Anthology IV by LIVENESS

ANTHOLOGY IV

A NTHOLOGY I V Critical and creative work by BA Creative Writing and English Literature students. Designed by BA Graphic Design and BA Illustration & Animation students from the Visual Communications cluster. The School of Art, Architecture & Design London Metropolitan University 2019â&#x20AC;&#x201D;2020

Anthology IV: A collection of critical and creative writing Written by Creative Writing and English Literature students at The School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University Designed by: Agata Rodriquez Fernandez Clara Delgado Caballero Dora Ramos Emmanuel Vasquez Filippo Mantino Sabrina Paris The Visual Communication department, The School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University Published by The School of Art, Architecture and Design London Metropolitan University Old Castle Street, London e1 7nt londonmet.ac.uk/arts Copyright ÂŠ 2020 The Authors Amran Ahmed, Cove Connolly, Isabella Orrebo, Jasmine Damaris, Kalika James, Laura Szandomierska, Prudenza Lacriola, Raum Inam, Reshma Shaik, Richard Samuels, Robert Cazacutu, Salma Mohamed, Stavros Giannoulatos. Set in Garamond Premier Pro and Gill Sans Nova All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

Foreword Andy Stone Head of The School of Art Architecture and Design

This has been an extraordinary year. The work presented in Anthology IV has been undertaken through a period of remarkable change. A time where the creative practice of our students and the academic practice of their tutors has shifted; in outlook, in context, in location, in communication. Anthology IV contains work of current Creative Writing, English Literature, Graphic Design and Illustration students. The partnerships and collaboration achieved by the students and staff must be congratulated and celebrated and I would particularly like to thank Trevor Norris, Alistair Hall and Angharad Lewis for their continued ambition for the Anthology. It is a vital component in the school’s culture. This beautiful publication is testament to the value of time taken, to understand, to interpret, to synthesise. The book’s themes evolved through collaborative sessions, sharing and testing ideas, and learning about each other’s practice. Those themes, developed through the 2019-20 academic year, now, in the wake and wash of viral, economic, social, and political challenges, are prescient.

The headings – Voices, Contrast, The Unexpected, Transformation – seem now to be so much greater in scope and importance. They anticipated the impact on our professional, intellectual and social consciousness and on the school as a whole. They now affirm a recognition and an expectation that we all have a responsibility to listen, to contest, to evaluate, to act. And so, we must change. Creativity, in which ever of the school’s disciplines, assumes a means of thinking differently, of working from another viewpoint. That imagination, now more than ever, must resist the comfort of the familiar and be outward in its reference, outward in seeking ideas, outward in addressing its constituency and accountable for the change it seeks. Anthology is key to articulating that transformation. This will be an extraordinary year.

Introduction Trevor Norris Course Leader, BA Creative Writing and English Literature

This year our annual anthology of student writing and design has been produced under very different circumstances. Because of the pandemic it will be a digital launch rather than the usual celebration with students, staff and members of the public at the summer show. We hope to hold a paper launch later in the year. Secondly, our writing and design students worked together at various points to decide chapter themes, the text and chapter order, and to promote the book on social media with a series of interviews and blogs. Every studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience of this project has been radically transformed compared to previous years, and I want to commend the tenacity, creativity and collaborative spirit that has informed the project throughout. The writing in this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anthology shows the continuing strength of the BA Creative Writing and English Literature as a place of serious discussion, ethical accountability to the experience of others and the celebration of our power to imagine and create new worlds. The writing is a response to syllabus assignments that asked students to respond to travel and nature writing through a postcolonial lens, ecological being and the different forms of solidarity this entails, the effect on the present of the past, and the different forms and genres creative writing and publishing can take.

You disembark in Woolwich with Somali migrants and wander through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the fringes of North London and the pleasure of the countryside in England and Pakistan. You’ll spend time with Catherine Blake and Virginia Woolf, and learn about the modern influence of Ancient Greece. You’ll watch Twin Peaks and see Olafur Eliasson’s art in the Tate. Sweden, South Africa, Australia and Italy are here, as well as a pub in Northern England in several years’ time. These are all works of great imaginative sympathy – the gift literature gives us whenever we are ready to receive. My thanks as always to the wonderful support and guidance from tutors in Visual Communication. To Alistair Hall, Ricardo Eversley and Angharad Lewis, collaborating is one of the great pleasures that the School of Art, Architecture and Design provides. Thanks also to Andy Stone for his continuing championing of the school’s collaborative work. Dear reader, I hope you enjoy this book.

@WriteLondonMet

CONTENTS VOICES Woolwich: a nomadic enterprise Amran Ahmed

Enitharmon Catherine Sophia Kalika James

Brothers in arms Richard Samuels

The Hogarth Press Jasmine Damaris

CONTRAST Sweden gate Isabella Orrebo

Hellenism as paradoxical modernity Cove Connolly

Filotimo 37 Stavros Giannoulatos Take me to the other side Jasmine Damaris

THE UNEXPECTED I had only eaten a mouthful Richard Samuels

Ancient mythology and the modern mind Reshma Shaik

Hypnos & Oneiros Robert Cazacutu

Damn fine coffee & Laura Palmer Laura Szandomierska

TRANSFORMATION Pink morning dew Salma Mohamed

Serial publication: a Victorian revolution Cove Connolly

Poiesis Prudenza Lacriola

Acorn season Raum Inam

chapter 1

voices

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Woolwich: a nomadic enterprise Amran Ahmed

Come to Woolwich to look for traces of its former glory. Stay for the cheap wine at the local Wetherspoons. The past is embedded in the fabric of our town, under the surface, waiting to be appreciated, for someone to take notice again. The gaunt and disillusioned faces in the streets express desperation at being stranded on this would-be island; discarded characters from a German expressionist film haunting the town as shadows of its defeat eerily creep towards you. The past is not always a foreign country. Woolwich was once at the heart of the British Empire’s military industrial complex, once part of Kent, and once home to the Arsenal football team which eventually left us for the North. It always seems like Woolwich is a place you’re supposed to leave behind if you want to make something substantial of yourself. Many of the teenage dreamers that studied at the local girl’s school, myself included, were taught to dream big, branch out. We wholeheartedly believed that upward class mobility was plausible, inevitable even. We just knew the generic ‘70s veneer of Woolwich, a place where

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cosmetically enhanced ex-military dormitories were repurposed to house families and elderly couples, was not an enviable place to be. When you come from a town in decline, you know that the gift of a stranger’s attention – a disapproving glance, a harsh word or roll of the eyes – means you’ve made it. Envy is a form of currency you savour on a rainy day. It reminds you that you are special, that where you live doesn’t define you, that there’s still time to reach the status of a nomad, a nobility you hope one day to acquire. Is it possible to be a nomad if you’ve lived in the same place your whole life? In truth, we are all descended from nomads. I come from a long line of Somali nomads. Many in the town are Caribbean, Asian and European nomads, all travelling from one part of the globe to the next, always in search of something new. For our ancestors the search for a liveable environment was always the motivation whether they were on expedition, empire-building or escaping from war. Through this lens, I’m reminded that Woolwich has been called home by many nomads. Medieval peasants, Victorian aristocrats, soldiers, refugees and the working classes all found a roof over their heads in the metropolitan drift. This former factory town has several notable historical sites, from the first McDonald’s in Britain to Antony Gormley sculptures that are dramatically lit in winter evenings. Woolwich natives have perfected the art of banishing coffee chains from the area. Occasionally, a Starbucks or Costa attempts to steal customers from smaller, usually family-owned cafes. Over time each one closes up shop and leaves as they are unable to conquer the appetites of the town. This mob protection also affects smaller businesses that open to sell discount price perfumes and cheap shoes. Cheshire cat grins appear in crowds when the “Closing! Everything must go” sale signs appear.

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The cruel mirror of the River Thames reflects both the grandeur that the town can never live up to and the grey stillness in which it languidly sits. Never quite seeming to redefine nor reenergize itself, it carries on blandly and obscurely. However, a hidden natural world exists beneath the dullness, seagulls present themselves in early Spring and end of Autumn, rabbits seclude themselves in the gated, towering grassy areas near the old factory buildings. Ravens can be seen all year round, cawing in the trees, especially early in the morning. The homes here are some of the cheapest in London. That doesn’t matter. Forget that homelessness is on the rise. Never mention that most people never actually leave. A listless nomad can get used to the dreamy comfort of familiarity in a small sombre town. Don’t call it defeat, call it conquest.

commentary One of the most rewarding parts of the editing process is understanding how even the smallest changes can transform the quality, imagery, and effectiveness of a narrative. The decision to separate the first paragraph into two parts, was made in order to make the distinction between “you” the reader, and “us” in “our town” clearer. This form of call and response sets the tone for the rest of the piece, as it depicts Woolwich from both a personal point of view, and what the reader can expect to see there if they have never been. Comparing the townspeople to German expressionist movie stars plays on the idea of how being haunted by the past can visually transform people. The opening paragraph of John Pilger’s A Secret Country uses this technique, when describing how the heat in Australia affects the locals ‘a permanent squint and lopsided smile. This makes us look laconic

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when often we are not.’ This is how Australians may appear to tourists. However, Pilger suggests that appearances are not necessarily accurate. As he goes on to explore how the abuses of Aboriginal Australians have led to decades of a slightly fraudulent, commercial image of Australia. Similarly, in my piece there is a tension between the repressions of a bygone era and the distortion of the way they appear today. Woolwich was a hub of major importance during the days of the British Empire. Its legacy is reflected in the very fabric of the town. This was something worth exploring in an explicit manner as it is part of the reason why the Caribbean, Asian, and African communities have settled there and contributed to the town. In this extract, sentences have been restructured, in order to better communicate the idea in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern that ‘every exit is an entry somewhere else’ more clearly to the reader. The term nomad is introduced in the middle of this piece. This is key because the beginning represents Woolwich with an oppressive atmosphere. A small town defeated by its own ‘former glory’, conversely the image of the nomads seeking their own enterprise, creating their own businesses, expresses a sense of hope. Both truths can exist simultaneously. A place can be suffocating and liberating, it’s all in the interior lives of the locals. This piece was inspired by Looking for a Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria by Noo Saro-Wiwa. and the Harlesden Road chapter of Ben Judah’s This Is London. There is a conflict between writing about the negative aspects of a place you know in such detail whilst also trying to present a sense of reality for the reader who may have never experienced it. Thomas Scovel notes that ‘what appears on the surface to be linguistically transparent, however, turns out to be almost impenetrably complex.’ Saro- Wiwa’s work presents the dual nature of understanding a particular space, as she is both a native and a stranger in Nigeria. Furthermore we ‘choose to formulate what we say or write’ via the influences from the environment we live in,

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and the cultures we absorb. Creative nonfiction is always a product of reallife experiences, despite the great sense of social realism in Judah’s work. His result is based on what he has chosen to share with us, the ‘frazzled Jamaican bums and owlish Nigerian security guards, whimsical Polish carpenters’ exist in this narrative because he has strategically placed them there. The struggle between representation and the object is immense. Crafting the narrative, editing, language and imagery – this is all built from our repressions, environment, and imperfections. There is an underlying psychological phenomenon that the writer experiences whilst writing an original piece. Barthes explains in Mythologies that ‘we know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense’. There must be a certain level of detachment from verisimilitude to explore one’s own imagination. In many ways, poetic intricacy allows for a more philosophical approach undeterred by the finality of descriptive common sense. Creative nonfiction that trades in poetic realism opens the possibility of more nuanced commentary and debate.

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Enitharmon Catherine Sophia Kalika James

“Lambeth! The Bride, the Lamb’s Wife, loveth thee, Thou art one with her and knowest not of self in thy supreme joy.” Since early childhood I remember the other voices; voices of people from another time, half-here, half-there. It seemed quite normal until I mentioned it to my mother one day, who responded with such shock and fear that I never mentioned it again. I discovered later that men who hear voices are called prophets, whilst women who hear voices are called witches. My father was a gardener in Battersea and I grew up by the river and in the marshy meadows of the orchards. The river rose and fell with the seasons and tides and kept time as we worked through our daily lives. Every event was conducted in earshot of her song, she ruled this patch of land and success or failure, death or life, depended on her. From time to time I would slip away to my favourite place by the spring, nestled between some boulders, clothed in green, under the shade of a hawthorn. The gurgling water, the cold stones, the sacred

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atmosphere, this was my church, my holy place; so one day, when I fell into a prophetic vision in this place, it felt sacred and true and I was not afraid. There was a man, a little older than I, stood beside a large wooden wheel with eight spokes; similar to a ship’s wheel, only this wheel was on land and mounted on a table in a workshop. A voice said to me ‘This is your future husband’. I was taken aback and immediately thought that he must be a sailor. ‘No’, said the voice, ‘This is a vessel of words and pictures’. Later, when I met William, I recognised him immediately and even though I could not understand the entirety of my vision, I understood enough to know that he was part of the plan God had set out for me and that to marry him would be my part in fulfilling that plan. The detail of my vision remains with me until this very day. Eight years after we married we moved to Lambeth and had a good house with a garden and workshop; there we installed a rolling press with a large, creaking, eight-spoke wheel to operate it. Truly, the first day I saw it I was overwhelmed by a strong sensation of foresight; this was the ship of my dreams. There was a large bright space with tables for setting out and engraving, plenty of room for materials and the peace to think. Better still was the freedom to work as we chose and our home allowed us to do that so well. William and I could work as inspiration guided us, sometimes writing poetry, sometimes painting or carefully crafting the copper plates. This place also became a sanctuary from the harsh influences of the city and both William and I felt it to be a great blessing and a privilege. Gradually, over time, the essence of our prayers and our work saturated the walls and held an atmosphere all of its own so that when we went into the building, the feeling of prayer was still present; this was a wonderful blessing. Often William was working and I would walk north of the river to get

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supplies: linseed oil, yellow ochre, charcoal, sometimes leather inking pads. These walks became a rich source of inspiration and I found reason to escape regularly down to the horse ferry or over Blackfriars to Brideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Well, here I could touch and feel the purity of the sacred waters. I yearned for the river, but the river of my childhood was gone, disappearing under the filth of the city; her swirling eddies black and dotted with bloated corpses. The stench of death hung over her day and night until it seemed that even she may have been lost forever. It was early spring but the winter had been harsh, biting winds still came up over the river and razed the marshes like knives. I had taken to rising especially early in the morning in order to walk over to Brideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Well before the chaos of the day started. I dressed as warmly as I could before venturing out onto the lane. Immediately I noticed an oddness in the atmosphere, a certain light in the air, a presence of some sort. I paused momentarily to notice it and become more aware then I tightened my bonnet firmly and carried on. Around the corner from Hercules Road was the Asylum for Female Orphans; no matter how many times I passed this way my heart would wrench and my soul would blaze with the cruel injustice visited on these children. This day was no different. As I approached the building I saw a fragile frame lie motionless on the steps; my stomach jumped into my throat, blood rushed to my head, my heart pounded in my breast. I quickened my pace towards her but as I got closer, I could see that she was quite dead. A young girl of perhaps twelve years, shoeless and ice-blue, one eye black and swollen and a trickle of dark crusted blood around her swollen lips. The misery of her short life written large across her tiny frame. There was an empty silence; just for a moment in the frozen greyness of the morning in the deserted street, before an eruption of vision and feeling that carried my body and soul beyond my will. I was filled

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with the suffering of the innocents, I was connected to them, they were me. Inside my head I heard shrieking and wailing, I grasped my hands around my hat and tried to stop the pain but I could not. I called out and cried and begged God to save me from this pain that I could no longer bear. A murder of crows shrieked their protest and rose, flapping like a ship’s sail into the sky. I stood up shaken then I steadied myself and began half-running, half-walking towards the river. By the time I reached Blackfriars Bridge my eyes were full of a strange vision; no longer the familiar ways that I had walked a hundred times, but a vision of London in the spirit. The river, deep and sacred since before we were here, called out to me to save her and restore her purity. The Fleet no longer gushed into this meeting of the waters, only a trickle of slime and rags fell into the banks of the Thames; the stench rose like a putrid corpse. Here too on the banks was Albion Mill, standing like an invader’s fort, a slavering parasite, a demon sucking the lifeblood out of her people. In my heart I felt loathing and that terrified me; I ran across the bridge and quickly towards Fleet St, stopping just short to enter Bride’s Well Lane. Even at the entrance the atmosphere was sacred – how so? I stepped into the lane and the cool stones were once again under my feet and I reached out my hands to touch the mossy walls. The voices in my head became quieter and the soothing embrace of the Mother beckoned me further. The narrow tunnel opened out into the courtyard of St Bridget’s church but that was not my grail, my chalice was much, much, older. The locus of spiritual power in this place was the well and it shone with a light that the Church could only reflect. I approached and sat on the wall, my heart thumping and raging against the suffering of everything I held sacred, then reached in with both hands to scoop handfuls of the healing waters with my

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palms. I tasted the cool pure sweetness on my lips as a soothing balm, grace and mercy somehow held within this place redeemed me and I washed the agonies written across my face until they were only a dull ache. Finally, I began to pray, over and over again, the same prayer until my head and heart felt joined together. I plucked three flowers from the churchyard and lay them on the well before taking out a shiny penny I had been saving for a moment such as this and slipped it into the water. I watched it sink glittering to the bottom. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Let it be so.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; When I arrived home without the linseed William was annoyed, but I was more disappointed that he did not understand my vision. We talked heatedly until late into the evening about women and suffering and the Will of God, so that by bedtime, I was exhausted. We retired to our bedchamber and then, almost as if I were not myself, I embraced William and kissed him deeply. His eyes blazed with passion and I held onto him and allowed him to press his body against me until we merged together and I could no longer distinguish which thoughts were his and which were mine. Finally, only the bliss of peace and love remained between us. Out on the marsh a murmuration of starlings twisted and soared and expressed the beauty of creation before settling down for the night. Early the following morning we woke and found again that the sky was a strange colour, an unusual atmosphere hung in the air, an unusual smell drifted into our room. William parted the drapes and saw it first; the morning mists had rolled in off the river and hung low over the marsh but the sky was red as poppies and black smoke billowed high into the air. He opened the window and called out to a passer-by in the street, I heard only a muffled voice before William swung his

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head back to me, face stretched in amazement. ‘It’s on fire!’ he gasped, ‘Albion’s satanic mill is on fire!’ ‘Thank God’ I replied. William turned his whole body and stood with his back to the window, blocking out the scene. He looked hard into my eyes for a few moments before coming back to the bed and sitting opposite me. He took both my hands in his and squeezed them gently. ‘Yes. Thank God’. He said finally.

commentary I was initially inspired to write this piece because of my interest in pre-historic London and the correlation of that with the works of Blake. However, as soon as I began to research Catherine Sophia, Blake’s wife, I decided that I would prefer for her to be the central character in the piece. This was in order to present an alternative view of the well recorded events in their lives and also to create a resonance with the sacred feminine of pre-history which would have been centred around the rivers and springs. Very early on in my research I came across the idea of a palimpsestic approach to storytelling and that inspired me to imagine the life stories of Catherine as an archetype, replaying ancient stories along the riverbank. There is a slightly ‘weird fiction’ element to the piece in that it contains magical ideas and visions as part of everyday life, however, these were inspired by actual experiences that both Catherine and William claim to have experienced. My research into their lives and places that they lived prompted me to choose a particular location that would be able to ‘work’ both historically and as a background for the story I wanted to tell. The fire of Albion Mills was an event in time that allowed me to place the story on an actual day

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(2nd March 1791) and this became the locus of the remainder of the piece. I researched London in the period initially through maps, then Antiquarian research and commentators of the period. I knew of Bride’s Well previously and had visited many times so it was ideal as the central spiritual focus of Catherine’s experience. The psychogeography of the river, the well and Catherine’s walks are the setting of the story. The workshop and home at Hercules Buildings in Lambeth are an ideal setting in which to describe the motive and practicalities of the work that Catherine and William did. There was a great deal of visual material available to understand how the workshop would have looked and sounded, including a play produced by the BBC for their Encounters series. The time period also placed the story as just previous to the publication of Daughters of Albion and I hoped to subtly imply a connection between Catherine’s protestation and that text. Finally, Enitharmon is an archetypal figure from the spiritual universe created by Blake, a divine feminine form. She is the ‘emanate’, or opposite, or wife of Los, the eternal prophet. Descriptions of her reminded me of the Crone archetype from ancient Britain although in Blake’s work she also appears to represent a sexual tension that I wanted to be included in the story. In Celtic mythology, sexual energy and particularly the union of opposites creates a magic which I wanted to infer. Further, Catherine and William joining together created events that they could not achieve as individuals. This philosophy of the union of the pairs of opposites is central to gnostic thought and is represented in Blake’s mythology as the ‘contraries’; the theme of the piece.

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Brothers in arms Richard Samuels

Reese never gave a toss about politics. If you were a cunt it was as simple as that. He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see the need for a prefix; tag, label whatever you called it. Brexit was supposed to unify the nation but the Restoration Government inspired fire-bombings, book-burnings, beatings and desecration of works of art. It became the ally of censorship and oppression, empowered patriots and forced undesirables to seek refuge in dark corners where they could dare to be themselves. The South was controlled by a coalition of academics, activists and workers. The North was in the hands of fascists; former societal malcontents, stand-up material for aspiring comedians if they dared, attributing malevolence and social inadequacies to a combination of childhood traumas, xenophobia and penis envy. People paid attention to politics now, venomous rhetoric greeted with lusty cheers and rapturous applause. Hatred accessorised with sovereignty and our finest hour, atrocity transformed into nationalistic necessity that would ensure genetic survival. Reese despised racism but he could not deny its power: it marred

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their mother’s passing; his brother clung to it like a life-vest while being escorted from the hospital, adamant that the Asian doctor was to blame; that he would have taken better care of her if she was one of his lot. The balm of rage temporarily relieved Ryan’s pain and lack of agency but it also enabled a moment of clarity; acknowledgment that he was a second-class citizen in his own country. That epiphany led him into the thorny embrace of the extreme right. A source of solace and sanctuary for the angry and disillusioned, like a lover, it entwined him, massaged his ego, whispered words of comfort and reassurance, convinced him of the futility of reconciliation, resolution would never be attained by coexistence with the enemy. A penchant for pain admitted him to the department of re-education; he revelled in the apprehension his presence inspired; fear was the ultimate aphrodisiac. The enemy: a designation not usually applied to a sibling but these were not usual times… “Two rum and blacks please”. Reese gives Ryan a wry smile. “Are you allowed to drink that?” “You’re taking the piss.” “No, I’m serious. Aren’t you supposed to be getting rid of foreign scum?” “You haven’t lost your sense of humour.” “And you’re still a miserable git.” They embrace and sit at the bar. “How’s the family?” “Good.” “Yours?” “Can’t complain.” Seeing his brother again evokes images, memories and conflict.

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Dad told them they were the descendants of a proud line of protectors and providers; forged in balls of British steel; men who would not hesitate to kill and die for their own. Ironic, words meant to solidify caused division. The birth of Reese’s son was the day of Ryan’s rebirth; the day he told his brother that he had tainted their line when he mated with a subspecies. Reese didn’t recognise the hideously transformed thing that stood before him. Another man would have paid for that slur with his lift. They went their separate ways. However, their father’s prophetic statement resonated within. Both men were fiercely protective of their respective families. “Remember that time you got run over.” Ryan steeled himself for what was coming. “Well do you?” “Of course, I do.” “How Mrs, Henry put her coat under your head, and waited with you until the ambulance arrived.” “Mum and dad were at work.” “Yeah, but did any decent hard-working patriots offer to help? You know that lady still won’t hear a bad word about you.” Ryan uses sarcasm to mask surprise. “Really!” “She thinks you’re a good boy who just fell in with a bad crowd, after all that has been said and done, she refuses to give in to hate. Tell me little brother, would you look into her eyes, or just one to the back of the head?” “Do we have to go there?” “We might not be able to finish this conversation after tomorrow, answer my question.” “I’d get someone else to do it.”

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“Conscience?” “Privilege of rank.” “Fuck me, an officer and a gentleman.” “What about me, could you?” “ I couldn’t watch someone else do it.” “Me and you on opposing sides, the old man must be turning in his grave.” “You could come back; the coalition would give your family asylum.” “You’d love that, recognition of the error of my ways, repudiation of past affiliations, and to complete my castration, a public declaration of fealty, sounds like re-education to me, our leaders have more in common than you think.” “We don’t torture people.” “Shame, being advocates of sexual freedom, I thought your lot might be into water-sports. Don’t kid yourself, we tell people what to think, and you tell them what they shouldn’t.” “Food for thought.” “You are not the only one with a sense of humour.” Reese signals the bartender. “Same again over here please.” The bartender puts a CD into the PA and returns with their drinks. Ryan nods to the rhythm of drum and bass. “Some things never change.” “I miss dancing, letting myself go.” “Remember the raves?” “I remember waking up.” “I hear they banned your radio stations from playing deviant material.”

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“Yep.” “What about the internet?” “Monitored.” “How do you get by?” “Headphones.” “Not exactly the party line.” “The chancellor has a taste for Chicken Korma and half of the senior party members have an extensive collection of gay and interracial porn.” “Do as I say not as I do.” “Get off your high horse. Haven’t you ever wondered what some of those sanctified coalition members down south get up to when no one is looking; if they ever use the dreaded N word; abuse their authority; wish the person on the other end of the phone could speak proper English? Wake up big brother, there are the powerful and the powerless that’s as good as it gets. I’m going for a Jimmy.” On his way to the toilet, his mind processed the gravity of the situation. He was duty bound to eliminate enemies of the state. The thought of putting a gun to his brother’s head made Ryan’s stomach churn, like when he broke his cherry. Up until then he’d mainly dealt with the rough stuff. His superiors said he had potential, and they would help him awaken it; gave him a revolver; took him into an interrogation room where a man sat with a black hood on his head. Cold steel, sweaty palms, dry mouth. Ryan seemed more nervous than his victim: to be fair, crocodile clamps and imaginative use of a cattle prod encouraged compliance. He cocked the hammer and aimed for the face. The prisoner simultaneously lost control of his bowels and bladder, the wall transformed into a gruesome canvas of blood and brain, Ryan threw up, the men laughed. A recollection that was both horrific and

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absurdly funny; they said it would be easier next time. They were right. Now he watched the expression on people’s faces change; wondered what they were thinking. He had a taste for it now, so why should Reese be any different. Reese nursed his drink and pondered the prospect of patricide by proxy. If one killed the other it would weaken or end their father’s line. Joshua’s mother moved away after Reese went public; refused to give their son his surname. She went ballistic, after all the shit she’d put up with, convincing her family that he wasn’t just another white boy with an itch. And then it turned out that his brother was a fucking Nazi. He didn’t argue. Ryan had already knocked the stuffing out of him. Besides, why would she want her child to share something so personal with someone who thought he was an abomination? Reese had a daughter who would likely marry and relinquish the family name. Reese returns to the bar and takes his seat. “I’ve got this round, two more please.” “So, what are we going to do?” “I don’t know about you; I am getting pissed.” “And after that.” “A stonking great hang-over.” The brothers clink glasses. “Tomorrow then.” “Tomorrow…”

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commentary Toni Morrison states that racism is a form of perpetual distraction: ‘There will always be one more thing.’ The Notting Hill Riots of 1958 are an example of this. That West Indian migrants were attacked is not disputed. However the initial cause of the animosity was omitted from the folk narrative. The perpetrators were sympathisers of white working-class families that were forcibly evicted from the area by white landlords to make room for black people who would accept worse housing conditions because racism radically reduced the rental market for them: the racist myth of inclusion attained at someone else’s expense and its structural cause erased. Morrison’s work also addresses the question of representation: who is included, and who gets to tell the story? Broaching this subject when creating a character who is a member of the extreme right was a test: vices become virtues depending on your point of view. My use of dialogue, apathy and casual brutality are verbal representations of the structures of heteronormative power and attempt to reflect societal complicity and its ambiguous attitude towards the invisible victims of sanctioned violence. The white working-class male has become marginalised; his misogyny and intolerance under scrutiny. Immigrants, feminists and queers try to emasculate him by questioning and challenging his relevance. Ryan’s position has been made redundant. This story attempts to examine identity and belonging through the eyes of an archetypal white male.

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The Hogarth Press Jasmine Damaris

One strikingly pale green unripe crabapple nestles in a cluster of red. The red bunch already seems polished and ready to be plucked. Some of the apples are fallen, still ripe, collecting by the bottom of a fence. All of a sudden a flicker of white rushes past. It’s a Clumber Spaniel – he trots by with his pink tongue hanging out. A rope leash travels from his neck up to the hand of a steadily walking Virginia Woolf. Making a right at the end of the row of houses she fingers the stitching on her lapel. Something makes her come to a halt and she glances up to notice the sunset. She smiles before turning to guide Tinker toward home. Leonard is poking at the fire in the dining room with a preoccupied look. Virginia greets him while setting the tired dog from his leash then she is hastening toward her desk, explaining that she’ll be quick as a cat writing her diary entry for today.

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friday 23 march 1917 Awful fog this morning, brought a tension within my body, both fog and tension lifted slightly by afternoon with the piercing sun peeping through. Wrote Nessa to liven myself up, I am missing her and I hope she visits us at Asheham – & hope she doesn’t see my request for her presence as entirely selfish. I admit a good gossip with her is in want. Paper says there are victims of German brutality in Nestle & three German aeroplanes shot down – Will we ever be free? Went for a ramble down Farrington Rd. (error for Farringdon St.) with L. in search of a printing press. Came upon Excelsior Printing Supply Company. L. & I chiefly impressed by their window display. Inside we made acquaintance with a young half-starved shop assistant who had the innocent eyes of a lapdog. The perfectly sensible brown overalls that hung off his slight frame were not unlike the ones fish gutters wore in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight & a brief flash of the past made a sudden and fleeting sobriety come over me. This was redeemed by his immense help with our purchases. Very convincing the boy was as he claimed we only required a 16-page booklet to guide us. It was a welcome piece of information after the St Brides rejection. We shall be self-taught in setting, locking, inking and printing type & my fear of publishers will no longer plague me! Although, my last publisher was only Gerald. I think that L. is worried about my state of mind since we first came to Hogarth. L. thought, and I am in agreement, that I should start printing as a hobby of therapeutic means – or as far as hobbies go, it is more of an ambitious venture. The manual labour of printing & bookbinding will keep my mind occupied while I am not up to writing. The effect will be as though a gust of wind has swept up my working worries and rushed them away; I can already tell! As I recall, this plan

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has been in motion since my thirty-third birthday when L. & I also decided on taking Hogarth House. (A Bull dog named John is all we require now to complete the goal for Hogarth – but Tinker is enough company for me at present). Attuning to the vibrant nature in Richmond has already done its part to tranquilise my mind. The printing press itself we have put in the drawing-room. I am certain it was the best printing press to take.

commentary Woolf did not write a diary between 15th February 1915 and 3rd August 1917, suffering a mental breakdown between these points. I have imagined that she might have written had she been able to add to her diary on the day (23rd March 2917) the Woolfs bought their own printing press. The Hogarth Press published work that reframed typical conventions in society and literature, and published key modernist writers and translations of Freud, bringing his theories on psychoanalysis to readers in the U.K.. The Woolfs published Eliot’s The Waste Land, Prelude by Katherine Mansfield and nearly all of Virginia Woolf’s own work. I wanted to understand how Woolf wrote, and inhabit her turns of phrase and had been toying with the idea of writing a diary entry or letter. I acquired her complete works and read the Diary, vol. 1 1915-1919. I found her letters from March 1917 helpful and particularly the one from March 23rd, written to her sister Vanessa Bell. The diaries, in particular, showed me what preoccupied Woolf socially (within her friendships and with the broader world) and psychologically. She would usually start her diaries with either some description of the weather or what she had read in the paper. She especially liked to describe how people looked in a playful mockery as if she were thinking about what she could tell

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Vanessa later. I decided to include a couple of errors Virginia made in her diary and letters as it seemed fitting, such as “Bull dog” instead of bulldog and “Farrington Rd” instead of Farringdon Rd. I noted how she abbreviates Leonard to “L.” and use of the “&”. The narrative style borrows from her short story Kew Gardens as it starts off focusing on a small part of a natural environment. The first paragraph is designed to convey how nature, plants, the weather, pets and walking were all important aspects of Virginia’s life and crucial for her mental wellbeing.

chapter 2

contrast

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Sweden Gate Isabella Orrebo

I left the Overground station and walked to the nearby Greenland docks. I say walk when in reality I rolled. I tend to do that – to picture myself like everybody else. Surrey Quays station was not wheelchair accessible so I had to get off at Canada Water. I changed at Highbury and Islington. From there I could take the train to my destination. But as I arrived no one was there to meet me with a ramp. Stuck on the train I reached Hackney Wick before someone helped me off. They put me on the next train back, hoping for better luck this time. Does that sound strange to you? Someone putting me somewhere. Like I have no control over my own existence; that I depend on other people’s permission to live my life. As if they are the ones who put me on the map. Swedes are never late, specially not for Fika or Fredagsmys. I was looking forward to tacos and the usual Friday feeling. I would not have chosen the delay. Even though I had little time, I couldn’t stop myself from taking a moment to look at the Cygnus olor. I feel love for them, a cliché I know. Mute swans in this country are perceptibly bigger than in Sweden. I

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wonder if it’s the contaminated water, pollutants of conservatism and hierarchy, that makes them swell. Aren’t they native to Eurasia and Africa’s northern reaches? They’re called mute swans for a reason. I cursed the bumpy road and the non-existent lower sections of the pavement. I had to go all the way around Tesco and continue under a tunnel. On an information board it said the dock was first laid out by a Duke of Bedford, called William Russell. He, in turn, got the land from a dictatorial chairman of the East India Company, as wedding dowry. It reminded me of when Zeus took the shape of a swan in order to seduce Leda, using his elegant neck and powerful wings. In some versions she isn’t seduced but raped. I wonder if she was too beautiful, or too powerful. Clytemnestra, daughter of Leda and Tyndareus, who was in Leda’s womb during the rape, is said to have been traumatized by what the swan did to her mother. This led to her killing her husband. I mean after all, her name means ‘to plan or to be cunning’. As for Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus, she was considered to be the ideal of human beauty, an inspiration for artists throughout time. Further in the text, I read how by the 19th century an influx of commercial traffic from Scandinavia arrived through the Greenland docks, delivering mainly timber hence the origin of these local London names. As I headed towards Sweden Gate, I felt a strange kind of pride. In a land born of fire, invasion and conquest – we mattered. Pine forests, The Middle Way and Liberalism. And our Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, financial security in case of illness and old age, supporting our families, guaranteeing social services, health care and children’s rights, the careful individual help for those of us with disabilities and our national coordination of the disability policies. I like how Franklin Roosevelt described it,

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“You have a royal family and a Socialist Government and a capitalist system, all working happily side by side…” As always, I focused more on avoiding holes in the ground, navigating my way around possible hindrances – meaning I didn’t pay much attention to the people in my surroundings, only to their feet which, considering the hour, were fewer than when the sun was out. I contemplated whether to take the shortcut, despite the cobblestones, or if I should make my way around the building. Considering I was late, I went with the first option. But once I reached my destination my muscles were tired. I waved at the receptionist through the big glass window while waiting for Filippa to come downstairs. The man recognised me and kindly smiled back. He wouldn’t let me in though, those were the rules – he was required to follow them. The fellows of St. John’s Cambridge have the privilege of eating swans and there were once swan traps in the college walls. People use their privilege to trap different swans in other ways. For a neighbourhood full of Scandinavian trademarks, the culture was very British. But in the carpeted corridor outside her flat the smell of fried mince hung in the air, and inside, it was as if I was standing in the latest IKEA catalogue. I took off my shoes and placed my handbag on Ivar. But as I made my way to the kitchen, the hallway was narrow, and the door openings slender. Suddenly, I was the Ugly Duckling in a society created for swans. Too big to fit in – too unconventional and too outlandish. Oh, just to be clear, and to follow the rules – Filippa helped me with my shoes.

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commentary After receiving feedback on Sweden Gate I began to restructure the sentences and paragraphs, a few awkward phrases that needed re-thinking, some changes of spelling, capitalising nouns and changes of tense. I used a thesaurus to correct my expressive mistakes, and started to focus on stylistic changes. I tried multiple ways of changing things back and forth, using different suggestions and ideas. I decided to kill my darlings. Some suggested changes had to do with English not being my first language which is why I couldn’t hear the odd ring to the words. I asked people for advice, which really helped. My main concern was trying not to lose the power in the sentence structure. I was satisfied with the ending of the first paragraph but not happy with how the next one started. I realized that was the problem – the start of paragraph two. In the end I merged the two paragraphs into one, and that way I kept my narrative and sentence structure but removed the awkward transition. Some secondary reading helped. I was impressed by the way Darran Anderson’s Imaginary Cities (Influx Press, 2015) touches on everything we had talked about in the travel writing syllabus so far but especially his ideas on the contradictions and enigmas in the way we tell stories about who we are and where we are. The way Anderson explains the relationship between urban life, the people living in urban space and now we go about creating and writing about urban space is very distinctive, and he draws on geopolitics and the importance of a city not being dominated by one idea or vision. There are benefits in contradictory opinions about our environments and although this specific aspect is not as obvious in my piece as in Anderson´s book, it can be seen in the attention the narrator gives from what is considered to be a normal, urban experiential mode.

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I also immersed myself in Ben Judah’s This is London: Life and Death in the World City. This work of creative nonfiction explores contemporary London and tells the story of the people living in the city whose stories often get neglected and stay untold. Judah aims to understand others and to tell the story of the 55% living in London who are not ethnically British. Although I can see the ethical difficulties of telling someone else’s story, the way Judah structures his narrative in relation to the people he meets is respectful, and he tells their stories in a sensitive and inspiring way. As with Anderson´s writing this is a powerful read. In a chapter on travel writing in The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, Kári Gíslason notes that the genre combines modes of exposition, description and narration – a combination of forms. I have tried to do the same in my piece.

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Hellenism as paradoxical modernity Cove Connolly

Hellenism, the study and appropriation of Ancient Greek philosophy, culture and literature, has been highly influential throughout history, shaping governments, academia and aesthetics for many countries, including Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century, British culture had been significantly altered by industrialisation and major advances in science. Within this new naturalism artistic innovation reframed classical antiquity and sought innovation outside of the confines of traditional themes and genres. This change was soon exacerbated by the effects of the First World War, with many artists and writers using newfound schools of thought such as psychology as a form of inspiration in a movement which would be defined as Modernism. Allusions and references to classical Hellenism can still be discerned, apparently contradicting the urge to make things new and so raise questions about what Hellenism within Modernism might represent. Oscar Wilde can offer us an insight into artistic use of Hellenism through his own engagement with classicism, as seen in The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wildeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s titular character appears to have taken his

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name from the Ancient Greek people, the Dorians, who are synonymous with introducing the concept of paiderastia to Greecian culture, defined as a ‘love of boys’. As classical Hellenism encompasses an era before the conception of Christianity, sexual affiliations between two men would not have been viewed as a sinful act in the time period. Academic Ann Aris suggests that this reference provided ‘the means of sweeping away the entire accumulation of negative associations with male love which had remained strong through the beginnings of the nineteenth century.’ Allusions to Hellenism can thus function as a means of opposing the contemporar views of homosexuality as a source of guilt. Though these classical connotations offered Wilde the opportunity to express his sexual inclinations in disguise, a necessary act when considering the illegality of homosexuality in the nineteenth century, he was eventually sentenced to two years hard labour as a result of sexual indecency with men. The denouncement of Wilde and the subsequent retrenchment of religious moralism around sexuality in Britain was particularly impactful for author E.M. Forster, who experienced the trial during his youth. Kate Symondson notes that Wilde’s prosecution ‘read like a cautionary tale’ for Forster’s sense of his own homosexuality. His references to classical Hellenism follow Wilde in the necessarily closeted way he expresses his feelings. One of Forster’s short stories, The Story of a Panic, depicts a group of English tourists who venture into the Italian countryside to picnic before being scared by their own imagination, or an unknown entity perhaps. While most of the characters run away in fear, a teenage boy named Eustace stays within the woods, eventually reappearing with a newfound vigour and enthusiasm for life that is met with bewilderment from his acquaintances. Forster invokes classical Hellenism in

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multiple references to Pan, the Greek God of shepherds and nature, as a way of elevating his story to mythological status. Here the authority and permissions of Classicism remove the restrictions of modern society, and hints at sexual experience and cross-class relationships to be explored with freedom (albeit allusive). After Eustace has been found by his acquaintances within the woods they notice goat tracks near to his location, Pan having the hind legs of a goat, alluding to an encounter between the pair. This is extended further when the vicar Mr Sandbach announces, ‘I know that what I am going to say now is what you are all now feeling. The Evil One has been very near us in bodily form’. As both Pan and the Devil are horned, readers will note contemporary Christian opinions on sin, and subtler readers will catch the narrative allusion to sexuality as well. The story continues and Eustace remains in a state of elation, expressing a desire to see the Italian fishing boy, Gennaro. Soon Eustace has to be quarantined on account of his unruly and passionate behaviour. Eventually, he manages to escape his confines and runs away in delirium, while Gennaro dies in a magical coincidence following a compromise involving money. Christopher Lane argues that ‘this equivocal outcome – combined with Pan’s hinted appearance as a figure sweeping over Eustace, whose name resonates quietly with ‘ecstasy’ – lets Forster transpose his ending without countenancing a physical affair between Eustace and Gennaro.’ Additionally, Forster’s Hellenism alludes to sexual experiences as epiphanic events, and freedom, whether sexual or literary, as a state of grace. The sudden change in understanding of Eustace’s behaviour after his encounter in the woods is of a piece with Forster’s works, and the Edinburgh Dictionary for Modernism notes that such moments ‘radically change the course of complacent bourgeois lives as his characters are faced with sudden

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‘panics’ of unrecognised desire: apparitions of the god Pan in natural and typically eroticised Mediterranean landscapes become conduits for repressed emotion.’ Allusions to Pan, the god of shepherds, are also a form of Pastoral. Pastoral literature evokes the simple rural life a shepherd would have led as well as the natural beauty of his surroundings, and was used often in the Romantic period as a nostalgic contrast to the industrialisation of Britain. In The Story of a Panic, Mr Leyland, an artist, announces that ‘All the poetry is going from Nature… her lakes and marshes are drained, her seas banked up, her forests cut down. Everywhere we see the vulgarity of desolation spreading’, before being informed by Mr Sandbach that ‘Pan is dead. That is why the woods do not shelter him’. Kelly Sultzbach suggests that the storm and winds that scare the characters soon after their discussion ‘assumes the status of an ancient pagan god reaching out to punish those who have abused the forest.’ Allusions to Ancient Greek culture can also be seen within other twentieth century modernist works, most obviously in James Joyce’s Ulysses, which takes inspiration from The Odyssey in its structure and themes. Joyce’s story depicts the journeys around Dublin of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom on the 16th June 1904. The novel is notoriously complex and navigating its experimental narrative and multi-layered textual references takes time. However, the Hellenistic allusions in the text work to give depth, as Jennifer Levine suggests: ‘The more detailed our knowledge of Homer’s epic, the stronger the echoes with Ulysses. The more precise, too, our sense of difference.’ Joyce invokes divine and mythical aspects of classical Hellenism work as a contrast to the stark realities of modern life, in the same way as E.M. Forster evokes the pastoral genre within his work. However, in his 1923 review of Ulysses T.S.Eliot notes that Joyce not only

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emphasises the reality of modern life, but also offers ‘a way of controlling, or ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history.’ Thus modernism uses Greek myth and cultural forms as a means of understanding the radical challenges of the twentieth century and shows how the past is both similar and dissimilar to contemporary life. Eliot goes on to suggest that Joyce’s use of The Odyssey ‘made the modern world possible for art.’ Classical Hellenism as frame and structure can also be found in the works of Freud. His theory of the Oedipus Complex, the child’s unconscious desires for the parent of the opposite sex, uses Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex where the titular character murders his father and weds his mother. John Farrell notes that ‘Freud’s primary message was that we never leave the past behind; both in personal and in historical terms, we are haunted by it. We are all like Oedipus, confronting the hidden sources of personal and collective fate.’ These brief discussions show that Hellenism is a paradoxical genre and that authors invoke antiquity to portray radically modern ideas. The writers call on Ancient Greek culture and religion to supersede the moral authority of Christianity, and show that ancient provenance is a tool which helps us frame the values of modern life.

ANTHOLOGY IV

Filotimo Stavros Giannoulatos

It’s raining. I’m stood beneath a shop front outside Highbury and Islington station while I wait out the downpour. The wind picks up, it’s howling, a biting chill sends a shudder down my spine. I zip up my jacket to weather the torrent, my phone buzzes. A text. “Dad when are you back? It’s 6pm. Can you get some milk?” My thumbs like jelly, I text back. “Yes, train’s delayed, let you know when I leave.” I glance up from my phone, at least a dozen armed police are guarding the station entrance. I look at a sea of blue strobe lights through the flashing sheets of cold droplets. Between the black silhouettes I can see a person on the floor. The sound of sirens blasts the air as an ambulance approaches. “It’s a stabbing, isn’t it?” Bastards! A memory carved into my mind, Durban, 1978. I see the headlights of a car shine through the curtains in my living room and hear the sound of tyres on gravel as a car pulls up in front of the house. I hear a

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loud fumbling of keys. The door bursts open and an unfamiliar figure stumbles in, drenched in blood. At first, I don’t recognise him, and think it’s an intruder. Terror hits me like a speeding truck. The fears wash away when I realise the trembling figure is my father. His face is like a burst-open tomato. He stumbles into the kitchen, goes to the sink and begins to wash away the blood. After he had cleaned himself up, he came into the living room and sat down on the sofa. I looked over to him “Baba, what happened to you?” He had a hollow look on his face. “I broke the law and I got punished for it.” “Why did you do that if you knew you would be punished?” “Because I wanted to do the right thing.” He turned towards me, “Have you ever heard of the word filotimo, Stavros?” Baba noticed that I looked confused. He smiled, “Filotimo, yio mou, is when you offer your heart to someone or something and expect nothing in return…” It wasn’t until a month later my mother told me that the cops beat him because they believed he was part of the ANC. South Africa during apartheid… Surreal and strange. A legacy of Western colonialism. It was 1987, I was 15, Pietermaritzburg. A whites only boarding school. Draconian and Victorian… a model of its imperial legacy. It was my first social dance. Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other.

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I wanna dance with somebody plays as the DJ turns up the sound. The boys ask the girls to dance, all but one. I walk over. “Hi, would you like to dance?” She looked up at me, to our right a group of boys smirking. I held out my hand and smiled. She hesitated… then put her hand into mine. That night Thandi and I talked about our mutual interests, dreams and aspirations. We planned to meet up, it would have to be the park. There weren’t many places people of different colours could get together. Later that evening, I returned to school. “Hey, kaffir lover!” “Fuck off Eugene, the only person who would dance with you is your mum!” Before I knew it, he landed a punch square on my eye. I tackled him to the ground. It took three of them to get me off him. Suddenly like a crack of lightning an announcement at the station interrupts my train of thought. They are letting us in. I text my daughter to tell the kids I am on my way home. As I walk past the scene, a woman sits on the side of the road, trembling. A paramedic approaches her and offers her a blanket, an older gentleman gives her a cup of coffee, “Take this my love, I will get another cup for myself, you look like you need it more than I do.” She looks up at him and smiles. Finally, I’m on the train. It’s still raining.

commentary This is a fragment of memoir that uses a stream of consciousness technique. The narrator begins with an inner monologue in the present, texting

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his daughter whilst waiting out a downpour at a train station where a stabbing incident has happened. His thoughts take him to his past as a boy, to an incident that happened in South Africa. There is dialogue between the boy and his father. It is in this section the meaning of filotimo is discussed. The narrator’s thoughts then take him back to his 15-year-old self and to an incident that happened at that time. He is then abruptly brought back to the present and watches a scene outside the train station. The three sections of the text all tie in with the meaning of the word filotimo. After reading Damian Le Bas’ book The Stopping Places; A Journey Through Gypsy Britain, I was inspired to write in the theme of memoir. I read Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson and understood how memoir is written from the writer’s thoughts, memories and perceptions and how that would differ from someone else’s perspective of those events. As evidenced in the following citation, ‘We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. Fragments of the real are retained […] We are unreliable narrators even to ourselves.’ In The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, Philip Neilsen suggests that ‘there is a lot of common ground between the two main forms – autobiography/memoir and biography […] how a person is remembered and valued can be a factor of life writing about or by them.’ Like all narrative forms, memoir requires skilled storytelling, imagination and research, and the quality of the writing is obviously central to the impact on the reader. Here I have tried to give the reader a vision of the individual (the narrator) and the communal, the present and the past, the human and environment. I tried to create an internal space, distancing myself from myself, and I was then able to switch back and forth from inside and outside of myself in order to give myself up to the experience of being a ‘self as other’. Memoir can be both painful and healing, and invariably brings experiences together and breaks them up.

ANTHOLOGY IV

Take me to the other side Jasmine Damaris

“Don’t go to the city. You go to the city, you get hooked on the needle.” The Isle of Wight is where everything stops. Progress is lost. It’s where people come to die – and it’s where I grew up. Until one day I met a boy who whisked me away, to Australia, actually. Me, an island girl, only having gone abroad a couple of times to nearby countries. Smoking and drinking after a long shift, my co-worker was spinning tales about my first stop in Australia, Adelaide. He had for some reason been there before. “Watch out for those Aborigines. They’re all beggars. If you’re sitting outside, they’ll come right up to you and try steal ya food and drink!” He spoke with abandon. ‘A single flower sprouting from a crack in the pavement’ – words from my journal. That is how I thought of myself on the plane to the other side of the world. To an apartment by a marina where dolphins swam in glittering water. Trams took us around Adelaide, the business district and shopping centres, the beaches and China Town. Everything looked clean and new, even the people. Tanned, healthy,

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vapid. Two months of nothing. But nothing ever lasts. Temperatures rose to above 40, making it hard to leave the apartment and I found myself screaming into pillows on the regular. We started to run out of money. I found us hotel work on a backpacker website and all of a sudden we were going to an outback town called Marree. Only 365 miles from Adelaide, not far by Australian standards. Our boss picked us up at the tiny airport in Port Augusta. Sitting in the back of her ute, I used tiredness to explain my silence. Really I was panicking, barely taking in the stark desert view, the emus and eagles the others were raving about. ‘I need to take a shit – I feel like I’m gonna be constipated. I’m not cut out for this. I need to run far away. Why am I such a failure? I need a hug from my Mum. I need this job.’ My stomach didn’t settle for the first week and every triviality swelled in my mind, as usually happens when first at a job. But a few weeks on and Marree had become my home. I’d met my best friends there – travellers like me, and I decked out my room with what I could scrounge, my mini-fridge stocked with lager and white wine. I thought the Isle of Wight was small but it was a metropolis compared to Marree. The town consisted of about 150 residents, most of them Dieri Aboriginals or Afghan settlers. I would get to know a lot of them when we congregated every Friday for darts, which everyone would participate in. Even if we were working, we had to drop everything to take that shot. Later, we would smoke and drink together, crowded around the pool table. The locals loved rock music and they’d give me their spare change to queue songs on the jukebox. Late one night in discussion with Fabien, an indigenous Australian adopted and raised in France, he told me about the fate of the

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Aboriginals who move to the city. His relatives had always warned him against moving to Adelaide, stating that those that did ended up as junkies on the street. He never went into detail but I now see that they were faced with a sickening truth. The Dieri stayed in Marree because they were protected there, they could have normal lives, a strong community, houses and jobs. The thing that shouldn’t have surprised me was that they were just normal, dressing and acting like anyone else in this world. The words that I heard people use before had made them sound like a different species, words like “Abo” or even “Aborigine” that separated them. Words can be damaging. Not enough people realise the power of what they say. As for my ignorant old co-worker’s warning, he was as bad as the media with his myth of Aborigenes and theft. The thing is, even though I was out in the middle of a desert, I felt more at home than I was in Adelaide or even the Isle of Wight. In a clichéd teenage quest to ‘find myself ’ I found other people, and began to understand why and how their difference mattered to them.

commentary As Neilsen suggests: “All primary individuals need to be as well realised as characters in a novel, with their own mix of social background and psychology (class, race, gender, motivation, desires, contradictions) – which lifts them above stereotype and aids insight and understanding.” (Life Writing, p. 135). In this short memoir, I show how my character’s background informs their decisions, thoughts and conclusions. She is white and from a closed-minded island in England which she thinks she is above until she meets the Dieri people, learns about their struggles and realises she needs to face

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her own racism. Readers connect with characters as if they are real people (even more so in life writing) and real people are filled with complexities and contradictions. Even when a writer claims only to be writing fiction, we can examine the writer’s life and find resonances. Novelist Pat Barker states in an interview: “Basically, I’m not interested in writing autobiography in any way, shape, or form, although I think at the end of the day when you look at the books on the shelf they are — for every writer not just for me — the spiritual autobiography.” (Creative Writing: a workbook with readings, p. 435) She notes that a real event can inspire writers and a single memory can be reimagined as a series of ‘what-ifs’.

chapter 3

the unexpected

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I had only eaten a mouthful Richard Samuels

He taunts us; an unruly, unwelcome guest. Crackle. Spit. Hiss. Roar. Greedy flickering fingers reach out, grasp and consume the old, weak and dying. The beast belches black smoke that chokes and blinds. Overwhelmed by fear, we run; ignoring charred bodies and cries for help. Amid the confusion we get separated and take different paths; mine leads to safety; his to ruin. My brother is gone, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just me now; we watched each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s backs ever since mother left. We never knew our father; which was no great loss; as the women in our family are the protectors and breadwinners. I remember waiting, calling and feeling disgruntled at the prospect of preparing my own meals. Now I must find a new place to call home which is easier said than done; as trespassers are not suffered lightly. Caution and fleetness of foot are my allies on this perilous journey; some days prove worse than others. Recalling such a day; when instinct dictated haste; but hunger compelled me to seek a meal. I had only eaten a mouthful; when set upon by a gang of thieves; discretion being the better part of valour; I withdrew; to the sound of their shrill laughter ringing in my ears. A memorable one; that involved an encounter of a more intimate nature; she was

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amenable, and I am not one to forgo an opportunity. Afterwards, we went our separate ways, nomadic life has its advantages; for I am not inclined to settle down and raise a family. Times along with my frame are lean, it is becoming more difficult to find food; the gangs are getting desperate; their strength lay in numbers; and with so many mouths to feed, no one is safe. Survival is dependent on the ability to eat and run; of late, I am running more than I am eating. A temporary change for the better, one of the gang leaders was killed; after biting off more than she could chew. That faction is too preoccupied with internal squabbling to notice a solitary traveller passing through their territory. Being able to dine unmolested, permits vigour and renewed optimism to return to my body; I stay for as long as I am allowed. An incident on the day of my planned departure required me to seek cover and remain hidden. Mother warned us, an encounter with one meant certain death, warlords. Even the gangs fear them; in their search for food they conquered each other and co-opted the land. This was the first time I had seen one, the title was not undeserved. His powerful muscular body moving imperiously, a killing machine; designed to inflict the maximum amount of carnage. I lay frozen with fear and admiration; assured that when he ate beggars potential usurpers kept their distance. Casually sauntering; surveying his newly acquired realm; he scowls with disapproval and sets off in pursuit of gang members who have become trespassers on their own turf. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time to move on; undetected, I unceremoniously slink away. A fellow traveller; we come to a mutual agreement; to share food and look out for each other. I enjoy the companionship; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reminiscent of the tranquillity before destruction. A symbiotic collaboration; where each empowers the other; doubling our chance for survival.

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Emboldened by our alliance, we consolidate our numerical advantage to relive the weak and careless of their spoils. A time of plenty; but if experience has taught me anything; it is that things change. My companion and I are in the process of obtaining a meal when he receives what appears to be a superficial wound. It becomes infected and slows him down; which is fortunate for me, we cross paths with a warlord who proceeds to kill my former associate; which provides me with a means of escape. I feel no guilt, shame or remorse; if it had been me, he would have done the same thing. Staying alive is all that counts; I find myself a safe hiding place and bed down for the night. Morning brings heat, flies and hunger; I do what I must and acquire an afternoon meal. Thirst forces a cessation of hostilities; enemies and allies forget their differences and share a libation, peace reigns for the moment. It is short lived; a mother calls frantically, her daughter is missing. After searching in vain, she has no choice but to give up and accept her loss. The others are too busy caring for their offspring and are oblivious to her cries of lamentation. I finish my drink; cautiously avoiding those that would do me harm and make my way. It is safer to walk during the day; the dark belongs to the warlords and the gangs. I come across a fresh bloodstain; a toll extracted; a costly one for those foolish; or brave enough to take a nocturnal sojourn. The land is changing; there is less cover; strange sounds and smells fill the air I need somewhere to hide and assess the danger. The intoxicating scent of food envelops my being; it is dark; but hunger and curiosity supersede safety. Venturing into the unknown I track the source of my desire. The beast; the one who took my brother; but he is confined; his flickers reveal a strange creature. I have never seen anything like it; but it has food; so, I approach, it calls out; another one appears and points its stick in my directionâ&#x20AC;Ś

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commentary The decision to write with the voice of a cheetah was inspired by Timothy Mortonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Being Ecological. The Anthropocene has had a devastating impact on non-human entities. Humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s obsession with empirical codification has relegated non-humans; and some members of their own species into a void of non-being. Ascendancy came with hierarchies of values that have caused passivity and inertia; that we are immersed in a culture of utility. The lifestyle some of the planet enjoys is not without cost; we have lost equilibrium and the planet cannot afford a game of catch up. Omnipotence has enabled bias regarding who or what is included in the sphere of human empathy. This mode of being severely limits methods of representation. This is a narrative attempt to reach into the void and establish a connection; to access my imagination; to visualise in order to share consciousness with a non-human. The objective was to try to speak as the cheetah; opposed to speaking for it. Canonical literature is heteronomous, Morton argues, it is part of that fixed mentality that has taken us to the brink of an extinction event. The piece is not meant to be an environmental crusade although my character alludes to his loss of habitat and the arduous nature of his journey.

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Ancient mythology and the modern mind Reshma Shaik

Literature and the arts in the late 19th and early 20th century experienced a crisis of artistic representation where the traditional ideals of what could and should be represented were re-examined and re-evaluated. This movement, termed as Modernism, responded to a modern world that was changing too quickly and so could not be framed by tradition. The growing impersonal and mechanical nature of human experience became a major concern for modernism, and artists found the conventions imposed on the expression of human experience in literature and the arts too rigid so they sought to liberate their work through experiments in perspective, content and form. For some artists, mythology carried ancient truths that could restore lost dimensions of understanding and help rediscover and value aspects of the human psyche that had been covered over in the modern world. The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) influenced the thought of many modernists. His attack on Christianity not just as a form of priestly or establishment power but as a monumental unconscious fraud perpetrated by the psyche on itself was a sentiment that

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resonated with the modernist generation. In his seminal work The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Nietzsche proposes an aesthetic interpretation of being in which the Apollonian consciousness (associated with reason, light and orderly appearance) acts like a veil concealing the irrationality and chaos of the Dionysian world. Some modernists hoped to access this archaic Dionysian knowledge by moving through the Apollonian veil of modern society with the help of a mythical past they endeavoured to explore. Nietzsche’s Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy is echoed by two of the most prolific theorists of the mind in the modernist era, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Freud’s psychoanalytic focus on the Dionysian world ends at the analysis of the intimate sexual fantasies and repressed images of what he calls the unconscious. Whereas Jung postulates that, in addition to the Freudian unconscious which he names the personal unconscious, humans are instilled with symbols, instincts and archetypes at a mythic level. In a 1910 letter to Freud, Jung identifies the need to revivify amongst individuals a feeling for symbol and myth, ever so gently to transform Christ back into the soothsaying god of vine which he was, and in this way to absorb those ecstatic instinctual forces of Christianity for the one purpose of making the cult and the sacred myth what they once were – a drunken feast of joy where man regained the ethos and holiness of an animal. Here, Jung is not only echoing the modernist wish to re-establish a connection with the primitive forces of nature mythologised by the archaic cultures, he also refers to reconnecting with the ecstatic instinctual forces – the combined reserve of archetypal and instinctual knowledge of humanity. He calls this the Collective Unconscious. According to Jung, unlike the repressed nature of the contents of the personal unconscious, “the contents of the collective unconscious

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have never been in the consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity.” Through the study of religions and traditions such as Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Gnosticism and Taoism, Jung traced a universality through individual belief systems. He believed that the similarities in world religions manifested the collective unconscious of the human psyche. Therefore, where Freud chose to view religion as an anachronistic survival of a primitive illusion, Jung recognised the mythic value of religions, and their role in acting as a guide to wisdom. As a result of their respective stances, Freud never escaped a ‘symptomatic’ conception of art whereas Jung appreciated the positive achievement of the modernist artistic imagination in its movement away from realist annotation and towards abstraction and evocation of myth. However, if we consider Jung’s positive and inclusive outlook on primitivism, we risk the disappearance of the historical, political and cultural specificity associated with the primitivist movement in the arts. Until the emergence of postcolonial theory in the late 20th century, primitivism was generally accepted to be a positive phenomenon that presented a novel approach to the practice of art in the Western world. In the wake of postcolonialist critique, this movement has been criticised as a manifestation of colonialism. Under this lens, primitive modernist art came to be seen as the exoticisation and exploitation of a foreign, colonised culture often deemed to be inferior for the pleasure of a Eurocentric audience in the West. Primitivist art also stands as a reminder of the aestheticized commodification of non-Western cultures and of the exotic native for the western consumer gaze. This colonialist practice arguably reduces the mythical value and the power of the collective unconscious and its archetypes through the fetishised abstraction of ‘primitive’ practices and their prioritisation over forms

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of mythic consciousness still alive in the developed world. Dividing the world into authentic and inauthentic is a colonial inscription much like drawing a line on a map. By reframing these judgements, a postcolonialist critique of 20th century modernism manages to confront and effectively revive discussion of historical, political and cultural specificities which Jung’s optimistic approach towards primitivism fails to take into account. The transformation of the traditional literary form into its modernist counterpart is nothing less than radical. The essential characteristics of a novel were stripped down, torn apart and rearranged as deemed fit. This gave rise to a myriad of literary works that we now come to recognise as the genre of experimental novels. Experimental novels explore the possibility of a whole new sense of character, play with and alter the structure of a traditional novel, and efficaciously redefine the role of a protagonist or an antagonist. Thus, unlike their predecessors bound by the conventional aspects of the novel, modern novelists were free to write what they wanted to write. Modernist artists, writers and poets who were searching for the mythic origin of repressed primitive energies and desires didn’t merely want to gain access to this forbidden knowledge. They wanted to capture and embody its essence in the work they produced. As Bradbury and McFarlane note, ‘Modernists by definition were fascinated with the process of evolving consciousness. Modernist literary works were often not organized according to linear time, but according to layers of consciousness.’ Relics of the realist or naturalist literary form such as detailed descriptions of outward forms of human behaviour are replaced in modernist literary form by the multiple ambiguities of experience in itself. James Joyce’s Ulysses illustrates this well. Joyce redefines the

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traditional boundaries of a novel by merging subject and object, by unhinging concepts of time and space and creating multiple presences of single beings. He does this with the unlimited field of mythic representation always present in the background in a way that drives forward the novelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s plot. The purpose of myth in Ulysses is not limited to the theme and motor of plot alone. Joyce and other modernist writers such as Hesse, Eliot and Yeats often drew on classical mythology to diagnose, and compensate for, the nature of existence in the modern age. Myth was employed by these writers to impose order onto a chaotic existence and find meaning but it was also used to contrast the lives of the ancients with the lives of moderns to exemplify the absence of a collective, communal mythology, the absence of a structure or meaning to life in the modern world. Throughout the modernist movement, mythology became a means to access aspects of the self that were repressed by the technologically modernised 20th century world. As the linearity and inevitability of historical narrative was rejected by the modernists, the mythic dimension was recognised as a deeper apprehension of historical consciousness, seen as an interconnected web. An influence on Joyce, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) saw mythologies of past cultures as authentic expressions of human experience encapsulated in time. In the same way, modernists used myth and its associated images and symbols as a means of amplifying the meaning of individual human experience in their work.

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Hypnos & Oneiros Robert Claudiu Cazacutu

On the last day of November, Hypnos woke up with a start half an hour before the designated time he was to open his eyes to get ready for a funeral. He seemed to have forgotten all about the death of his grandfather because of a peculiar dream he had which was also the reason he woke up so unusually early on a Saturday. The memory of this dream started recreating itself, and his grandfather Hypnos was on the stage of the auditorium where Oneiros found himself, signing and gesticulating with great animation at the inaudible crowd, and the singer’s red suit captivated Oneiros’ thought as it was the only colour he could recall seeing in the darkness of the fictitious theatre. There was no sign that indicated the primo uomo to be his grandfather – on the contrary, his slim body and movements suggested that it was not – but his feelings towards the figure confirmed in a strange way that this was the case. When Oneiros recollected the oddest part of the dream, which was that he could hear the crowd’s appreciative – now loud and distinct – clapping at the end of the performance, but not Hypnos’ voice, he remembered why he had set up an alarm for eight thirty, and

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why he had to meet with his father Thanatos at nine. Oneiros remained in bed but when he glanced at the clock and realised what the time was his gaze moved from the nightstand to an antiquated contraption on his writing desk: a birthday present he had received from his grandfather when he was young. Oneiros, on a birthday which now seemed a million years away from the present, had received a transistor radio from his grandfather, and the memory of unscrewing it and staring in wonder at its circuit board – with its infinite white traces from one pin connector to the other and every marking line leading to the controller in the middle of the green board – brought tears to Oneiros’ eyes because in this memory, Hypnos happened to have entered the room at the time he was still inspecting and tinkering with the copper conductors, and instead of scolding him for trying to ruin the gift he had saved for many months so that he could afford buying it, he approached his grandson tenderly and remarked how he could see how the lives and thoughts of people may seem to follow similar patterns, but it’s much more complicated than that. Hypnos had had a fulfilling life, and even though he wasn’t able to sacrifice all of the time he had to his beloved Oneiros, his grandson would implore him to visit his house in the evenings when his daytime errands would cease for the day, and Hypnos would narrate to him – in fragmented and enigmatic timelines – stories which Oneiros could never grasp the meaning of but listened to with close attention mainly because of the charming delight Hypnos would derive upon hearing his grandson’s exhortations. Oneiros was aware of his grandfather’s attitude towards death, and he accepted that deep in his heart, Hypnos was not the kind to believe – as he had so many times murmured in defiance – in “superstitions and fables, no matter how alluring they may be.” His grandfather’s

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tranquil response to imminent death wasn’t what shocked him the most. On the day he had visited him for the last time and sat on a chair next to the deathbed that his father Thanatos had arranged, Hypnos’ disturbing remarks – which Oneiros interpreted as warnings – offended him, and he felt distressed at the language his grandfather used and his persistence in bringing up religious topics when in the past he had insisted he didn’t want to discuss such issues with him. “Don’t be a fool,” he said, “there’s nothing beyond but death, just death.” Oneiros fell asleep next to Hypnos’ bed while he kept his vigil past midnight for several hours. He was startled by a dream he had of his father conducting the funeral service, and when the gravedigger – who also happened to be Thanatos – hurled the soil he had dug beforehand on the casket that contained Hypnos’ body, the throbbing sound of dirt hitting the hardwood surface of the coffin’s lid caused Oneiros to wake up with a short yelp. The pulsating alarm clock went off at eight thirty. A sharp pang vibrated throughout his being when he remembered that he wasn’t awake when Hypnos drew his last breath. Confused by sleep, he tried recalling what he had experienced during his sleep but as he finished his cup of coffee and was dressing accordingly for the occasion he was distracted by his father’s calls. On the way to the chapel, Thanatos talked about his father with respectful admiration, but Oneiros could not help thinking how frightening death is, regardless of his grandfather’s assertions. When they reached the cemetery and were greeted by other friends of Hypnos – people who Oneiros had never heard of before let alone met – the sight of the scattered tombstones around the neglected

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graveyard aroused in him a strange familiarity, and when the funeral service was concluded, and the cemetery worker started burying his grandfather under great heaps of soil, the full memory of the haunting dreams unfolded before the silent labour of the gravedigger and his seemingly mute work. Oneiros struggled for Thanatos’ hand on his right, and unable to clutch it, he stood staring at the worker’s exertions as the dirt accumulated on his dead grandfather and the beating sound of the rattling muck made him feel abandoned and scared.

commentary The structure of the story was an experiment with semantics, fractals and diegetic levels, which creates a seemingly fragmented plotline and a series of surreal scenes interpolated in ‘real’ scenes. This allows for a story that performs a full circle. There is a hierarchy of symbolism in the names of the characters and their relations; although it would make sense for the grandfather to be Thanatos (he would be the oldest family member and act as the personification of death – the oldest of all grandfathers) there would be a plot hole if there was to be any father at all. Most of the story relies on a repetition of character names that aims to indicate the relationship of their names in the sentences. On another note, the text is dominated by male characters; the names Hypnos, Oneiros, and Thanatos are neuter words in Greek but the suffix -s strongly indicates a male and for aesthetic purposes the decision was made. The story attempts to explore certain themes which are interlocked aspects of being: death, dreams, grief, denial, memory and the past and connecting relationships all strive to make the mind the main protagonist of

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the story. The timeline which takes place in Oneiros’ ‘reality’ is very limited, and the story focuses on the symbolism which occurs in these dreams and how they impact his experience with the ‘real’ events that occur at his grandfather’s funeral. While it is true that names such as Hypnos and Oneiros may seem to classify the story as a fable or as a mythological story inspired by Greek legends, the reader should know that names such as Agape, Angel, and many others which indicate abstract concepts and transcendental beings, are very common names of both women and men in contemporary Greece.

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Damn Fine Coffee & Laura Palmer Laura Szandomierska

A television set is a curious thing. It is widely regarded as a symbol of domesticity and family life, even if it’s going out of style. Turned off, it is homely (heimlich) despite being hollow. Once on, it becomes an instrument of possession (something unheimlich) that allows anyone to temporarily exit their reality in a quite visceral manner. By its very nature, TV is then an uncanny device and thus a perfect channel for the Gothic genre. Gothic fiction, especially contemporary, concerns itself with the liminality and dual nature of the human condition; it examines and celebrates the darkest, most perverse desires which lay dormant within all of us, and which find their socially acceptable release through a Gothic narrative. The concept of duality in the Gothic genre is therefore a layered one, existing both within and without (the fictional world and the audience). Gothic fiction can be experienced either as a cautionary tale outlining the dangers of this world or a vicarious liberation of forbidden desires without suffering or consequences. The intrinsic aspect of the Gothic is thus the matter of taboo (mostly

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relative in culture, certainly in individuals, so the Gothic genre is elusive) and so is about going too far into the proverbial woods where boundaries can be crossed and transgressed. Gothic fiction is a flirtation with and a lesson about the darkness we are not willing to entertain in our waking lives. Now, cue the music: Audrey’s Dance youtu.be/nITuHzF4ryk Snap your fingers. noisnemid tneserp ruoy fo tuo llaF ABC At the crossroads of television conventions and Gothic fiction lies Twin Peaks (1990-1991), a surreal TV series and a collaborative project of David Lynch and Mark Frost centred around the murder of Laura Palmer. Twin Peaks was one of the first big auteur productions made for the smaller screen and challenged ideas about genre television as mindless entertainment, instead offering its audience a deeply layered and disturbing narrative suitable for academic consideration and fandom obsession. Every scene is packed with indirect messages, double meanings, and stimulating, poetic dialogue which perhaps explains its premature demise. It is interesting to note that television itself is one of the running symbols in the show, both as a device to illuminate and foreshadow the main plot events through the use of a fictional soap opera, Invitation to Love, and as a token of duality, repetition, and prophecy (all tropes pertaining to the Gothic). Furthermore, the TV format of Twin Peaks could be perceived as an extension of the show’s lore since one of its most potent themes is that

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of domestic and incestuous abuse. Designed to be watched at home while surrounded by your loved ones (as was certainly a popular ritual for many families in the early ‘90s), watching the series can be a distressing and uneasy experience in itself. Twin Peaks invites evil into our homes through the means of a television screen, making the whole event (within and without) all the more uncanny. IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY (TW: rape/incest + major spoilers ahead) ABC I want to type: when Laura Palmer was found dead, her father lost his mind. But he lost his mind as a young boy when he invited BOB into his body and so I can’t. It is no longer a secret that Leland Palmer, Laura’s father, is the one who kills her. Correction: BOB does this through Leland’s body, right? It appears to be so but is there any difference? We can choose to follow the supernatural narrative, which is the more comfortable one out of the two, and believe that Leland absolutely didn’t want or mean to do the things BOB made him do, that is, rape his daughter from the age of 12 and murder her when she was one year shy of reaching legal adulthood. Is BOB a demonic spirit or does he simply free the deep-seated desires in the minds of his vessels, more catalyst for human cruelty than a fully alien presence? When describing his and BOB’s origins, MIKE tells Agent Cooper that they are parasites feeding on human fear and pleasure. He mentions nothing of making people do things they don’t already want to do. We learn that ‘in the beginning, there was no BOB’ as Lynch has

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said on many occasions, and that Leland was always meant to be the killer. In the series we witness Leland Palmer’s descent into madness following his daughter’s death. No one else’s reaction, even Sarah Palmer’s psychosis, can compare to Leland’s profound despair over the loss of his daughter. Once we realise the truth, Leland’s character, his suffering and remorse are changed. We do not know when Leland is himself and when BOB is in charge of his body. Is it the mourning of a father after the brutal loss of his daughter or BOB mourning the loss of a vessel he’s been perfecting for years? Incestuous desire is a significant trope in Gothic fiction as it involves perverse longing for a socially forbidden relationship and the abuse of power. It serves as the main conflict in the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764), where the theme is a commentary on the compulsion to produce heirs. Twin Peaks subverts this trope as Leland-BOB’s motivation is to create an heir out of Laura herself. The focus is on impregnating Laura with the spirit of evil (BOB’s essence) and on the attempt to make the perfect vessel for him to inhabit next rather than producing children. However, Laura chooses death and liberates herself from her father/BOB, and ends the cycle of abuse. In Heaven, everything is fine. youtube.com/watch?v=Ij2u7mL7YmA&t=79s ABC RAGE, RAGE: THE SPIRIT OF A WOMAN

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Next blog posts Ghosts and horror through the lens of feminism and psychoanalysis; how the early male literary influences shape our ideas about the genre. A HAUNTING, or THANATOS AS A GIRL A flashfic story about a woman whose repressed feelings about her husband manifest themselves as ghosts.

chapter 4

transformation

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Pink morning dew Salamatu Mohamed

Autumn: shades of brown and green, multicoloured leaves, heavy winter scarves and the scent of cinnamon and pumpkin on every street. If you ask anyone in Europe what autumn is, this will most likely be their answer. To me, autumn is a warm orange rusty scent of nostalgia that hangs around the mind and in the nose, and reminds me of one particular school trip I went on years ago. I remember the startling and fresh spectacle of nature that surrounded the residence we had rented for the night. The ground under our feet was covered in yellows, oranges and reds, that were loudly dying at the feet of pines and cypresses. And the evergreen trees! Silently surrounding the place, swallowing every noise before it could reach our ears, making the cement and loud cars a forgotten curse. It is said that cypresses are planted next to cemeteries to help the souls of the dead reach the heavens. To me, in that opening, away from the traffic and deep in that small forest, surrounded by cyclamens and colourful cinerarias, it was like we were already there.

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Everything in its time, Patience leaves behind, I move on and don’t mind, Winter passes by.

* Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) americanart.si.edu/artwork/grand-canyon-yellowstone-17832

A gorgeous spectacle of colours and perfumes that now evades the mind, a romantic display of art, sublime in the highest degree, like a work of Thomas Moran*. The sunrise though… unforgettable. We couldn’t miss the sunrise. The night was wasted away to the sounds of secrets being shared, truths being stolen and laughter. But still, we were sitting on the patio in those few moments that precede dawn, eagerly waiting for the familiar and warm autumn orange to colour the pastel lilac of the sky. The sky offered no warmth, and frost was on its way to coat the fragile grass blades, but we remained outside. Conversations were still swirling around me but were thinning down, as if everyone was running out of words. But in truth, we were all just absorbed in Nature’s play, watching as the last stars of the madrugada stopped twinkling in the sky. It is said that dew doesn’t have a smell but I remember that the death of the madrugada smelled of wet leaves, cheap drugstore perfumes and pink morning dew. It smelt of innocence, still. Parole di Ghiaccio (Words of Ice) was the song of choice: we sang it the whole summer and autumn and although there wasn’t any frost on the grass yet the image of that morning is crystallised in my mind. Its lyrics are the name of the painting for that day:

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The silence before the sunrise was intertwined with the sound of the cameras snapping pictures and the forest waking up before our eyes. The wild flowers kissed the sky as they blossomed and the oak tree seemed to stretch its undressed branches in the gentle breeze. “Komorebi.” It was said conversationally but the word still startled us, sending a lone black woodpecker away in fright. It was the owner. She moved next to me and pointed her finger somewhere at the oak tree before us: a magnificent specimen that she had previously introduced as the oldest tree in their small forest, still producing leaves and acorns as well as hosting red squirrels and other fauna. “It’s a Japanese word,” she explained. “It means sunlight that filters through the trees.” She was pointing at the branches of the tree, showing us the golden light shining through the few autumnal leaves still on the oak. It was like watching tears of gold seeping through the tree’s leaves, pearls of light flooding together into a sunray. The owner must have seen a thousand sunrises already but she stood there with us still, absorbing the cold heat of that dawn. No further words were exchanged as the light shone brighter on the foliage until the whole tree was shining over us, the red leaves ablaze. Our shadows behind us looked like giants, perhaps filled with the memories of the night before and the sunrise before us. But still we didn’t talk, content with living in the moment until it was time to return inside. By the time the sun was up, the forest had awoken with the sound of the wind crying and the birds chirping but by then our phones were back in our pockets and we were inside.

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commentary In his chapter Life Writing in The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing, Philip Neilsen differentiates between biography and memoir. While writing a biography one must look for objectivity and pay clear attention to details. Memoirs are more focused on honesty in writing: as long as the work is honest and truthful, personal feelings are allowed. An important detail in life writing is the centrality of memory. Any piece of writing that takes place after an event runs the risk of being flawed, especially if notes have not been taken following the event. While writing my first draft, I was aware of the risk of altering the truth because the events here took place a while ago. Because of this, I made sure to incorporate only things I was sure had happened, making sure to use phrases like â&#x20AC;&#x153;that now evades the mindâ&#x20AC;? to express the fact that some memories I simply couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t retain.

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Serial publishing: a Victorian revolution Cove Connolly

Serial publishing, described by academics Graham Law and Robert Pattern as “a term we use to cover two related practices: the publishing of periodicals with miscellaneous contents and the issuing of unified texts at intervals in independent fascicles or parts”, had been around since before the Victorian period began and terminology for the form such as ‘journals’ had historically been used to describe the publishing of literature in distinctive parts. However, the classification of works as ‘serial’ did not become customary until the 1830s, with the longer effects of the Industrial Revolution leading to significant changes within the publishing industry. The emergence of greater literacy, government reductions in the tax of materials as well as mechanical innovations in the creation and distribution of literature allowed for the serial boom of the nineteenth century, now recognised as a revolution in London’s publishing history. When reflecting on the period as a whole, it is clear that considerable transformation and innovation resulted from growing industrialisation. Defining aspects of Victorian life such as communications,

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travel and labour were becoming increasingly mechanised and economically focused while at the same time substantial reforms by government took place. London’s publishing trade and commerce was equally transformed through the increased popularity and prevalence of serial publication. This pioneering mode of literary distribution can be credited with launching the career of Charles Dickens, eventually becoming synonymous with the writer as a result of his lifelong championing of the form. Dickens began his career working in newspapers under the pseudonym of ‘Boz’, before writing The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, also known as The Pickwick Papers, a satirical work of social and political commentary created as a narrative to accompany the illustrations of artist, Robert Seymour. While Seymour did not live to see his work’s success, Dickens and publishers Chapman & Hall gained public acclaim and reaped huge rewards with the work’s popularity allowing for reissues, which in turn could be bound by fans to create a complete novel. This reaction to The Pickwick Papers would begin to revolutionise the publishing industry, as demonstrated in Law and Pattern’s summation of the fact that ‘at a stroke, this serial, comprising over six hundred pages and more than forty illustrations, reduced the cost of owning a new novel from 1½ guineas for three volumes paid at once – the standard price and format from 1821 to 1894 – to a pound, paid out over nineteen months.’ This price disparity highlighted the economic benefits of the form which would soon be exploited in a variety of ways. The serial format presented publishers with the ability to maintain consistent readership in the delivery of lengthy works spread across a series of instalments while also acting as a reliable source in which to test market appeal, reap benefits from extensive advertising and

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minimise losses on unpopular works. The economic benefits and speed at which serial issues could be produced, as well as the advancing technologies of the era would see the rise of print-capitalism within Britain. In turn this saw many publishers, including Dickens with his own Household Words, begin to publish additional volumes and Christmas special editions to meet reader demand. The Victorian appetite for serial works is evident when considering their consumption with issues being bought publicly via bookshops, railway stations and independent salesmen. This social form of accessing literature marks a stark change from earlier in the century when publications were mostly rented from private library collections by the middle or upper classes. The significance of this change not only illustrates a demand but also an ever-growing and literate audience. Literacy rates slowly increased throughout the nineteenth century and a will to eradicate ‘taxes on knowledge’ emerged, with duties on paper and stamps being reduced and eventually removed as a result of advocacy for education. Serial publications allowed for reading to become a community event and a part of daily life, and Law & Pattern note that ‘because these serialised fictions were read, discussed, circulated, dramatised and pictorialised in the press, their characters and stories became a part of the nation’s regular diet of news. Whether Little Nell died or Becky Sharp lied became nearly as widespread a topic of conversation as Chartism or the Irish famine.’ This in turn saw serial publications become a recognised form of popular entertainment through their ability to offer distraction and escape from the effects of an increasingly industrialised world, particularly for those living in the lower classes who had found their lives to be the most drastically changed. Charles Dickens recognised his increasing popularity and used

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his influence to share his perspectives on social and cultural reform through his works, with his father-in-law and early editor George Hogarth referring to his early sketch A Visit to Newgate as ‘an example of Dickens’ powers as a social commentator.’ Campaigning soon became the heart of Dickens’ periodical journal Household Words with Mrs Gaskell enlisted as one of its first contributors due to her work depicting the effects of industrial change. Dickens professed that there was ‘no other writer he was keener to enlist’, declaring that the purpose of his periodical was ‘the raising up of those that are down and the general improvement of our social condition.’ These sentiments appear more significant when considering Dickens’s position that all literary contributions to Household Words would be anonymous. Dickens’s editorial ethics and his quest to find writers with a mutual concern for the social effects of industrialisation show that he understood serial publication as a form of contemporary activism and social campaigning. Additionally, Dickens’ status as brother-in-law to the secretary for the Board of Health, Henry Austin, gave further influence and purpose to his campaigns for better housing, sanitation conditions and funding through the medium of Household Words. Biographer Claire Tomalin states that Dickens ‘was practical and fierce in his protests against what he saw as criminal neglect and complacency in local and national government’, asserting that he had ‘set out to raise standards of journalism in the crowded field of periodical publication’ in the hopes of appealing to intellectual and academic audiences who could be influenced by the social injustices in his reports. Dickens’s bold and honest depictions of Victorian London would lead to journalist Thomas Henry Lister describing Dicken’s as ‘the truest and most spirited delineator of English life, amongst the middle and lower classes’,

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as well as Reverend James Baldwin Brown declaring to his flock that ‘there have been at work among us three great social agencies: the London City Mission, the novels of Mr Dickens and the cholera.’ Serial publication is evidently a significant development in the history of the publishing industry with the nineteenth century popularity for serialised works allowing for literary texts to become recognised as a commodity. Furthermore, as populations expanded at unprecedented rates so too did levels of adult literacy with serials eventually becoming the most common and popular form of literary consumption, offering lower class audiences the opportunity to access literature and education for the first time. The revolution of serial publications also offered a low-cost way of being kept informed of popular stories, trends and opinions, which in turn would lead to public acknowledgement and widely held discussions of ideas. This possibility was exploited by Dickens as a tool through which to share his views on social reform in the hopes of garnering recognition and public support. Dickens’s deliberate focus on the effects of Victorian industrialisation can be seen throughout his extensive catalogue of work as well as through popular opinions of Dickens as a social activist. As a case study, Dickens illustrates the vast popularity and extensive influence that the serial publication form could hold. As a result, the nineteenth century will always be recognised as the era in which the publishing industry became an integral and accessible part of British life.

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Poiesis Prudenza Lacriola

Oh shit I’m blind is this how blind people feel must be terrible but just feeling your surroundings hearing their voices sense their reactions the tension the bedazzlement the hesitation the expectation them bumping into you in the blinding dark how do I know I haven’t been blinded I try and strain my eyes but how far can my sight go if there’s nothing to be seen but then again who said there’s nothing to be seen how useless our eyes can be with no light around we’re mirrors waiting for the light to be reflected upon us so that our eyes can reflect it back it’s scary isn’t it how fast our mind can go if you think I thought about all this in a split second before the white light flashed and went off again and then flashed and went off flashed and went off flashed and went off flashed and went off accompanied by a different sounding splash every time the water burst out and then fell back down it must be such a shame for some epileptic people not to be able to experience this they should be warned anyway the sign at the entrance

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only said not to take photos cause it would ruin the experience for you and those around you I didn’t expect to find this thank God I’m not epileptic but maybe if they put on a warning sign we all wouldn’t be too surprised when entering the room that’s the whole point of this artwork if I think about it the surprise effect or maybe it isn’t but it kinda is for me I wonder if the images created by the fountain when the light goes on are the same other people around me see or if each one of us creates their own and how long do the impressions of these images last in their mind for me quite a bit but as soon as the last impression’s gone another flash goes off another image comes up and I wonder if the video I just took reflects exactly what I saw with these eyes of my own I’ll check later but how will I know if it does I won’t remember a single image of the approximately three hundred and fifty I saw anyway cause really who knows how many flashes there have been in the ten minutes I’ve been here one two three flash one two three flash ok so if there’s a flash every three seconds that means I’ll have to divide sixty seconds by three and multiply it for ten minutes it’s two hundred I think I’m not good at maths shit it’s less than three hundred and fifty but the sequence of flashes seemed faster to me and think of how every single one of these images is probably unique and unrepeatable maybe not one drop of water will ever fall in the same place again not one gush will spurt out following the same exact trajectory upward and downward I’m thirsty it’s making me thirsty if I was alone in here I would have already drunk some water from this fountain my eyes are burning though it must be the flashing light a tear’s falling down we were planning on coming to this exhibition together I wonder how you would have reacted to this I bet you would have loved this shit but never mind I don’t love you anymore I need to get out though it’s been only fifteen minutes but my eyes are burning I

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might really go blind, no I’m actually not drawn to any of this as much as I am to that fountain I gotta go back I just needed to rest my eyes ok now I’m ready to stay oooh someone’s touching the fountain’s platform I didn’t think about that it’s raspy why I’ll probably never know unless I ask Eliasson on Twitter maybe I will or maybe not that’s too much effort and maybe this platform’s just all they could get and it’s not part of the artwork so it won’t make it any clearer but then again is a fountain even an artwork who gets to decide what is and what isn’t and anyway does an artwork have to be clear I don’t think so mmmh it smells good it really smells like damp like water it’s exactly the smell of life it makes me think of sources waterfalls streams and those moments when you’re so thirsty you can even smell and taste water once you finally get to drink it as you can taste life once you finally get to live it damn I’m so thirsty and this splashing sounds are making me wanna piss wow a drop just reached my face the fountain touched me I’ll leave it on my cheek I’ll take it in another million fountains splashed their drops on me before but I’m here right now for this one only I wish I could put my hands through the gush I mean I can but no one’s doing it would I look stupid if I did the kid in front of me seems to have read my mind promptly sticking his hand out and touching the water the splashing sounds suddenly change while his fingers flicker through the gush and play the music of the water which flattens out horizontally before spurting out upward again once he takes his hand away kids what a beautiful thing fully living every moment fully living everything not giving a fuck about who’s watching cause really they just wanna know what things are like and what things are and they’re doing nothing bad what makes me think it would look bad fuck it what am I here for I’ll do it oh it’s almost impalpable I thought the water would violently crash on my hand but it caressed it and elegantly

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fell downward after blowing up in the air and it just left my skin wet as a memory of all this maybe this is the whole point of this artwork to be a child again to be an Australopithecus as deep down we all are but this is not even its meaning maybe there isn’t one this is the starting point or better isn’t it just the point.

commentary In this piece I explore the process of poiesis, that is meaning-making. According to Heidegger, poiesis is the bringing forth of something, like a blossom becoming a flower. Here the subject is Olafur Eliasson’s Big Bang Fountain, which stops being just the observed exerience of a fountain when people interact immersively with it and each other. This evokes a sixth sense, which includes all the five senses and adds to them: seselelame. This is a feeling within the body that includes both internal and external senses, as well as other perceptual, emotional and intuitive dimensions of experience. When we look at an artwork, we perceive and interpret its action, our own reactions and those of the other spectators/participants around us all at the same time so that these act upon each other. This is called embodied knowledge since it’s not our mind that gets to know the object in front of us through reasoning but it’s our body that does this through its physical and emotional reactions to the object. When fusing subjective experience and objective knowledge, we become aware of our sentience, we feel that we’re feeling. As Josephine Machon states in Immersive Theatres, seselelame helps us describe and better understand the fused embodied ways in which we undergo and make sense of a work, both in the moment of the encounter and subsequent to the event, which is why I chose this idea in order to write a creative response to an artwork. We’re surrounded by things, which

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means they’re always present, but we only feel their presence when we acknowledge them. Presence comes from the Latin prae-sens, that which stands before the senses. To feel the presence of something, then, means to become aware of the very fact that we’re perceiving something. The meaning of an artwork, then, might not have to be found solely in the materiality artwork itself but in the embodied, sensory experience of it. Since experience is in this case more important than presentation, environmental art is definitely better suited than representational art for this kind of approach. As in Environmental Theatre, the fundamental exchange between performers and audience is the exchange of space: spectators are scene-makers as well as scene watchers. This can be easily linked to Eliasson’s idea of space. His artworks, indeed, are made to be defined and entered into by the viewer. Any human presence in the space alters it thus altering the artwork that’s in the same space, making it impossible for us to stand still and for the work to be examined in a conventional way. I tried to express this by recounting, for instance, the interaction between the child and the water of the fountain, which alters the sound and the shape of it. Art becomes a shared interpretation between the artist and the receiver, which is why meaning is not imposed on us, but we make it in our response to the artwork. We can’t grasp the transcendental meaning of an artwork as if it was something fixed; transcendence, indeed, is always something in the process of becoming. Deleuze says that in the moment of appreciation of an artwork the work itself acts upon the nervous system and the flesh. The full force of the experience is the moment of being in the event itself.

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Acorn season Raum Inam

April showers bring May flowers A rhyme I heard as a child. Every year it seems to hold true. Last April there seemed to be no shortage of rainfall. During my daily excursions to the park I would walk along rain-soaked tracks, careful not to get mud on my only decent pair of walking shoes. I walked through that park enough times to memorise everything I met; every small lake that modestly called itself a puddle, replenished by spring showers; every low hanging branch that hit my face if I became distracted even for a moment; every slug squirming as fast as its fat little body would allow. I thought that if my mother were in the country she would ask why I kept going out. To which I would reply: “For the fresh air, mama. And the exercise. The weather isn’t that bad. It’s getting better.” And the weather was indeed getting better. April turned to May and my mother returned from her visit to Pakistan, bringing the sultry heat of the summer with her. I found a companion in the Sun’s caress upon my face; the wafting fragrance of a lone, golden tulip blooming in an endless periwinkle meadow. I would imagine the cotton-ball clouds

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as sheep coming to graze. Carnelian rose hips glistened starkly next to the velvet, tanzanite-tinted sloes of the hawthorns. The arid earth itself was the same hue as the goldstone ring my mother had once given me for my birthday. The darling buds of May were blooming. Over the humid summer I would meander through the park, wandering through the nearby Brook Farm open space as the fancy would strike me. I would trace the path of the Dollis Brook that runs a tenmile course from Mill Hill to Hendon. No – “runs” isn’t an accurate description for this body of water – “walks”, maybe. Plods. Trickles. A quaint if lacklustre stream with its quartz-like water, shallow, home to a few small minnows. It does possess a certain charm but not one that was more enticing to me than flowers and fruits. It must have seemed irresistible to Finchley councillor Alfred Pike in the 1930s, who certainly found the Dollis Brook impressive enough to designate the land surrounding it a protected area, known today as the Dollis Valley Greenwalk. He was, apparently, so adamant about keeping the area unspoiled by growth that he persuaded councillors from neighbouring Hendon to purchase land around the brook to stop it from falling into the hands of insatiable land developers. During late August raw, green buds started to appear in the oak trees, a sign of the oncoming autumn. I began to notice the squirrels scurrying about, bounding rabbit-like up the trunks of old oaks. They would pause for a second, look around, then dash along the nearest branch. They’d pause once more, sniff the air, then sprint down the trunk again at speeds an animal that small should not reasonably be capable of. They would inspect the green buds with their round, inquiring eyes. The nuts weren’t quite ready at the time – acorn season had only just started. The squirrels waited for them, as did I.

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The acorns ripened fully in September. The celestial meadow of periwinkles became filled with a whole flock of bleating, lazy sheep, and the squirrels rarely came out. They were most likely hibernating, with the once sanguine weather turning sour. “Mama, I wish I could hibernate. It’s so cold nowadays.” I once said to my mother. She just shook her head. My old friend, the Sun, no longer radiated as strongly. The berries died. My mother had long returned from Pakistan. What use was there to continue my visits to the park? My mother reminded me: it was still acorn season. The Dollis Brook still ran, plodded, trickled along, with its minnows and crystal waters. The purifying rains had washed away the almost overbearing scent of the elderflowers. The periwinkle sky was still there, just hidden by the sheep-clouds. Perhaps this is what Pike saw in the dreary farmlands and parks. October; I sit and watch a particularly energetic slug inch its way towards a fallen acorn.

commentary Ben Judah’s This Is London is valuable in the way it depicts people as an integral part of place. That is to say, human beings are as much a feature of a landscape as, say, rivers or trees might be. I gained a new appreciation for Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere by Jan Morris, for the way Morris was able to place herself within an environment so seamlessly, and present both her own story, and that of Trieste as one and the same. I attempted to do something similar in my own work. My aim was to depict my own emotional state whilst my mother was away, and how it changed

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once she returned from her holiday. Here I focus on making the chronological transition between the seasons clear. In Aminatta Forna’s Happiness I found a very fluid style, which I admire, particularly in her transitions between topics. I tried to emulate this somewhat in my own piece, to varying degrees of success. Forna’s style is not the only one I struggled to mimic – I was also influenced by the work of John Keats. I found it quite useful to turn to his poetry as a source of inspiration, especially in terms of describing nature. His use of imagery and metaphor is so vivid and luxurious, and I wanted my own work to have a similar effect on the reader. His poem To Autumn is particularly insightful, as is Ode to Psyche. Similarly, W.B. Yeats’ poetry was also of help.

About the book

This project is the fourth volume of a collaboration in writing, design, illustration and publishing between staff and students from two creative disciplines in The School of Art, Architecture and Design â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the writers of the English Literature and Creative Writing department, and the illustrators and graphic designers of the Visual Communication department. Staff leading the project were Angharad Lewis (Head of the Visual Communication course cluster), Alistair Hall (Lecturer in Visual Communication), and Trevor Norris (Course Leader English Literature and Creative Writing). Working through a live collaboration as the writing by students emerged and visual communication students responded to the bookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s themes, writing and visual design were formed together. The design of the book and its illustrations were developed by students in 2019/20 Visual Communication cluster, as part of their professional practice module.

The School of Art, Architecture and Design The School of Art, Architecture and Design (London Metropolitan University) provides high quality Foundation, Degree and Postgraduate education at purpose built workshops and studios in Aldgate. There is a strong emphasis on socially engaged Architecture, Art and Design applied to both local and global contexts, a school wide interest in making and many projects focus on aspects of London. Students at the school are encouraged to learn through practice, experiment with process and gain real-world experience in both individual and collaborative projects, engaging with professionals, communities and companies.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the dedication and creative energy of the many staff and students of the Creative Writing and English Literature and Visual Communication departments who have contributed. In particular the dedicated student design and illustration team of Sabrina Paris, Agata Rodriguez Fernandez, Clara Delgado Caballero, Emmanuel Vasquez, Dora Ramos and Filippo Mantino. Grateful thanks goes to Andy Stone and Christopher Emmett at the University for their ongoing support of the Anthology project.