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

Guest Editor: Sylvestra Gray Stone

Art Editor: Jane Troup

Design and Production: David Briggs, Luke Evans, and Louise Cox

Cover artwork: Ruth Bennet

Copyright © March 2023 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.

Prose Fiction

Visual Art

Editorial

PERHAPS IT WOULD BE TIMELY to assert strongly that nothing in these pages was written by an AI text generator. The magazine is pure, distilled human consciousness. ChatGPT4 may be capable of some impressive simulations of creative writing, some of which might well pass the Turing test. But who cares? If they aren’t the genuine expression of a particular human consciousness, why should we be interested? The reflection of a reflection may have a certain aesthetic quality, but isn’t art about sharing a part of ourselves and our humanity?

Perhaps another virtue of writing produced by humans rather than by computer algorithms is the ability to prompt us to become better versions of ourselves, to strive towards moments of transcendence and human connectedness –ideas that inform evocative poems by Adam Burns and Elie Karlin, and Daniel Porritt’s affectionate short story about a barber called Vincenzo. In some ways, there can be no better proof for the primacy of human creation than the artworks created by our Year 8 students, who deconstructed their own poetry to explore the contranymic relationship between figurative language and figurative art. And even when we consider AI’s ability to imitate poetic forms, could a computer have conceived the formal invention of Sylvestra Gray Stone’s poem, ‘Spoiled’? Or the exquisite formal and aural patterning of Helen Cormack’s ‘Vapour’?

None of this speculation, however, prevents Chloe Hilliard from engaging in a poetic act of sympathy for what it might be like to inhabit the other side of the human/AI interface. Nor does it dissuade Isla Reavley, Lara Smith, and Loreta Stoica from using poetry and prose to articulate concerns about the male gaze and violence against women that have been so prevalent in the news in recent months. Other writers engaging creatively with present issues include Toby Greene, whose plangent elegy for a badger run down by a speeding car catches us and its protagonist in the full brilliant glare of its linguistic headlamps, while Jonathan May and Hannah Drake – two OBs whose creative use of epistolary fiction to address how BGS might position itself in the face of our present climate catastrophe – demand something more from us more than mere approbation. Taking a more oppositional stance towards his alma mater, but no less impassioned, Joshua Walmsley’s punchy polemic challenges us all to consider how we might retain fidelity to traditions while engaging fully and meaningfully with the need for a more inclusive and understanding culture.

We thank our contributors and our readers for being patient with us in publishing this sixth issue of the magazine – the need for our gratitude perhaps being emphasised by the fact that three of our contributors have subsequently left BGS for other climes. Our best wishes to Maanaswini Manish and to Adam Burns, as well as to Ruth Bennett, to whom we send our gratitude for the stunning photographs gracing these covers. Would ChatGPT4 have been more efficient at getting this issue out? Unquestionably. Would some of the contents have been less punchy? Maybe. Would its readers have been as appreciative? We leave that to better minds than our own.

David Briggs and Luke Evans