No. 5 ÂŁ3.50
100
FERMENT
Literature and illustration zine
Summer 2012
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Hello. I ALWAYS leave the writing of this til too late. I don’t know why. It’s like my memory has a block on it or something. As a result of this, I’m writing this on a bus to London. The toilet really stinks, which is annoying as I really need a wee, but I can’t bring myself to be locked in that cupboard of stench (someone just went in as I wrote that. I hope they survive). This is annoying, but I’m not so old yet that I can’t hold it in for a while. HOWEVER (God, they just came out. It smells even worse now. They look slightly traumatised), what is a problem is that I am also very thirsty, so I’m in a very uncomfortable position of crossing my legs while I add more liquid to the problem. Anyway, issue 5. ‘Upside Down.’ We figured this theme would not only provide a variety of interpretation possibilities, but maybe also make people write in a slightly different way to how they normally would. Whether or not they did, I don’t know, but we’ve been given a wonderful selection of writing, which has inspired our illustrators to produce some really beautiful artwork, hopefully having thought about their processes in a new way too. Who knows? Right, I can’t hold this piss in any longer. I’m gonna have to brave it. If I don’t make it out alive, let my worldly possessions be divided up equally between our contributors, as gratitude for the work they’ve done for us, and also James & Sarah, who work a lot harder at putting this together than I do, due to me having virtually no computer skills whatsoever. You guys rock. I’m going in. Wish me luck. Paul
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Brought to you by…
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Paul Askew
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Sarah Plant
James Weiner
@misteraxl paulaskew.tumblr.com
@plantsarah
@jamesweiner
Sarah spent too much time in Birmingham and the effects
In previous lives he has been a record cover designer,
When not working in retail, Paul writes and performs
are only just wearing off. After putting designing NVQ
magazine editor, and sometime Apple-certified engineer.
poetry, regularly inflicting his imagination on people in
textbooks behind her, she has now moved onto colouring
He spent some time inside the music industry machine
Oxford and London. He’s starting to be allowed to do so
in the information superhighway. For Ferment, Sarah likes
which rather put him off. So he left to reform his character,
in other places too, so watch out. His number one heckler
to look at lots of fonts and argue with James about white
worked for himself, and is now a civil servant helping
is his own mother. For Ferment, Paul is in charge of words
space whilst corralling our cabal of illustrators.
the government figure out this web thing. He co-designs
Inside out.
Ferment and looks after the website and his colleagues.
and keeping our writers happy. Boy you turn me.
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Al Murphy
And round ‘n’ round.
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Matt Lewis
Thanks Newspaper Club (www.newspaperclub.co.uk) for the mega
www.al-murphy.com
mattlewis.deviantart.com
Al Murphy studied Illustration at Liverpool School of Art
Matt Lewis was born in Hereford and taught himself to
cover. And of course thanks to all of our fantastic contributors.
and has gone on to work for a large roster of clients
draw as a child by reading comics. He moved to Oxford
including The Guardian, MTV and the BBC. He has
Reproduction rights
in 1997 to study and lives there still with his partner
has exhibited his work internationally and is currently
Hannah and their son Frank. He enjoys charity shops,
working on his first children’s book. He lives and works in
long johns and detective fiction.
Brooklyn, New York.
Ferment
easy to use printing service and to Al Murphy for this issue’s
All content is copyright their respective creators. Please contact them with any inquiries for republication or commissioning.
UPSIDE DOWN
Upside Down
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Downside Up The upside down pint glass is an empty pint The upside down trilby is a collection box without a lid The upside down fly is dead Dead lucky to be able to perform such aerial acrobatics To be upside down is to turn something on its head If something doesn’t have a head it can still be upside down When the upside is down A pea is never upside down Even when a pea is upside down nobody can tell I envy the freedom of objects that can go unnoticed when upside down They sit free from judgement A lump of mud A logoless golfball A floating bubble A piece of fluff When I am feeling upside down people say “What’s wrong? You look terrible.” I stand there and say “I’m ok” wishing I was a rubix cube.
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Adam Bletch www.adambletch.com Adam likes to create light hearted and bashy images usually containing characters, hand drawn typography
Ferment
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Rob Auton www.robertauton.blogspot.com www.theyellowshow.blogspot.com www.bangsaidthegun.com @robertauton
and detail. Drawing a lot of inspiration
York born wordsayer Rob Auton has had his
from vintage advertising and old
poetry played on the radio by Jarvis Cocker,
cartoon characters he tries to add his
starred in a film adaptation of his poem
own touch and do something new
‘Footballers Life for me’ on Channel 4 and
with every image. Hailing from the
was recently described by film director Paddy
countryside of Oxfordshire, he now
Considine as “a very funny man”. Rob also
resides in London where he is trying
co-runs the hugely popular London poetry
not to forget his bumpkin roots.
extravaganza ‘Bang Said the Gun’.
If You Can’t See My Mirrors I Can’t See You
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Shirley Darling is in Slough for a conference about warehousing innovation. She clicks on the TV and he looks directly at her for the first time since she handed over the cheque for costume hire. Shirley Darling is a soprano. She practises as she loads special letterheads into the photocopier and prints off technical information about trucks and logistics options. She knows every single supply chain solution by heart, learning all the packages and prices by singing them to the tune of The Flower Duet. Lakmé had been Shirley’s first production with Cheadle Heath Amateur Operatics Society, which she joined the same week she started at the haulage firm. That was just after Dave Darling left on the last train to London. If you can’t beat Stockport’s transport infrastructure, she thought, join it. CHAOS is currently working on Carmen and though Shirley isn’t best pleased as the lead goes to a mezzo-soprano, she is soon distracted by the exotic new conductor Stanislav, on loan from a group in Berkshire, on secondment from Moscow. He gets about a bit, laugh the tenors; no staying power, joke the baritones. Shirley pretends not to hear. During their first session, Stanislav whips CHAOS to a climax of sound, teasing out notes they didn’t know they had in them. They leave breathless; skin shiny, eyes reflecting each other’s newfound release. What an inspiration, bass voices growl. So talented, soprano lilts twitter, then realise their lift is missing. When Shirley appears, her silky bob is ever so slightly ruffled. On the night of the dress rehearsal, the Carmen cast gathers as usual in Cheadle Heath Village Hall. But the outfits aren’t there and, three cups of tea later, neither is Stanislav. The girls are quiet as Shirley grinds the gears and floors it along the A560.
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Sarah-Clare Conlon flashtagmcr.wordpress.com/buy wordsandfixtures.blogspot.com @wordsnfixtures Sarah-Clare Conlon is a flash fiction femme fatale and dictionary aficionado based in Manchester. She has a slight obsession with smut and edited the adult short story collection Quickies, but when she’s behaving she runs the Manchester Literature Festival blog and writes about arty stuff on the award-winning Words & Fixtures.
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Ric Stultz www.ricstultz.com @ricstultz Ric Stultz is an illustrator from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He draws and paints every day.
Upside Down
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Hinrich von Haaren
Pale Sins
Hinrich von Haaren grew up near Hamburg. He studied Chinese in Berlin before moving to London. His radio plays were broadcasted on German radio. His volume of short stories, “The Outlived”, and his novel “Brandhagen” were both published in German.
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Grace James www.grace-james-illustration. blogspot.com gracejames.weebly.com Grace James is a Kent based illustrator whose work draws upon the everyday, people and places. She enjoys composing imagery that captures moments in time, both past and present and is also inspired by fiction and her surroundings. Grace primarily works in her sketchbook, both indoors and on location and mainly works through the medium of pen and ink.
Ferment
I sit on a dirty bench by the dirty canal. My husband and my sons don’t know that I sit here, although I do this every day. On the narrow canal path people walk by without looking at me. Sometimes they throw rubbish into the canal – cans, chocolate bar wrappers, blue plastic bags from the corner shop. Once, out of nowhere, two kids came running down the slope next to the bench, pushing a scooter and pushing it right into the canal. They watched it sink and they couldn’t stop laughing. Once, a man sat down next to me. We sat there for a while without speaking, but people don’t sit next to each other on a dirty bench by a dirty canal without intent. They either get up and leave or they start a conversation. The man said he was an architect, but I immediately knew that he was lying. I couldn’t say how I knew but I was absolutely sure of it. There seemed to be something attractive about the fact that he was lying in this very obvious way. He asked me back to his white studio and while we made love on a mattress on the floor, my eyes searched the naked room for a sign as to this man’s real identity – the one hidden behind the architect lie. We were rolling
around, from the mattress onto the floor and back onto the mattress, moving in that theatrical way that people use when they have sex for the first time, and the false architect uttered loud noises of intimacy. Afterwards he said that no one had ever made love to him like I had. I told him about the boys pushing the scooter into the canal. They couldn’t stop laughing, I said, and suddenly telling this story seemed intimate, something I had revealed to him. I got up and went to the bathroom. Next to the mirror hung a black and white photograph of a woman and two boys. It hung a bit too low to be in comfortable view unless you sat on the loo. After I had washed my hands I took the picture off the wall – hands still wet, leaving water marks on the paper – I looked at it like you look a picture in a magazine and then put it back on the white wall the other way around. The three heads, the woman’s and the two boys’, were now pointing towards the floor, their legs sticking up in the air. When I came back the architect was still on the mattress, snoring faintly, his chest uncovered, his arms draped around his hair, his head slightly to one side – as if he had arranged himself for my benefit and then fallen asleep.
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Jo Bell www.jobell.org.uk @ Jo_Bell Jo Bell is a boat dweller and the director of National Poetry Day in the UK. Formerly an archaeologist, she now works across the UK in poetry and is moving her narrowboat from the NW of England to the SW in summer 2012. She wants to be Norman MacCaig when she grows up. Find out more including event listings, workshops and courses at www.jobell.org.uk
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Estelle Morris
I thought it better not to mention it as you bent me over the table, but I saw that you had cleaned the kitchen floor. I deemed it best to let it pass as we were gasping on the hearth rug, but I noticed you had set the fire; and that the bathroom where we showered after and before, was furnished with clean towels, pearls of soap; that you had thought to light a joss stick, tilt a lamp toward the ceiling, buy in lemons for my morning tea. I say this, not because I fail to notice all your more precise and private courtesies, but just to show you that the small ones count.
www.estellemorrisdancer.com estellemorris.blogspot.co.uk Often ambiguous, my illustrations consist of people, narrative, passing moments and intricate details. Pencil drawing is my favourite way of working, along with other hand applied methods such as print and collage. I like to collect old 8mm slides and photographs and often use these for ideas and inspiration.
Upside Down
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Ted Piker creatureforum.wordpress. com/category/creature-artists/ ted-piker tedpiker@gmail.com Born in Cincinnati, Ted moved to the UK in 1972 after his university year abroad in Bath where he met his wife Ann, an artist. Changing his career more often than some people change their socks, Ted has had tables thrown at him when running a youth club, worked in rehab with Hells Angels Vice Presidents and resolved commercial disputes, as the ideal preparation for his current role as part-time committee clerk in local government. He hangs out in High Wycombe, is into healing and meeting those looking for the real Jesus.
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Shelley Revill shelleyrevill.com wriggleplum.blogspot.co.uk Shelley is an illustrator and animator from London. She has spent alot of time recently drawing monsters for a picture book project so she relished this opportunity to create something a little bit different.
This Way Up This way up, indeed! Taking a lot for granted, You smug pointy-headed little arrow Let’s see if you change your tune, Turned the other way up Or do you fancy yourself as some kind of fashionista And now, thanks to you, Down is the new up. You don’t know if you are coming or going And me, I threw all my Absolut out the window So don’t ask me to point the way.
Ferment
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UPSIDE DOWN The first thing you notice is the ceiling rose, almost trip up on it. Then the stiff stem of electrical flex and the bare bulb, like a bluebell about to bud.
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www.michael-stewart.org.uk @headspan Michael Stewart is a multi-award winning writer, whose plays have been performed extensively throughout the country. His fiction has been published
You look up. You see a standard lamp hanging from the ceiling, a chesterfield sofa, a faux-bearskin rug, a glass dining table, four white plastic chairs, all of them fixed to the roof of the room. You notice now, the light switch where the plug socket should be The paintings hang low. Van Gogh’s sunflowers are falling from the sky, Holofernes is bearing down on Judith, Jesus is doing Yoga. You ask him why he’s done it. He just shrugs it’s how the world is, he says and falls onto the ceiling.
Michael Stewart
widely in anthologies and magazines, including Route, Leaf Books, Brand Magazine and Aesthetica. His debut novel, King Crow, was published in January 2011 by Bluemoose Books, and was awarded the Not the Booker prize by The Guardian newspaper.
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Paul Downey whatfettle.com @psd Paul originally hails from Saltburn-bythe-Sea but resides in Berkhamsted with his wife and three teenage children. An inveterate hacker of computer software, he’s mildly notorious as the creator of The Web Is Agreement, a series of doodles about The Web.
Upside Down
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About Last Night. We were in her living room. It was about 5am and she was trying to do a headstand. Each time she would almost get it right, but just couldn’t keep balance. Probably because it was 5am and she was very drunk. The Sloth & Cake had been showing the latest David Blaine stunt. For nine days straight he was hanging by his ankles off the top of some building in New York. Everyone in the pub was watching, apart from Duncan, who was writing, and a guy who was reading Roald Dahl’s The Twits. Peter had got a round in and told us that someone at the bar had said they reckoned the stunt wouldn’t be that difficult to do, on account of the fact that bats sleep hanging upside down. This made us all laugh, except Duncan, who turned to a fresh piece of paper and started writing about a man who walked everywhere on his hands. I tried to do one. I used to be good at them at school. Hadn’t tried one for years though. Also, I was even more drunk than she was, so any hope of balance was shot. She helped hold me up, but it wasn’t enough. I still fell. We laughed. We drank more gin. Duncan put salt in his coffee (Duncan doesn’t drink). He claims he likes it like that, but I’ve always been convinced it’s just an affectation. “Seriously dude, how can you drink that?”
Ferment
Duncan gave Nathan the look of someone who’s been asked the same question too many times. “How can you leave your house looking like that?” Nathan always goes out in his pyjamas. Has done since Emily broke up with him over two years ago. We’re all jealous of Nathan, as he’s the only one of us making a living out of writing. His first novel was made into a film, and he’s just been asked to write a screenplay for a sequel.
but he’s told it so many times now, that I think he’s made himself believe it. The barman called time. I downed the rest of my cider. “Right. Shall we go to this party then?” I woke up on her bed, still fully clothed, with just enough time to get to work without getting a bollocking. It was a sunny, crisp morning, the kind you get when Winter’s finishing. There weren’t many people about. My walk was uneventful, but nice.
The demon on my right shoulder was whispering, “Kiss her. Go on, kiss her.” The tele cut to a news story about a capsized ferry boat. Thing had flipped before everyone could get out. They didn’t know how many people were still in there. Peter took a lego figure out of his pocket, kissed it, and stuck it onto the ceiling. The ceiling of The Sloth & Cake had become a lego city landscape. No-one knew who’d started it, but one day a lego figure was on the ceiling. Instead of being taken down, it had been gradually added to over time. The angel on my left shoulder said, “Well? What the fuck are you waiting for? Kiss her already, you knobhead!” Nathan started telling someone at the next table about the time someone poured him a pint with the head at the bottom of the glass. This never actually happened,
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Paul Askew Nathan Chan mhvh.co.uk nathan-chan.com 26 year old illustrator/designer/art worker/promoter/image maker hailing from the mean streets of Birmingham. Self confessed doodle-er! Whether it’s little characters, objects in front of me or obscenities I just want to scream out loud. I scribble them on a piece of paper or preferably a ‘post-it’ note (other sticky note brands are available).
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okfinewhateverigetit.tumblr. com sadcoredadwave.tumblr.com www.metazen.ca www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ sian-s-rathore @helpimburnt
20 ways in which I perpetuate the rumour that I have eloped with someone everyone thinks I eloped with because of a short story I wrote once that discussed the theme of elopement (because I am rather arch and quite hilarious). 1. On Twitter I constantly refer to him as my “better half”. I sometimes hashtag “#betterhalf” when speaking about him. 2. Sometimes when we walk into a restaurant or bar together I will use a “marriagey” kind of phrase in a loud stage whisper to him, e.g. “I’m thinking duck-eggshell blue for the guest room.”
Sian S. Rathore is a conceptual writer and an editor for both the Metazen and Sadcore Dadwave online zines. She writes criticism for Stride Magazine, is a serial blogger and has recently started to write for the Huffington Post. Her work has been published in Bad Language, Cake and UP Literature. Sian likes to spend time relentlessly repeating quotes from her favorite shows and trying to convince fellow writers that typewriters are still cool.
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in Birmingham, since completing her studies she now freelances in illustration specialising in fashion, and observing trends/shows. Using various materials to develop her work she collects and assembles them using Photoshop, which has become her main way of creating her Illustrations.
8. I have started to act as if I have moved up one social class because everyone knows that he was privately educated at a boarding school and I come from pretty rough and wanton beginnings. 9. I tell our friends how much my mother likes him. 10. I tell our friends how much his mother dislikes me. 11. I encourage public arguments between the two of us over the middle names of our future children.
4. I discuss openly how me and him do not sleep together but “that’s just what happens I suppose.”
12. I am talking to my friends about how marriage doesn’t scare me, but mortgages do, then I follow it with “however he earns a good salary and the pension is insane.”
6. I have started to discuss my love of cooking and cleaning and I have stopped being a feminist. 7. I make him call me once a day, preferably when other people are around. I say on the phone things like, “Oh, what are you LIKE!” and “that is SO YOU” to reinforce the notion that I share a strong, almost psychic bond with him.
Natalie Lines Natalie lines is an Illustrator based
3. I have started to refer to his friends as “our friends”. If someone I know has spoken to him even once they too are “our” friend.
5. I have started to become friends exclusively with couples because now that I am possibly married I want to see single people as diseased, deformed and hunchbacked loners.
Sian S. Rathore
13. I have stopped talking to attractive women because I want to give off the impression that I see them as a threat. I figure if I’m going to be a wife I may as well deliver an astonishing performance. I have also banned him from having girlfriends because then people will know “something is up.” 14. I have started using “summer” as a verb.
15. I have told everyone about “our friends in Wiltshire”. They are a wonderful couple. They have been married ten years and are expecting their second child (heavens knows how she does it, she is just *such* a saint to him and he’s a bloody martyr for having that job at the bloody bank). 16. I discuss in company how I have become widowed to Skyrim and Dead Space. 17. I have got a gym subscription because I am now inexorably focused on keeping trim and looking nice. 18. When talking about his Aunt Josephine I refer to her as “Aunt Josephine” rather than “your Aunt Josephine.” 19. I tell people we are thinking of making pots of jam and elderflower Champagne as Christmas presents this year. The jam won’t be a *patch* on Aunt Josephine’s, though. 20. I show them the marriage certificate, photographs of the day and wedding rings because I eloped with him.
Upside Down
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