BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

Bristol Grammar School, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SR

Tel: +44 (0)117 933 9648 email: betweenfourjunctions@bgs.bristol.sch.uk

Editor: David Briggs

Assistant Editors: Francesca Moses and Olivia Alexander

Art Editor: Ed Hume-Smith

Design and Production: David Briggs and Ruth Bennett

Cover artwork: Will Lindsay-Perez

© remains with the individual authors herein published January 2019

All rights reserved

BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS is published twice yearly in association with the Creative Writing Department at Bristol Grammar School. We accept submissions by email attachment for poetry, prose fiction/ non-fiction, script, and visual arts from everyone in the BGS community: pupils, students, staff, support staff, parents, governors, OBs. Views expressed in BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS are not necessarily those of Bristol Grammar School; those of individual contributors are not necessarily those of the editors. While careful consideration of readers’ sensibilities has been a part of the editorial process, there are as many sensibilities as there are readers, and it is not entirely possible to avoid the inclusion of material that some readers may find challenging. We hope you share our view that the arts provide a suitable space in which to meet and negotiate challenging language and ideas.

Editorial

To be between four junctions is to be in a very specific geographical location in Bristol, a site haunted by pedagogues and pupils during the day, by dog-foxes and late-shift porters at night. A place marked by nearly a thousand desirelines each day as the worn soles of its temporary tenants are blown about by the motions of their brains, by the pitiless efficiency of clocks and watches, bells and timetables. And yet it’s also very clearly a place, like Derek Mahon’s disused shed in County Wexford, “where even now a thought might grow”. So here they are, thoughts that have sprung to life, taken shape and moved beyond the inchoate in this particular aggregation of time and place.

Fittingly enough, in this first issue, these thoughts have taken their final forms in any one of four media: poetry, prose-fiction, prose non-fiction, and the visual arts. So, to turn the pages of this magazine, to be immersed in its language and forms, is to be between four junctions in another way.

There’s a pleasing variety of work here, from across the school community. Teachers, support staff, pupils and students made submissions, and we were pleased to be able to make our selections from such a thoughtful and well-formed body of work.

It is noteworthy that the dominant subjects for poetry derived from concerns about climate change and the effects of war. Luke Dorman and Jooles Whitehead show a concern for the natural world in their visually precise poems, and Sophie Thomas brings a ludic poignancy to the same subject in her tour de force tribute ‘The Last Blue Whale’. Writers concerned with war include younger poets such as Charlie Groombridge and Naomi Parsons, but also Jasleen Singh, whose tribute ‘The Indian Soldier’ appears here in the wake of having been broadcast on national television as part of the Armistice Day centennial service. The psychology of servicemen and women also finds plangent expression in a forensic and striking short story by Arthur Hales.

Some aspects of the IB English couse are also beginning to find their way into the collective consciousness, and Asha Chatterjee’s splendid non-fiction piece ‘In Search of My Great-Grandfathers’ blends the historical and the personal with such skill it richly derserves its epigraphical nod to Edmund de Waal. Similarly vibrant and enjoyable work in creative non-fiction comes in the form of James Ormiston’s Transylvanian travelogue.

The prose fiction submissions showed writers from across the Senior School age range engaging imaginatively with the notoriously difficult short story form. We were pleased to be able to include brief but highly accomplished and fully-realised pieces from younger writers Theo Cameron and Lauren Dickie, and we were all dazzled by Rosa Thorne’s dystopian vision replete with the marvellously-named Foucher Illusocoins.

Returning to poetry, which was by far the most dominant form among the submissions, and therefore runs to two sections, this editor’s particular highlights include Taraneh Peryie’s Christopher Tower Prize winning ‘Richard’, Jennifer Benn’s calmly observed ‘Footage’, Can Pehlivanoglu’s fantastically ambitious Ovidian narrative ‘Sakura’, and Belnice Helena-Nzinga’s haunting and inventing poem ‘The Silences’.

This magazine also serves as a complement to At the Junctions, a new reading series at BGS featuring visiting writers from across the UK. During the 2018 Autumn term we were entertained by readings from poet and creative non-fiction writer Katy Evans-Bush, poet and Professor of English and Creative Writing, Andy Brown, and world-building prose fiction writer (and OB) Jeremy Levett. We also learned about issues concerning race and ethnicity in publishing from Heather Marks. Each writer delivers a thirty-minute set, followed by questions, during the extended lunch-hour. They follow this by chairing a workshop with the AFA Creative Writing students during the subsequent afternoon lesson. Visiting writers are also invited to submit to the magazine, and we are therefore pleased to be able to include Andy Brown’s elegiac evocation of the end of summer as well as Jeremy Levett’s archly-comic sci-fi vignette about the end of worlds.

This is a rich and diverse first issue, and it bodes well for the future of writing at BGS. We are grateful for all our contributors, and also for Ruth Bennett’s support with production and design, and Ed Hume-Smith, Head of Art at BGS, for selecting and photographing the visual art represented in the magazine, including the sourcing of our stunning cover image from Will Lindsay-Perez. Between Four Junctions will be a bi-annual magazine, and so the window for submissions for the second issue will re-open during the coming summer term, with a view to publication in September 2019. We hope you will be sufficiently moved, cajoled, and inspired by what you find here to pick up your pen/brush/camera/what you will, and contribute.

David Briggs