Poetry from the Jungle

By: The Ceylon Press
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  • Summary

  • Listen to a growing poetry anthology: 80 poets who reset the world’s literary canon. Recorded in the jungle, the Podcast takes its surroundings as its measure - that perfect order that exists, in artless balance, beneath a dense and tangled canopy.
    Copyright 2023 The Ceylon Press
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Episodes
  • Notes on The Jungle, Max de Silva

    Notes on The Jungle, Max de Silva
    May 8 2024
    The JungleThe Work of an Unknown AuthorEdited by Max de Silva 2020 A DedicationWhether or not the original text of The Jungle included a dedication can, sadly, only be a matter of random speculation given the passage of so many hundreds of years, but for my own part I would like to dedicate my contribution in its publication, the Preface and Notes, to two who have been an inspiration throughout the long and sometime complex process of editing. They know who they are. MM and Fion Cati. Contents A Preface to the Work and an Explanation of its FindingThe JungleAn Index of Associations The Jungle A Preface to the Work and an Explanation of its Finding IntroductionThe Jungle is a curious work, and its provenance something of a mystery that I hope this edition will go some way towards illuminating. Many scholars, not least some of my own colleagues at the Department of English Literature at Marischial College, have commented that it is not a poem at all. Or even a reliable history. Fortunately, as an academic specialising in old English dialects and English colonial lexicons, and not poetry (or even Literature or Colonial Studies), it is not my place to enter into such debates. But why, you might most reasonably ask, is someone like me involved in this work at all? And what exactly is this work? The two questions are deeply intertwined. The Jungle (and that is not its real title, as you will learn) is not an complete piece of writing. It is missing parts – how many exactly we cannot really know. But I am getting ahead of myself. I will begin at the beginning, relatively speaking. The Buchanan-Smith Archive The manuscript was discovered amongst the paper of Lady Margie Buchanan-Smith, a Scottish landowner from Balerno, south of Edinburgh, who died in 1901. Buchanan-Smith was well known in her time for her crossbreed shorthorn cattle, which later went on to produce the beef for which Scotland is now so famous. But she was also a collector of antiquarian papers, and left her considerable, albeit largely uncatalogued, library to the Montrose Library. There it sat, still in its original boxes until 1932 when T. Jerome Mockett (later Professor Mockett) discovered the trove of documents and set about cataloguing them for the library. The Mockett Catalogue Many interesting first-hand accounts were revealed by Mockett’s careful cataloguing, the Diaries of Captain Graham Laurie, being probably the most famous, written as there were over the period of the later Napoleonic wars. The Diaries capture in vivid detail what life was like for a merchant ship ferrying trade from the East and West Indies through seas swarming with French frigates. As we know, Laurie’s Diaries later went onto inspire the Hornblower novels written by C. S. Forester. Laurie would later go on to create a not inconsiderable scandal by his marriage to Coco zur Wager, the natural daughter of the French pretender, Bianca, Duchesse de Orleans-Bourbon. Scandal, it seems ran in that family for Laurie’s son, Dominic became a notable London buck and partner-in-arms of George Bryan "Beau" Brummell. The Jungle (and I will call it that for the sake of convenience) was one of the many manuscripts for which Professor Mockett could find few details. A Bill of Sale, still attached to the manuscript, showed that it had been bought by Buchanan-Smith from Desmond Truscott, an antiquarian bookseller then based in Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket in 1884. The Rutland Family From that small ticket, it is possible to trace a likely provenance to the Rutland family, who had for several generations been tenants of the Langold-Gillows, the eminent eighteenth-century furniture makers who later built Leyton Park near Slackhead in the Lake District . The Rutland’s were tenant farmers of the Leyton Park Estate. The last of the line, Katarina Kennedy Rutland, married Rupert, the swashbuckling younger son of the watercolourist and poet Sir Simon Langold-Gillow, who famously meet his end aged 98 when out sketching Scafell Pike in a snowstorm. Katarina Kennedy Langold-Gillow (nee Rutland) was widowed early after Rupert Langold-Gillow came off the worse in a local duel. She spent the years of her widowhood living at Leyton Park, taking a particular interest in rescuing the famous Herdwick sheep breed, introduced into the area by Vikings and later immortalised by Beatrix Potter; but in her time, almost extinct. She left her own papers, which included the complete papers of the Rutland family, to the Library at Leyton Park. The Langold-Gillow Library When eventually, in 1854, Sir Stefan Langold-Gillow came into the baronetage, the Leyton Park Library was sold off. The new baronet, a member of Cardinal Newman’s Oxford Movement, was interested in theology and kept behind only those books and papers that related to his particular interest. The rest – including a ...
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    32 mins
  • The Jungle, edited by Max de Silva

    The Jungle, edited by Max de Silva
    May 8 2024
    The JungleThe Work of an Unknown Author Edited by Max de Silva, 2020I secrets Nothing yet does the jungle give,however long you wait or watch; it is eternal, it does not age. Its appearance is scarcely a hintof all that is hidden - tight-lipped, dark green; ceaselessly undisturbed, untouched, unconcerned even; indifferent to what begins where,or how, or why - as if it could knowthat it will allsimply return. Actually,it is a great wall, limitless, its ends unreported,holding closethe smuggled secrets of this day and tomorrow, of one millennia to the next, filtering the sun like a censor, carrying forward its confidential cargos in low capacious vaults. Listen now; stop, and listen. It speaks in ciphersthat have no key,yet picks out imperfectionsbetraying themlike a spy to an enemy, dipping, dipping into nameless valleys and up the steep sides of unforgetting hills. II island The songs that have enduredare merely words,the tunes themselves long lost; the texts are somewhat incomplete, but what survivesis that perfect island, presented in the way a child might dream of an island set in a great sea, rising up from forested beaches to a centre of mighty mountains that disappear into clouds. Immense riverstumble back down. In the villagesthe old dances are still young; new babies are fed on milk dipped in gold before their horoscopes are taken. Numbers rule the universe. Boys touch the feet of elders; householdsprepare their daughtersto come of agewashed in water with herbs, the girl concealed until she is presented with her own reflection swimming in a silver bowlbeneath her face. The gems later looted from their antique tombswere not even from the island - diamonds, emeralds,even amber, to mixwith their own stones, pink sapphires and rubies, garnets, topaz, aquamarines;rose quartz fine enough to see through. Carpenters inlaid furniture with ivory and rare woods; crafted secret chambers, hidden drawers. Fish sang off long sandy beaches. And along the rivers stretched parks,warehouses, jetties, mansions. III bounty Later,they measured that happiness,when happiness was a choice, recalling a time of bounty, an embarrassment of great cities,of shipping lanes that converged on southern ports. The safe shallow waters of the Lagoon welcomed visitors. Kings ruled, father to son,brother to brother,daring to do all they thought, There were brindleberries and fenugreek; lemongrass, mangos; the coconuts fruited; frangipani bloomed, ylang ylang, ,even kadupul flowers, queens of the night. High wooden watchtowers rose protectivelyover wide courtyards, and gardens grew cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla. Waters rippled in great tanks built by kings like inland seasto flow to fields and homes. Kitchens prepared milk riceand new disheswith ginger and kitel, turmeric, tamarind. In the shade of palace buildingsfrescos were painted, statues carved, the talk was of new trade routes,marriages, miracles. Tomorrow is tomorrow - <...
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    1 hr and 52 mins
  • Douglas Dunn. Love Poem.

    Douglas Dunn. Love Poem.
    Oct 18 2023

    I live in you, you live in me;
    We are two gardens haunted by each other.
    Sometimes I cannot find you there,
    There is only the swing creaking, that you have just left,
    Or your favourite book beside the sundial.

    The Ceylon Press currently produces three podcast shows.
    1. The Jungle Diaries (www.theceylonpress.com/thejunglediariespodcast)
    2. The History of Sri Lanka (www.theceylonpress.com/thehistoryofsrilankapodcast)
    3. Poetry from the Jungle
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    1 min

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