Been trying to identify the name of this compact little climbing rose that’s lived in my garden since before I lived here as it is day six’s plant of the day. Have used three different apps that have so far matched it to (5 different) leaves and flower heads that simply do not conform to what it is, so for now, until someone gives me better info, going to just call it a rose.
Whatever its Latin name might prove to be, it’s defo a hardy specimen. We had the garden landscaped about a decade ago and moved this rose from the bottom to the middle lawn and it took the upheaval in its stride, which is another reason, in addition to: its beauty, its thin, fragile fragrance and the way the petals cluster so thickly that the rose heads are almost like huge buds even when they’re full grown, why I love it so much. It’s not a typical looking rose so I’m glad I’ve got the picture to show you what it really looks like. Without the picture maybe the default setting rose image that might pop into your head would be bigger or more open? Words are weird like that – they signify a thing that we all agree on but leave loads of room for error/difference. I.e. when someone says pig we all think of a pig – but then maybe my default setting pig is different to yours. Maybe the first image that pops into my head when someone says pig is a pygmy Japanese pot bellied pig – and maybe yours is a Gloucester Old Spot, or maybe its Peppa, or Babe. Which just goes to show, that words at once signify something in common but also have loads of margin for non-overlap – which is what makes them so interesting, especially for a writer of flash. That’s kinda what I was going to go on to say at the end of yesterday’s blog before Harry unexpectedly rocked up – about exciting and unexpected effects in writing which can result from wide spans in agreed meanings. Words can at once share and befuddle, or at least mean more than one specific thing to different people which is what, hopefully, I will be looking at when I do my PhD. (Yeay I got there eventually – took a week but you know – steady pace wins the race). It’s by no means a done deal yet, but I’ve put in an initial proposal to York St John to write a horror novella-in-flash as the creative part of a PhD by Creative Practice with a critical commentary, working title Off the Page and Between the Lines – a critical investigation into blank space, internal endings, pause and stasis in writing a horror novella-in-flash. Will write more tomorrow explaining how resonant word meanings fit into all this empty space – but just going to leave that there for now, because you know – white space is important and it doesn’t often get foregrounded. Before then though, here is me reading a story on the BBC last week called A Fairy-tale Ending (from my new collection Hostile Environments). This story depends on loads of breaks and spaces and silences to help with the moving on of vast swathes of narrative time – as I hope you will hear as you listen. I’m on at 1 hr and 21 mins
Jan Kaneen Creative and Other Writing 