The Farmstead

Buffy in S6, for an sb_fag_ends prompt that I picked specifically from the poetry wot I like on my shelf, so I didn't really have any excuse anyway. This is the link, or below the cut:

( Flashblind )

In other news, it's been a while since you've had a Nigel Kennedy video, so have another:



Sound quality's ever so slightly better on the Radio 3 website - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01g9vvg - but the embed doesn't work because the BBC have never fixed that...

I wrote a poem for sb_fag_ends! As I say over there, I've been threatening to write some angsty-angry Spike POV poetry set in S6 during the sex-fest ever since I wrote this fic. This isn't quite that, but it sort of is. Probably quite far along in the relationship, I'd put this just before Dead Things or so. Rated R for being very much definitely crude without being particularly extensive or precise. Not work safe!! Not very happy either, but just about free of stuff that needs a warning on AO3. For the prompt 'Starting a sexual relationship/Being strong in the face of temptation'.

( so now begins the waiting. )

I wrote a poem for sb_fag_ends (the DW site for which has somewhat died, I fear; sing out if you miss it and we'll try harder!). We're on Sumerian Proverbs this month, after brutti_ma_buoni uncovered a load, of which the the summary for this poem is one.

G; free of stuff needing an AO3 warning (but gloomy); Buffy POV in S6-ish; free verse with a slightly concrete edge, because I was experimenting.

I looked into the water. My destiny was drifting past.


( Fluid Dynamics. )


-

So, this is it! The end. Dum-dum-dum... I've had a blast writing this; I hope anyone who's made this far with me has had fun too! brutti_ma_buoni has been excellent, naturally, keeping me going to the edge of doom, and all that. There'll be an index post in a minute, but just to reiterate this is Spuffy and PG-13, basically. It's about ~4200 words (~550 lines) and warnings of this book are the general death and denial of agency that's been going through everything.

The party returns home.

[XI]

XII

      The future, when it really happens, feels
A certain way. A single second comes
That knots together all the past before,
So every nudge of inclination, cause
Set out for consequence, they settle, stop.
( ... )

Back into the swing of the endgame now, where perhaps unsurprisingly I find myself getting a bit more wordy than before, so this book clocks in at ~4600 words (~580 lines). Still Spuffy (though Spike&Gunn + Spike&Illyria are probably more relevant labels here), still PG-13, still warnings generally for death and denied agency, though they only vaguely come up in this book. Big thanks to brutti_ma_buoni, who betas like a trooper and slapped my wrist in all the right places. Not in a weird way. Um.

Spike and the others return to the upper world.

[IX]

X

      It’s later, in the evening, when Spike stands
With cigarette, back on the roof again –
The one that’s so familiar, where he
Escaped from rain and war and ruined streets.
Of course, this tarmac’s now ( ... )

The podcasts for writerconuk have been put up, by the wonderful Audio Video! It's all very exciting. If you want to know what WCUK is like, or just listen to people talking about fandom, do check them out!

I'm on there with my Fanpoetry Talk, in particular. When I get home, I'd like to make a video with my Powerpoint Presentation, but for now I've uploaded the .ppt file here, which you might like to follow along!


[Quinara - Fanpoetry Podcast, WCUK 2011]

(Massive shout outs to mere_ubu's Spaiku, sobsister's sonnet and fulselden's ballad in here!)

.

I'm just back from writerconuk which was absolutely fabulous, as usual, with a lovely mix of interesting and funny new people, familiar old hands that it's always nice to catch up with at conversational pace (even if they spent a considerable portion of the weekend telling me how much was going to go wrong with my body as it got older... Cheers again, gang!), tasty food, tasty drink, comfy hotel furniture and extra specially informative talks! Having got back, also, I have found myself in the WiFi-enabled cafe down the street and am being constantly informed by menus to 'make myself at home', so I intend to.(I feel very cool though; this is the sort of cafe that only appears on TV, with loads of random tables and rickety chairs, with nice people serving you stuff and a whole library's worth of old books to read. I feel like a proper student or something... ETA: I should probably explain this with an extra comment that I currently have no internet in my house, and so have been using my phone as a WiFi hotspot, but do not have anywhere near enough data allowance to properly surf the net, so that's why I've been somewhat absent, and will probably continue to be until I go to France via my parents' house at the end of this week.)

I'm a bit tired so I'm not sure I'm up to recounting everything at any sort of length at the moment, but I did do a fanpoetry talk involving a workshop where we collectively wrote a poem in the style of Blackadder (from the Blackader III era - written to Amy Hardwood in Amy and Amiability, aka The Shadow, before she screws him over), and I have promised Gill repeatedly that I would post it, so the two versions are below the cut. There should be a podcast of the talk at some point (scarily!), so I'll post the rest of the presentation then, because the slides aren't very informative on their own and all else I have are the scribbles in my notebook.

( Poemy Poem. )

I learnt many things over the weekend, so I'll have to get on those at some point. I think the main points are, though, that my vids are vastly more amateur than it's quite standard for vids to become (I have this horrible feeling I might have to learn some software); I have a worrying tendency of picking up on sueworld's accent and vocal mannerisms if I talk to her for more than five minutes; also that Tara in OMWF is actually enjoyable to play when putting on a mildly(?) David Bowie voice. And when having an EastEnders style row with bogwitch as Willow.

Oh, oh, oh, though my Docs also won an award for Cutest Shoes (I may have been ungracious about the 'cute' label, but was chuffed nonetheless) and I won an apparently authentically patterned Fourth Doctor scarf in the raffle, as knitted by lilachigh! I am much pleased with it, and look forward to wearing it in the autumn/winter. (Yes, with my anorak parka! At least until I need a thicker coat. :P)

Hope everyone got home OK, or is stiil OK at the hotel! I'm already looking forward to the next meet up. :D

My other Three Weeks for Dreamwidth thing was to post some poetry to forkedtongues, which really meant sorting out a project that I'd vaguely started and subsequently abandoned. It involved trying to translate Aristophanes' Lysistrata in way that actually got across a bit more of the cultural implications, using another cultural context - which was basically the sort of Monty Python/Carry On/Ealing Studios school of British comedy, which is actually a better match for Aristophanes than you'd think. The problem I generally have with Lysistrata is that people seem to take it as vaguely proto-feminist (the women go on a sex-strike, thereby taking their sexual agency into their own hands and asserting their political opinions for the benefit of Athens and Greece), and, yeah, maybe that works in a modern performance, but it's not what I think follows naturally from the Greek and the Athenian context. (The play is basically full of stereotypes, and Lysistrata only really gets where she does by eschewing her femaleness; on top of that the whole play was written and performed by men for men (at least primarily), so I don't think you can really escape the ha-ha, we're-all-lads vibe.)

Of course, there's also the general problem that I don't know many translations that are actually funny, which, by the bye, Aristophanes is...

So, anyway, this is something like the first 'scene', translated in a way that hopefully is possible to follow without footnotes, gets across some of the frown-making aspects and attempts to actually be amusing. Under the first cut is the Greek (edition N.G. Wilson, Aristophanis Fabulae, Tomus II. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007]) and a slightly more literal translation (A.H. Sommerstein, Aristophanes Lysistrata. [Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1990]), which takes a couple of liberties for sense, but keeps everything culturally located in ancient Athens and gives a good impression of what the Greek says. Under the second is my playscript prose translation.

( Lysistrata (1-54) )

( My Translation. )

One thing I thought it would be fun to get into for Remix Madness was some poetry - either turning it from prose or trying to rework a poem (it's almost like music, people, ooooooh). Luckily, stultiloquentia put her name in the sign up box, which meant I could work with one of my most favourite fanpoems - Illyria Writes a Poem (What country, friends, is this?) - which is a beautiful sestina of shiny sounds and images, all about Illyria's displacement and sense of displacement that comes from her grief, with poetry the means through which she replaces herself as a humbled writer rather than a big, prophesied, written thing (a sense of order growing from a form without scansion and rhyme scheme the way only a sestina can grow it). I read over it again and found wanting to know how the 'world', as it were, felt about Illyria's shifting position within it - from omnipotent God-King to human-esque poet, which gave me a very obvious first line, as you'll see. The poem's construction gave me a sense of verse length and cyclicity, as well as key words: again, rhyme, home, grief, insects, hand. I decided 'again' could be conceptualised into the remix-concept itself, but everything else got in there. Then, I won't lie, there was some very productive freestyling. Then some equally productive editing.

I ended up with 120 words of AO3 warning free G poetry about nature watching Illyria somewhat askance: :D

( Write My Country New (Fearful Suppliant Mix). )

Yay! I achieved my goal of getting these three books posted before my birthday! (Heh, it seemed laughably easy back in January - apparently my rational brain knows me much better than my intuitive one...) This book doesn't end on a cliffhanger, so I hope it won't be too irritating to wander back into the abyss between updates again. I'm definitely looking forward to finishing this, never fear - just need to recover my poetry brain.

Let's get to it! Spuffy (as in actually a bit); PG-13; ~4300 words (~550 lines); warnings for the series of death and denied agency, with only brief mentions in this book, but added for this book is reasonable amount of stylised gore. Big thanks to brutti_ma_buoni for the butt-kicking beta!

Illyria shares a memory and other preparations are made.

[VIII]

IX

      She’s caught by light, by pain that magnifies
Light brightly, feels her body fall away,
Keep falling, rushing wind against her skin,
Until she’s fallen into dark and cold.
For minutes then Illyria can’t move,
Her muscles trembling with shock and pain,
Stone hard around her gushing acid blood;
This does not feel as her flesh feels, but then
She can’t remember who or where she is.
There’s light again( ... )