Questions from Pashazade

[ailbhe]

1)What does the painting do for you?

It makes me happy and soothes my soul, it gives me a sense of achievement especially when other people like it, and it gives me access to using colour in a way nothing else in my life quite manages.

2)At what point (if ever) will you consider sending the children to a conventional school?

I'd send them to a conventional school if I thought it was the best thing for them. I'd allow them to attend a conventional school if they wanted to go and I thought it wasn't bad for them, same as swimming lessons, ballet, etc.

3)How did you come to develop your feminism? (I can't think of a better way to phrase it. For me there was a growing awareness that something was rotten in Denmark and it wasn't me. I'm wondering how your experiences differed from mine.)

My mother had a large hand in my feminism, I know that much. Developing it... when I was 14 my boyfriend gave me a feminist slogans tshirt, I was collecting feminist postcards as early as I had spending money, I had a piece in a schools art exhibition in the Women's Aid centre when I was 16. I was 14 when The X Case was in the news. I think growing up under the heel of the oppressor had something to do with it.

4)Whose poetry do you really love? Why?

Gosh. I used to love Yeats but have, for now at least, outgrown that. ee cummings for the hoppitty skip language playing. I really loved the book of god-that-woman-laureate-argh-clare-something I read, but I only read one, for the feminism and language precision. Dorothy Parker for the snark. Ogden Nash for the jollity and the unexpected knives. Alice Walker. I haven't read as much Maya Angelou as I'd like but I like what I've read. I like language play, politics, joyfulness. I'm not so keen on "difficult" poetry - punchy or skippy is my thing at the moment.

5)To what extent do you think that being Irish has shaped your political outlook?

Growing up female in 1980s/1990s Ireland certainly shaped it like billyo, but I don't think *Irishness* per se has. That has affected my cultural outlook more than my political one, which may be a meaningless distinction.

Comments

[snorkel-maiden.livejournal.com]

Would you like to give me some questions?

[ailbhe]

1) Are you really happy as much of the time as you seem to be? Is it hard work?

2) To what extent do you want to conform to gender clothing norms while raising Leo?

3) Bucket and spade sandcastles or big heaps built with hands?

4) Why didn't my hanging basket totally die? Is it because I started it in winter instead of in high summer? Do you know ALL about plants or just have an instinctive understanding of how to not kill them? Where did you learn it?

5) Could we all walk to your house one day, so that my children want to and we definitely don't get lost? We've failed utterly so far and it's probably my fault. It might be fun to walk with the kids, you never know.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Carol Ann Duffy? Have you read The World's Wife?

[ailbhe]

Yes, that one! Hurrah!

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

There's also Feminine Gospels in a similar vein. Her best collection is probably Mean Time, but I caution you that much of it is extremely sad.

[ailbhe]

I can't be having with sad, sadly. I do mean to get more of it but no can brain now.

Mind you, "Dulcie Captains the School" was ripping. And had NO blatant, gratuitous racism.

[cabbagemedley.livejournal.com]

I've just sort of rediscovered poetry after studying a module with the OU - I'd forgotten how good it can be when it really is good. (Same for short stories, actually. I used to be into them and then stumbled across too many in a row that did things I didn't really like, so I thought the form wasn't really for me. It totally is, though!)

Have you read any Benjamin Zephaniah? He is very good and writes for children as well.

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

I went through a huge Yeats phase as a teenager (Mai walking cliché-ity, let me show u it) and then went off it, mostly because I'd been immersing myself in all the Celtic Twilight stuff. Re-discovered him in my late twenties after I read The Wild Swans At Coole when they printed it as the Guardian Saturday Poem and I was absolutely blown away.

I actually want to comment quite a lot on your answers, but I'm a bit submerged at the moment so it may end up being rather later.

[ailbhe]

I never had a huge Yeats phase (did write poems with no capital letters though, so that's something...) but I liked the ones in the book at school. I like that one better though.

[ailbhe]

I actually want to comment quite a lot on your answers, but I'm a bit submerged at the moment so it may end up being rather later.

I know it's the anxiety talking, but please confirm that I'm not in terrible trouble and you don't think, um, anything dreadful.

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think anything dreadful! (And I sympathise. I suffer from attacks of the headweasels too.) I've just been knackered and getting home late, and will now be away for the weekend.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Me, please?

[ailbhe]

1) What are you doing these days then?

2) Down at the bottom of the well of depression is kind of boring. How do you get out, or remind yourself that out is posssible?

3) Do you ever wish you could make things go BZZZ again with your HV kit?

4) What's your hair doing at the mo?

5) When you explode with maternal pride, do you use double-sided sticky tape or glue to reassemble yourself? Does Weasel help?