Guernsey
Posts relating to Guernsey
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Seventy years of Liberation
It’s Liberation Day in Guernsey, 70 years since those aboard HMS Bulldog accepted the surrender of the Nazi occupiers, and the island’s liberators we welcomed into St Peter Port by a crowd which included my half-starved grandfather. The legacy of bunkers and fortifications built into the island is still plain to see. When I went to school I thought…
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Victor Hugo and Guernsey
Having fallen down a flight of stairs two days ago, I have spent a good deal of time on my back applying icepacks to a torn thigh muscle. While trying to write in a horizontal position, I realise that I am feeling homesick for Guernsey. I’ve been glancing at a translation of Victor Hugo poems by Harry Guest called (fittingly enough) The distance, The…
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‘A Return to Sarnia’ has its premiere
Chiara Beebe’s piece A Return To Sarnia, was given its premiere by the Guernsey Sinfonietta on Wednesday 6th August in St Peter Port’s Town Church. It was conducted by Sebastian Grand, and featured an authoritative young baritone Casey-Joe Rumens. It was spellbinding. It made my hair stand on end. It was an amazing thing to…
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Chiara Beebe, and ‘A Return to Sarnia’
August 6th sees the premiere of a new piece by Chiara Beebe. She is a 22 year old composer, cellist and singer born on Guernsey, whose piece A Return to Sarnia, based on a poem by Peter Kenny, will be performed as part of Terra Nova, an evening of modern and new music, by The Guernsey…
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La Gran’mère, a Guernsey goddess
I am an idolater. This is not something many of us can say in this godless age. My Goddess is somewhere between three and five thousand years old. She was hewn from a large lump of granite until, around the time of the Romans, she was carved again, adding the garments and, possibly, the face she wears now. She…
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An exile’s lament
I am an exile, but I am not alone. Most people I know live far away from where they grew up. Though born in London, my mother moved to Guernsey to live with my grandparents when I was little. I started school on the island, and my brother was born in the old granite cottage…
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Liberation Day
Guernsey was liberated on 9th May 1945, and this year one of my poems Root and Branch was beautifully read as part of a Liberation Day sermon by Dr Jonathan Frost, Bishop of Southampton. The service was featured on BBC Guernsey and you can listen here. The service starts at around 1:31 and my poem Root…
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The sound of one hand clapping
I have been fascinated by silence for years. Having lately met several classical musicians and composers, it is interesting to discover just what a touchstone John Cage’s 4’33” is. What I glean from these discussions is that John Cage was trying to get people to listen to the other sounds of the music hall, or…
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Choking on potato peel
Just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer (and completed by Annie Barrows) and I am trying to work out why it makes me grind my teeth. I can see why the book has done so well. As an epistolary novel, it is easy to read, and there is no…
Peter Kenny: a writer's notebook 