Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr Christine Plastow

@chrissieplastow.bsky.social

1.2K followers 920 following 480 posts

Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at the Open University | Co-artistic director of Theatre of the @GentleFuries | researching Athenian forensic oratory & theatrical receptions of myth | she/her | catposting

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · Mar 18

Because I'm updating them today, I'd like to remind #AncientBluesky that we have *FREELY ACCESSIBLE* Ancient Greek resources at the Open University! 🏺

First, we have a 16 hour free OpenLearn course, which takes you from learning the alphabet to reading simple sentences: www.open.edu/openlearn/hi...

Getting started on ancient Greek

This free course, Getting started on ancient Greek, offers a taster of the ancient Greek world through the study of one of its most distinctive and enduring features: its language.The course ...

www.open.edu

16 120 320

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 2d

Day 6: Moirai (a haiku)

Paying out the thread,
The sisters, like carpenters:
Measure twice, cut once.

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 2d

Ok that is a lot of curtain!

1 1

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 2d

I only know this because I used to sell curtains, but it's so that when you pull the pleats together/loop the eyelets onto the pole, the curtains are still wide enough to cover the whole window!

1 2

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 2d

Day 5: Hermes Psychopompos

In the taxi the driver tells outrageous stories
About killing giants, rustling cattle,
Business ventures and sailing and travels here and there.
I forget to look out the window.

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

1 1 2

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 4d

Day 4: shroud

Winding a shroud as an act of love
For the place you used to live
Like pulling cloths over old furniture
To keep the dust off
Like tugging up a blanket
Over my tired, sad heart
Like the flat grey sheet of cloud
On the earth without you in it

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

1 1 5

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 5d

Only three days in but I'm finding writing for #ClassicsTober25 so rewarding. Turns out if you enjoy doing something and you do it a little bit every day (/whatever level of regularity), that feels good. #TinyJoys

1 2 9

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 5d

Day 3: Graiai

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

When we were new made, old-young,
We’d squabble for our turn with the eye.
Who cares about the tooth? One’s little use
But glimpses at the world were worth yanked grey handfuls.
Now we are old-old we let the eye roll away
All sights worth seeing already seen.
There is better knowledge in the twining of sisterly fingers
Than in the play of light on Perseus’ hair.

1 1 9

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 6d

Day 2: Thanatos (best read with his brother from yesterday)

Thanatos is the older by one minute,
Always arriving sooner than he should.
At least he sticks around, unlike his twin
Who’s ever fleeing in the rosy dawn.

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

1 2 9

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 7d

Waffle and I are enjoying tuning in online this afternoon to the launch event for Women Creating Classics and Women Re-Creating Classics!

A tabby cat resting his front paw on a copy of Women Re-Creating Classics: Contemporary Voices

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 7d

Waffle sends slow blinks of support!

Tabby cat lying on a desk doing slow blinks.

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 7d

Day 1: Hypnos (with a visit from Day 2: Thanatos)

To die, to sleep: the two are brothers,
Twins, fraternal, not identical.
You can see the resemblance, though the eyes are different.
One looks on darkness, one on bright dreams.

#ClassicsTober #ClassicsTober25

1 4 12

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 7d

After faffing around with the usual mild terror at the idea of sharing anything creative in public, I've settled on taking this year's #ClassicsTober prompts as creative writing prompts and will be sharing poem fragments of uneven quality. Here we go! #ClassicsTober25

1 1 23

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 8d

These are just the ones that are still ripening.

Lots of pears laid on plates and in a bowl on a table.

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 8d

I wish you could! And that's so sad - an unjuicy pear is such a depressing object.

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 8d

Oh how annoying! I should have said I've only tested it in Chrome.

1 1

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 8d

If you're trying to access things in the browser, I've found using browser profiles works - you can be logged into the different accounts in different profiles and they don't conflict with each other. Works well for external examining at other unis that use the same system too!

1 2

Reposted by Dr Christine Plastow

Greek Myth Comix @greekmythcomix.bsky.social · 8d

A reminder that #ClassicsTober starts tomorrow on @classicstober.bsky.social and the overall theme is KATABASIS.

ClassicsTober25: Katabasis

1. Hypnos
2. Thanatos
3. Graeae
4. Shroud
5. Hermes Psychopompos
6. Moirai
7. φαρμακίς (pharmakis) - witch, sorceress
8. Erebos
9. Lampades
10. Hekate
11. Torch
12. Styx
13. Empousa
14. Cocytus
15. Τέρατα (Térata) - monsters
16. Typhon
17. Echidna
18. Kharon
19. Shade
20. Acheron
21. Kerberos
22. Judge
23. Lamia
24. Phlegethon
25. Tartarus
26. Punishment
27. Erinyes
28. Phobos & Deimos
29. Mysteries
30. Lethe
31. Elysian Fields

2 23 46

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 8d

Compulsory pear will continue until morale improves. I currently have 60 pears in my house. Everything is pears.

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 14d

Our pear tree has made so many pears and they are ripening so fast, it is currently compulsory to eat at least one pear a day in our house. I am enforcing the Pear Rule with an increasingly sticky iron fist.

4 10

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 9d

Honestly, making freedom of information requests about content warnings feels a bit passé at this point

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 11d

RIP Tony Harrison. My favourite poem of his, which I quote almost every time I open the orators: ay ay! stutterer Demosthenes/gob full of pebbles outshouting seas

Them &
by Tony Harrison
I

alai , ay, ay! ... stutterer Demosthenes
gob full of pebbles outshouting seas —
4 words only of mi 'art aches and ... " Mine's broken,
you barbarian, T.W.! " He was nicely spoken.
" Can't have our glorious heritage done to death! "

I played the Drunken Porter in Macbeth .

" Poetry's the speech of kings. You're one of those
Shakespeare gives the comic bits to: prose!
All poetry (even Cockney Keats?) you see
's been dubbed by [vs] into RP,
Received Pronunciation, please believe [vs]
your speech is in the hands of the Receivers. "

" We say [vs] not [uz], T.W.! " That shut my trap.
I doffed my flat a's (as in " flat cap " )
my mouth all stuffed with glottals, great
lumps to hawk up and spit out ... E-nun-ci-ate!

II

So right, yer buggers, then! We'll occupy
your lousy leasehold Poetry.

I chewed up Littererchewer and spat the bones
into the lap of dozing Daniel Jones,
dropped the initials I'd been harried as
and used my name and own voice: [uz] [uz] [uz],
ended sentences with by, with, from,
and spoke the language that I spoke at home.
RIP RP, RIP T.W.
I'm Tony Harrison no longer you!

You can tell the Receivers where to go
(and not aspirate it) once you know
Wordsworth's matter / water are full rhymes,
[uz] can be loving as well as funny.

My first mention in the Times
automatically made Tony Anthony!

1 9

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 12d

Friday feeling.

Tabby cat reclining next to a computer keyboard.

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 12d

Pleased to share this fascinating conversation with the brilliant playwright Caridad Svich @csvich.bsky.social, where we talked about her Iphigenia play and how to adapt Greek tragedy now. Out now in Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies!
university.open.ac.uk/arts/researc...

The Open University

Caridad Svich is a US-based playwright, songwriter, editor, educator and translator of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian descent.

university.open.ac.uk

1 2 10

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 14d

Bought myself an early birthday present. As both a classicist and a @themountaingoats.bsky.social fan, I'm always going back to the text.

Photo of me, a white woman with blonde wavy hair and glasses, sitting in my office with a bookshelf in the background. I'm wearing a grey sweater with red text reading 'I'M DOING THIS FOR REVENGE'. It's a lyric from the song Training Montage by The Mountain Goats.

2 16

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 14d

Dr Christine Plastow @chrissieplastow.bsky.social · 19d

Sometimes on a Friday evening after one (1) gin and tonic you hear Somebody to Love and cry a bit about Freddie Mercury