Lecture: The Life and Work of William Blake

I´m giving a talk about William Blake on Friday 20 September. William Blake is one of the most interesting and influential British poets and artists. He is a forerunner of the Romantic era, a visionary, and held revolutionary views about society, human nature, perception and art.

I´m going to talk about the main events in his life, a little about his personality and discuss a selection of his poems, illustrations and paintings. I will handle these topics at a fairly general level but I hope to be able to give a clear impression of his ideas, beliefs and philosophy and to show how these are apparent in his writing and artwork. and I will have to select examples from his work, of course, because there won´t be time to go into detail. The talk will last about an hour and I hope there will be time for questions afterwards.


And now you want to know where this is going to happen. Here are the details in full:

Friday 20.9 at 18.30 in Tampere main library (Metso), we will be in the upstairs lecture room which is called Pietilä-sali. The talk will be in English. It is organised by the Tampere branch of the Finnish-British society. It is free and all members of the public are welcome.

If you´re in or near Tampere on the 20th September, drop in. I look forward to seeing you there.

Poetry reading at Arkadia Bookshop in Helsinki

This is some advance information for anyone who will be within striking distance of Helsinki in mid-October. I´m reading at the Arkadia Bookshop in Helsinki on Tuesday 15 October (not sure about the exact time yet, but definitely in the evening). The program is titled, `Four Brits and a Finn´, and I´m one of the Brits, but the only Englishman; the other three are Scots. The Arkadia Bookshop has a very attractive website:

http://www.arkadiabookshop.fi/

The poetry event is not listed there yet but I imagine full details will be posted closer to the time. I will also post full details, including names and information about the other poets reading and confirmation of the time, here on my blog in good time. Arkadia offers a lovely environment for a poetry reading, plus the opportunity to browse and buy books at bargain prices so I have a strong suspicion that this is an event not to be missed.

Have you read The Finn´s Tale?

This blog receives between 200 and 300 visitors a month on average. I´ve been wondering how many of you have read my novel, The Finn´s Tale, and if so, which country you are from. The novel is easily obtainable via Amazon, Book Depository and the publisher´s website so international markets are well served. In addition, Stockmann´s Academic Bookshop in Finland and Pocket Books on Helsinki railway station have sold a considerable number of copies and I wonder how many of those have been purchased by foreign visitors to take back to their home country as a souvenir as well as a source of information about the Finnish way of life and culture.

So in this post, I am making a request for those blog visitors who have a copy of the book - and that includes the Kindle version, of course - to add a comment indicating their home country. If you´d like to offer a comment on your response to the novel, I´d be very interested in that as well, of course. It would be great if we could find readers from around the world and on every continent so do please let me know where you are (including Finnish and English readers). I´m looking forward to hearing from you.

The cover of my new novel

My new novel, Arthur´s Eventful Weekend, is due to be published by Ward Wood Publishing early next year. I´ve been working with Mike Fortune-Wood and Adele Ward on planning the cover and it´s now ready. I´m very pleased with it.

I think the title has a slightly quirky ring which I like. I´ll post more details about the themes and story closer to the publication date.

And for those of you who want to know what I do when I´ve just completed a novel, I will tell you: I get to work on my next poetry collection. And that´s what I´m going to do now.

Two favorite recipes

These are two very simple but very tasty recipes. The amounts are slightly flexible and you can vary according to the number of eaters and your own preferences, for example you can vary the amount of stock.

Fennel and Tomato Bake

several potatoes, sliced
1 fennel bulb, sliced
3 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 cup of stock
teaspoon of tomato purée
salt and black pepper

Cook the sliced potatoes and sliced fennel in boiling water for 3 minutes, then drain. Blend the tomatoes, garlic, stock, purée and seasoning. Layer the potato and fennel slices in an oven dish, pour over the stock mixture and cover. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 180C/350F/gas mark 4 for 1 hour.
It´s possible to substitute Jerusalem artichokes for some of the potato, which I would recommend, actually. I use about 25% Jerusalem artichokes and 75% potatoes.


Broccoli with Red Bean Sauce

broccoli florets
olive oil
1 red pepper, chopped
3 spring onions, chopped
1 can of aduki/kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup of stock
cornflour

Steam the broccoli for 8 minutes, drain and keep warm. Heat the olive oil and fry the pepper and spring onions until soft. Add the beans and stock and simmer for 3 minutes. Mix the cornflour with a little water and add to the bean mixture. Cook for one minute more. Pour sauce over broccoli and serve.

From Coiled Roots by Donald Adamson

Donald Adamson is a Tampere-based Scottish poet. He has previously published two pamphlets and his translations from Finnish to English appeared in the anthology How To Address The Fog, published by Carcanet and the Scottish Poetry Library. His full poetry collection, From Coiled Roots, was published this summer by Indigo Dreams Press. The collection as a whole is wide-ranging and eclectic, including a few set in childhood, some that consider aging, some with a historical background and some wonderful, understated love poems that show great sensitivity and delicacy in their use of language; `understated ardour´ is the phrase I came up with to describe the tone. I have added an example of one of the love poems below. There are poems set in Scotland and several set in Finland; some of these name Finnish places, but readers familiar with Finland will recognise a Finnish setting where it is not actually stated as such. There are several versions based on poems by the Finnish poet, Lassi Nummi.


I have read and enjoyed the collection enormously and recommend it highly. The book is available from Amazon or from the publisher´s website

This is a poem from the collection which is reproduced here with Donald´s permission:

What We Found

An hour away from daylight; snow´s
light, blind touching, and the single eye
of a train drawing in.

And all that day, as pine trees
inked themselves on paper fields,
I did not know you

till joking nervously,
we crossed the frontier.
Words were new then, and eyes.

What we found there,
more than from any temperate season, grew

out of the ice and the crystalline
and dangerous purity
of snow.


Donald´s blog is at:
http://donaldadamson.blogspot.com
and has several poems, including one from the new collection, and a link to the publisher´s website.

Donald´s website is at:
http://donaldadamson.co.uk

Magnifying Glass

Since this blog started life as a poetry blog I reckon it´s time to post a poem. This one is from my collection, Midas Touch, published by Ward Wood Publishing. I have played a little trick in line 3. As is well known, there´s a certain kind of language, or diction, I should say, which is outlawed in contemporary poetry. Archaic terminology has no place in poems written in 2013. The basic premise is quite reasonable, of course, but my inner devil loves to break rules. `Greensward´ is a word that would not be accepted by most editors, quite rightly, I have to admit. Lovely, therefore, to smuggle it in as `green sword´. Heh, heh.


Magnifying Glass

At school we´ve all looked into one,
hovered it over a blade of grass
and seen the green sword´s cutting edge.

We´ve peered at the tips of our fingers,
the geography of whorls writ suddenly large,
and followed the Nile across green and yellow
to Abri, El Khandaq, Khartoum.

When the boy at the back raised his to one eye
and winked hugely, we laughed,
but the side of his face
stepped out of itself.

At arm´s length it made trees shrink
and stand on their heads,
a single leg pointing up
into a grassy sky.