Welcome to the February bulletin. Your editor has stumbled across some Lawrencian trivia this month which might come in handy for a future pub quiz. To offset the madness of the reign of the Orange Narcissist, I’ve been reading Barrack Obama’s A Promised Land as I’ve felt nostalgic for articulate and eloquent language. Obama was raised a vociferous reader and cites Lawrence as one of his formative reads. A more ominous fact relates to O.J. Simpson, who used D.H. Lawrence as a pseudonym for booking into hotels. I asked OJ if this was true, which he denied, but added ‘If I did it…’
This bulletin is produced each month at midnight, usually after a 12-hour stint at work, wedged in between various other tasks and projects, but penned with love. The purpose of the bulletin is to create a gallimaufry of Lawrence-related trivia that will help you get through lockdown and create awareness of the many ways that Lawrence continues to have an impact on the world. Needless to say, the tone expressed in these bulletins is that of your editor and not that of the Lawrence Society per se.
My motivation for producing this bulletin is part of a wider strategy to digitise Lawrence archives so that they remain accessible to future generations. With the JDHLS online, audio recordings of meetings on the website, and the Society now having a digital presence on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube - we've finally made it into the 21st century.
This month we celebrate Valentine’s Day which will be pretty much like every other day - stuck indoors arguing over the TV remote. No doubt Lawrence wouldn’t approve of something as commercial as Valentine’s Day which is probably for the best. He once wrote of the ‘being-in-love business’ that ‘One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it’. Can you imagine getting a card from him in 2021? ‘I love you, sometimes, not always, in fact I hate you a lot of the time, I’m sick of washing up, grrr, angry emoji, xx’
If you want anything included in the bulletin, lob it over to me (james.walker@ntu.ac.uk) or our Bren (brenda.sumner@gmail.com)
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ONLINE MEETINGS
HOME (Eastwood)
Wednesday 10th February 2021
Alan Wilson: ‘Linwood and Newton – Two Unsung Local Musical Heroes.’
This forthcoming talk takes on both a local and musical flavour. It is to be given by our own Chairman Alan Wilson. Alan, a retired professional musician, also a former native of Eastwood, has spent considerable time researching both his family history and the musical and social life of the area he grew up in. He has discovered two very interesting local luminaries - sadly neglected and forgotten and hence given the title ‘unsung heroes’. This is an opportunity to bring these two people back to the foreground and to celebrate the immense legacies they both left. He has subsequently recorded many pieces, achieving performances for the first time since the persons’ lifetimes. Alan aims to show that the former cultural music life of Eastwood is something to be valued, thanks to Linwood, and the fact that the Nottingham based great grandfather of D.H. Lawrence was not only a talented tuneful composer in his own right, but he also had a genetic influence into the very accurate and sensitive descriptions of music that Lawrence puts into his own writings.”
AWAY (London Group)
Thursday 25 Feb at 6.30 on the usual Zoom link.
Lara Feigel: ‘Encounters between humans and animals.’
Lara writes by way of introduction and stimulus to thought: 'I would like to look at the scene-building that Lawrence uses these sorts of encounters for from a technical and formal point view, and to use that to launch us into some of the larger epistemological and ethical questions and issues of political and cosmic consciousness that they raise. Along the way we might ask: is nature hierarchical for Lawrence? Are people animals? Does Lawrence prefer animals to people? Do Lawrence’s animals think and what do they think about us? What could rewilding mean and what does our desire for it amount to? And have we broken away from the animal world so much that we need a new paradigm to think through issues of ecological belonging and climate change at the largest levels? What would Lawrence make of the climate activism of today?’
Homework:
‘Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine’
‘Snake’ (and any other animal poems from Birds Beasts and Flowers that you’d like to look at).
St Mawr
Women in Love: Coal-Dust (ch 9), Water-Party (ch 14)
D. H. Lawrence Review 43.1 and 43.2 (2018). D. H. Lawrence's Green Modernity. Caleb Fridell. (available to read for free on jstor if you register for a free account)
Carrie Rohman, Stalking the Subject, Modernism and the Animal, 2009
Contact Catherine Brown for more details: catherinelawrencelondon@gmail.com
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From the JDHLS archives
Jane Costin
When we came over the shoulder of the wild hill, above the sea, to Zennor, I felt we were coming into the Promised Land. I know there will a new heaven and a new earth take place now: we have triumphed…this isn’t merely territory, it is a new continent of the soul. (2L 556)
This well-known quote, in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in February 1916, conveys Lawrence’s feeling on first seeing Zennor (shown above). Disappointed over the suppression of The Rainbow, poverty stricken and with no prospect of selling his work, he had fled from London and the war. But despite the adversity that surrounded him, characteristically optimistic, Lawrence views this not as a defeat but as a triumph; seeing Cornwall as a potential site for Rananim.
At present, we all face problems and because of travel restrictions are unable to travel to Cornwall. But we can go there virtually in the special Cornwall edition of J.D.H.L.S. Volume 4, Number 3 (2017). For those who enjoyed Fiona Fleming’s excellent talk on the connections between Lawrence and Hardy, this includes Adrian Tait’s essay comparing their responses to Cornwall. Many of these articles were first given as papers at the 2016 International D.H. Lawrence Conference that was held at the Tregenna Castle Hotel St Ives to mark the centenary of Lawrence moving to Zennor. And it seems that where Lawrence leads, others follow, as it has just been announced that Boris Johnson will host the next G7 summit of world leaders at the same hotel in June 2021!
The new website of the Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies hosts articles published since 1988. Please delve deeper into the searchable archive https://journalofdhlawrencestudies.com/ and feel free to write in about your own finds to Susan Reid: sue@niallc.co.uk. And look out for your copy of JDHLS 2020 in the New Year – we will send it out as early as we can manage.
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Lawrence and Academia
D. H. Lawrence, Distance And Proximity An International Virtual Symposium
(12‒14 July, 2021)
‘What a pity that distance remains distance, so absolutely’
Please hold these dates in your diaries for a virtual symposium in our time of pandemic, which will enable us safely to address D. H. Lawrence on themes of distance and proximity.
The symposium will be hosted on Zoom by the D. H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain with no fee for registration and everyone is invited to attend any or all of the events, regardless of whether you are scheduled to present.
The format of online roundtables and workshops of short papers is proving attractive and so we invite anyone interested in leading a workshop to make contact as soon as possible, as we will give priority to workshop proposals received by 15 February 2021. Please see the call for workshop proposals at https://www.dhlawrencesociety.com/symposium and send proposals or expressions of interest to dhlsymposium2021@gmail.com.
A further call for short papers on specific workshop topics will follow by early March. Meanwhile thank you for all the enthusiasm and support for this event we have received so far.
Susan Reid, dhlsymposium2021@gmail.com, on behalf of the Symposium Committee.
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On the Box
The second artefact in the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre is dialect. As part of this, I've written a short story called 'A Raight Racket' which is comprised of dialect used in Lawrence's writing. It's read by Lawrence Country, a folk music band from the Bagthorpe Delta, and available to watch on our YouTube channel here.
The story/video also has another purpose. It is being used in the Nottingham Trent University module Questioning the Canon as a creative writing exercise with first year English students (Annalise Grice is the module leader). Using the D.H. Lawrence Alphabet (see further down the bulletin) students create short stories of their own using dialect. This in turn leads to discussions about how and why language changes and its importance in helping to form identity as well as opening up discussions about Lawrence's life and work.
If you work in education and would like to use this in your teaching, please get in contact and I'll provide you with relevant resources.
Watch A Raight Racket here
Read about the dialect used in the story here
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This month on Torpedo the Ark, another amazing array of posts offering a radical interpretation of Lawrence's work and bringing it into touch with authors, ideas, and cultural trends with which it is rarely associated in mainstream criticism.
Here are the top ten posts which, hopefully, will interest and amuse members of the D. H. Lawrence Society:
1) A short comment on D. H. Lawrence and the Arts, ed. Catherine Brown and Susan Reid (Edinburgh University Press, 2020):
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/d-h-lawrence-and-arts-initial-reaction.html
2) Some further remarks on the question of education, with reference to the work of D. H. Lawrence and Michel Tournier:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/michel-tournier-on-education-1.html
3) Ever wondered how children might be initiated into the democracy of touch? This post provides the answer:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/on-initiating-youth-into-democracy-of.html
4) Lawrence despised false notions of childhood innocence and in Fantasia he addresses the issue of child sexuality:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/suffer-little-children-d-h-lawrence-on.html
5) The Escaped Cock (1929) remains one of Lawrence's most beautiful and philosophically profound tales as this post illustrates:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/on-risen-christ.html
6) Erotic lactation is an interesting subject - never more so than within religious and literary contexts:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/on-erotico-religious-lactation-or-get.html
7) The D. H. Lawrence Society has used Zoom to host meetings: But what would Lawrence make of Zoom?
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/zoom-what-would-d-h-lawrence-do.html
8) Long before Lawrence was dreaming of his Democracy of Touch, another sex radical and utopian pervert - Charles Fourier - was
providing a detailed blueprint for le nouveau monde amoureux:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/couscous-with-rancid-butter-thoughts-on.html
9) D. H. Lawrence hated money, but not everyone shares his view; some, in fact, think money is essential to happiness:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-money-post.html
10) As is commonly acknowledged within the criticial literature, Lawrence's work is hugely influenced by his reading of the Bible:
http://torpedotheark.blogspot.com/2021/01/why-even-anti-christ-reads-bible.html
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PROJECT PROGRESS
Ennio’s Muse is a digital compilation album released by British record label Whitelabrecs, as a means to generate funds and interest into an ambitious project called Return to Sea and Sardinia. 2021 marks 100 years since D.H Lawrence’s travel book Sea and Sardinia, in which he documented his travels from Sicily, through the Mediterranean Sea and up through Sardinia, before returning to his Sicilian home.
In Return to Sea and Sardinia, photographer and filmmaker Daniele Marzeddu plans to retrace Lawrence’s steps, a full century on since the original voyage. The journey will be captured through photography and a documentary film, which will be scored by anonymous composer Glåsbird. This ambitious plan is currently underway as we all work together to hopefully obtain the funding needed to realise it.
Whitelabrecs have decided to curate a digital compilation, in which all proceeds will be donated to Return to Sea and Sardinia for a period of 12 months. The album is themed on cinematic scoring, inspired by the late great Ennio Morricone and throwing forward the themes of Mediterranean travel that lie ahead. The artists invited have been asked to produce a piece of music, as if they are scoring for an imaginary film. The result is a series of dream-infused pieces, in which you can expect modern classical composition and ambient moods, all draped under a clear-night-sky canopy of stars. The artists each pull in their own direction but collectively, Ennio’s Muse is bound as a cohesive whole which plays out like a movie.
Info www.whitelabrecs.com www.whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com
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Tamara Drewe and Thomas Hardy
If you enjoyed Fiona Fleming’s talk on Lawrence and Hardy, you might be interested in reading Posy Simmonds graphic novel Tamara Drewe – a modern interpretation of Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd which originally appeared as a comic strip in the Guardian. The story is set in a writer's retreat and follows the fortunes of Tamara Drewe (Bathsheba Everdene), a young gossip columnist, who turns the eye of the local men. When she embarks on a fling with a Rockstar, Hardy’s famous ‘Sword Dance’ scene in the forest is replaced with a drum solo in a cottage. The comic was turned into a 2010 film, staring Gemma Arterton and Tamsin Greig
Watch Fiona on our YouTube channel here
Listen to Fiona's January talk here
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The D.H. Lawrence Alphabet
The D.H. Lawrence Alphabet is part of the dialect artefacts in the D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre.
Source: D.H. Lawrence Memory Theatre
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Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say online...
We may not be able to visit museums at the moment, but you can view all of the Lorenzo portraits at the National Portrait Gallery online here. Edmond Xavier Kapp's attempt is monstrous, whereas Dorothy Brett's oil on card portrait from 1925 captures a pale-faced Lawrence in a sombrero. You can zoom into these portraits and buy copies.
You can read about the death of Lorenzo in the Guardian archives here
Literature Cambridge (20th March 6 pm)
Hugh Stevens, Lawrence’s Nature Poetry
The poetry collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) expresses Lawrence’s remarkable joie de vivre in the years after the First World War. The poems in the collection were written between 1919 and 1923, and follow D. H. Lawrence’s and Frieda Lawrence’s peregrinations from Tuscany and Sicily, through Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Australia and ending up in the American Southwest.
The poems all use a disarmingly casual and fluent speaking voice full of challenging addresses to the reader. They are delightful, full of spontaneous inventive verbal creativeness, marvellously original observations of the natural world, thoughts about our relationship with our environment, and often containing profound and sustained meditations on the meeting between the human and the non-human.
D. H. Lawrence described his novel Kangaroo as a ‘thought-adventure’, and these poems are all ‘thought-adventures’ in their own way. We will focus on a selection of poems, including: ‘Pomegranate’, ‘Fig’, ‘Medlars and Sorb-Apples’, ‘Bare Almond Trees’, the sequence of poems about a family of tortoises, and his great masterpiece ‘Snake’. Most of these poems are collected on our blog page.
Live online lecture and seminar with Hugh Stevens, Senior Lecturer, University College London
Saturday 20 March 2021
18.00 British Time
19.00 Central European Time
£26.00 full price
£22.00 students and CAMcard holders
Link to enrol here
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From the Archives
In our last bulletin we welcomed Stella Howells, a member of Croydon Writer's Group. Following on from this, Sheila Bamford spotted these extracts from the D.H. Lawrence newsletters no. 82 and 83 about Ruth Webb's involvement in raising funds for the Croydon blue plaque. It is a useful reminder of how much effort and time goes into preserving literary history and culture. This is an abridged version of the original article.
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Lawrence and Me: José Goris
In this feature, members of the Society introduce themselves. Please get in contact to be featured.
 My name is José Goris. I am a new member of the D.H. Lawrence society, living in the Netherlands. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about myself, and my reasons for becoming a member of the society. This was first of all because I have a special bond with D.H. Lawrence’s work - I studied English Language and Literature and wrote my Master’s thesis on his major novels. Some of these works used to be on the book list of secondary schools in my country, and as a teacher I enjoyed discussing them with my students. They generally perceived D.H. Lawrence as a ‘difficult’ author, but at the same time they appreciated his writing about relationships and the protagonists’ trials and tribulations. Furthermore, I used to organise literary visits to areas in England, such as Canterbury, Broadstairs, Stratford upon Avon and also to Eastwood where D.H. grew up. Apart from that I have always had a great affinity with England, which is going back to my youth when I watched the ferry leave from Flushing every day. I had only one dream: to be on it one day! And in later life this dream came abundantly true - until recently I have always been a frequent visitor to the UK.
In the twilight of my career as an English teacher I became interested in innovative developments in secondary education: Content and Language Integrated Learning or CLIL. In sum, this means that content subjects such as history, geography or science are taught and learnt by means of a foreign language, and that language is mostly English. I was really curious to know if student proficiency in English benefitted from this approach, and conducted research into CLIL effects on foreign language learning in a number of European countries. My hard work led to the writing of a dissertation, which I successfully defended in September 2019, when I obtained a doctorate in educational science.
What I hope to get out of my membership is getting in touch with English people with whom I can share my interests, and hopefully meet in person in the D.H. Lawrence countryside after the pandemic. In the meantime, you can find my dissertation on my website, as well as essays about D.H. Lawrence and other literature courses I used to teach. Just follow the “English Language and Literature” link on the right.
José's website
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To be included in the newsletter contact james.walker@ntu.ac.uk or brenda.sumner@gmail.com
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