I haven't had much time to work on Hild lately, but every now and again something pops into my head and I write it down.
The last week it's been poetry. (I use the term loosely.)
Here are two pieces I wrote to be part of the book. English people of a certain age will recognise something about both.
The first is based on a football chant. I imagine it as the kind of taunt one group of gesiths (Anglo-Saxon warriors) hurled at another:
Your sister's your mother
Your father's your brother
You fuck one another
Now we'll fuck you
The second is based partly on a song I wrote in the mid-eighties that I never sang in public, and partly on a Public Service Announcement from slightly earlier, Learn! To! Swim! The PSA ran over and over on Channel 4 when the network first went live: they didn't have any advertising and had to fill the space with something. Anyway, this one is sung by a bunch of women in a bakery:
I'll sing you a story that's never been told
of women from everywhere brave and bold
who creep from their houses in the dark and the cold
to wage war...with bread!
black bread
white bread
plaited bread and rolls
honey bread and butter bread
and bread that's full of holes
eat!
this!
bread!
Just thought I'd share.
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I think I might have mentioned this before? In the RPG game I run, the culture that has the most Norse mixed in has what are basically rap battle, hip hot rhyme wars, which they call "kennings." Yo!
ReplyDeleteFun stuff, Nicola. Thanks for sharing. Just finished Ammonite and understand more your assertion that Hild is the book you were born to write.
ReplyDeletemordicai, a 'kenning' in my world is a metaphor e.g. 'whale road' for a sea route.
ReplyDeleteDianneorDi, Hild is...Hild is *it*.
Okay, so does this mean you (in some sort of reverse of reality) are priming your tea party pump? Or is this just the exhuberance of spring? Having recently seen Nine,and loving Glee!, I find the visualization running through my head of these women bakers (is there a feminine version of baker?) singing down the aisle, smiles on their faces, flour flying from their fingertips, quite invigorating. "Hooka tooka my soda cracker?" anyone?
ReplyDeleteIt's spring, and I'm so busy doing LLF stuff and Sterling stuff I haven't been able to write for two weeks. But it's like water behind a dam: the pressure is building and little jets and squirts shoot out at odd time and at strange angles...
ReplyDelete