Clark / Davidson Spake

Dialect and Voices from the West Midlands
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-911027-83-6
Verlag: Nine Arches Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 120 Seiten

'Examining regional accents and our attitudes to them are a way of peering into Britain's soul. I can't wait for this book' - Sathnam Sanghera Spake: Dialect and Voices from the West Midlands with contributions from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), Julie Walters, Liz Berry and many of the regions best known writers. Spake is a love letter to the West Midlands voice and a challenge to the preconceptions and prejudices that abound about dialect and non-standard English. Much maligned, frequently overlooked or simply left out altogether: the English West Midlands has for decades been diminished in the national conversation - and with it, the rich dialects and voices of the region are often misunderstood, ignored or worse - ridiculed and mocked. But who's to say that the way we 'spake' isn't every bit as vital and precious a part of the landscape as other accents and dialects? This anthology features contemporary writing that draws upon dialect in ways that explore the potential of the narrative and poetic voice, bringing to life the silent histories and harsh realities of a vanishing working-class way of life in what was once Britain's industrial heartland. From contemporary re-imaginings of the interwar decades in Steven Knight's TV series Peaky Blinders to Liz Berry's prize-winning poetry and up and coming new talent, this book celebrates and gives voice to experiences rooted in the region that have largely lain at the margins.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Clark, Urszula

Davidson, Jonathan

Leseproben

Lisa Blower
Mr Briggs’s Next-Door Neighbour
It comforts Beth to imagine them as snails. In their slowness, their indifference. One day they will just retreat into their shells and never come out. A last moment of logic, she thinks, and their days of captivity end. She smooths out the crossword on her lap and doodles a kiln aside of the clues; shivers. “Bit parky today, granddad. You want me to fetch your cardigan?” He wants to know if she’s smuggled in his cigars. “Not today, granddad. I didn’t bring my purse.” Her mother watches her from the other side of the dayroom. To her, his disease is a parasite. It burrows into the bedrock of the soul. She finds herself willing him other illnesses to speed things up. On other days she wants to punch him. Remember my first steps? That first day at school when I clung onto the classroom door until my knuckles went white? Remember who you called shoeshine boy? You walked me only halfway down the aisle to him, dad, for me to come to my senses. Why can’t you? He’d tell her he was picking coal at six. Bookie’s runner at eight and on the pot banks at fourteen. Moonlit in a chippy on a Friday and Saturday saving up the wages for a week in Rhyl and there she was standing behind a piece of glass. Then he’d lose the rhythm of remembering and ask her if she’d come to clean out the fryers. “No dad. You sold the chippy after the fire, remember?” In the evenings, Beth finds her mother googling unconventional medicines and finds why doesn’t he recognise me? in the search engine. He’s taken to calling her Mr Briggs’ next-door neighbour, as if she is the title of a book. Beth thinks this is lovely. “You keep pushing him to feel something like you’re expecting a miracle,” she says. Beth is sixteen and wears glasses for farsightedness. She’s always been able to see the bigger picture, Claire jokes, and hopes that Beth’s recent coffees with a boy with intense eyes doesn’t distract her. She’s been predicted eye-wateringly high grades in her GCSE’s and that is not always coffee on her breath that Claire smells. Back in the dayroom, and Claire watches her father look at Beth like she’s something he can’t put his finger on. He asks her for the nearest bus stop. “We can go find the bus stop granddad,” Beth says. “It’s not far.” He takes her hand. When she looks, there’s a sweet in her palm. Blackcurrant and liquorice this time. Those Sunday afternoons they all spent listening to the charts. He has taken to sucking the sweets first so they stick to Beth’s skin. She’s come to like how her skin crisps dry with his saliva and obligingly puts the sweet in her mouth. Claire hates this part. It seems so unhygienic. She watches him lean across her daughter to get a better view of the crossword. “It’s lightnin’ that,” he says. “12 across.” He watches Beth spell it and frowns. “Ar found ‘im jed in that storm an’ all, struck by lightnin’ as he biked home. Week later, an’ we’re all in us black an’ in front pew sits his owd missus mindin’ a cat. White Siamese eet was, ‘ead on a swivel, an’ she goes an’ dumps this cat on the coffin an’ starts yellin’ – ‘on your ‘eads is this! An’ yer’ll get nowt owt o’ me!’ Any road, there’s no wake or send off or nuthin’ an’ everyone’s stood outside chinnin’ ‘bout her nerve til me mother says, well this canna be right in God’s eyes, an’ next thing she’s got me passin’ round cake slices on rips o’ kitchen roll save the crumbs on ‘er carpet. An’ ar see this tuther woman out corner o’ me eye an’ she beckons us over. So ar goes with a slice o’cake like, an’ she’s got this disease up ‘er face – ar’d never seen the likes be eet, and she says, ar’m sorry fer yer loss duck, but your mother’s got a lot answer for. An’ she knows eet. An’ next thing, me mother’s got me and our Alb by scruffs of ar necks an’ tellin’ us gerroff up them fields an’ tack that bloody cat with yer. She hated cats my mother. Said they were bad luck – only ‘ad t’ look one in the eye and she got a rash. An’ there eet was in a bin bag all tied up.” Something in Claire snaps, like her body is made of elastic bands and she pings across the room to put both hands on her father’s shoulders. “Cost spayk layk a Stokey?” The words take on a life of their own. “Cost kick a bo agen a wo an’ ed it til’ it bost? Spayk layk a Stokey. Ar spayk layk a Stokey. Arm not your goddamn next-door neighbour dad. Arm your daughter.” He puts up a hand and strikes. Beth shrieks. Tea has been spilled. Her hand scalded. Granddad shouts for the guards to take her away before he shoots. Claire and Beth sit in Grace Downey’s flour-coloured office on a simmering red sofa where they are offered more tea, handed tissues, a cold compress for Beth’s hand. “He hit me,” Claire says. “He has never hit me.” Grace looks at Claire like she’s interrupted her holiday and says, “with all due respect, this isn’t about you.” Claire sits remembering how her father had entered the home so cheerfully and clutching his wedding photograph. Told her, “you don’t need to come in. I’ll send you a postcard.” The day before, she’d been called from casualty to come and collect him. He couldn’t remember why he was there just that there were summat mitherin’. Claire took him home and found six-months-worth of bus tickets making the same journey there and back to A&E, all laid out on the coffee table like he’d been trying to solve a crime. This is not the first time Grace and Claire have locked horns, and Grace takes Claire’s blame on the chin as she takes everyone’s blame because the blame needs somewhere to land – a pile of blame that she bags up and puts to the back of her mind. “We’ve just never seen him that whole,” Beth says. “I can’t even remember the last time I heard his proper voice.” “Fools die hard,” Claire mutters. “And you’ve got your exams.” She knows what Beth is thinking. “But it triggered something.” Beth believes in miracles. “Something came alive.” “He’s my father Beth.” The words sound far unkinder than they are meant. Beth’s own father has never wanted to know and Claire is usually so careful. Grace suggests that Claire takes a few days off from visiting. Spend some time remembering you, she says. Claire eventually agrees, though it upsets her more that her father won’t know the difference between her being there or not. At home, over a takeaway, Beth says, “I want to try again with another crossword. I have an idea.” Claire is worn out and feels covered in dust. “I’m powerless whatever yet the enemy all the same,” she says. “Do what you like.” * When Beth was little, she used to find the crosswords screwed up in the bin. Letters where they didn’t fit and never finished. He spelled the words as he knew them. She says, “Morning granddad, you want eggs?” and points to 7 down. “That’ll be breakstuff,” he says. “’E were as pig-‘eaded as ‘e were bald-‘eaded. ’Ad us all thinkin’ he were sum war veteran who deserved eet when ‘is whole world were fly-tipped furnished. All smug, you’d think his Auntie came from Brighton, yet he’d look you up an’ down as if yer were summat he might catch. Emergency red tie and fancy bloody westcott all gradeley, he’d be at our door of a morning askin’ fer a glass of watter then ‘ave his eye on yer furniture. We tried follow ‘im once, see where he really lived but never took a key t’ a single door. Me mother always knew when we’d let ‘im in. Said she could smell ‘im and check the mugs. Which one he drink outta? Where’d he bin sat? Stood there with the Jif. Fungus and fleas she called it. Yer dunna give the likes o’ im an ounce of yer breath.” And then the sweet in her hand. Lemon sherbet today. Beth’s smile fills the room. “10 across granddad. Tried to get a bite, admitting mum’s flipping hungry.” “Bi ‘appens that’s clemmed shug,” as if it were on the tip of his tongue. “An’ they can tell me mother what they bloody like, I onna bothered. I know what ‘appened an’ I never stole nowt.” * Beth starts to record her granddad’s stories on her mobile phone then plays them back to Claire at the kitchen table. She tells her that she waited in his room today whilst they shaved him and cut his toenails. “He keeps saying there’s a hole in his ceiling,” Beth said. “That someone’s moving his stuff.” There is no hole, of course. Beth, standing on a chair, had run her hands across and down because she was once the little girl who believed...