Five Fine Things on a Thursday...
a regular segment in which I inflict my taste on you dear reader...
Listening! to Ethan Hawke 2020 TED talk on creativity (entitled give yourself permission to be creative). Inspiring but not corny, and filmed in a barn! Ethan is all about channeling the jester artist and breaking habitual living - which I love as I loathe habits! Ethan takes the view that creativity is essential rather than luxurious which leads me onto my second ‘Fine thing on a Thursday’….
Contemplating! activist, poet and philosopher Audre Lorde’s short but powerful essay collection The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House. Worth recommending for the title alone! (You can read an edited version of the title essay here.) This collection includes the essay Poetry is not a Luxury -a consciousness-raising case for a broader definition of poetry, enlivened and far removed from the ‘clever word-play’ of poems written largely by DWEMs (Dead, White, European, Males*). Audre re-frames poetry as a liberatory, dream-space, that works against systems of oppression and division (while importantly allowing for difference)….and I can’t do her justice so do go read it!
Reading! Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Olga has won the Nobel Prize for Literature so doesn’t really need my recommendation but I LOVED this novel! The protagonist is a William Blake, horoscope-obsessed, animal-lover living a hermetic life on a small Polish plateau, character-driven, funny and challenging, also oddly fits into the crime genre. (Side-note: I hope one day that Joe Rogan will read this book.)
Using! The Color Theasurus by writer Ingrid Sundberg (I haven’t forgotten how to spell colour, she’s American!). I use this resource all the time - a wonderfully curated synonym list for colours and shades with the corresponding charts, great for writers, teachers, designers and colour-enthusiasts. I’m currently in Greece (see pic above) and have needed the following in order to describe the varying shades of the Aegean sea: admiral, cobalt, azure, cerulean, turquoise, lapis, and emerald!
Publishing! me! At the end of June my non-fiction book Roaming Wild, the Founding of Compassion in World Farming was published. You can read a version of the books preface here for more of a flavour of what it’s all about. Thanks very much indeed to those who’ve already purchased and read it, (prize for speediest reader goes to Aunty Judy!). If you would like a copy you can pick one up via all the usuals or with a discount via Compassion in World Farming here (scroll to bottom of blog for discount code and deets).
I’d love hear of some of things that are currently enriching your life, do comment below and thank you for reading. More Fine Things here.
Love,
Emma x o x o
*I’ve got nothing against DWEMs per se, Shakespeare is one after all, and he’s pretty cool, I just think the curriculum and the culture needs to open up.