Friday 17 May 2013

Ghosts

I love Scarborough. It has a faded grandeur, an elegant tackiness about it. But there is nothing faded or tacky about Woodend, a light, and relaxed space, converted into offices/studios for businesses and creatives, with an Arts and Craft Gallery. The Sitwell family bought the house in 1870, and it was where Edith was born in 1887. It was sold to Scarborough Council in 1934, and became the Wood End Museum of Natural History until 2006, when it was adopted for the creative workplace development.
Sheryl Butner, the Finance and Gallery Manager showed me around. In my head I began re-inventing myself- 'perhaps, I could move to Scarborough and become a jeweller, hire the lovely attic room currently vacant and just hang out here all day... that would be easier then trying to write a one woman show about Edith Sitwell, Elizabeth the First and myself! And Woodend feels friendly and peaceful, and a perfect place to be creative. However, Sheryl informs me it is 'allegedly' full of ghosts. This seems to be a theme with Sitwell houses, Renishaw too apparently has ghosts, even to this day. And in Edith's day, Helen Rootham (Edith's Governess and companion) once performed an exorcism at Renishaw to remove an elemental that inhabited an unused wing of the hall.
The theme of ghosts also filtered into Edith's work. In her first attempt at a memoir she states, ‘I have always been a little outside of life, and the things one could touch comforted me; for I am like a ghost’. She never finished this version of her memoirs (her autobiography, 'Taken Care of' was written and published much later on in her life), but some of the materiel generated was used in her poems:
For I was like one dead, like a small ghost,
A little cold air, wandering and lost’
('Colonel Fantock', 1924)

And Virginia Wolf once said about Edith herself, ‘There is something ghostlike and angular about her.’

Sheryl confessed she had never seen a ghost at Woodend, even when she was there late at night with others who at the same time swore they could see the ghost of Lady Ida, and a spectral family dog, (I don't think anyone's seen Edith but I doubt she'd be hanging out there in ethereal form if her mother was also floating about!)

Like Sheryl, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do know that wherever I go, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, or back home to Brighton, I now no longer travel alone- Edith and Elizabeth are never far away.

(Find out more about Woodend at www.woodendcreative.co.uk.
Also a special nod to Richard Greene- Edith's latest biographer- I'm reading 'Edith Sitwell. Avant Garde Poet, English Genius,' again, and know that many of my references, quotations etc come from him.)

Thursday 2 May 2013

The Poem’s the Thing…


There’s so much about Edith Sitwell that I find fascinating; her upbringing, personality, looks, fashion sense and lifestyle. Strangely, one of the most essential things about her- her work as a poet- is something I was originally less familiar with. In ‘Edith Sitwell: Avant Garde Poet, English Genius’- Richard Greene refers to Sitwell's poems as "the most important events in her life.”



As a keen amateur analyser of poetry, and an actor/voice teacher who understands the importance of rhythm and language within a play text, Edith’s poetry has a natural attraction, but I wanted a professional opinion.  I went to meet Kate Evans- a poet who has written her own response to Edith’s work- ‘Words in My Head’



Kate lives in Scarborough, (Edith’s birthplace). Another excuse for a family day out, this time with mum, dad and dogs. (They’ll all be glad when I’ve got this ‘Edith thing’ out of my system- although I think the dogs were grateful for a breezy beach walk, and we had a good lunch overlooking the Grand Hotel, the harbour and, to my Dads delight, one of the funicular railways.)



Whilst the family were frolicking on the beach I discussed Edith’s early poems with Kate. We started in the obvious place with Façade- poems set to music by William Walton. The fact that Edith is sometimes referred to as the godmother of rap still makes me laugh. I made a flippant joke in a feature for the Funny Women website- referring to Mr Walton as Will.i. am, adding that in reality you can’t compare him and Edith to the Black Eyed Peas. When you know Edith like I’m beginning to know Edith the ‘down with the kids, gangster rap’ image really doesn’t fit- (apart from the bling, maybe?). But the point is that like rap, her poems rely on the texture of language, sound and image and its relationship to rhythm and melody- And this Kate explained made it innovative. ’It’s radical for its time…a radical jump from the Romantics to Modern poetry.’

Also as Edith remarked to Stephen Spender, as a female poet "There was no one to point the way. I had to learn everything – learn, amongst other things, not to be timid." 

And there wasn’t always support from other female writers. Virginia Wolf reviewed Edith’s poem ‘Clowns Houses’ remarking ‘Miss Sitwell owes a great deal to modern painters and until her optic nerve has ceased to be dazzled it is difficult to say how interesting her vision is.’ (Although it is worth noting, as Richard Greene observes Sitwell and Wolfe’s friendship was complicated, one which was both ‘intimate and competitive.’)



Edith’s later poetry still relied on word, sound and image but also became more intense in emotion influenced by her personal life and world events. The ripping apart of her personal life came in the form of the death of Helen Rootham, the governess who became a life long companion, and, with her tumultuous but platonic relationship with the painter, Pavel Tchelitchew. The Second World War was a ripping apart of the countries national identity, provoking poems such as ‘Still Falls the Rain’. Other events such as a late conversion to Catholicism encouraged religious references and imagery.



I also asked Kate about Edith’s prose; of particular interest to me, as my play focuses on Edith’s biographies of Elizabeth the 1st. Reading Fanfare for Elizabeth and The Queens and the Hive- despite Edith’s insistence that they were non fiction crust earners- the mark of the poet runs through them. Kate described them as creative non- fiction or poetic prose. Again, as a writer and creative, Edith was running ahead of the pack. Kate also said, as writers, we owe a lot to her- ‘We are the God Daughters of Edith’ (I’m glad for this- I’m certainly more suited to being a God daughter of Edith then a God Daughter of rap!)   

I could have talked to Kate for hours about Edith, and her poetry, but had another meeting lined up at Woodend. However there are plans afoot for various Sitwell events in 2014, to commemorate fifty years of Edith’s death, which we will both be involved in. You can also find more about Kate Evans and her work by visiting her blog http://www.writingourselveswell.co.uk/