Dear Editor I write as co-producer of the award-winning West Country Voices’ film, ‘Phosphates: Too Much Of A Good Thing?’, which was shown at last year’s Frome International Climate Film Festival. I bring the good news that this exciting and inspiring Festival is taking place again soon! Read the update below. I hope to see […]
There are books read in childhood that, over time, are elevated to mythic status, as memory seeks to preserve that embodied sensation of the newly discovered miracle of reading which grants agile, hungry imaginations a licence to fly. One such book is The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I don’t know exactly how old […]
Asif Kapadia’s dystopian drama explores where current events and politics could lead over the next few decades. It’s the year 2073 and the worst fears of modern life have been realized. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarized police roam the wrecked streets, while survivors hide away underground, struggling to remember a free […]
Shire Hall Museum in Dorchester is hosting an emotive photography exhibition from Robert Golden, offering an intimate insight into the lives and experiences of the Windrush generation, 25 years after their arrival in the UK. Opening on Friday 27 September, Searching for the Motherland features over 50 photographs of London’s Windrush generation and their families […]
We thought it might be fun (and interesting) to ask our editorial team and contributors what they are or have been reading recently. Do write in and tell us what you have enjoyed and would recommend (or not!): editor@westcountryvoices.co.uk. More to come! Dame Sarah Cowley, our Dorset editor. Someone Else’s Shoes, by JoJo Moyes. Penguin […]
Four years on from Brexit and I’m taking a look at how various industries have been affected by the realities of our decision to leave the European Union (EU). I’ve already looked at How fishing was gutted by Brexit, and how Brexit has impacted farming. In this article I want to look at how Brexit […]
YouTube footage from the climate change conference COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021 reveals scores of delegates chanting “Another world is possible”. It reflected their disillusionment at the compromised conference process and at the lack of governments’ commitment to meaningful action in the face of the escalating climate crisis. While, unsurprisingly, the footage was not […]
If you are one of those who (as dance critic Mary Clarke said), “think ballet is just Swan Lake” – pretty fantasy, tutus and tiaras, with no relevance to modern-day Britain, I might suggest you watch the Royal Ballet’s production of Manon. (It doesn’t have to be ridiculously expensive: tickets at, for example, Seaton Gateway […]
That’s why you should read it, says Simon Chater. Widely revered but little read, Dante’s Divine Comedy turned 700 years old in 2021. I celebrated this anniversary by writing some Tasting Notes to introduce the poem to new readers. Shakespeare fans say God came to earth twice: the first time as Jesus, to show us […]
Like Virgil, I must now fall silent. Here are Dante’s last written words, leading up to the beatific vision that ends his Comedy:
Beatrice appears more beautiful than ever as she nears the end of her ‘special relationship’ with Dante. Doing her bidding one last time, he bathes his eyes in a river of light to free his vision from the last vestiges of earthly defects. Born a Florentine girl and now among the redeemed in paradise, Beatrice […]
Mystics often describe their relationship with God as a love affair. Dante’s is full of joy, even ecstasy, but he also gets angry with God – a less acceptable emotion that is harder to deal with. In Paradiso 27 we see the poet moving from one extreme to the other, then turning to Beatrice for […]
Dante’s “earthrise” moment is entirely imagined – no astronaut’s photos were available in 1320. Its emotional impact is no less powerful for that. As we leave Saturn, the most remote of the planets, to enter the heaven of the fixed stars, Beatrice addresses him: In the array of the seven planets, each sphere enclosing another […]
In the sphere of Saturn Dante meets a kindred spirit, Peter Damian, who leaves him in no doubt about the limits to human knowledge. Saturn is the outermost of the seven planets, the coldest and most remote from earth. This is the heaven of the mystics – those who, on earth, led a contemplative life […]
In the sphere of Mars, spiritual home of the courageous, Dante meets his great-great grandfather, Cacciaguida degli Elisei, who predicts the poet’s exile from his beloved Florence. A 12th century nobleman who fought in the second crusade and died a martyr in the Holy Land, Cacciaguida speaks of a Florence long vanished, a city “sober […]
Dante and Beatrice emerge from the earth’s shadow into a new clarity and brightness in the heaven of the Sun. This is the light by which the wise know God. The poet invites us to join him in celebrating the order we see in the created world, which gives a direct taste of its Creator: […]
‘Brexit’: a word which inspires irrational passion in some, and sadness and loathing in so many of others. “Brexit means Brexit” – really? What is its etymology, its origin? The very word ‘Brexit’ is nothing more than a corny ‘portmanteau’ word, a blend of words in which parts of multiple words are combined to make a new […]
The souls in the heaven of Venus enjoy spiritual telepathy – wordless communication made possible by their participation in each other’s minds through the all-knowing mind of God. Dante invents new verb forms to convey their ecstatic mingling of identities. Venus is the third and last heaven on which the earth casts a shadow. Here […]
We are so lucky to have so many creative, motivated people in our west country communities. People like Ashburton Arts Centre director and celebrated jazz musician Andy Williamson who puts together cracking events like the Ashburton Chamber Music Festival 13 – 23 July and the diverse, eclectic but accessible Tinners Moon Festival which kicks off […]
The opening cantos of Paradiso contain an extended and complex argument about how we gain new knowledge and how we can trust what we perceive. The challenge, for Dante, is to understand that spiritual reality works differently to the physical world he is leaving behind him. Dante begins Canto 2 with a challenge to his […]
Here’s how Dante begins his Paradiso – not with himself, as in his previous two canticas, but with God: This third and final phase of Dante’s journey begins in the relative world – the world of more or less, of hierarchy, of the many not the One, of the universe as a separate physical entity. […]
A new book and touring exhibition takes visitors on a unique A–Z journey through Cornish places and their richly resonant names, in poetry and photography. Tom Scott writes about his involvement and the project’s objectives. Angarrack, Feock, Halliggye Fogou, Nancekuke, Ponsanooth, Zennor… What secrets of language, history and legend can Cornwall’s place names unlock? I’ve […]
Most of us know the West Country as home of the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their struggle for trade union rights. It is less well known that Dartington Hall in Devon is where the Labour Party manifesto Let Us Face the Future was written. This set the direction for the 1945 Labour government, founding the NHS […]
Two streams from the same source flow through the verdant earthly paradise. Dante must get a dunking in both of them before he is ready to ascend to the stars. After his evisceration at the hands of Beatrice, Matilda brings Dante to Lethe, the stream of forgetfulness, which purges him of all his shameful memories: […]
It’s the moment Dante’s been waiting for! He is to meet Beatrice again, after more than 20 years of separation. We might expect a joyous reunion, but that’s not at all what we get. We left Dante relaxing amidst the grass, flowers and trees of the earthly paradise, beside the stream of Lethe. A woman, […]
Reason can only take you so far. At the summit of purgatory Virgil reaches the limits of his knowledge. His task done, he crowns Dante master of himself, ushers him into the earthly paradise, watches in silence for a while, then turns for home in limbo. The wall of fire that purges the soul of […]
Bird similes abound throughout the Comedy. I find this one, in which Dante compares himself to a fledgling stork, delightful: Ostensibly, Dante is making a play for our sympathy here by presenting himself as young and eager for knowledge yet hesitant to ask a question, doubtless out of reverence for the older and wiser Virgil. […]
Except for the good pagan poets found in limbo, Dante places all the poets in his Comedy among the saved, most of them high on the slopes of purgatory. Poets have a high calling in life and this is reflected in their fate after death. Dante is keenly aware of the poet’s mission as prophet: […]
Virgil’s great exposition on love is centrally placed in the Comedy, occupying Cantos 17 and 18 of Purgatorio. With this, Dante signals that love, and the understanding of love, are at the heart of his poetic matter. Doctrinally, the ideas Dante attributes to Virgil are standard-issue medieval philosophy, derived from the teachings of Aristotle and […]
Life’s not a zero-sum game, say the souls on the terrace of envy, so don’t live it that way. Dante doesn’t ‘get it’ at first, but Virgil explains. We have just met Guido del Duca, scion of one of the leading families of Romagna, the region next-door to Tuscany, where Dante comes from. Like all […]