BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

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

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

Editors: David Briggs and Luke Evans

Art Editor: Jane Troup

Design and Production: David Briggs, Luke Evans, and Izzy Neumann

Cover artwork: Ishaan Kumar

Copyright © May 2022 remains with the individual authors

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.

Visual Art

Editorial

As we emerge from two unprecedented years of pandemic and episodic lockdown, it’s timely to consider the extent to which our writing has retained vestiges of our experience of that time, even while it makes a marked return to the themes that occupied us before Covid. The last two years have changed us. Although it’s sometimes difficult to articulate precisely how, we can find ourselves transported back there so easily when we read, for example, Jooles Whitehead’s poetic evocation of the rituals of wild swimming, Jennifer Benn’s exploration of place and lifestyle in ‘Siren Song’, or even Kane Rickard’s sestina in celebration of spring succeeding the snows of winter. But other cultural currents and political concerns continue to exercise us, have never really receded. Pleas for our oceans, such as Amélie Chalk’s powerful poem ‘Manitus’, remind us of the plural and interconnected nature of the challenges we face. Similarly, Jasmin Lay’s cautionary Petrarchan sonnet about the colonisation of Mars, or Isla Reavley’s haunting dramatization, in verse, of an obsessive artist’s pathological objectification of the female body, show the breadth of political concerns in our community, and how writers can engage us with these themes. In prose as well as in poetry, pupils and students actively sidestep hegemonic attitudes, showing an alertness to the ways in which diversity of characterisation can enliven creative work. Eleanor Cooke and Salma Elsaid demonstrate just such an ability to take imaginative leaps in their narrative perspectives. Contrastingly, Olga Jastrzebska’s plangent story ‘One-Way Ticket’ shows how the deliberate restriction of a point-of-view can be an equally effective narrative strategy. Freja Abrahams and Kai Drysdale, meanwhile, give different but equally consummate demonstrations of the ways that formal invention can transform the art of fiction.

It requires no small measure of imaginative range and emotional maturity to be able to achieve critical distance from one’s own experience, to stand back far enough to view it in context, and this can make non-fiction a challenging form, especially for younger writers. But the assured control of voice in Mak Crosby’s and Henry Oxley’s autobiographical writing would seem to contradict that assertion. Writing ostensibly about dance, and a tortoise, they conduct us on thoughtful explorations of how identity is shaped by our consciousness of gender, of age, and by our relationships. We are also pleased to include the winning entries from the recent One-Hour Essay Challenge, run by Dr Massey. Alice Towle’s inventive defence of panto took the laurels in the Senior category; Naomi Penney’s consideration of whether colours have a history won first prize among the Juniors.

Finally, we are thankful again to Jane Troup and the Art department for giving us a wide selection of vibrant visual art to choose from, so as to make these pages even more dynamic. A choice of images from the new Canvas Competition accompanies some deft and charming studies of landscape and architecture.

We hope you enjoy this new issue of the magazine.

David Briggs