Poetry Diaries 2019 Liberty Faber Poetry Diary 2019 ($30, HB) Faber & Faber Poetry Diary 2019 ($25, HB)
Full colour hardback A5 size desk diaries with a week to a view & a poem or illustration every week. Illustrated throughout with vintage & contemporary book jackets these diaries have a sturdy cover and an elastic closure.
The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre by Don Paterson ($45, HB)
Award winning poet, Don Paterson puts on his critic’s hat in this volume to attempt to answer several questions: What is a poem? In what way is its use of language distinct? What conditions allow it to arise, and what is its cultural purpose? Paterson looks at the writing, transmission & reading of poetry with wit & scholarly flair, drawing together linguistics, literary analysis, metaphysics, psychology & cognitive science in a thorough exploration of how & why poems are composed. Part polemic, part technical treatise & part meditation, The Poem takes the form of 3 extended essays. Lyric attends to the music & sound patterns of poetry, and the way in which they work to deepen poetic sense; Sign develops a new theory of metaphor, metonym & symbol, and looks at how ideas of ‘meaning’ change under poetic conditions; Metre addresses poetry’s relationship to time & to the rhythms of speech, then builds a theory of prosody from the ground up, proposing some radical correctives to existing metrical theory along the way. Through his various professional guises—as major prize-winning poet, as Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews & as Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan—few are better placed to grant this insider’s perspective.