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EDITOR'S NOTE INTERVIEWS ARTICLES REVIEWS POEMS Eli Ankutse

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Jon Sands

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& You Thought Losing Your Virginity Was Traumatizing...

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Once Upon A Time

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Top 5 Fairytale Films 24

M R Peacocke

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Rawan Jamal

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Emily Axford

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EDITOR'S NOTE Words by Charlotte Marshall

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Editor's Note


In this issue we relive, reread and rediscover childhood classics in their darker, more adult form. Reigniting our imagination; getting lost in a fantasy world that isn’t always as far from reality as we once believed.

Fairy tales have cast a spell over readers and audiences, both adults and children, for centuries. These enchanting stories have traveled across countries and cultural borders. Passed on from generation to generation, they are ever changing, transformed with each re-telling. There are few forms of literature that have stood the test of time and continued to have this great power to enchant us and rekindle our imaginations. Wicked Queens and Stepmothers, beautiful Princesses, monsters, dwarfs and elves, to goblins and giants, glass slippers, poisoned apples, magic keys and magic beans, the characters and images of fairy tales are one we all recognise, no matter what culture or age. But, in this issue we explore what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What are they trying to communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? Are they relevant hundreds of years on, and if so, how? Fairy tales stretch across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy – all things we can still relate to, regardless of age or time.

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ELI ANKUTSE Words by Poppy, Jess & Eli.

We sat down with Eli Ankutse, founder of Joshua’s magazine, Ape of Gentlemen and his newest venture Samson magazine (which he has invented the new term triannually for) in Hockley, Nottingham's answer to Shoreditch, at the beginning of our April heatwave. 01

Interviews: Eli Ankutse


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As he walked in with his iPad, iPhone and Blackberry you would expect this guy wouldn’t be able to live a life without tech, but it later became apparent it was a necessity for his ever growing business ventures; not a lifestyle choice. Eli first inspired us after a short meeting with him previously in the year in which he exclaimed his love for rereading fairytales and finding new meaning in them in his adult years. Why would a guy with so many different businesses, who is constantly on the go, decide that his choice of escapism would be fairytales and not reality TV?! As we sat down with him he started telling us about how he was not sure he was going to be able to meet this week as he was meant to be wine tasting in Sicily. Suddenly it dawned on us, our interview and Hockley couldn’t beat the Sicilian sun and wine, but we would sure damn try. We went onto try and reassure him that it wouldn’t have been worth it - but come on, who were we kidding, who wouldn’t want to go wine tasting in the Sicilian sunshine? Eli then went onto explain his latest venture to us, Samson magazine and the launch event happening that Friday in London with Nike, which sounded pretty fucking fantastic; beers, football and a DJ. He had managed to get the Kings (who have worn the last two Nike tournaments held in London) down to play a game of five-a-side football against the mega crazy team he had created, pulling in only the best players to ensure he thrashes them to add another achievement to the list. It was hard not to be transfixed by his passionate conversation as he spoke about all these businesses with such ease. We asked him how he coped with the stress, when in comparison the stress we were currently consumed by was miniscule and he told us that if he had gone his whole life without stress and then suddenly got piled high with this, well he simply wouldn’t be alive. You build up to it and then you eventually glide through, phew, the hope we suddenly felt. And on this note we began to dig deep into Eli’s world of fairytales…

J: E:

Describe yourself in three words… Erm… Honest, I’d say brave and err, faithful I’d say.

J: E:

What is your dream sandwich? Oh my dream sandwich, I am really, really boring when it comes to food! But my dream sandwich is probably a club sandwich. That’d be mine too. Yeah but with the crusts cut off! Really? Are you fussy? No, no, no but you said dream sandwich here!

P: E: J: E: J: E:

What are you currently listening to, and your song for this year? E: Well, I don’t listen to the radio at all I can’t stand it! I feel like this whole thing, again, of unplugging, I like to control how I’m feeling mood wise, and the radio controls you, music is very powerful like that. So, I listen to a variety of strange things. I listen to Onra, you know Mad Lib, he is like the Vietnamese version of that. He’s amazing, he does these albums called Chinoiseries, he went back to Vietnam, and he went to this old shop and found this old Chinese vinyl. So, he sampled this vinyl and made albums out of them. My favourite tracks are Valley of Love on Chinoiseries One and Got to Go on Chinoiseries Two. Chinoiseries are little Chinese things, so that’s what I listen to know and a lot of Mad Lib, and at the same Arvin 2015

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time it... varies quite a bit. I listen to Antonin Dvorak, New World Symphonies and stuff like that occasionally if I am in that mood. But, then, occasionally I will listen to Kanye, All Day; it’s just a mix. But, generally Onra and Mad Lib is what I listen to. J: E:

What is the one thing you couldn’t live without? Erm, I don’t think, it’s weird, I am not overly attached to anything, they’re all a function, for me it’s going what function couldn’t I live without, what one do I care about more than the others.

P:

Ok, if you had to go to an island and you could only take one thing with you, water and food is all taken care of, what would it be? It probably, would have to be a book. It is the only thing that has value and can outlast me, and every time you read it you can have a new interpretation, be a new character.

E:

J: E:

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Interviews: Eli Ankutse

If you were given a million pounds tomorrow, what would you buy? I’d give it all away, and I mean that. I’ve got this plan, my whole plan is to start and get rid off this culture of half sitting on money and just give it away. If you can make that much money, you can make it in a day. So I would give it away, and actually what I eventually want to do, this is my master plan, so you’re getting something here, I want to set up a fund, completely unrelated to Government, where people with a lot of money, because these people make a lot of money for a reason, they’re good at doing things. And, every year we say we are going to put ‘x’ amount of millions in the account and we go to the country and address a need purely for the people, nothing to do with


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the Government. So, people can’t say anything, control it, so if we have to bribe a couple of people to do it, it doesn’t matter, it’s part of the budget, I know, standard things like a house, but I would just give away, I don’t need that much money, it takes the fun out of getting it, why would you get up in the morning? P: E:

I was having a conversation the other day actually, why if you have that much money do you need it? What are you going to do with it? There’s no point, at the end of your life it isn’t giving you anything more. Exactly! People say, my family, but the world is your family! I can’t sit here on all this money when I know people are starving and stuff like that, how can I sit there? As long as I have enough, and everyone around me has enough, I don’t need to sit on it for any reason, just give it away. I don’t need that kind of money!

J: E:

What is your biggest achievement to date? Erm, my biggest achievement is probably freeing myself from the, the mundane, normal life. That is by far my biggest achievement. Being able to be in full control of my own destiny that is the biggest thing by far. If I had to plug myself back in now, I wouldn’t know what I’d do to be honest!

J: E:

Where do you see yourself in ten years? The way I see myself, is actually, I know everyone wants to travel, but I don’t see myself being located anywhere. The whole reason I started doing what I’m doing, Joshua’s, is because I didn’t want to be based anywhere. I have this thing, this fixation with Japan and my business partner has a fixation with New York, and we could both do it from... Arvin 2015

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P: E: J: E:

wherever we are in the world, and if we wanted to move, we could still do it. So, ideally, I see myself everywhere. Erm, in terms of location, I don’t know, ill be honest, I don’t 100% see myself in the UK, I didn’t grow up here, until year 10 I was in Saudi Arabia. Oh, really? So here’s like coming on holiday, so I never feel like I’m here, here. What is on your bookshelf at the moment? Ha! My bookshelf… a kindle! I’ll tell you what I bought recently actually, Hans Christian Anderson full works, my most recent book, which is quite on theme actually. It is amazing; it has literally everything in it! And Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, which is not a fairytale, it is the complete opposite, like a Bible but a negative one, and a Bible is on there too, and Monocle guide to Business and basically lots of magazine and I mean lots, all kinds. I don’t read them, just browse because I don’t want to get affected by the content and lead us to a direction. I want the magazine to be from what I believe it needs to be, so I don’t want it to move me, but at the same time I want to see how things work spatially and see if I can get some special designs and concepts that I maybe hadn’t considered, and, also see who’s advertising and who is active in the market.

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Interviews: Eli Ankutse


"Kim and Kanye, I think they would be in Rapunzel, Kim would think she was in this tower, she’s trapped and all these men and Kanye would come save her in his Yeezy's!"

J: E:

What inspires you to read fairytales? I find fairytales actual escapism, a lot of people watch reality TV, which is just a translation of what, is happening anyway. Whereas fairytales are so far fetched they allow you to truly escape, as you know it is not possibly true. At the same time it stimulates your mind and gets you thinking about things, and I find it is actually a creative process even though I am relaxing at the same time.

J: E:

What is your favourite fairytale? My favourite fairytale? This is a toughy actually…I don’t think, I’ll be honest; I don’t think I have one, I take from all of them something else. Because I have the full Hans Christian Anderson works there are obviously some in there that weren’t as popular, really weird ones, like about a broken champagne bottle. And the stories are actually quite dark and a lot of them end in bad ways, ya know, and in a way I find that… I quite like that. As a child when I read fairytales I didn’t read them in the same way, you know, as a child reads, very innocent, very top level. From all of them, now when I read them, I don’t necessarily find it hard, I just find it different, from every single one I read I get a sense of this angst that he’s feeling when he’s writing them. I think all these fairytales are a reflection of where he was at that moment in time. When I was a child I didn’t know the backstory behind them, you know, and he got molested as a child at the boys school and all this stuff like that, and you can read these signs of angst and the way he views love, and things, through his fairytales. But, as I said, I don’t really have one, but the most popular ones, that people read now are overplayed. It’s like any good song; you can hear it too much can’t you? It could be your favourite song if you had only ever heard it twice, but by the time you get hammered with it you don’t like it anymore. I think that is the same with most famous fairytales. I wouldn’t say it was one; it’s a mix of them all really.

J: E:

What fairytale do you think Kim and Kanye would be in? Kanye! Kim! HA! What fairytale do I think he thinks he should be in or…*laughs*. Erm, Kim and Kanye, I think they would be in Rapunzel, Kim would think she was in this tower, she’s trapped and all these men and Kanye would come save her in his Yeezys!

P:

So if you had three parties, Liberal Democrats, Labour and Conservatives, and if you had to put each one in a fairytale, or as a character in a fairytale, which party would go where or be who? Ok, so, Lib Dem I’d put as Humpty Dumpty, if they ever got in power, that would be what would happen, they wouldn’t be able to put things back together ever again.

E:

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J:

J: E:

J: E:

J: E:

Labour, I think are honestly, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, they mean well, but they aren’t all there, I can’t see them… I can’t take them seriously, let’s put it that way. Conservatives, I don’t love them, this is tough, I am trying to think of someone in a fairytale who is kind in an evil one, evil but to be kind, so like erm… I don’t know, that’s quite a tough one, because I don’t think they’re overly nice, but I don’t think they’re overly evil either. I don’t think there is anyone like that in fairytales! Yeah, they’re more polar in fairytales, you either get evil or nice, you don’t get those intermediate characters. They’re necessary evils, let’s put it that way. That’s how I feel anyway. If you were Prime Minister for the day what would be the first thing you’d change? We were having a massive debate about this the other day actually! *Laughs* But, the main thing for me, is that, it’s not something I’d change, but it’s the angle I would try and take. I don’t like how people in charge can’t do what they think is best for the people, because the people won’t let them. There’s a reason they’re at the top, they got all this information that we know nothing about and they can’t tell us! I feel like they’re handicapped by having to answer to the public, you know, we don’t know what to have for breakfast most of the time, and we want to control this guy, who knows everything, been educated his whole life, who we have elected in power, and he can’t do what he feels is best for us, because we won’t let him. And, so, I don’t know how that would work, but I would like to free the reins a little bit, sort of like a hybrid between how Kings used to be, so, we maintain a democracy, but we have someone at the top who could actually lead. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing or not… J: If you could live in any fairytale, and what would your character be? E: I think I would be, and this is a bit general, it is not an exact one, but I would be the guy that always starts of as nothing and ends up being King. Because, I think, without knowing what one side is you can’t understand what the other side is, so I think it would always be some sort of transition where you start of at the base and you end up near the top. And, with that we dragged Eli off to take some photographs, pushing him into a photobooth, after he exclaimed how much he hates having his photograph taken, but better be prepared for what Friday beholds. After bidding farewell to Eli we couldn’t help but feel inspired, a man with so many words, so many projects but with always enough time for more, driven by the desire to succeed and help others.

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SANDS Jon Sands is a poet from Brooklyn, who has recently returned from a tour of the UK. We caught up with him to find out more about what inspires him, his dream sandwich and what the written word means to him.

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Interviews: Eli Ankutse


Words by Charlotte Marshall

What are you reading at the moment?

I'm reading Seamus Heaney's Nobel Lecture from 1995, Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, and two Cathy Park Hong poems from the latest edition of Poetry Magazine.

What’s currently filling your book shelves?

My bookshelves are definitely on the come up. Though, I've also utilized my library card a lot lately. It's unbelievable to walk out of an establishment with a handful of books you didn't “pay” for. However, I feel as though I still operate under the this-is-my-book-now mentality, so with all the fines, I'm not sure I've really helped myself. There is a lot of poetry on my bookshelves. Anytime I leave for tour, I generally (at the last second) throw one of about seven books into my bag: “Smoking Lovely” by Willie Perdomo, “Kingdom Animalia” by Aracelis Girmay, “Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah” by Patricia Smith, “If There Was Something to Desire” by Vera Pavlova, “Against Which” by Ross Gay, “Boneshepherds “by Patrick Rosal,or “Here” by Wislawa Szymborska.

Send us what you see,or describe it poetically.

Just the everyday sweetness of Gowanus, Brooklyn from a window that needs washing.

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Where do you seek inspiration for your work?

I read a lot. There's no doubt that It provides a spark. It introduces me to forms that unlock my stories or my imagination. It also models a vulnerability that serves as permission. I think I seek form and permission more than I seek inspiration. Inspiration requires only one's breath (and maybe not even that, though I'll have to get back to you)

What’s your dream sandwich?

One with extremely liberal amounts of avocado and some sort of craft hot sauce.

Whose words would you secretly like to claim as your own?

Not really my bag. But there are lots of folks I quote almost daily: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Keith Haring, Ellen Bass, Patricia Smith, Annie Dillard, Geoff Kagan-Trenchard.

What superpower would you like and why?

Oh man, *obviously* the power to instantly heal. Both myself and others. Can you even *imagine?*

What’s currently playing on your Spotify?

“Astro” by MelloHype & Frank Ocean, “Only One” by Kanye West & Paul McCartney, “The Door” by D'Angelo, & (like everyone else) “Take Me To Church” by Hozier.

What’s playing when you think no one’s listening?

“Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus, for about five years now.

Can you sum yourself up in one simple poetic verse?

Probably not. But I've been trying for a few years. I might have to go to the sweet pool of Uncle Walt Whitman, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

Interviews: Eli Ankutse


"Poetry, and really the mixture of history and imagination have a ubiquitous power over all our lives, and it behooves each of us to be intentional participants in that process."

I would also love to know more about your work with Bailey House and the Positive Health Project?! How did that come about? How do you think creative writing has a positive effect, and as a youth mentor how do you think this creative skill enhances their lives?* Really interested in the wider context surrounding what the written word means not only for you but for the people you help and the beneficial effects of the fantastic work you do!*

I'm a subscriber to the William Carlos Williams quote, "It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably every day/ for lack/ of what is found there." My life as an educator is often the attempt to get poetic thought into spaces where it is not generally prioritized. Poetry, and really the mixture of history and imagination have a ubiquitous power over all our lives, and it behooves each of us to be intentional participants in that process. Patricia Smith has spoken about a poem existing when a narrative has been stunned and can't move forward without further commentary. I love that, and I've been an ambassador for poetry in a lot of spaces, and have the privilege of watching that process firsthand. The way in which we tell our stories, and our ownership of them can shift the direction of our lives. In spaces, specifically, where the value of one's life has been marginalized by the structures of society, this is as much about the discovery of one's own story as it is the necessity to correct an inaccurate portrayal of it in a larger societal context. That is powerful on a global level, but equally powerful to engage in that telling for one's self. It allows people to understand themselves as full, complicated, and ultimately worthy of life. Obviously, that process doesn't stop with writing alone, but I believe people who write with as few defense mechanisms as possible find, in their own poetry, doors that beckon to be walked through in their own lives. Upon departure from the page, they continue to beg a type of bravery from the writer. That has been my experience, and has heavily influenced my goals as an educator. Mahogany L. Browne identified poetry as, not therapy, but therapeutic. I love that.

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...AND YOU LOSING YOUR WAS TRAUMA

Over the years, the film industry has seen a proliferation of re makes of classic fairy tales. From Snow White and the huntsman released in early 2012 (where Kirsten Stewart famously cheated on Rob Pattison for the films director), to the recent adaptation of Cinderella released earlier this spring all have something in common: they’ve been modernised. Reinvented to have a darker, more sinister twist these films portray something we wouldn’t quite get as an innocent child reading these harmless fairy tales before bed. Directed by Sir Kenneth Branagh, Cinderella is a modern remake of Disney’s 1950’s animation that has already taken a huge $70m (£43.1m) on its opening release in America. The film stays faithful to the traditional, with memorable characters such

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Interviews: Eli Ankutse

as the wicked Stepmother, Prince Charming, glass slipper, Fairy God Mother and of course Cinderella herself. Played by British actress Lilly James – best known for her role in popular TV series Downton Abbey whilst Cate Blanchett plays the Stepmother and Helena Bonham Carter the fairy god mother. Director Branagh states in a recent interview with the BBC that he wanted to just let the fairy tale speak for itself “because it affects us more in a complicated way than we think”… “ Audiences have already come up to me saying the film is about patchwork families and child bereavement and even about politics between women in today’s society”. It has been widely speculated that Cinderella the story itself is about a maiden’s virginity; represented with the glass slipper. In the traditional fairy tale the passing of her


THOUGHT VIRGINITY ATIZING... Words by Charlotte Marshall

father results in Cinderella being locked away in her room and ordered to serve her wicked Step Mother and Sisters. When the glass slipper doesn’t fit the Stepsisters, the wicked Mother breaks the shoe in fit of rage. All seems fairly tame for an innocent fairy tale, right? Nope. It is actually suggested that Cinderella is the fairest maiden in the land, and a virgin. So when the shoe breaks, Cinderella’s hymen supposedly breaks and she loses her virginity. Who would of thought? Our childhood is beginning to look a little sinister, isn’t it? The earliest recorded tale of Cinderella originates from China, where small feet are considered sexually and socially appealing, hence the emphasis of the shoe in the film. Alongside the significant meaning of the shoe, the classic fairy tale signifies the difference between good and bad, and the

importance of inner beauty. Cinderella’s Step Mother and Sisters are not physically beautiful and choose to not accept Cinderella because of her beauty. This jealousy results in the step sisters deforming their feet to match Cinderella’s - originally chopping off their toes and later having their eyes gouged out by pecking doves in the original tale. This film is all about the difficult but simple choice to be good and kind. Bragnah states “whether you’re dealing with Shakespeare or the great fairy stories, they are all great big metaphors for human nature” As we grow older the darker side of human nature becomes more fascinating as reality becomes more mundane and these modern twist on fairy tales allow us to do just that! Catch Cinderella in UK cinemas March 27th. Not to be missed.

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Interviews: Eli Ankutse


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