Friday’s
event for Somerville Arts Week was a Musical Variety Concert, organised in
association with Somerville Music Society, who hold lunchtime recitals every
Friday in the chapel, as well as a whole host of other events such as choir
concerts and open mic nights. The concert included a huge range of performers
including opera, piano, a bassoon duet, jazz, organ and local band, ‘The Oh So Many.’
Sunday, 6 May 2012
SAW; Cocktails & Costumes
One
of the most eagerly anticipated events of Somerville Arts Week was the
historical costume show, a presentation of the history of the college using
photographs from the archives and a huge variety of outfits ranging from
Victorian and Edwardian costumes from the National Theatre, used originally in
productions of The Cherry Orchard or The White Guard, to some beautiful 90s
treasures, including some vintage Versace for the introduction of boys in 1994.
The
evening began with a demonstration from Angels cocktail bar, where the
attendees learned how to make classics such as martinis, cosmopolitans and
mojitos, as well as some new creations like the ‘Maid in Chelsea’, a mixture of gin, lemon juice and elderflower
cordial! Next, we moved over to the chapel for some harp music, a presentation
and the show itself, accompanied by some great period accessories and music.
With thanks to the National Theatre, OUDS & Angels Cocktail Bar.
SAW; Gillian Cross
As
mentioned previously, Somerville has produced a huge amount of notable alumni
that have become authors. Amongst the Sayers, the Holtbys and the Brittains,
the college has also some more modern authors to its name, including that of
Gillian Cross. Gillian is a children’s author whose works include ‘The Demon Headmaster’ and ‘Where I Belong,’ and these were the
books that she chose to focus on when she came and spoke during Arts Week on
Wednesday 2nd May. I asked Gillian to talk about her experience as a
writer, the story of a book from its inception to its publication, her
anecdotes along the way and her attitude to reading and writing.
Echoing
the sentiments expressed by PD James during the Oxford Literary Festival, it
was clear that for Gillian, ‘the books
choose you’ and her falling into particularly children’s writing was as
much a serendipitous occurrence as the accomplishment of an enjoyable past
time. The Demon Headmaster began as a suggestion from her young daughter
that Gillian write about a wicked headmaster, and the rest fell into place.
After considering the idea, the hypnotism element was introduced as a way for
the headmaster to get away with his agenda, an idea that ‘connected with children’ without being too sinister. Despite it
being a novel for young people, Cross had to rewrite a great deal of the book
in order to get it right and eventually realised what was wrong with the first draft after sensing
subconsciously that there was something not quite right with the story. The
book is incredibly important to Gillian; it has always been her most popular
book, even before the BBC approached her in the early 1990s to turn it into a series, and her determination to include the scene in the snow where the
prefects punish SPLAT for throwing the forbidden snowball by forcing them to
roll all of the snow on the field into snowballs, without their hats, coats or
gloves despite the BBC arguing that it was too expensive, demonstrates the
importance of the book's integrity, despite its young audience.
Gillian’s
attitude to the role of an author was also interesting; in terms of research,
she suggested that researching hypnotism would have been a barrier, as making
it too technical would have removed some of the fun from the book. On the other
hand, for Where I Belong, her novel
based on a visit to a Leicester school about Somalia required a great deal of
research as writing about someone else’s culture involves ‘a moral duty to get it right.’
SAW; Principals of Murder
For
many Somervillians, students and staff, the event of Arts Week 2012 that most
epitomised Somerville and everything artsy related to it was the short play, ‘Principals of Murder.’ This was loosely based on Dorothy L
Sayer’s Gaudy Night; a murder
mystery set in Somerville College, Harriet Vane having returned to her old
college to give a talk on the ‘Principles of Murder,’ incorporating her works
and her experience in Holloway, an incident that occurred in Strong Poison, the novel that introduced Harriet to Lord Peter Wimsey, who assists her after she is arrested for the murder of her fiancé.
Adapted
for Arts Week by two students who altered the plot but retained many of the key
elements of Sayers’ novels, the play was a huge success. It was staged in the
chapel and members of the cast sat amongst the pews to reflect the intimate
nature of the story. Harriet’s return to Somerville takes an unsavoury turn
when the JCR President ends up murdered but, with the help of Lord Peter Wimsey
and some telephone calls, the mystery is resolved in a tense and shocking
manner, the denouement shaking many audience members, particularly the women!
Despite the plot changes and references to modern day issues such as the financial
‘irregularities’ of the bursar and the JCR President/ Vice-President rivalry, as
well as the scandalous relationship between the Principal and the Porter, the
play echoed many traditional Sayers’ techniques and phrases. Lord Peter’s musings
that ‘when you know how, you know who’ and Harriet’s admittance that she would
perform the traditional female role of ‘scrubbing floors very badly whilst
being able to write detective novels rather well’, ensured that the ambiance of
Sayers’ mysteries was sustained, and the issue of women in education brought
out the liberal and independent minds of historical Somervillians like Sayers’
whose books propelled the notion of female empowerment and wit. The wit of
Sayers herself resonated too with references to a fictional Vane novel, Lethal Passions in the Porters Lodge, a
misogynist male tutor who asks of the ‘question’ of equality and education and
a senior tutor with a pile of manuscripts that will forever remain unfinished.
The
play was a fantastic combination of Somerville, old Somervillians and the arts
and definitely a highlight of the week.
Friday, 4 May 2012
SAW; Poetry
Monday evening saw an intimate poetry workshop and reading from Somerville alumnus Kate McLoughlin, an English literature lecturer at Birkbeck who has recently turned her hand to poetry and some students, including the newly elected Poet Laureate, Krishan Neelendra.
Kate’s
recent venture into verse was spurned by two things; a 1934 poem by William
Carlos Williams, called ‘Just a Note to
Say,’ which is about a note left on a fridge from someone who has eaten
someone else’s plums, and a trip to Barcelona where Kate saw a painting by
Picasso, a response to another work by Velasquez.
William Carlos Williams, 'Just a Note to Say.'
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Kate
began to wonder what it would be like to respond to the note. Her book ‘Plums’ is a collection of poems written
from the mind of the person to whom the note was left. They are all of varied
length, tone, style and include experimentation with the elements of the poem,
after they had been stripped down and analysed, emulating what Picasso had done
to the Velasquez painting. McLoughlin’s 58 variations explored many different
ways of responding to the note. She changed the endings, the attitude of the
writer in response to the note, played around with the concepts of forgiveness,
sin, stealing and retaliation and altered the structure and form of the poems
to create a hugely varied assortment of verse.
After
Kate introduced her work, some of the students had the chance to read some
poetry, whether written by themselves or another. There was a huge range. We
began with some hilarity from Krish with a poem based on the tort law case of Donoghue v Stevenson, which concerned a
woman who discovered a decomposing snail in a bottle of ginger beer, followed
by a piece echoing Poe’s ‘The Raven,’
and based on a dream of his where he and a friend found a dead pigeon, before
closing with the infamous ‘Trilogy.’ Next,
we had some poems concerning relationships, a product of ‘doodling with words’ exploring not only relationships between
couples and friends, but also the relationship that one establishes with a
poet. Some Patois poems by Linton Kwesi Johnson, ‘Sonny’s Letter’ and ‘Inglan is a bitch’ came next, the
reader communicating how a poem can be just as powerful when based on
day-to-day experiences than on great themes such as love, hate or the meaning of
life. The experiences in these two poems concerned the ‘stop and
search’ law and a Jamaican immigrant’s difficulty to find work on arriving in
England. Finally, we had a poem by Edward Thomas called ‘May 23rd’, which was special to the reader for its evocative
portrayal of idyllic, countryside living and the memories that this
revived.
Thursday, 3 May 2012
SAW; Dorothy L Sayers
Somerville
Arts Week 2012 began on Monday 30th April with a talk from two
delightful ladies from the Dorothy L
Sayers Society, an international ‘appreciation society’ dedicated to the
life and work of detective novelist and notable Somerville alumnus, Dorothy L
Sayers. 2012 is the centenary of Sayers ‘coming up’ to Oxford and the society
is commemorating this in August with a convention that is taking place in
college and will comprise of various talks and events, celebrating the life and
memory of the writer and reviving enthusiasm for her work. Radio 4, who
serialised some of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries on air, recently did this
too. Sayers’ talent and determination to succeed in all areas of her work is
admirable, and in true Somerville fashion, her particular fortitude to pursue
lines that were previously the realm of men designates her as a figure that
Somerville should be proud to remember and promote. It was therefore an
absolute pleasure to invite Seona Ford and Jasmine Simeone, the Vice-Chairman and
Secretary of the society respectively, to speak during term-time to the
students and enlighten them on some of the lesser known aspects of Sayers’ life
and work, particularly her poetry, something that the audience, myself included
were ignorant of its importance and influence on her. The talk was part
biography, interspersed with passages from her books and anecdotes from her
life.
Sayers
was born in Oxford, her ‘appreciation of
words’ was evident from an early age when she would change the language of
nursery rhymes to fit her own family and experiences. Like many authors, she
was a great reader and constantly experimented with poetry and prose relating
to the world around her, acting as a script writer for a pageant at a local
village and producing poems such as ‘The
Gargoyle’ in her mid teens. Sayers won the Gilchrist scholarship to Oxford
to study modern languages with the highest recorded marks that year, where she
continued to flourish and cultivate her talent through groups of like-minded
students such as ‘the mutual admiration society,’ a group of young women who
encouraged each other with their work and studies.
Sayers’
work was influenced by the goings on around her and much of her work is drawn
directly from her experiences in Oxford during the First World War and
consequently her work at Bensons, an advertising agency, where she first began
to develop a taste for the manipulation of words and style. This assisted her
greatly in ‘Murder Must Advertise,’
her experiences of a working environment dominated by men were seen here and
subsequently in the work of Miss Climpson, a character with a typing bureau in
the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries who is employed by Wimsey to assist his
investigations, as in the musings of Lord Peter and thus Sayers herself, who
would suspect a woman…?
Sayers
had a confident and direct yet professional approach to writing. She was aware
of censorship laws, seen notably in ‘Whose
Body?’ where her idea for the body found to be a naked man in bath drew
much intrigue and controversy. Sayers was also prepared to research her
material intricately. ‘Five Red Herrings’
required research into train timetables and the work of painters and ‘The Nine Tailors’ facilitated a great
deal of research into the art of bell-ringing, yet by the end of this Sayers
had still never pulled a rope.
The
best thing about the talk was the insight it gave into how varied the work of
Sayers was. She wrote comedy, mystery, about religion, village life, the impact
of the war, her cats and even did a great deal of work translating other works
such as ‘Song of Rowland’ and Dante,
the latter being completed after her death by her goddaughter, Margaret
Reynolds who was chair of the Dorothy L Sayers society until her death in
March. Sayers was also an incredibly sophisticated writer. She moved both the
genre and characters of detective fiction forward; Martin Edwards has
recognised this particularly with the development of Lord Peter Wimsey, who was
given a history of shell shock from the war and was impacted by the various
reforms of the roles of peers in the House of Lords during the time of Sayers’
writing.
Somerville college has produced a vast
number of strong female authors, Winifred Holtby and Vera Brittain included,
but the dedication of Sayers to her writings, her characters and to Oxford
itself, seen most particularly with the reunion of Harriet Vane and Lord Peter
Wimsey in the fictional Shrewsbury College in ‘Gaudy Night,’ ensures that she will and should be celebrated as a
great author as well as a great Somervillian.
‘The
Gargoyle.’
The
Gargoyle takes his giddy perch
On
a cathedral or a church,
There,
mid ecclesiastic style
He
smiles an early Gothic smile
And
while the parson, full of pride,
Spouts
at his weary flock inside,
The
Gargoyle, from his lofty seat,
Spouts
at the people in the street;
And
like the parson seems to say,
In
accents doleful, ‘Let Us Pray.’
I
like the gargoyle best. He plays
So
cheerfully on rainy days-
While
parsons, no one can deny,
Are
awful dampers when they’re dry.
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