Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. The blog name refers to the mythical pact made between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House and still miraculously in print.
Since March 2024, Jen Breach (writer, VCFA graduate, and former student) has helped me manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog. They have lined up and conducted author/illustrator interviews and invited and coordinated guest posts. That support has helped me get through weeks when I’ve been in edit-copyedit-proofing mode, and it’s also introduced me to writers and books I might not have found otherwise. Our overlapping interests have led to posts for which I might not have had the time or attention-span. It’s the beauty of shared circles.
Landmark, Seamark, or Soul's Star?
Years ago, an English teacher handed me a volume of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins and forever changed my relationship with words. "Vex'd elm-heads" and a "listing heart" and the moon "dwindled and thinned to the fringe | of a fingernail...." It was as if that long-ago voice was showing me how heart and place could meet within a twist of a word or a single rhythmic leap.Thank you, Christina Harrington, for telling me about Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane, because here is a book that delves into the inseparable nature of place and language, despite out best efforts to tear them apart. Macfarlane's introductory chapter discusses the culling of words related to nature from the Oxford Junior Dictionary:
Inscrutable Wonder: The Emerald Mile by Kevin Fedarko
Back in the last century, my husband and I visited the Grand Canyon. We were grad students at the time, and we cobbled the trip out of our spare savings because the Canyon was such an iconic place in the American landscape. What was more, it had come to occupy so cavernous a space in our imaginations that we decided, that year, we simply had to go see it.