While i was researching and studying for a project I’m doing on Mary Renault, two things happened.

First, I realized that she embarked on her great work on Alexander the Great, Fire from Heaven, as she entered her 60s. And I thought, come on, I can do something too, maybe not that, but something!

Second, I was reading her Theseus books which are based on early patriarchal myth, and in letters to her publisher she discusses that, the mergence of patriarchal ethos. Hence, all the derivatives – example, the bull leapers of Knossos finally bringing the Minotaur down, and then the Hunger Games. 

What of the monster slayers? – rather than reconciliation.

So, I started an exercise, anthropological – certainly, what about the matriarchal myth, how far back do we have to go for that, certainly “pre-history”. I began with the cartoon, not of the bearded wise man sitting in front of a cave, but the wise woman with her long white hair. What did she see, what did she know? And from there the story came, as if remembering (in the Mary Daly sense, yes), as if something was unfolding and my task was to follow it through. so I did, creating an action heroine to explore matriarchal modality, in terms of the adventure/gender & sexuality/moral and spiritual compass. It involves breaking through concepts within language as well: What of “woman”? So there was the necessity for distinct terms, and therefor a short glossary.

And forget it with linear time, the modern concept of time…that’s a challenge in a story-line.

Royalton Community Radio, streaming from royaltonradio.org, WFVR-LP 96.5 local fm

Radio show Mondays 7-9pm, featuring whatever  music I can find, accessible or that my budget allows, from all over Africa, with a focus on southern Africa. Replay  a show from the website of any of the many all-volunteer DJs for up to a week before a new one is recorded from the live recording in studio. 4 years now in March 2017!  In My Bones/African Music.

This conversational piece focuses on Bryher’s post WW2 writings. What influenced her difficult historical fiction? Long time partner of H.D. Bryher kept to the background on purpose. She kept well-covered, low-profile so that she had the freedom  to do what she wanted. Having no sense of entitlement to the wealth she received as she came of age, from her father, she put the money towards her social and literary activism, and funded the modern literary movement coming out of Paris, helping authors with funds so they could write, publishing them, forming literary review, and cultivating a network of subscribers and readers through correspondence and conversation. Her own writings later in life were steeped in surviving 2 world wars and great changes in Europe. She spoke geographically, setting her stories in deep time. This January Tale which she published in America through Helen Wolff, takes issue with the Norman Invasion of 1066, from the Saxon point of view, to point out what she and London had endured during the Blitz and imminent threat of Nazi invasion. She could not abide by England celebrating the 900th anniversary of the Norman Invasion (1066), when they had so recently withstood invasion. Had they forgotten? She felt America was receptive, and certainly so with Kurt and Helen Wolff who published a sweep of her books. In 1966 she corresponds with Helen Wolff over the work on this novel – 1966 -she wanted to get it out, as a rebuttal, as testament to the grim reality of exile, the lot of the refugee.

Hard copies are and will be sent out to archives or the piece is available as a PDF on request to rebbeguin@gmail.