Jeremy (hope Hurricane Sandy spared you) was talking about food as art. Well, how about this?
Harriet Tarlo is a poet and teaches creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University. She’s also a friend of our friend Kathy, a baker and bought a copy of “Bethesdabasics” from me.
Anyway she’s written a learned paper on H.D. (the American poet Hilda Doolittle) entitled “An insurmountable chasm?”: Re-visiting, Re-imagining and Re-writing Classical Pastoral through the Modernist Poetry of H.D.”
What do we find on page 17? “There is a move towards downsizing in our culture, including to making our own everyday foods and other necessities which makes this piece strike home. I found and re-shaped some words from one of Mick Hartley’s recipes in Sourdough Made Simple to make this poem in honour of baking from natural leaven, a re-found skill:
This is the one with which
I most identify developed over such
a long period, I no longer remember
the influences a long period of struggling to get
sourdough right at a time when information was not
easy was contradictory
when you found it.
This dough
a mixture of white and wholemeal flours
is very gentle and forgiving”
What do you think about that then? Got to put a quid on the price of the book. I’m going to get Adam to deconstruct it.
The PArtisan Baker 