On Inverted Writing

By Hannah Reade

Hannah Reade

‘There’s rosemary that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies. That’s for thoughts. There’s fennel for you; and columbines; there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me: we may call it herb grace o’Sundays: O you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy; I would give you some violets but they withered all when my father died: they say he made a good end.’ Ophelia, in Hamlet by William Shakespeare

If singing is the outward expression of a song, then I inverted this song. Rather than performing it on stage, as has been done many times since Shakespeare wrote ‘Hamlet’, I took the structure of Ophelia’s song and made a little book. She sings of seven herbs which, perhaps to an audience in the 16^th century, would have been commonly understood to represent different medical, mythical and symbolic things. It is hard for a modern audience to understand why it is relevant that the violets withered when Polonius was killed.

So, I researched each of these herbs in different ways, I was meandering, not heading towards a goal. I spent a morning digging with a herbalist in Devon, he enlightened me on the relationship each herb has with the planets. For instance, Rosemary is of the Sun, because it flourishes in the warmth and light; but it is also of the Moon because of its silvery underleaf. This way of describing qualities in a plant can also inform one of its medical uses. I read the writings of Hildegard Von Bingen, a 14^th century nun, whose medical advice blurs myth with science. Nicholas Culpepper worked on classifying plant categories, not long after Shakespeare’s life. His writings on plants inform a lot of what we know now.

From this research I boiled down a key element which linked to each plant. For some it was obvious; Rosemary for instance, took on ‘Memory’, for others it was less so. In my meandering it had struck me that another way to ‘invert’ Ophelia’s song further was to carry on this ‘research’ away from myself. So, I sent seven letters out to seven women who I know, and who are interested in gardening or plants. I sent them seven cards on which were written the following:

A memory
A thought
A vision or image
A discovery
A cure
A secret
A beginning or tending to

I invited them to write, or draw, what first came to mind when they read these headings. Their responses were varied; some were deeply personal, others were mundane or scientific. When I compiled them into chapters corresponding to the headings I began to see connections in the responses. For instance, bees were mentioned twice in the chapter on ‘A vision or image’. I suppose I was playing with the idea of a critical mass of information – how much does there need to be in order for you to see patterns. Perhaps 7 is quite minimal for this to be possible, but I think it works.

Coming back to Ophelia and her herbs, each chapter is introduced with a small sample of my research and how it led to choosing each heading. So although I inverted her song, I keep coming back to it.

About the author:

Hannah Reade is currently writing songs, her CD will be available as of January 2010. To find out more about this visit www.wanderingswallows.wordpress.com