On a cold boat, Sally is warmed by her fire, the sound of her neighbours, and the cathartic practice of “speaking in tongues”, a technique she  learned as a very young child from her aunt, who ran an all-female Christian charismatic group and would suddenly launch into these emotional outbursts. She reflects on how this practice may express the longings of the subconscious, and may have influenced her writing. Then she corrects the proofs of her next book, The Green Lady, the third in her series of “coming-of-age” memoirs, or anti-memoirs.

Further Reading

Sally’s first book in her cycle of childhood memoirs (she prefers the term “anti-memoirs”) is Girl With Dove, in which we are introduced to her granny, her mother, and her aunt, who brought the practice of “speaking in tongues” to the family. The book can be found here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Girl-Dove-Life-Built-Books/dp/0008226857

Sally’s cycle of books, Girl With Dove, No Boys Play Here, and the forthcoming The Green Lady, form a coming-of-age narrative. Coming-of-age stories, which usually follow the narrator from childhood or teenage years to adulthood, form a very significant branch of literature, with examples including Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, many of Charles Dickens’ novels (Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, David Copperfield), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Emma by Jane Austen, The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger and White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, is a practice in which people utter words or sounds, often thought by believers to be languages unknown to the speaker. It’s seen as a divine language and sign of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; a practice going back to the apostles at Pentecost, as related in the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a prominent feature of worship by Pentecostal and charistmatic Christian groups, such as the one run by Sally’s aunt.

Catharsis, used in this sense for the first time by Aristotle, is the purification and purgation of emotions through tragedy, or any extreme emotional state that results in release, renewal and restoration. It can also be related to the idea of expressing buried trauma, thereby easing the burden.

Genius Loci was a phrase originally used by the Romans to denote a literal “spirit of place”, a presiding divinity who inhabited a site and gave it meaning. Writers of the 18th century, such as Alexander Pope and Dr Johnson, developed it as the more secular idea that a location has a distinctive and palpable atmosphere; then the Romantic writers developed the quasi-spiritual sense that a place can have profound significance and meaning for us. Perhaps the most influential work in developing this idea is a set of five poems, written by William Wordsworth and included in the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads collection published in 1800, which he grouped under the rubric “Poems on the Naming of Places”. He explained: “Many places will be found unnamed or of unknown names, where little Incidents will have occurred, or feelings been experienced, which will have given to such places a private and peculiar interest. From a wish to give some sort of record to such Incidents or renew the gratification of such Feelings, Names have been given to Places by the Author and some of his Friends, and the following Poems written in consequence.” The poems can be read here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lyrical_Ballads_(1800)/Volume_2/Poems_on_the_Naming_of_Places

The producer of the podcast is Andrew Smith: https://www.fleetingyearfilms.com

The extra voice in this episode is Emma Fielding and the music is by Simon Turner

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