Poetry translation competition & recording

category: Writing
by Soph, 2 Comments »

It seems I’ve had another rather long spell of silence on the blogosphere. I completely forgot to renew my fribblejunk.org domain name, so I’ve sadly become simply fribblejunk.jk-digital.com - I could always buy it again, but really the site isn’t as active as it has been, and I think I’ll get just as many visitors without the domain name. University has been busy; lots of musical activities as usual, and lots of reading and work. At the moment we’re doing Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (just the first two books) in my English lit module. It’s a great text and I’m enjoying it, but it does take a long time to read.

Regarding the song I spoke about in my last blog (all those weeks ago), I’m going to a nearby town with the chamber choir on Sunday, to make a recording of all of the Shakespeare songs we’re doing at the moment, as well as a couple of other pieces accompanied by a string quartet. It should be fun! We’re going back to a church where we had a weekend away last term; the acoustics are wonderful there so it should sound great on the CD.

I’m thinking of entering this poetry translation competition. I’ve done quite a few literal translations now in one of my English and French comparative modules, and I’d quite like to have a go at writing something more poetic for my own pleasure. I thought I might as well enter the competition while I was at it - could be fun.

Other than that, not much literary news from me - I’m on holiday in a week so hopefully I’ll be doing much more writing and reading then, and more blogging!

17

January
2008

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes…

category: Music, Site, Writing
by Soph, 6 Comments »

I’ve added two more essays to the site; one is a comparison of two poems (one English, one French) and the other is an essay I wrote for my French Imagination module about Racine’s play Phèdre. I’ve written lots of other essays in my term-and-a-bit here so far, but these are the ones I’m most happy with. I got a first on the critical comparison.

The music centre here has a different ‘theme’ each term - last term it was ‘MC at the Movies’, so lots of the things we sang/played were from films. This term the theme is ‘Shakespeare’, so in Orchestra we’re doing Suite 2 from Prokofiev’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (which is AWESOME) and the whole of Verdi’s ‘Macbeth’. In choir today we started learning four songs from different Shakespeare plays that have been arranged for eight-part choral ensembles. They’re great fun; I especially love the one which is taken from ‘Macbeth’ and sung by the witches:

A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron. Thunder. Enter the three WITCHES.

FIRST WITCH
Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed.

SECOND WITCH
Thrice, and once the hedge-pig whined.

THIRD WITCH
Harpier cries, “’Tis time, ’tis time.”

FIRST WITCH
Round about the cauldron go,
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Sweltered venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ th’ charmèd pot.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

THIRD WITCH
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravined salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digged i’ th’ dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew
Slivered in the moon’s eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-delivered by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab.
Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter HECATE and the other three WITCHES

HECATE
Oh well done! I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i’ th’ gains.
And now about the cauldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

Music and a song: “Black spirits,” &c. HECATE retires

SECOND WITCH
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.

Here the song ends suddenly as we give one stamp of the foot in unison. Only Shakespeare could have thought up such fantastic lyrics! I also take my hat off to Jaakko Mantyjarvi, the composer, who has used a brilliant mixture of jazz and dissonance to create a really spooky arrangement of the song. Great fun!

14

January
2008

Oh dear…

category: Academic, Site, Writing
by Soph, 2 Comments »

It’s been over a month since my last post, and I don’t have much of an excuse except that I haven’t had very much to blog about. I’m not sure if anyone will still read this, but if so I hope you had excellent Christmases and New Years. I’ve been back at university for a week now and the work is beginning to pile up again. However, yesterday John pointed out that despite my inactivity here, the site has had quite a number of visitors looking at my essays. In the last four days I’ve had around 50 unique visitors, so I’m glad someone is finding FJ.org useful. I’ve just put up another essay (which I’m actually about to get the mark for in my next seminar). I have several more which I will put up later, as they take a little more time because of the footnotes and bibliographies, and copying all of the formatting I’ve used in Open Office like italicised titles.

I don’t really have any news on the literary front, and I try to keep most of my ‘life-news’ on the Whasblog. I suppose I can share some tidbits here, though… On Friday I went back to school for my prize-giving ceremony, in which I won prizes for French and Psychology. I was really pleased with the French one, but I don’t really think I performed any better than anyone else in Psychology (I really would have liked a prize for English but I better not complain…). I got a £10 book token for each prize, which was very nice. I might go and spend one of them on a birthday present for my mum this afternoon.

Apart from that the same sort of music and work stuff is going on at Warwick. We’re currently house-hunting for next year - on Wednesday I’ll be going for my first look around some of the houses the others have spotted.

I better get to that seminar. Hope everyone is well, sorry again for my unforeseen inactivity over Christmas.

Toodle pip!

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