INKLETTE The Club Inkers’ Newsletter V O L U M E
INKLETTE’S special issue on THE BARD OF AVON– William Shakespeare
TODAY’S INKER Club Ink presents yet another phenomenal inker for April 25, 2014 at S wa m i Vivekananda Library, Bhopal from 5pm IST. Join Club Ink for ‘Spin A Yarn’- a unique story weaving session as each Club Inker binds the threads to create a masterpiece.
Club Ink organized its stimulating event consisting of POETAINMENT, an ORIENTATION CUM ACTIVITY SESSION ON HAIKU and an INKERS’ DISCUSSION ON TEARING T H E BIND:CENSORSHIP IN THE LITERARY WORLD on April 6, Sunday, 2014 at Swami Vivekananda Library. A heartfelt thanks to all the Club Inkers who attended. Club Ink also launched the second issue of its in tern ation al enewsletter– Inklette.
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Why do I love thee? June 2012- The sun had soaked me in its fever. My skin had crisped and crumbled beneath my netted stockings. On that sweltering day in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I walked underneath thatched roofs and wooden floorboards clamoring under my flats. All the while, I successfully guised myself as a pilgrim treating Bill’s birthplace as if it contained all the sacrosanct elements of the world within its contours. Yes, Bill was a demigod. William Shakespeare is regarded to be the greatest playwright in English Literature. And I do not find myself in that divine disposition to refute that claim or deny it, in the least. Shakespeare’s elevation to immortality may be justified by stating the undeniable universality of his themes that has ensured his place in the literary pantheon throughout the ravages of time. However, the mystery that lingers over Shakespeare concerning his life and work make studies and analysis of Shakespearean texts all the more beckoning. I would remark, however, that Shakespeare drove literature into a different dimension. One can verily justify that Shakespeare was the first to provide enough power to the ‘classic’ that it beat the arenas of the ‘classical’- which was the cardinal pillar in the very manifestation of the ‘classic’ itself. To turn the father into an adjective associated with his offspring, is indeed, a herculean task to perform. William did succeed and provided enough aspiration for generations to come. WS, in my opinion, did have a penchant for making the stage experience truly memorable underneath those boastful, emotional words.
I am a bardolator to the core. I think Shakespeare is the master, he’s the one who has determined the masking and unmasking of literature in a raw finesse that extends beyond the continents of our race’s erstwhile thoughts and the many more that are to blossom. On that midsummer night’s dream, Bill penned that billet-doux shining like the luster in his eyes that brought me back to that land of reverie and admiration for him. He was the one and only. He was the Romeo sitting beside his chimney and sipping his holy ale, talking in the saccharine tones that embraced my soul and the darkness within. Those verbal duties he did fulfill and on the Twelfth night that brought the end to this winter’s tale, Bill arose once again. Devanshi Khetarpal
INSIDE THIS ISSUE Page 2 On Shakespeare (1630) by John Milton A Silly Poem by Spike Milligan Editor’s Bottle Of Ink Page 3 NY Times Bestsellers– April 20, 2014 The Late Mr. Shakespeare: An Excerpt Page 4 Photograph by Claire Mason If World Was A Stage by Noorjahan Khan Page 5 Survivor by Vijay Seshadri Remembering Gabo (1927-2014) Page 6 Photograph by Jyothi Vallurupalli Submission Guidelines
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On Shakespeare (1630) by John Milton What needs my Shakespear for his honour’d bones, The labour of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame, What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a live-long monument. For whilst to th’ shame of slow endeavouring art, Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu’d book, Those Delphick lines with deep impression took, Then thou, our fancy of it self bereaving, Dost make us Marble with too much conceiving; And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die. John Milton (1608-1674) is one of the greatest poets in English Literature. He is best known for his epic Paradise Lost.
Editor’s Bottle Of Ink
A Silly Poem by Spike Milligan Said Hamlet to Ophelia, “I’ll draw a sketch of thee, What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?”
Dear Club Inkers, Welcome to the pages of the third issue of Inklette– Club Ink’s official newsletter. This is Inklette’s special issue in order to honour the Bard Of Avon –William Shakespeare on the occasion of his 450th birth anniversary. The world’s perception of Shakespeare’s life and work have changed over the years. His enduring works and their doubtless universality coupled with the implications, complications, interpretations and the several aspects conjoined to them have enthralled readers for ages. Club Ink takes this opportunity to organise a newly conceptualised story and innovative story weaving session called ‘Spin A Yarn’ on April 25, 2014 at Swami Vivekananda Library and launch the much awaited special issue of Inklette for all the bardolators waiting out there. Special thanks to our immensely talented contributors– Noorjahan Khan, Claire Mason and Jyothi Vallurupalli. Enjoy reading!
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Devanshi Khetarpal Editor-Ink-Chief Inklette
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Best Sellers @ NY Times: April 20, 2014 Paperback Fiction Mass-Market
Paperback Non-fiction
Never Go Back by Lee Child (Dell.) Starting Now by Debbie Macomber (Ballantine) Daddy’s Gone A Hunting by Mary Higgins Clark (Pocket Books) A Game Of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (Bantam) Alex, Cross, Run by James Patterson (Vision)
Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent (Thomas Nelson) Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and Patrick Robinson (Back Bay/Little, Brown) Proof Of Heaven by Eben Alexander (Simon & Schuster) The Monument’s Men by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter (Little, Brown) Brain On Fire by Susannah Cahalan (Simon & Schuster)
The Late Mr. Shakespeare by Robert Nye An Excerpt There are those who say that William Shakespeare never sold fireworks, and so he was never in Warwick Jail with a phantom flute. Mr. John Aubrey, for instance, will have it that when Shakespeare was a boy he exercised his father’s trade of butcher, but that when he killed a calf he would do it in a high style and make a speech. Now, there is some truth in this, but like all the things that Mr. Aubrey tells his friends it is spoilt by carelessness, as well as by a complete failure to give any tangible examples in proof of what he says. It could not have been for his father, in fact that young William ever worked as a butcher’s apprentice. By the time that he had to leave the grammar school to earn his living, his father’s butchery business was forspent. It was probably to his neighbour, Thomas Giles, established as a butcher in Sheep Street, or perhaps to Ralph Cowdrey similarly established in Bridge Street, that jolly Jack Shakespeare offered his son’s services. The families of Giles, Cowdrey, and Shakespeare were already linked by the skin and leather trade. And when Jack stopped butchering he didn’t stop drinking with other butchers. So when William came back from Warwick and returned home like a prodigal son, it was a neighbour’s fatted calf that he had to kill. And it would have been either in Giles’s butcher shop, or (at a pinch) Cowdrey’s, that he made that high style speech still remembered in Stratford. But what was that speech? You might well ask, sir. What did Shakespeare actually say? That, my dear madam, is a very good question. Mr. Aubrey does not tell us. Mr Aubrey may not know, indeed. But Mr Robert Reynolds does. Here then, gentle reader, from Pickleherring’s 43rd box, carefully copied down nearly half a century ago after Mr. Shakespeare’s funeral from the tear-oiled lips of a fellow mourner (Lucy Hornby, widow of the blacksmith Richard Hornby) is the speech that Shakespeare made when he killed a calf.
The bard’s famous calf-killing speech, never before published. Mrs. Hornby told me she heard it twice. She had never been able to forget the boy William standing there in the sawdust, cleaver in hand, eyes rolling, apron cross-hatched and boltered with blood, nor the words that came pouring forth in a red torrent as she waited with some impatience for her joint. This is what Shakespeare said: I am the butcher takes away the calf And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays And bears it to bloody slaughter-house. Hark how this dam runs lowing up and down, Looking the way her harmless young one went! She can do not but wail her darling’s loss… I am the butcher, &. etc., &. etc, &. etc. That is, Old Mrs. Hornby claimed that Shakespeare repeated what he had said. He would say the lines over and over, she insisted, rather than get on with the job in hand and actually cut up the calf. (I must say that I doubt this repetition. Mr. Shakespeare in my experience never repeated himself. More likely that my informant was disguising her own failure to remember more.) Some of the other customers, the widow Hornby told me, made complaints to the management. They appreciated neither the tenderness of the sentiments expressed in the verse nor the toughness of the steaks carved out by Shakespeare. The way in which the apprentice reminded his audience just what the meat on the end of their forks really is cannot have been much good for business either. But I think it took more than a few dissatisfied customers to put an end to William Shakespeare’s too brilliant career as a butcher, and to drive him forth again from the bounds of Stratford. It took, my dears, a death, and a birth, and an earthquake.
Robert Nye was born in London in 1939. He currently resides near Cork, in Ireland. His works include Falstaff, Mrs Shakespeare, The Memoirs of Lord Byron and Merlin.
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PHOTO BY: Claire Mason Claire Mason is a talented photographer from Las Vegas. She is an attendee of the Oxford Prep Experience at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford where she majored in Photography. Her work encompasses a depth of emotion and her photographs are enchanting and their quality is nonpareil.
If World Was A Stage by Noorjahan Khan World’s stage One like thou, Shakespeare Told stories
Julius has more Valour or gallantry Or Brutus more brute
For ages thou write Plays, poems, ballads, And winding tales
Time has long held Glorious theatre To refine drama.
Thou art not keen Plotting scenes, characters; As narrating life For if Shakespeare Says it all ‘er again It wouldn’t be same Tempest might be Holding more blow this time To wreck it all up
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POEM BY: Noorjahan Khan Noorjahan Khan is a very esteemed member of Club Ink. Her interdisciplinary knowledge and multifaceted personality has allowed her to explore the arenas of psychology, science, poetry, multimedia and much more.
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Survivor by Vijay Seshadri We hold it against you that you survived. People better than you are dead, but you still punch the clock. Your body has wizened but has not bled its substance out on the killing floor or flatlined in intensive care or vanished after school or stepped off the ledge in despair. Of all those you started with, only you are still around; only you have not been listed with the defeated and the drowned. Vijay Seshadri (1954– ) is an Indian born poet who recently won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection 3 Sections (Graywolf Press).
So how could you ever win our respect?-you, who had the sense to duck, you, with your strength almost intact
Remembering Gabo (1927-2014) I remember stumbling down an archaic staircase, squirming my eyes along the tender curves of subtle and arcane phrases. I couldn’t stop reading those pages over and over again. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World – I kept reading that short story until midnight drew close onto the horizon. The next day, I rushed to the bookstore and bought Love In The Time Of Cholera. The more I read Gabo, the more he enchanted me. His magical realism pierced through my heart, making it burst into a million shards like the stars that hover overhead. There was no lexical magnificence, no high and mighty words etched to his prose. There was a humility, a talent and a will. One Hundred Years of Solitude and The General In His Labyrinth are still conspicuous among the mammoth bookshelf, full of books that I have hoarded all these years. I recall slipping into numbness among a debris of artistic maturity that upheld Gabo’s works and enriched
them, making them sumptuous to read all the while. His unobscured brilliance radiated beyond the realms of culture and this terra firma and the unseen as well. What Gabo has taught me as a writer, is to weave a story that is entirely my own no matter how much I may have to find it amongst the devastations of a storm or a jejune debris. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was one of the most deserving Nobel laureates of all time. He is one of those writers that seem to narrate stories that connect to you emotionally in such brilliance, that you can not help but slip into them and make your creation out of it. Some writers awaken lost cultures and histories and Gabo has done the same. Not only did he show the world the lesser-seen face of Latin American literature but glorified it in a way that was succinct, independent and aboriginal. RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez. DEVANSHI KHETARPAL
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PHOTO BY: Jyothi Vallurupalli Jyothi Vallurupalli is a high school senior from Hyderabad, India. She will be studying at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania starting this fall. She is an amateur photographer with a penchant for light painting and motion blur techniques. This photograph portrays a glimpse of her wanderlust.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Thank you for showing interest in Inklette. We are currently publishing short stories, poems, essays, book reviews and art work, which includes photographs or paintings. Inklette intends to publish the best examples of art and writing from established and emerging artists from all over. Each piece should be single spaced and typed in Times New Roman Font 10 on either side of the page. Please include your piece and a short bio (about 50 words) separately as .doc attachments to club.ink13@gmail.com. Photos and artwork should be scanned and sent as .jpg or .gif file to club.ink13@gmail.com The subject of the email should be: First name_Last Name_Type of Submission (For eg: Casey_McCormick_Poetry). Simultaneous submissions are discouraged. Please send us your submission in any one category. Do not send us more than 5 poems, 5 photographs or 5 paintings or 2 short prose pieces at a time. Multiple submissions are not accepted. Inklette accepts submissions on a rolling basis, i.e. all year round. However, we do keep fixed deadlines for each issue. Submissions received after the deadline of a particular issue will be considered for the next issue. We would request you to go through our previous issues to get acquainted with the quality of work that we seek. We have no definite time period for sending a response to your submission. However, you may send us an email regarding the status of your submission after the termination of a month. Inklette is an e-newsletter which has an extensive circulation through Club Ink’s facebook group as well as through www.issuu.com. For more information, feel free to contact us at club.ink13@gmail.com. We look forward to reading your work! Devanshi Khetarpal Editor-In-Chief Inklette
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