“Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Britten: Great Shakespearians”, a volume focusing on Shakespeare’s reception by the major composer, edited by Daniel Albright, the Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Literature at Harvard University, editor of “Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources”, author of many works including “Beckett and Aesthetics” , “Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the Science of Modernism” and “Stravinsky: The Music-Box and the Nightingale”, a Consulting Editor for Interlitq and a contributor to Issue 4 of Interlitq, will be published by Continuum in March 2012.

In a recent video filmed at the Chicago Humanities Festival, Hollis Clayson, the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University, whose works include “Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era” and “Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870-71)”, and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, discusses the influence of artificial light on Parisian impressionist artists and foreign artists living in Paris in the nineteenth century.

In a recent video, Elena Poniatowska, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation, whose many works include the books of reportage La noche de Tlatelolco and Nada, nadie: Las voces del temblor and novels including La piel del cielo, and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, discusses “MORENA Cultura”, the Commission that has been formed in Mexico to promote national culture and states that this endeavour must commence at the grass-roots of education.

In an interview, Martha Nussbaum, the American philosopher who is currently Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, discusses the story of Euripides’s Hecuba and what she terms the “fragility of goodness”, stating in the process “to be a good human being is to have an openness to the world—an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances”.

Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped by Frances Spalding, the art historian, critic and biographer, a Professor of Art History at Newcastle University, author of many works including “Roger Fry: Art and Life” , “British Art since 1900″ and  “Duncan Grant: A Biography”, and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, is to be published by Lund Humphries in March 2012.

Herewith further information concerning the publication:

“As the 2007 Prunella Clough exhibition at Tate testified, Clough (1919-1999) was one of the best and most original artists to emerge in the second half of the twentieth century. This book celebrates this female artist’s outstanding contribution to British art providing, for the first time, a comprehensive overview of Prunella Clough’s entire career.

Situating the development of Clough’s art within the trajectory of her life, Frances Spalding explores the key themes and inspirations that informed the artist’s work. Frances Spalding’s unique access to previously unpublished letters, a journal which Clough kept in the late 1940s and notebooks from the artist’s visits around England, ensures that this highly readable artist monograph of Clough’s life and work breaks new ground.

Important themes such as her interest in Surrealism, Neo-Romanticism and Abstract Expressionism, run alongside debates, such as the artist’s position within the English art scene and her critical reception. Her relationship with her aunt, designer and architect Eileen Gray, is given due attention, as are other key alliances in her life.

Prunella Clough: Regions Unmapped will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers, from those with a general interest in the artist and the period to curators, collectors, dealers and academics.”

Michael Scammell, a Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia University, recipient of the English PEN Non-fiction Prize for best biography of 1984 for “Solzhenitsyn: A Biography”, author of “Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic” and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, discusses in a recent audio interview with Richard Handler, the life and work of Arthur Koestler.

In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys by Campbell McGrath, the American poet who has published eight collections of poetry including “Seven Notebooks”, who has been awarded many prestigious awards including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award”, and who is a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, will be published by Harper Collins in February, 2012.

Denise Duhamel, a Consulting Editor for Interlitq, and a contributor to Issue 3 of Interlitq, and Issue 13 of Interlitq,  will be participating in the Young Writers Program at the “Desert Nights, Riding Stars Writers Conference” (Arizona State University) on February 23rd, 2012 at 7pm.

Robert Pinsky, the U.S. poet who was Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress between 1997 and 2000, a Consulting Editor of The International Literary Quarterly, and who contributed an example of his poetry to Issue 7 of Interlitq, will be giving a lecture, “The Value of the Arts and Humanities in Education and Society” at UTC on February 7th, 2012.

Ruby's Room no 35 by Anne Noble

One of Those Days

by Jane Seaford

When Mum came in from the bedroom, she had pink cream on her face but you could still see the other colours underneath, especially just below one eyebrow where there was a rim of black coming through. Her lips looked sore, too, swollen and bitten and when she yawned, it was almost as if she was trying not to cry. She walked through to the kitchen end of the living room.

Tansy started moaning, looking up from the floor where we were sitting cross-legged with all our dolls around us: ‘I’m hungry, we’ve had no…’ she began but I pinched her to shut her up. It wasn’t the right time to whine. It wouldn’t do any good asking to be fed. It was one of those days.

‘Trixie hurt me!’ she yelped and Mum looked up from filling the jug.

‘Cut it out, you two,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a headache.’

Tansy turned her mouth down and made it tremble. But I grabbed her arm, hurting her to stop her being silly and I leant over and whispered in her ear: ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up. You’ll wake Pete if you don’t give over.’ She pouted but I could see from the way she raised her chin and put her face on one side that she was beginning to understand.

Although Mum was staring out through the drizzle into the back yard as she waited for the water to boil, her eyes had their dull, blank look, as if they didn’t want to see. She had her arms crossed and was smoking. 

‘Shit,’ she said suddenly, ‘what are those bloody boys doing out there in pyjamas?’ She lit another cigarette from the old one, which she dropped into the sink. It made a fizzing sound in the dirty water. Mum started to cough. Tansy was watching her as she hugged her best doll, the only one still with all its legs and arms, close to her chest. Her mouth was working as it does when she’s not sure.

Mum took a big puff and breathed out a thick stream of smoke. She pushed the window open. Cold air came in and Mum leant out. ‘You, Kevin, Grant, come in here right now,’ she yelled and started to cough again. ‘More effing work, more effing work for me,’ she complained as she made tea. ‘Soaking wet pyjamas to wash and dry. And in this weather.’ I could hear our brothers still playing outside.

Mum pushed the window further open. ‘Get inside, now,’ Mum called more loudly and I shuddered. She’d wake Pete; she’d wake the baby. She banged the window shut and went to the door. As the boys came in, she hit them, first one then the other on the backs of their heads.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘get yourselves dressed and stay inside.’ She looked down at the muddy marks on the floor. ‘Trixie,’ she called to me. ‘Make yourself useful for once and clean this mess up.’ She spooned milk powder and sugar into two mugs of tea and taking them with her went through the hall and into the bedroom. Sometimes I hate being the eldest.

After I mopped up the floor I looked again in the fridge, as if it somehow might have filled itself since I had last opened it earlier, trying to find breakfast for us all.

‘I am hungry,’ Tansy said. I shrugged. That morning, we’d shared the last of the stale bread, spreading it with a thin layer of jam and now there was nothing left to eat.

‘Let’s look for money,’ Kevin, said, coming out of the back room where we all slept. He had dressed in dirty jeans and a jumper that was much too big. The big bruise on the side of his head was turning yellow. Sometimes the grownups drop coins in odd places and if you’re lucky you can find enough to buy something from the corner dairy. Kevin, Grant and I looked everywhere, feeling between the cushions and reaching under the sofa and chairs, while Tansy sucked her thumb, still cradling her doll.

The baby started to make little squeaking noises, almost but not quite crying. Just lately he’d stopped the loud screaming he used to do, as if he’d learnt that it doesn’t do any good. I went into the hall and rocked the pram. Kevin counted the few cents we’d found: not even enough for a small chocolate bar. Grant rummaged in one of the ashtrays and pulled out some longish cigarette butts. The boys put them in their mouths and pretended to smoke. They gathered up the empty beer tins, shaking them to see if there was anything left them in, drinking the dregs when there was, making faces at the vomity taste.

Just as the baby stopped whimpering there was a loud knock at the front door. ‘Nana,’ Grant said, putting his butt back in the ashtray. But Nana didn’t push into the hall as she normally did and when I opened the door, there was June with Brad. Her mouth was creased and floppy under the thick greasy lipstick she was wearing. It had made a bright red mark on the tip of her cigarette and her hair had gone blonde.

‘S’pose Pete’s still in bed,’ June said and I nodded. ‘Too bad,’ she said, ‘he’s having his eldest son for the rest of the weekend.’ She pushed Brad through the door and I watched as she walked up the path and away in her high heels that looked silly below her fat white calves. She teetered slightly on the wet shiny pavement. She’d been Pete’s girlfriend before he came to live with Mum, even though she was nearly the same age as our Nana. I shut the door and looked at Brad and he looked up at me. He was almost four, the same age as Tansy, but he could hardly talk and he still wore nappies. Drool was dripping down his chin and he was holding tightly onto an empty box with both hands. I pushed him into the living room and started to rock the pram again.

The baby wouldn’t shut up. The whinging sound went on and on and then he gave a sharp loud yelp, and then another and another. The bedroom door banged open and there was Pete, standing and yawning. He was wearing underpants and a T-shirt and smelled sour.

‘Shut the eff up,’ he shouted and when I’d breathed in, I was scared to let the breath out again. He was staring at me; his eyes were red and there was a vein throbbing in his neck. After he’d hit me, (it didn’t hurt too much, just a light bang on the side of my neck) I ran into the living room. Tansy, Kevin and Grant were huddled together by the window.

Brad stood alone, squashing his empty box. ‘D d d,’ he said when he saw Pete who asked: ‘What’s he doing here?’ and gave a big sigh as if he was doing his best and the rest of us were holding him back. He clumped through to the kitchen area and opened the fridge door. ‘Who’s drunk all the Sprite?’ he yelled and stood leaning on the bench, rubbing his face. Our Nana keeps asking Mum what she’s doing with a man so young, but Pete’s a real grownup. He had his twenty-first birthday the day after the baby was born and disappeared for quite a long time: nearly a week. Mum cried when he came back. She said it was because she was so glad to see him, she thought he’d gone forever.

When I said: ‘I wish he hadn’t come back,’ a little bit too loudly, Mum pulled me to her. ‘What did you say?’ she asked. She put her face close to mine and I could see spittle between her lips. I don’t like it when Mum becomes mean and I shook my head and tried not to tremble.

‘You’re hurting,’ I said. Mum’s fingers were pinching my arm where she was holding me. She dug her nails in so that I almost cried out.

‘You’re lucky to have Pete here,’ she said with the witch voice she sometimes used. ‘He’s a darn sight better than your real useless father.’

When she let me go, she pushed me away and I stumbled and fell against the table, banging my elbow, which hurt my funny bone and I couldn’t help crying.

Now Brad started to cry. He sometimes opens his mouth for no reason that I can see and this loud noise comes out. The baby was whining again and the rain stopped being drizzle and started falling heavily. When it does that, it sounds as if someone’s dropping pebbles on our roof, over and over.

‘Chris’ sake,’ Pete shouted. He came through the living room, cuffing Brad as he went. He lifted the baby from the pram and shook him till the whining stopped.

Then he shook him some more, saying: ‘That’s right, you be quiet or you’ll get some real punishment.’ He grunted as he almost threw the baby back into the pram. Then he pulled the sheet and blankets up so that only the top of the head was showing and went back into the bedroom, banging the door. By now Brad had stopped crying and we could hear Mum and Pete talking, the voices going up and down. We all listened and when suddenly it was silent, we all looked at each other, waiting to see what would happen.

We heard Mum giggle. Tansy smiled at me and the boys stood up. They picked up their cigarette butts and swaggered round the room, pretending to be big men. Brad laughed and I noticed that the rain had stopped.

This time when there was a knock at the door it was Nana.

‘Well,’ she said coming in and looking round. ‘I suppose the two of them are still in bed?’

She picked up Tansy, who wrapped her legs round Nana’s middle and held onto her tightly. Brad tottered over and stood clasping both her legs. Although she was our Nana and not his, Brad seemed to prefer her to other adults.

‘What have you got for us?’ Grant asked, looking at Nana’s big brown bag. She comes to see us almost every Saturday and she always brings treats to eat.

‘Let’s clean the place up first,’ Nana said, putting Tansy down and we all helped, even Brad, clearing up the mess the grownups had made the night before and tidying away our toys. The sun had started to shine and Nana opened the windows, letting out the stale, crowded smell. She had brought a big bottle of milk, a tin of Milo and two sorts of biscuits. She made us drinks and we sat round the table, like a real happy family, eating until there was not a crumb left, while Nana had her mug of tea and smoked a cigarette.

‘Time they got up, your Mum and that Pete.’ Nana said, after she’d washed up and I’d helped to dry. ‘And the baby must be due a feed.’ She knocked on the bedroom door, ‘It’s me,’ she called, ‘There’s tea made. I’ll take the kids to the park. You two better stir yourselves. It’ll soon be evening.’

I helped Tansy dress her best doll and then we all went out. All except for the baby, who was lying quiet in his pram.

It was beginning to get dark when we came home, still licking the ice creams Nana had bought us. Mum was sitting in the living room and Pete was out.

‘He’s gone to the shops,’ Mum explained, lifting Tansy to sit on her knee. She smiled up at us all. She’d put more cream on her face, smoothing it over the places she wanted to hide. Everything seemed almost normal.

Nana said she must go soon, but she sat for a while, leaning back in the chair, looking tired. Pete came home. He gave Nana and Mum a beer each, took one for himself and put the rest in the fridge. I looked in the supermarket bag. There was a packet of cheese, a loaf of bread, lots of different flavoured chips. My tummy rumbled.  

‘Did you get nappies for Brad?’ Mum asked. He was beginning to smell.

‘Forgot,’ Pete said and he grunted.

‘We need them,’ Mum said.

‘Effing kid,’ Pete shouted. He drained his beer, took another one from the fridge and left the house, banging the front door as he went.

‘Well,’ Nana said.

‘Don’t you start.’ Mum said.

‘I’ll just have a look at the baby and then I’ll go,’ Nana said. She heaved herself up from her chair and went to the pram in the hall. I watched as she gently untucked the blanket a little, bent to touch the baby’s face. I saw her frown, reach into the pram, pull back all the bedclothes and lift the baby out. She looked at him, sighed, shook her head, rocked him, pinched his cheek.

She came quickly into the living room and went to Mum, holding the baby tight. ‘This child’s injured,’ I heard her say. ‘I’m taking him straight to hospital.’

‘No,’ Mum said, reaching out her arms.

‘He’s cold, he’s barely breathing,’ Nana said.  

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,‘ Mum said, standing up.

Nana looked at her, holding the baby against her breasts with both arms. She peered into Mum’s face. ‘He’s been hitting you again. And the little one. I’m taking this child, now, and I’m calling the police.’

As she was going out of the front door, we heard Pete’s car coming back.

‘What you doing with my son?’ He asked as he climbed out, still with his beer can in one hand. Nana ignored him and went running to her car. I wondered how she was going to drive with the baby in her arms. We were all in the hall by now, watching. Nana had managed to open her car, get in, close and lock the door. Pete was banging on the car roof. I don’t know how she did it, but Nana’s car lights went on and she drove away. Pete chased her, yelling, but then she turned the corner and was gone.

He came back inside. He was breathing hard. ‘What the hell was that all about? She’s kidnapped the baby.’

‘She said he was injured,’ Mum said. She was shivering; Tansy was clinging onto her leg with one arm, cuddling her doll with the other.

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ Pete was almost roaring.

‘She says she’s going to call the police,’ Mum said. Her teeth were chattering now.

‘Interfering old bitch,’ Pete said. He’d raised his hand. I didn’t know which of us he wanted to hit. Kevin, Grant and I slunk back into the living room.

‘D d d,’ Brad said, looking up at Pete. Pete kicked him and he started to cry.

‘I’m leaving,’ Pete said. ‘I’ve had enough of this place, had enough of that old busy body.’ 

‘Stay, please.’ Mum started to cry. She picked up Tansy and came into the living room. She sat on the sofa pulling Tansy onto her knee. Tansy dropped her doll, closed her eyes, started to suck her thumb and leaned back on Mum who was reaching into her pocket for her cigarettes. I saw her hands were shaking, so I went to help her, finding the matches and striking one for her. She leant forward to take the flame and her hands as they touched mine were cold.

Pete went to the fridge and we watched as he took out all the cans of beer, piling them into the plastic bag alongside the bread and cheese and chips. I wondered if I dared to ask him not to take the food but then I realised I was no longer hungry.

‘Should have gone ages ago. I’m fed up with all these kids and the way they do exactly as they like. No discipline in this house,’ Pete said as he took the loaded bag and walked thorough the living room and out into the hall.

‘Don’t leave me,’ Mum called, but he’d gone, the door slammed one more time.

Brad, who’s been standing by Mum, bent to pick up Tansy’s dropped doll. He knelt down and, holding its legs, started to bang it on the floor, over and over. Mum just sat smoking; her eyes like glass in spite of the tears that still dripped down her face. Most of the pink face cream was gone, so that her bruises and the black eye showed. I wondered who she was crying for. Probably Pete, I decided as the thin plastic head on the doll cracked open and Brad crowed in triumph. 

About Jane Seaford:

Jane Seaford writes short stories. Several of her these have been placed, highly commended or short-listed in international competitions. Many have appeared in anthologies or magazines. Others have been broadcast on Radio New Zealand. As a freelance journalist she had a column in a magazine called ‘Bonjour’ and sold pieces to the Guardian, the Independent and other British
publications. She is also the assistant fiction editor for Takahe, a New Zealand literary magazine.

About Anne Noble:

Anne Noble is one of New Zealand’s most respected photographers. Her substantial body of work spans landscape, documentary and installations that incorporate both still and moving images. She often works in series enabling her to explore the medium and its possibilities in great depth.

Since 2001, Noble has been researching and photographing Antarctica. She is exploring the cultural construction of place through imagination and depiction. Moving away from the traditional photographer’s role as companion to exploratory and surveying teams, and questioning the tendency to frame the Antarctic landscape as heroic, picturesque or sublime, Noble is searching for appropriate forms of representation in light of our current, rather than historical, relationship to place.

In 1998, Noble embarked on a series of photographs of Ruby’s room (Anne’s daughter), her toys, and spectacular close-ups of her mouth. The works expand Ruby?s mouth in many guises to a scale that is at once scary, comical and heroic. Lush, large, and electric in colour, the photographs are of imaginary disembodied physical and sensory experience.

In 2001 The Dunedin Public Art Gallery curated a major retrospective of her work. The resulting exhibition States of Grace, toured New Zealand 2001 – 2003. In 2005 and 2006 her work has featured in exhibitions at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, in Berlin and the Patio Herreriano in Spain. Noble has just returned from Paris where she has just completed printing her series Ruby’s Room, which will be exhibited at the Musee du quai Branly in 2007 and tour Europe in 2008 – a catalogue will accompany this major exhibition.