Hi Lawrence,
Many thanks for all those memories about the area, and the city. I
wonder how much changed it is. Obviously, I'd have no real idea.
As for the bridges, you are correct. However, I did go there via the
ferry from Slussen, thus there was that small bridge to cross to get
to the wharves as well. And my train comes in from Gullmarsplan, so
more bridges in my particular journey that day. Simply by way of
explanation.
There is still a lynx in Skansen, in fact mother and father lynx and
two playful littlies - though that was another visit, not this
particular day. No elephant that I could see. Bears, reindeer, elk,
owls, wolves, mostly. I haven't been into Gröna Lund though walked by
it, and the Tivoli. They still have bands there. I also passed the
Abba museum and there is a trace of an Abba reference in the poem.
And I'm glad the poem withstood a second reading.
Thanks,Jill
________________________Jill Jones www.jilljones.com.au
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poetryetc: poetry and poetics"
To:
Cc:
Sent:Thu, 2 Oct 2014 11:27:21 +0100
Subject:Djurgården
Hi Jill
I had a pleasant evening thinking on and off of Djurgården and
Stockholm
in general. It stayed with me until this morning; but within minutes
of
consciousness return the shipping forecast cleared my internal screen
and
speaker for new thoughts. Dover, Wight, Portsmouth, Plymouth
Then I was too busy coping with the heating being on in the bus to
revert.
(I complained and the driver told me that it's autumn. I said the
weather
hasn't broken yet and he said they don't think like that.)
I wonder if Stockholm bus drivers are still largely from
Jugoslavia-as was.
I've reread your poem, keeping my enthusiasm for the city in some
check;
and I still think highly of it, the poem.
I was confused yesterday by your reference to bridges because I
remembered
only one, crossing the little channel to the north,
Djurgårdsbrunnsbron, or
something like ; and that seems to be the way it is; so now I think
you
mean in that part of Stockholm generally.
It's over 20 years since I was there; so the enthusiasm is mental in
at
least one way. At that stretch, memories are unreliable. Djurgården
features a little in the last Kurt Wallander novel by Henning Mankel.
That
novel's helped to adjust my thoughts a little, quite apart from many
I knew
being dead. A dark side of Sweden - Palme's assassination, paranoia
re
USSR... I was coming back for the ferry just before Xmas 1991 when
there
was a bomb explosion in Central Station. I was at the Djurgård town
by
Gröna Lund and Skansen so there were people around. Everyone looked.
I said
out loud that it was bomb; and, interestingly, someone said "No, this
is
Sweden." I said I was a Londoner and I knew the sound of a bomb.
It turned out to be neo Nazis I believe.
The very interesting sound artist Ake Hodell used to live there on
Falkenbergsgatan as I remember. I went there the once.
He made a tape-based text-sound composition called Djurgård ferry
over the
River Styx - Djurgårdsfärjan över floden Styx. Well worth a
listen. It's on
the web.
I never went to Gröna Lund though I heard Status Quo playing there
some
time in the 70s - heard them from Södermalm, where I tended to stay.
I remember Skansen, the zoo etc. My friend greeting a goat "hello
smelly
goat" either in the 70s or the 90s, long ago anyway. And a lynx,
visibly
crazy pacing backwards and forwards over its hill. A large hill but
small
for a lynx, which needed a territory more like the size of the city.
And 2
elephants side by side in a shed rocking in distress.
But then Djurgården is so called (Djur = animal) because it was
earlier a
royal hunting territory
I doubt whether any of that is much use. I had better not write more.
Save
perhaps that then and possibly now if you stand at the northern end
of
Mosebacketorg and look out it is the scene described from the main
character's point of view at the start of Strindberg's Red Room as he
looks
at Old Town and then east to Lidingö and out into the archipelago.
To one
who grew up in a city newly-flattened by bombing that was interesting
Enough already, enough old man's memories.
Thank you for a fine poem
L
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