I suppose it’s because I’ve got two fairly unusual names, Lois and Elsden, that I’ve always been interested in names. When I was a child we had a big dictionary and as well as the usual definitions of words, at the back there were other sections – common foreign words and phrases, medical terms, several other indexes (or should I say indices? Or is the word indices just used for maths?) – anyway, as well as titles, ranks and honorifics, there was a list of first or forenames, Christian names as they were called then. I loved the list and would read it over and over again, marvelling at the unusual, strange and sometimes funny sounding Biblical, classical and other rare names. I came across plenty of unusual names in the hundreds of books I read then – I would borrow half a dozen books from the library each week. My dad had a similar interest – and maybe mum did too, and it extended to place names, and there were plenty of those which were unusual near us, the Gog Magog Hills for example, plus of course the hilarious Six Mile Bottom.
I went to a school where many children had parents from other countries so as well as several Susans, Richards, Elizabeths, Davids and Lindas there was Zebretta, Rosanne, Jan and Barto. I taught in school where young people had ancestry from all over the world, and I loved the wonderful names I came across among my students. When I had my children my husband reined in my enthusiasm for the extraordinary – and although our children have rare names no-one could ever call them weird, although there can be spelling confusion! It’s not just first names I’m intrigued by, it’s surnames too – again, my surname is quite unusual and I nearly always have to spell it when someone needs my name for some reason.
While I was a child growing up in Cambridge, we often had people from other countries visiting and staying with us. One of our French visitors had an English friend and he had a surname which was so unusual that I have never ever heard of anyone else with that name. Our visitor’s friend was a student called Rodney Pybus who was at Cambridge University. For some reason I’ve never forgotten that unusual name. Imagine my surprise then, while I was away with my writing friends on one of our ‘retreats’. as we were enjoying ourselves in a second hand bookshop, I came across a book of poetry called ‘Flying Blues’ and did a complete double-take at the name of the author – Rodney Pybus! I had never met Rodney, I had no idea of anything about him, it was only his unusual name, his unique name, that I remembered from so long ago. Obviously I bought the book, but strangely, I didn’t read it – and somehow it got put on a bookshelf here at home, and I’ve still not read it. Having found it again, I am going to read it!
There is a short biography on the back cover explaining that Rodney was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and went to Cambridge University – where he met our French friend. He worked in journalism and television and became literature officer for Cumbria before moving to Suffolk. He’s published many books of poems, this one that I have is ‘Flying Blues’ :
Flying through the first half of this new, two-in-one collection of poems by Rodney Pybus are the butterflies and birds which took over his creative lufe for several years. Here they are celebrated for themselves and their ability to emblematise human desire, loss, obsession and sensual delight. They range from Norfolk and eighteenth century London to Scotland, Bohemia and Australia.
‘Words of a Feather’, part two of the book, is a creature of a new and different kind: a poem for voices, an epistolary novella that tells the story of a 1930’s marriage disrupted by the husband’s absence in Mauritius where his life is overwhelmed by new experiences of art, nature and erotic love. Verse letters, the husband’s poems, and the intervening reflections of a present-day narrator tell the tale. This inventive tour de force explores moral and artistic themes, a rich development of the technique Pybus deployed in ‘Loveless Letters’.
No doubt I will share more about the poetry of Rodney Pybus!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flying-Blues-Rodney-Pybus/dp/1857540735?ref_=ast_author_mpb
Lois Elsden 