Even Grimmer Tales
Read Even Grimmer Tales Online
Authors: Valerie Volk
Tags: #Fairy Tales, #adapted fairy tales, #fractured Fairy Tales, #satire, #sexual abuse, #incest
Interactive Press
Even Grimmer Tales
Valerie Volk has always been a closet writer, starting as a seven year old with a collection of embarrassingly bad fairy stories. In the intervening decades as a student, teacher, lecturer, examiner, researcher, education program director, wife, mother of four, and grandmother of six, writing has been a secret indulgence.
Now, in this new life as an author, she has published many poems, short stories, and two books:
In Due Season
, a collection of poems that won the national Omega Writers' CALEB Poetry award in 2010, and
A Promise of Peaches
, a verse novel, in 2011. Her third book,
Even Grimmer Tales
, is a collection of twisted adaptations of the already dark tales of the Brothers Grimm, and her fourth book is nearing completion.
In her lighter moments, she loves reading, film, theatre, travel, classical music, especially opera, jazz and people watching â a never-ending source of interest. Her website is www.valerievolk.com.au.
Interactive Press
The Literature Series
(Not for the Faint-hearted)
Valerie Volk
Interactive Press
Brisbane
Interactive Press
an imprint of IP (Interactive Publications Pty Ltd)
Treetop Studio ⢠9 Kuhler Court
Carindale, Queensland, Australia 4152
ipoz.biz/IP/IP.htm
First published by IP in 2012
© Valerie Volk, 2012
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
Printed in 12 pt Cochin on 18 pt Goudy Old Style.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Author: Volk, Valerie.
Title: Even grimmer tales : (not for the faint-hearted) / Valerie Volk.
ISBN: 9781922120007 (ebk.)
Other Authors/Contributors: Hermanowicz, Leszek.
Dewey Number: A821.4
Other titles by Valerie Volk:
In Due Season: poems of love and loss
(Pantaenus Press, 2009)
A Promise of Peaches
(Ginninderra Press, 2011)
Cover and internal artwork by Leszek Hermanowicz (www.hermanowicz.net).
For David Harris, with thanks for love and laughter
Front Cover Image: Leszek Hermanowicz
Jacket Design: Leszek Hermanowicz
Author Photos: Roy VanDerVegt (www.royvphotography.com.au)
I am indebted to the many friends who have listened to my
Even Grimmer Tales
with either laughter or raised eyebrows - and sometimes both - and have spurred me on. I have appreciated greatly the encouragement and perceptive comments from the writing groups I belong to, especially Friendly Street Poets, Literati, Poetica, and Hills Poets. The support and interest of Jude Aquilina of the South Australian Writers' Centre has been invaluable, and contact with her is always stimulating. Useful comments were also made by Geoff Page and Alison Hastie, and the work of David Reiter, as publisher and editor, has been painstaking, precise, and has provided an enormous learning curve during the revision process.
Two other people deserve special thanks: Leszek Hermanowicz, whose witty insights and creative skills have produced the artwork in this book, and David Harris, always my first and most responsive reader. And, of course, the Brothers Grimm, without whose tales two hundred years ago this version would not exist.
An earlier version of the poem âRed' appeared in
Poetrix
.
Preface
Little Red Riding Hood
Red
The Frog King
The eye of the beholder
Cinderella
The taste of cinders
Sleeping Beauty (Briar Rose)
Sleeping Beauties
Snow White
A Tiny Tale
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The Bare Facts
Rapunzel
Hairific
Hansel and Gretel
Pre-prandial musings
The Fisherman and his Wife
Of Mice and Men
Thumbling (Tom Thumb)
Rock-a-bye baby
Beauty and the Beast (Bearskin)
De gustibus â¦
Puss in Boots (The Poor Miller's Boy and the Cat)
Of Felines and their Footwear
Epilogue
Even Grimmer Tales
(Not for the Faint-hearted)
The Brothers Grimm wrote many tales.
My volume is a fair bit slimmer.
Their stories were for children's eyes.
My tales are really somewhat grimmer.
So enter the dark woods with me.
My forests are a different kind.
These verses show what lies within
The caves and crannies of the mind.
A young girl in a red cape â pretty obvious how she got her name â is asked by her mother to deliver food to a sick grandmother. She walks through the woods, where a wolf suggests she picks flowers to take with her. While the girl, clearly a gullible child, does this, he hurries to the grandmother's cottage, where he gobbles up the elderly lady, takes her clothes and her place in the bed. Red Riding Hood is surprisingly convinced by this substitution, though intrigued by the changed appearance of the old woman, and queries the large ears, eyes, and finally, teeth. “All the better to gobble you up,” he says â and proceeds to do so. But all is well! Both victims are saved by a passing woodsman, who uses his axe to free them from the wolf!
“So do you always dream in colour?”
he asks me.
I stare around his office. Typical shrink talk.
Questions, questions, questions.
“How did you feel when â¦?”
“Have you imagined that ..?”
“When your father beat your mother, did you ever â¦?”
“And when your little sister died,
how did you...?”
Questions
I won't talk to you about, Herr Dr Hempelmeier.
Forget it, or I'm leaving.
Except, I can't.
Not till you tell the guards
to take me back
through corridors of steel
and gratings, locking
me in with my thoughts.
Do I dream in colours?
Yes, red. Blood
red. Maybe blue, black and white,
if she'd worn something different.
We'll never know.
She
knew
what she was doing,
tripping through the forest past my hut.
A dozen other paths she could have taken.
But no, always this one. Stopping
at my gate, if I was digging
in the garden.
Her mother must have warned her.
Other children kept well clear of any
scent of sweets.
Not her
daring me with raven curls
above the garden gate.
I tell you that she waited for me.
She knew I'd come.
“Off to Grandma's.”
Her excuse.
A basket full of cakes and pies.
“Have some?
Mum won't know.”
And something else besides?
But still no further than the gate.
Well taught.
Easy to follow that red lure
to Grandma's. Many times.
I'm sure she knew.
Anticipation's sometimes
better than the act â¦
The day I got there first
she didn't even hear
old woman's muffled feeble cries
behind the wardrobe door.
Bed
was more inviting.
She knew what she was doing.
Lies, all lies.
That story of a woodsman rushing in.
True there was an axe.
But only me. And Red.
Funny really,
the way the stain merged with her cape.
You couldn't see it till
the pool grew to the lake
that drowns me every night.
Wonder if she'd worn a blue dress â¦
Different story then.
Perhaps my dreams
would be a different colour?
A handsome king is transformed by a witch into an ugly frog. (It's risky to cross witches!) One day, when a spoiled Princess's golden ball is lost in his fountain, the frog offers to return it to her. However, because he is missing his former life, he first makes a bargain with the girl, that she will share her meals and her bedroom with him. Her ball returned, having got what she wanted, the princess, typical female, tries to back out of the deal, but her father insists that she honours her promise. The girl grows surprisingly fond of her new companion and ultimately her kiss releases him from the spell. She discovers, to her amazement and delight, that she is sharing her bedroom with a handsome young man. Though, as they say in these days of internet romances, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you get a prince.