Saturday, October 22, 2016

Review of Anhaga in Text Journal 20 no 2

http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct16/kunkler_rev.htm

Pity Mr. Kunkler couldn't be bothered to read the book he was supposed to be reviewing. Anhaga does not mean 'Wanderer' in Old English. The word is used twice in text and both times it's translated properly.
And all the other factual errors? You'd think someone reviewing a book would at least have the decency to get his facts right and pay attention to what's on the page. The arrogant ventriloquism of the ending would be marginally less offensive if it were written by someone who had read the book he was supposedly reviewing.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Battle Of Hastings.....

950 years ago....

These words worked the long day Harold died,
when Norman French swept up the slope of Senlac Hill
and English grammar broke and bled into the dusk.
Harold rotted in his unmarked grave,
but the tattered remnants of his word hoard
colonised the globe. Linguistic vertigo:
fall and find yourself, there in the shield wall,
beating battle-axe on war-board, chanting
“Out! Out! Out!” as the chain-mailed tide,

grey as the Channel, flows up the hill.

(originally published in Lady Godiva and Me, This version printed in Rough Spun to Close Weave.)

(And all the words in the first line are found in Old English)