Tangahano

http://teaohou.natlib.govt.nz/journals/teaohou/issue/Mao34TeA/full.html

http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/johnt/001472.shtml


I was searching on Google today to see if I could find anything about my mother's first and best book, published in New Zealand in 1960. Apart from many sites offering copies for sale, I found these two links which offer some information about the book, TANGAHANO.

Spring

Spring is here. truly today. The chill has gone from the early morning walk. I fear there will be no more fires lit in the hearth this year.

In Spring, Cyprus turns green and gold. Yellow is the overriding colour. In buttery burst come the lapsanes, eagerly picked, sauteed in olive oil and drenched in beaten eggs with a squeeze of lemon to finish. The Lazarus daisies intensely yellow rise again in the fields and smother them.

Fluorescent yellow clumps of tiny oxynuthia grow and soon forsythia, wild fennel and golden rod will jostle for space.

Today the sky is blue and empty, white cabbage butterflies drift across the fields and birdsong fills the air. Already there are smatterings of mauve anenomes and red poppies. I'm told the snakes are emerging from their hibernation.

oxynuthia

Lapsanes

Assignment result

I was thrilled last week to get my final Play Writing assignment back and found I had scored an amazing 95%. It gave me an enormous rush of confidence and pleasure.
I had meantime contacted the only local to Nicosia, theatre company in English to ask if I can sit in on their new production from start to finish to get a feel and understanding of theatre in the real so to speak. They hope to start a new production late April and are very welcoming to me (it is also perfect timing for me).
http://www.alphasquare.com.cy/productions

Have also spent the last week or so transfixed by the New Yorker short story podcasts. The sheer pleasure of hearing good writing from across a span of time, read by writers and discussed by them about what makes them and the writers so good has been wonderful and instructive. The downside is that you feel that there is little point in 'picking up your own pen' so to speak. But I do.

Poetry and the New Yorker

Cover of New Yorker

At the moment it is Poetry with a capital 'P' on the course. My assignment is due in a couple of weeks but I think I've cracked it this week. I dreaded it but finally it wasn't so bad and I found something to write about which I enjoyed and I think was suited to the poetic form (or at least the form I created). To tell the truth I actually enjoyed it. But in the long run poetry is not for me, I think.

As a result I have spent too long this morning downloading from the New Yorker, audio files of authors reading the short stories of other authors, which they then discuss with the literary editor of the New Yorker. My thinking is that these are current and quality, something to aspire to, something to learn from.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/podcasts/fiction

I also subscribed to the magazine which at 80Euros for 47 issues delivered to my door is a pretty good deal I feel.

I tried revisiting my incomplete Nano novel this week and still cannot work up enough interest to return to it on a serious basis. I think there is some good writing in it but there is also a lot of wordage done just to pad out the word count. One day....