The Pembroke Bullfrog, Trinity 2012

RINITY TALKING jell Cr t(t:cciifttertitzlit,,11 tic

Interview with ,'L' HARRIET BAKER

CONTE-NTS 24

Writing Places ANNE BRINK

REVIEW 26 Black Butter flies, Hamlet 28 Kindle, Madonna, Lavinia Greenlaw 30 Lucian Freud: Portraits

Poetry 31 34 35

77//re poems, 77//re

MIKE KALISCH

Just Ibr . you, DYEDRA JUST hyst Pockets, JOE NICHOLSON

Our trip to the other side 35 WILLIAM DIB

Contemplation of the modern mop 36 ROBBIE GRIFFITHS

The magically mundane ALEX JOYNES Gerard Manley Hopkins' beautiful unopened box of cocktail sticks. line that 'The world is charged with Here, without explanation, Bennett the grandeur of God' is one that offers a wealth of truths regarding has always resonated with me. The social class and aspirations. They sense of a continued presence that are wishes never quite realised, as is will then 'flame out' is incredibly often the case for Victoria Wood's vivid and moving. I too would characters. Her sitcom Dinnerladies subscribe to such a view of the had as its theme tune heartrending world (though I wouldn't attribute lines concerning one's dreams, and it to God) and yet the sense of how life can often wear them down. profundity that abounds in our everyday life is no less striking than A thread of tragedy runs throughout Hopkins' imagery. The literature, all of these works. It is not a music and television which have tragedy of epic scale, with tears and had a lasting effect upon me are pain, but one that is muted, and all rooted in the ordinary, the ever present. Wood observed once mundane even; yet out of this they that British funerals are markedly weave gold and reveal so much different to those overseas, with about human nature in the process. the woman often rolling up her sleeves and declaring 'Right, 72 In my eyes, the reigning triumvirate baps, Connie, you slice, I'll spread.' of locating the extraordinary in But I don't think that Bennett and the very ordinary is made up of Wood are as much concerned with those great Northern bedfellows the almost mythical sense of stiff Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood, and upper lip as they are with how one Morrissey. Their work continually often sets aside disappointment draws out those elements of and sadness for the sake of loved existence which define our days ones. It is rooted deeply in love and and in some way help shape who care. we are: evenings spent indoors, a trip to the supermarket, time in Often though, it's a love that dare a faded seaside town. All three of not speak its name. The Royle Family, these writers have an unmatched such a bold and yet incredible abilty to craft gems of dialogue that idea for a television programme, shine forth, spoken by characters consisting of the viewers watching who could easily be one of our the Royles watching television, neighbours, or a stranger on the showed how love is often far street. All have their stories to tell. from the bold, audacious ideal we would like to think it is. As the Bennett's Talking Heads concern family face up to losing Nana, the lonely pensioners, isolated audience sees Jim and herself in a busybodies, and repressed spouses. beautiful montage which shows the The monologues which stream love and respect they hold for one from them are confessional, in this another, however hidden it is by way helping to discover and dissect their pettiness and bickering. It's what is often hidden. Meanwhile, an incredibly touching moment, in Bennett's autobiographical reminding us of the fragility of life, writings, he recounts a tale of and the quiet yet powerful bonds his mam and dad, who wished that hold it all together, often to entertain and to host parties without us ever even realizing it. in their later years. Following their deaths, when clearing out This sense of understanding other cupboards, Bennett discovered an people is often so subtle in many 4

THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

works that it's wrongly overlooked.

Morrissey, in his music both as part of The Smiths and as a solo artist, is often accused of being a misanthrope, with little regard for human beings. I believe that Morrissey is, more than anything else, profoundly disappointed and disenchanted by humanity. Anyone who writes the lyrics 'Sad veiled bride, please be happy/ Handsome groom, give her room/ Loud, loutish lover, treat her kindly/ Though she needs you more than she loves you' is deeply in touch with humankind.

Similarly, Morrissey is labelled as a depressing artist, when in fact his music has rather the opposite effect on many people; ask' might serves as a rousing anthem for the shy and isolated.

Philip Larkin is similarly subject to both misconceived charges. He was once declared to be 'the saddest heart in the post-war supermarket' but he himself stated in response that 'The impulse for producing a poem is never negative; the most negative poem in the world is a very positive thing to have done'.

Larkin saw himself as depicting real life, not, as some critics argued, the `dreary life.' Larkin quite rightly stated that he would like to know how such critics spend their time, asking if they 'kill a lot of dragons for instance?'. In 'Born Yesterday', Larkin's poem for the newly-born Sally Amis, he wishes for her a life that is 'ordinary', even hoping that she is 'dull', if that is what a `Catching of happiness is called.'

This is remarkably moving and so very true, with Larkin almost basking in the glow of everyday life. He recognises the limitations of life but does so in a positive light of acceptance.

In attempting to explain what it is that makes these works so moving and memorable, we inevitably

run the risk of `unweaving the rainbow', and losing the essence of what makes them so special. All the writers listed have a wonderful grasp of the rhythm not only of everyday speech, but the everyday itself; they draw out magical symphonies from the hum of the humdrum. All, too, are rooted in an understanding of, and deep feelings for, members of society. Even if the works themselves are not especially warm in tone, there is never any sense of superiority or mocking of the mundane.

Equally, due to the fact that inspiration is drawn from all around us, these works are accessible: by the people, of the people, and for the people. Larkin himself hoped that his poetry was the sort that could be discussed in the pub, and I would suspect the other personalities would agree with this sentiment. Their works

are ones that resonate with us all, as we at once recognize ourselves and identify others. It would be wrong to suggest, however, that it is somehow an easy task to write about day-to-day life: it is only when one observational watches comedy at its worst that we can appreciate the skill involved when it is done right. Indeed, it could even be the case that that which is nearest to us in terms of inspiration is precisely the most difficult truly to access, just as we too, in our acts of routine, effectively switch off. In doing so, we miss out on the abundance of personalities, stories, tears and laughter which constitute life. For this we are all the poorer.

ILLUSTRATION ANNE BRINK

Mad Men and therapy MIKE KALIS CH Mad Men Mad Menindulges (and we as viewers indulge with it) in illicit delights that have now become transgressive or outmoded during the passage of time from the drama's early 196os setting to the present day.

Under the auspices of historical distance, the drama permits us to take pleasure in things we no longer feel able to enjoy in the real world.

These illicit delights can be relatively simple: the sight of someone smoking a cigarette on screen in an office is refreshing and aesthetically powerful precisely because of the cigarette's status, increasingly outdated and outlawed. We may feel similarly about the role of alcohol in the drama; there is a certain forbidden jouissance jouissance in the sight of professional men getting hammered, at work, daily, for an audience which is constantly reminded of how

many units they should be drinking, and being roundly chastised as part of a 'binge-drinking culture'.

We may be less comfortable with the enjoyment we derive from the other forms of illicit indulgence Mad Men Mad Men offers. The prevalence of homophobic and, more often, misogynistic humour in the drama has been the source of much criticism, as well as much shocked delight. The power of these types of humour again rests on their status today as socially censored discourses to which our access is strictly forbidden; to see others making full use of them is transgressively exciting, and it is an excitement protected by the drama's historical distance and, of course, its fictionality.

But Mad Mad Men Men engages not only in discourses of forbidden delight, but

also in what I would call dormant anxieties; that is, fears from which as a society we have moved away, but which nonetheless still remain active, however recessively. One such nexus of anxieties centres around therapy, and the figure of the therapist. Betty Draper, Don's long-suffering though rather unlikeable wife, starts seeing Dr. Wayne, a psychoanalyst, in the second episode of the first season, her treatment terminating at some point in the hiatus between the end of the series and the beginning of the next. Her reasons for going to therapy, and Don's reaction to the suggestion, embody a set of prevalent misconceptions and suspicions surrounding therapy, once mainstream, now dormant. Betty first moves towards therapy when she notices her hands have begun to shake, so much so that, whilst driving the kids one sunny Sunday, THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

5

/ MIKE KALIBCH, 111D 1/t:'% AND THERAPY

she veers off of the road and into a tree. She seeks medical advice but the numerous diagnoses offered are inconclusive, and she begins to think that the causes may be psychological.

This series of events enacts a continuing belief regarding when therapy should be considered as a treatment. Betty turns to the idea of psychiatry only after medicine has failed to provide an instant cure; therapy is a last resort, a method to turn to only out of desperation.

More significantly, Betty's motoring accident physicalises the main reason why many think that people can or do go into therapy; that is, when, and only when, their life goes skidding off the rails (or road).

Therapy is constructed as a viable treatment only after a significant and identifiable 'trigger', or trauma.

Such a conception is out of step with the way in which therapy is perceived and employed today, when it is not only a crisis-response, but a more regularly used method of maintaining emotional well-being.

Meanwhile, Don's response to Betty's suggestion that the cause of her shaking may be psychological verbalises a dormant prejudice that many still hold about therapy: `Doctors must love that they finally have an answer for 'I don't know what's wrong." Therapy thus becomes a by-word for inconclusiveness, a dumping ground for those cases to which regular, reliable medicine can only shrug its shoulders. The conceptualisation of psychoanalytic treatment as a waste of money, as when Don vents to Dr Wayne, After hundreds of dollars, all you've managed to do was make her more unhappy,' is one which, in a more and more `therapised' society, sits alongside other outmoded discourses which we no longer feel permitted to access. The route by which Betty enters therapy, and Don's reaction to it, play out this recessive and censored anxiety, and provide viewers with an opportunity to participate in an outlawed discourse.

The therapist figure, Dr Wayne, is a strict Freudian psychoanalyst, and his treatment room is a veritable 6

model of stereotypes connected with therapeutic practice. His room is dark, the decor severe and sombre; at its centre, naturally, lies the ubiquitous black leather couch, the therapist's own chair positioned so as to be out of sight to a patient lying down. At least partially historically accurate, Dr Wayne's room is more importantly also potently imbued with signifiers of long-standing fears harboured by many regarding what goes on 'in treatment': the couch and its placement suggesting a sense of display, the action of lying down connoting vulnerability, the position of the therapist's chair out of plain sight, higher, all-perceiving, enacting what many construct as the uneven power balance between practitioner and client. Dr Wayne's practice thus confirms dormant anxieties regarding therapy. No matter that his practice is very different from that of an analyst today; the power of the depiction lies in the fact that it plays upon ongoing anxieties which no longer have a legitimate discourse in which to be voiced.

This extends to uneasiness surrounding the intimacy between practitioner and client upon which therapy relies. Today, it would be deemed ill-informed and smallminded to question the propriety or motivations of therapists, or to be suspicious of the relation they share with their clients.

But Mad Men once again engages with these disquiets.

The relationship between Dr Wayne and Don is tense, not only because Don thinks the therapist is out to hoodwink him, but also because there is a sense in which Dr. Wayne's perceived intimacy with Betty boarders on the transgressive, that his role is not one of professional disconnect, but one in which he is trusted with information that should be between man and wife.

Thus when Dr Wayne says to Don, not without a certain degree of sexual

THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG ILLUSTRATION ANNE BRINK

suggestiveness, 'I just spent a very interesting hour this afternoon with your wife', we see the figure of the therapist as one creating a schism, a distance within a couple; he is an intruder and an informer, as his incredibly unprofessional practice of providing Don with a summary of each of Betty's session pays testament to. It is no coincidence that Betty stumbles upon this covert practice between the two men when trying to discern, with the help of a phone bill, whether Don is guilty of infidelity. In a sense, her discovery of Don's late night calls to her therapist confirms a type of unfaithfulness, on the part of both Don and Dr. Wayne. The drama enacts fears regarding how much trust we put in psychiatrists, and the potential dangers of the position they occupy.

Whether Betty's treatment with Dr. Edna, a child psychiatrist (in the seventh episode of season one, Dr Wayne say of Betty to Don, `We're basically dealing with the emotions of a child here.') proves any more successful remains to be seen. Here's to season five...

Twitter me this KILEY BENSE Since 2007, the press (and to some extent the public) have flaunted, hyped, and heartily embraced Twitter, the `micro-blog' platform that began as a start-up in 2006.

There are newspaper articles examining Twitter's effects on language, politics, and media; hysterical interviews about the dangers of its penchant for producing sound-bites of thought; CNN and other national news networks regularly read tweets during live broadcasts, either in response to a pertinent question asked earlier in the show or to provide an eyewitness account of an event. Publications collect readers' tweets about current content and print them in the physical pages of that week's issue as commentary, a peculiar phenomenon that divorces the tweets from their context and strands them in the analogue world, without the instantaneous connections that explain and elucidate them on Twitter. Activists tout Twitter as the twenty-first century revolutionary's essential tool, and the site has played a role in protests stretching from Egypt to Syria to Wall Street. The Chinese government deems the site so threatening that is banned there. Twitter's growing presence in our daily lives isn't imagined or inflated, either: it's real. In late 2008, Twitter's popularity soared from less than five million users to more than onehundred million in 2010, and it continues to expand.

As with new technologies throughout history, from the printing press to text messaging, Twitter's rise has been accompanied by much public handwringing over its potentially disastrous and dumbing effects.

Noam Chomsky said that Twitter 'tends toward superficiality and draws people away from real serious communication' and that 'it is not a medium of a serious interchange', whilst the actor Ralph Fiennes commented in an October 2011 article that because of Twitter 'our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted, so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us'. Author J.D. Davidson accused Twitter of causing current English vocabulary to shrink: 'You only have to look on Twitter to see evidence of the fact that a lot of English words that are used, say, in Shakespeare's plays or PG Wodehouse novels are so little used that people don't even know what they mean now'. It should be noted that none of these critics actually use Twitter themselves.

Is Twitter killing the English language? The answer, for anyone familiar with the scope of history or the patterns

and truisms of linguistics, is a resounding and obvious no. Nor is Twitter an arbiter of 'superficiality', syntactic simplicity, mental degradation, or vocabulary decline.

It is no guiltier of these sins than ordinary conversation is, and though its arbitrary one-hundred-and-forty character limit certainly affects the language people use on it, this does not mean that they are discarding complex words in favor of lazier alternatives, or substituting inane thoughts for brilliant ones just because they won't fit. In fact, the opposite might be argued.

The restrictions of Twitter actually engender linguistic creativity, forcing the invention of new words, syntax, and grammar. No one would argue that the restraints imposed by the strict rules of a sonnet or a haiku are also strict limits on innovation. And Twitter might even be more welcoming to ingenuity; as an emerging medium, it is not subject to universally agreed upon rules. There are few widely-accepted standardizations on Twitter. This makes it very idiosyncratic; it is a jungle of colloquialisms, slang, variant spellings, and personal tics. People on Twitter tend to express themselves as themselves, without fear that their words will be scrutinized for 'correctness'. But this freedom is not a sign of a looming linguistic apocalypse. Instead, Twitter's wild-west ethos supports a culture of individual and often inventive discourse.

Twitter is a place where 'comedians are kings'. The format encourages and rewards the funniest, snarkiest, and cleverest. It is essentially a global popularity contest, driven by rapid-fire bursts of words. Salman Rushdie recently took to Twitter to pen a cheeky limerick about reality star and chronic attentionseeker Kim Kardashian's quickie marriage, featuring the alliterative lines, 'The marriage of poor kim #kardashian/ was krushed like a kar in a krashian/ her kris kried, not fair!! why kan't I keep my share?/ but kardashian fell klean outa fashian'. Twitter is teeming with word play, irony, biting, teasing sarcasm, and a cacophony and range of voices that can't be matched within geographically or physically constrained borders.

The historian Geoffrey Hughes has said that in the dawn of the printing age, words 'travelled at speed across continents'. Never has been this so true as now, and at a rate that was once unimaginable, with Twitter leading the charge.

THE PEMBROKE THE PEMBROKEBULLFROG BULLFROG

7

An Interview with LY-Xliesekrtc Michael Heseltine is one of Pembroke's most distinguished alumni. He arrived at the college in 1951, and became a property developer after leaving Oxford, before founding the hugely successful Haymarket publishing corporation, but is most famous as a prominent Conservative politician. Lord Heseltine was kind enough to grant the Bullfrog an hour of his time last term, and we visited his home in Belgravia, within sight of Buckingham Palace Gardens, to ask him about Oxford, business, and the world of politics. Despite evidence of an expert's experience of amateur journalists, interruptions from staff fielding media requests, and some canine interference on the microphone, this hour yielded some very interesting answers to our questions, and Lord Heseltine finished with some pertinent advice for students.

On an Oxford life Pembroke: I was reading about the very different interview process you experienced on coming up to Oxford; am I right in thinking that your interview was with the master and you didn't know what subject you might do before you arrived?

Lord Heseltine: I'm sure you're not wrong...I think I was going to do law, but very shortly after my arrival I talked to my tutor [Norman Ward Perkins, whose name adorns our television room] and he said 'No, you should do PPE'; and that was after I'd come up. I think I was the last person into the university without a college entrance exam, because Pembroke accepted five credits in the schools' certificate system as sufficient academic background.

All you had to do was to be interviewed, and I was interviewed

by Pembroke College, Oxford, and St. John's College, Cambridge; I got into both, and chose Oxford.

I was interviewed by the Reverend Holmes Dudden, who I think was 92 at the time...suffice to say, it wasn't a very penetrating interview.

PMB: So, where did you live while at Pembroke, and what are your memories of the place?

LH: As you go through the main porters' lodge, the first staircase on the left, I guess {today's academic officel...maybe I moved to the second staircase fin a later year].

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I don't think I shared rooms — if membership soared. we shared a living room, we didn't share bedrooms. I've often come PMB: Do you know why the back to Pembroke over the years; nightclub is called the Purple they even did me the honour of Turtle? giving me an honorary fellowship. I have to say that I was not a college LH: No. I think it was called the guy — I didn't live in College in my cellars in my day, because it was first year, but a long way out on the originally a coal cellar. We cleared Banbury Road. My base was the it up; the steward and I literally Union; I was fascinated by Oxford began the process of getting rid of politics. the coal.

PMB: Could you tell us about the Union? You eventually became president, but how did you start out?

LH: I started off like everyone else: I made paper speeches, then became Secretary, then Treasurer, and eventually President. The treasurership was important, as the Union was in some financial trouble at the time. I was the leader of the glass-half-full argument, aiming to improve the quality of service offered to undergraduates to boost the membership, and we got it right. We had a huge backprojected television screen (which to you would seem like the arc, but it was state-of-the-art), and we did the night-club in the cellars.

We also had a fantastic offer in the restaurant, which was a fourcourse lunch for two shillings and six pence, and a five-course dinner for three shillings and six pence... so a four-course lunch for twelve and half pence in today's money, which was quite a good deal, and

On the worlds of property and publishing PMB: Could you tell us what you did after leaving university? Did you have a plan?

LH: I had a Ex, o o o [from relatives].

The original plan was that I would do three years articles in a firm of chartered accountants in London, and they were going to pay me £7 a week. One of the formative moments of my life was when I thought 'but then I'll have to spend the ii,000 [to subsidise that salary]'. So, I found a mate who had a thousand pounds and we bought a boarding house. We bought a short lease on a Notting Hill Gate boarding house with eleven rooms — we lived in two, and sublet the other nine. We bought it for 21,750, and sold it eighteen months later for £3,750 pounds. Then we bought a hotel, with forty rooms. And it carried on from there.

Then, in 1957, two years after I'd come down, a friend of mine called Clive Debovitz rang me and said

M k1)1,,LEINE

YITOR

/ ROBBIE ROBBIEGRIFFITHS, GRIFFITHS,AN AN INTERVIEW INTERVIEW WITH WITH

Lord Heseltine

`I've got an idea, I'd like your advice...' solutions...the disaster is to come I got in a cab, and he showed me the to colleagues and say 'these are the project. He'd been offered Oxford options': well, colleagues haven't got University What's What fa magazine time to work out what they want for Oxford students with a careers to do in those circumstances. They advice insert}, and asked me 'What want someone to come and say 'these do you think?' are the options, and this is what I recommend.'

I said, 'It's no good... give [the careers' booklet} free to every last PMB: In ministries, how does an year undergraduate in the country.' issue arise and how does it get dealt He thought it a good idea, and asked with? me to join him — and that's how I got into publishing. The forty pages LH: It comes up like a snowstorm of advertising that he showed me from the bottom. You're at the head [made} £1,600 in 1957, which became of a pyramid, and the snowstorm of £64,000 two years later. That was in paperwork comes all the way up to 1959, and you can multiply by thirty you; you can't beat it. You can sit to get today's value — it was a fantastic there and do as much as you like, project. And we ran that, and then clear your desk, and before you've developed into other publications. even stood up there will be a new file, or pile of files, and it never gets You can see the extraordinary any smaller. That's the extraordinary moments of luck — with the Ei,000, science of running a department, and thinking 'I'm not going to waste it, the department machine makes sure I'm going to buy a boarding house'; that there's always enough work to `don't give it to first years, give it to keep the Secretary of State busy, but finalists...' I had no plan. never so much that they can't cope...

You never get to the end of the pile.

On the political game PMB: Following on from your PMB: My mother asked me to ask business interests - do you think this one. She reminded me that Mrs. there's intrinsic merit to doing other Thatcher once said in a magazine work like that before going into interview that 'there is no such thing politics? as society', and David Cameron talks about the 'Big Society'. What is your LH: Yes, I feel that very strongly..I view on this thing, 'society'? think that the House of Commons needs to be widely representative of LH: I'm a one-nation Conservative. contemporary society; people who This has been the abiding strength come with experience add a new of the party, that they have seen dimension, which is very important. an obligation and responsibility, particularly of the more privileged, PMB: Could you tell us what a for society at large. And I strongly Cabinet meeting is actually like? believe it, that philosophy.

My problem is looking back... I can't remember which side I was on [laughs}'. I probably was fon the side of inclusion}, but I can't remember.

The row then was all about Cyprus.

There were huge rows about Cyprus.

Do you know about the row about Cyprus?

PMB: No, I'm not aware of the row about Cyprus...fit was later discovered that there was great debate about giving the colony independent status in 1960, but only after nearly four-hundred British soldiers lost their lives there in the late 195os}...so the rows don't change in politics?

LH: The subject of the rows change, but the nature of them doesn't. [The Commons} is now more widely perceived because of television and radio. But the behaviour is no better and no worse than it ever was. Indeed, [to illustrate this} the width of the debating chamber is determined by two swords' lengths so that you couldn't draw swords and hurt each other — that's the width of the middle of the chamber.

PMB: What do you think of the new film, The Iron Lady? Do people ask before portraying you?

LH: Oh, certainly not. I've had not contact with anyone from the film. I think it's very distasteful (though I've not seen it). Making a film about an elderly lady in advanced and declining years is distasteful.

PMB: And finally, what advice would you give to students?

LH: It's a very pressured life...at the And some final questions LH: I had a plan, but I didn't stick top of politics, the only problems PMB: There have been great changes to it. My advice is very simple: do you ever face are those that no for the university and the country what you enjoy, do something that one else can solve. They're usually during your career; Pembroke means you look forward to Monday controversial and, whichever decision deciding to let women attend the mornings. There's only one life, you make, there will be a considerable college, even. Could you tell us about and it's not a rehearsal. To have the constituency of people who disagree, what's changed in politics? excitement of looking forward to and will be disappointed — that's your what you are going to do, seems to job, to make decisions, and you have LH: When I was President of the me, in terms of the satisfaction of to be good at making decisions. Once Union, we had a huge debate about your life, hugely important. I've you get into the cabinet, you're in the letting women in, and I remember always done what I enjoyed doing. business of coming to colleagues with being very deeply involved in it.

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THE PEMBROKE THE PEMBROKEBULLFROG BULLFROG

The power is in the people and the politics we address JAMES SAAD

In the past year, the Bullfrog has miles west of Manhattan. I spent hop culture so appealing? Why do played host to a lively discussion many of my teenage years in New they continue to grow and endure, about the influence of hip hop York City clubs listening to rap with each passing year attracting culture and the widespread effect music, attending open mic battles, new fans from all over the world? it has on modern society Charlie and immersing myself in hip hop McCann kicked things off in culture. The terms hip hop and rap Despite their rugged exteriors Michaelmas with her insightful are often used synonymously but and harsh demeanors, hip hop article, 'The Rap Sheet', and Charlie rap is only one division of hip hop musicians often wear their hearts Coldicott continued the debate in culture, and did not evolve or exist on their sleeves. I was always Hilary term with his poignant piece in isolation from its other major attracted to the vivid mental Do You Fools Listen To Music components. There are four pillars pictures that rap artists paint.

Or Do You Just Skim Through of hip hop as outlined by Afrika With their clever word play and It?' Both authors use the London Bambaataa, an activist and true expressive use of metaphors, I summer riots of 2011 as a starting pioneer of the movement. They found something beautiful in their point, but end with somewhat are: I) MCing or rapping, 2) DJing, ugly truths. Raw lyrics bathed in opposing views. As an American 3) break dancing, and 4) graffiti the camouflage of street slang and studying abroad, I am a guest in writing. Rap music takes its roots were disguised as rhyme, then laid this country. I was not here over from the Griots of West Africa, over retooled workings of familiar the summer to witness the riots or but in the United States it began beats with smooth melodies and speak to that effect. However, I can in the South Bronx as a product hard bass lines. It felt like the share my own personal experiences of streetwise ingenuity and is a artists were speaking directly to and opinions, and perhaps offer a slick form of poetry born of urban me. Jay-Z would say 'I put my heart different perspective. Ultimately poverty. Hip hop culture took form in to this, this is much more than I'll probably raise more questions during the seventies with artists marketed music, the reason I got than I answer, but my goal isn't to like Grand Master Flash, Lovebug a market to do this is people going tell readers what's right or wrong. Starski, Kurtis Blow, The Sugar through pain I'm just walking them Rather I hope to get people Hill Gang, and RUN DMC. Rap through it'; and suddenly, I wasn't thinking about the issues and allow was an alternative to the popular alone. There was someone else out them the freedom to make up their disco music of that era, compelling there who not only felt how I did, own minds. and original enough to outlast but could articulate it beautifully disco and propel itself to the multi in verse. Don't get me wrong: I was born and raised in New billion-dollar industry it is today. the specifics of our lives may have Jersey, in a small town about twelve But what makes rap music and hip been different but what we shared THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

11

JAMES SAAD,

The power is in the people

was a sense of hopelessness and desire to change. It's the ultimate tale of underdogs everywhere.

The more I listened, the more I came to realize that these rappers weren't just poets - they were also story tellers. Their stories weren't always pretty; in fact, they were often quite dirty and violent but they were honest and surprisingly accurate. The mere fact that I was listening to them meant that there was hope and that change was in fact possible. I think a lot of people relate to rap in that way, and it's through that common bond that many friendships are forged.

I was sixteen when my mother died of cancer. The following year I went off to college. I was confused and angry and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Eventually, I dropped out and blamed everyone but myself for my discontent. As time went on, my situation worsened and that sense of hopelessness within me grew. All I had was my music, but through that I came to meet other people who shared my passions and not only understood me but could relate, because their situations weren't much different. Around that time, the East Coast/West Coast rivalry began to really heat up, and Biggie and Tupac were at the center of it. I loved Big's style his flow, his delivery, and his swagger, but I related to Pac, his passion, his anger, his sensitivity, and his struggle. When he died I knew the world had lost an amazing talent. Even though he's gone his music and lyrics continue to inspire.

The World'. `With all this extra stressing The question I wonder is after death, after my last breath When will I finally get to rest?

Through this suppression They punish the people that's asking questions And those that possess, steal from the ones without possessions The message I stress: to make it stop study your lessons Don't settle for less even a genius asks questions Be grateful for blessings Don't ever change, keep your essence The power is in the people and politics we address Always do your best, don't let the pressure make you panic And when you get stranded And things don't go the way you planned it Dreaming of riches, in a position of making a difference Politicians and hypocrites, they don't wanna listen.'

Of course, hip hop is not without controversy; just pick up a newspaper or turn on the news. It seems the more popular the genre becomes, the more criticism it receives. Everyone from David Cameron to Al Gore has taken issue with rap's lyrical content and the messages it carries. In the 199os, prominent civil rights activists C. Delores Tucker and Reverend Calvin Butts (Pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and President of the State University of New York College at Old Westbury) Eventually, I found my sense of took aim at gangsta rap, claiming purpose. I went back to school the lyrics were misogynistic and and finished my degree. Now, here threatened the moral foundation I am at Oxford working on my of the black community They second Master's. I no longer feel linked rap music to black-on-black that sense of hopelessness, and I violence, and called for a more still find inspiration in rap. I can positive portrayal of the black say with certainty that hip hop has community in the music industry. had a positive effect on my life, Are rap artists being irresponsible and in spite of the fallout I'll bet I'm not alone. One of my favorite with their lyrics? Perhaps, but rap Tupac verses is from 'Me Against music is not a fad. It's a musical 12

THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

art form that has been around for decades and, while all art is open to criticism and scrutiny, it should never be censored. Filmmakers too are often criticized for their depictions of sex and violence.

Quentin Tarantino is a perfect example of this. Once, at the Montreal World Film Festival, a critic reminded him of the fivehundred murders committed annually in Washington DC alone, then asked him about the ramifications of movie violence.

Tarantino replied that an artist shouldn't have to worry about the consequences of his art: 'If I start thinking about society or what one person is doing to someone else, I have on handcuffs.' This wasn't the first time such issues had been raised, but the question remains: does art imitate life or is life imitating art?

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was also fascinated by depictions of violence. In particular, he was intrigued by the excessive cruelty that lies at the heart of every Greek tragedy. He wondered why artists so compulsively depict the ugly and painful as well as the beautiful, and what it is about art that allows us to find all such depictions pleasurable. He goes on to identify a dialectical struggle between two opposing forces: order and chaos.

Nietzsche argued that some degree of balance between the two should be secured in all art. Perhaps then, the question worth asking is: are rappers' chaotic excesses creative, and are they tempered or balanced by ordered restraints and redemptive manifestations of beauty?

Regardless of one's position in the debate, it remains a discussion worth having. The fact that it continued throughout the academic year and has motivated three separate authors to make contributions to this magazine evidences this point.

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TRINITY TALKING

Gender discrimination is dead. No longer does your gender affect the choices in your life, disadvantage you from your peers, prevent access to life's opportunities. Feminism is an ideology long since gone. The move for equality is over, and the world, society, is in balance.

Women and men do not exist. Instead, people are seen for what they truly are, not what nature decided to put between their legs. Mothers and fathers share the same responsibilities, and expectations of the bread-winning macho man, and the caring stay-at-home woman have turned to dust. High-flying females sit at the head of board meetings, in plush city offices. Men in aprons clean the oven, and hoover the stairs.

Governments are led by women as frequently as by men. Objectification in the media is a thing of the past. Everyone retires at an same age, having had identical choices and options since the day they were born. One hundred percent of sexual assault and rape incidents are reported to the authorities, and lead to conviction. Employers see female staff as the qualified, able employees they are, not as baby-producing, maternity leavetaking burdens on the organisation. A boy who cries in the playground is comforted, a girl who doesn't want to wear a dress, wears trousers. 'Sluts' are 'lads', `lads' are 'sluts'. Yorkies are girl-friendly, and McCoy's are human crisps. Banter, what is banter? The patriarchal society is remembered as the misogynistic, domineering machine it was. A man walks down the street, in a skirt, and not one other shopper bats an eyelid; it doesn't even register. It is the norm. Nowadays, the only difference between a man and a woman is biology, and even then, the difference is only noted by the urinals in the male toilets.

Society has committed cold-blooded murder. Gender discrimination is dead.

Men = Women, Women = Men. If only.

ANONYMOUS

We live in a world where, four decades after the so-called Equal Pay Act, women earn on average seventeen percent less than men for work of the equivalent value; where there is a distinct lack of female presence in positions of leadership and decision-making, with just nineteen percent of the world's parliamentary seats and a mere twelve percent of the UK's boardroom seats being occupied by women; where one in five women will be a victim of rape in her lifetime, and one in four a victim of domestic violence. On a more global scale, forty-one million girls are still denied a primary education, and sixty-four percent of the world's illiterate adults are women.

Such staggering statistics can be hard to take in as a student at Oxford. But even here within the Oxford bubble, gender discrimination is a shocking reality: there are only six female JCR presidents, compared to twenty-five male presidents; only one tenth of professors at Oxford are female; only twenty-five percent of women go on to do post-graduate study, compared to thirty-eight percent of men; and just six months after graduating from Oxford, the pay gap is twenty-seven percent between men and women. Despite making up half of the world's population, it is clear that women do not have the same opportunities as their male counterparts. The situation may be changing, but it is a slow process. Certainly at the moment we are a long way from being able to say that gender discrimination is dead.

ALEX POYNTER

`Gender discrimination' is such a temptingly evocative way of phrasing the issue.

It brings back images of lynch mobs gathered in white drapery, or processions of `shower'-bound Jews at Dachau. The reality of the situation is much gentler, with a socio-economic focus that, whilst being about as dead as Lord Lucan, cannot continue to be the fire and brimstone subject that it once was. Perhaps women need a bigger platform to stand on. What a shame, then, that society thinks that all carpenters are men.

NICK HILTON

The notion that gender discrimination is dead is false. Gender is a socially constructed identity which, though separate from biological sex, is often used as a basis to discriminate between individuals. Discrimination refers to the distinguishing of one thing from another, and discrimination on the basis of gender is a huge area of debate; but more narrowly the supposition that it has in some way 'died' or 'been killed' in the UK is flawed.

Rather than thinking about statistics of, say, the rates of pay and career progress in a specific profession for men versus women, gender discrimination can be shown to exist ideologically, in the fabric of British or more broadly Western culture. Some would argue that in the twenty-first century we all want equality; no-one in their right mind would discriminate on the basis of gender. In reality, the legacy of the fewer liberties that women have historically held in Britain compared to men is very much alive today.

Employment, for instance, is a sphere of an individual's life in which much gender discrimination is still encountered, despite legislation, discrimination which in many ways hearkens back to retained social attitudes which associate gender characteristics with one biological sex, the male, and elevate it above the female.

To take a common example: few students at Pembroke would consider the female nurse/male doctor dichotomy relevant in Britain today,,but more tellingly the field of surgery is highly male-dominated, indicative of attitudes in society which lead to discrimination and inequality based on sex. It is a fact that boards of directors are male-dominated: surely, in a world in which gender equality is 'dead', this would not be the case. Instead, archaic ideas of 'masculine' and 'feminine' characteristics live on, the discrimination between socially constructed genders that we see in the historic oppression of women (and men) into defined social roles far from levelled into equality.

These attitudes are, importantly, very difficult to shake. Although discussing the links between gender discrimination and language have to be brief here, these same discriminatory attitudes can be seen linguistically: take for instance insults, of which many are specifically orientated to gender characteristics associated with the female, for example 'slut', 'bitch', or 'dog'.

On an entirely different note, the very mechanisms through which we think of 'gender' discriminate by nature. Although the extent to which we can separate biological sexual characteristics and those which originate in socially constructed gender is highly contested, even defining which make up those in a 'gender' without being self-aware is discrimination, something which it is nearly impossible to get away from in our mode of thinking today.

Claiming that women belong in the kitchen and men in the workplace seems ridiculous, but certain other assumptions (for instance the idea that being female means being better at arts subjects and worse at science) are harder to shake. Clearly, whether concretely in various areas of social life, or abstractly in cultural attitudes and perceptions, gender discrimination is not dead. The idea that there are two genders which possess specific characteristics is inherent in our thinking even today. Despite advances in gender theory or movements such as feminism, many of the assumptions by which we distinguish between individuals on the basis of gender continue to exist.

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An Interview with Pdte,4 air& HARRIET BAKER When Paula Claire catches sight of the volume of her poetry I have in my bag, she cranes towards me immediately, `Where did you get that? It's very rare.'

I explain that I came across it purely by chance, that a friend of mine affiliated with a priest on St John's Street had been given a box of books, dedicated to the Church by an elderly lady who had recently died. She takes the copy from my hands, and traces the writing on its cover; 'To Gilly and David', it says in a feminine slant. I notice her eyes have welled with tears. She handles the worn yellow booklet familiarly; they are her early poems, written when she was teaching in Greece after her graduation from University College London in the 1960s. 'Gilly was a dear friend', she says slowly. 'She died very suddenly. I gave her this when I had them published on my return from Greece.' I say that she must keep the booklet, but she answers, 'No, of course not. It is yours.

But this coincidence is too beautiful. I believe in patterns, like in my poetry; that Gilly has come in with you today to say hello to me. I am very moved.'

This is my first impression of Paula Claire, self-proclaimed visual poet and professor of poetry, a woman who has dedicated fifty years of her life to the art. Her voice is striking, full and clear; her long hair is tied up in a bun.

She truly occupies the space in which we sit, a blue room decorated with large canvases, mirrors, and stained glass. Claire creates visual pieces on a verbal basis; abstract shapes and forms, expressed through various mediums.

She performs alongside her pieces, and experiments with 'clusters of words', improvisation, and audience participation. She is a figure of some debate, having entered into the bidding for the Oxford Professor of Poetry this year only to withdraw her application on the grounds that both the press and the University treated her disrespectfully.

Claire ran alongside Geoffrey Hill, and it seems that the unusual tenor of her

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work was ridiculed both by the press, and, she tells me, the University. She shows me her application booklet, outlining her main aims if she secured the position: to 'provide a comprehensive up-date on the great array of innovative twentieth-century poetic forms showing their relationship with time-honoured styles'; to 'show the revitalization of the tradition of the group speaking of poetry'; and to `indicate the uses of modern technology aural and visual in the service of poetry.' `I didn't enter it to win', she tells me, `but I withdrew because I was treated without the proper respect, simply because I didn't fit in. I was treated like an outsider.' By this, she tells me she means the club-like aspect of the bidding process and its various publicity outlets: The proviso smacks of the old boys' club'. Claire tells me that there were several factors that led to her decision to withdraw First was the release date of the applications to the press. Geoffrey Hill's application was released through the Oxford Gazette before the end of the University term, whilst Claire's application was processed much later, and therefore missed the initial wave of publicity Secondly, it was the frustration she felt at the English Department's deliverance of miniature tag-lines to accompany each applicant in the press releases. Hill received a seventeen-word abstract to stand by his name, whilst Claire received only three, which were, Artist and performer'. This, she felt, was a serious failure on the part of the department, saying 'they omitted the most crucial word when describing my profession'. Yet it was the implications of doing so that proved the most injurious, as 'the description rendered me inapt for the professorship.' It was, she maintains, a matter of equality and respect; 'I was refused the label 'poet'.

As a woman, they pushed me into the role of an interpreter, a passive role.'

Gender seems to be at the heart of the

debate concerning the professorship. In 2009, Ruth Padel was the first woman to be elected to the position, though she resigned after nine days at the centre of a media scandal. The position has been running since 1708, the elected remaining in position for a five-year term. During this time, W. H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, and Christopher Ricks have held the professorship yet Claire argues it is time for a woman to claim the role, in order to break down the University's hindering reliance on tradition and patriarchy. She directs me to an article by Mary Ann Sieghart, who has joined a brigade of journalists asking questions such as 'Is Oxford sexist?' Claire is far from making such claims, yet it seems that the episode has left her applauding the media backlash against the University. She argues that the English Department of the University is too traditional: An institution or a department is only as good as its open-mindedness.

I was not taken seriously because of the exploratory tenor of my work.'

Since her withdrawal, Claire informs me that her Candidate Statement has been deleted from the OPP Archive on the English Department website: `Deleting material from the online Archive is not what an educational establishment should be doing. My statement was part of the history of the OPP bid and my resigning does not entitle them to expunge all trace of my Statement. This means that they don't want anyone to know what I stood for.'

I ask Claire about the origins of visual poetry, of whether a poem can really be contained within an image before simply merging into visual art itself. She explains it is to do with origins, and the breaking of structural boundaries, since `visual poetry has arisen from the study of the ancient traditions of pattern poetry; it is drawn from impulse alone, the human desire for self-expression through, initially, shapes and forms.

The imagery of a visual poem is

derived from one word, its essence.'

Her `Scorchmark Poems' of the 197os demonstrate this basic impulsive desire for self-expression, achieved by the use of a soldering iron on cartridge paper.

A blackened firework looms from the white, Claire's response to the sociocultural obsession with nuclear power throughout the 197os, 'huge energies', as she describes them. Energy is the concept; she takes William Blake's assertion that 'Energy is eternal delight' and deeply questions the statement. The scorch marks are born of curiosity, and yet, ultimately, fear.

Claire's work has received mixed reviews. Although she has dedicated fifty years to poetry, it seems that she has spent most of this time defending her creations from critics. Flicking through catalogues of her early work, visual poems are interspersed with texts transcribed from interviews, in which Claire declares 'I am a poet.'

She believes in the open-mindedness of poetry, comparing herself to Gerard Manley Hopkins, her literary father.

She believes resolutely in the power of words outside of the structural boundary of formal poetry, in clusters of words, repetition and improvisation. `Poetry is an aural art and a communal art; poems create the stepping stones to create a community,' she says, explaining her belief in the relationship between words and music, the 'sounds and visual signs of all languages.' This aspect of her work leads her into the performative; she dedicated much of her career to working with Bob Cobbing, creating the Konkrete Canticle in the 197os, a group of exploratory poets experimenting with the audio and visual possibilities of poetry in a growing technological era. She has performed in the USA, Canada, Germany, Holland, Portugal, and Italy, where it seems she has received greater acclaim for her work

Upcoming events May zoiz, 8.00am, Hopkins' Spring Poems, Poets' Corner, Oxford Thursday 7 June, Loopm, Oxfringe, 'Poems for Many Voices', St Michael at the North Gate 3 October, Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall, London http://paulaclaire.com/

than in the UK. It is a simple matter, she says, of 'being taken seriously' for her work, an issue which lies at the heart of her decision to withdraw her application from the Oxford University Professor of Poetry bid.

Claire is resolute and indefatigable in her work. From home, she is archiving a vast collection of visual poetry collected from all over Europe and internationally, and is working on a new catalogue celebrating her fifty years of poetry. She also initiated Poet's Corner Oxford, a spot under a webcam at the crossing of Beaumont Street and St Giles: 'What I want to happen is that anyone can read poetry there at any time and arrange for friends anywhere in the world to witness them on the live webcam. No event would last longer than a few minutes -- like a group of birds appearing briefly, and then they are gone.'

THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

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AFGHANISTAN Ell CARROLL

.Art on the French Riviera RACHEL LINDSAY The French Riviera is undeniably a beautiful stretch of land. With its balmy climes, delicate sandy beaches, and lazy Mediterranean towns, it is little wonder that such an area has gained so many admirers. The coastline arches from the Italian border to the rocky Provincial coves near Marseille, encompassing glitzy St. Tropez and the charming bourgeois town of Nice. Over the past two centuries, a startling number of impressionists, post-impressionists, and other artistic schools have frequented the Cote d'Azur in order to paint landscapes and watercolours, or simply to gain artistic inspiration from this delightful part of the world.

The landscapes here are glorious and the vegetation is lush, but how did such a large number of modern artists find themselves setting up their easels in this unassuming beauty spot on the French coast?

The French Riviera was not always renowned for its artistic influence. In almost a century and a half, this part of France altered from a pathway for artists to get to Italy to a veritable artists' abode in itself. It is curious that the French Riviera transformed itself so radically in such a short space of time. Until the 185os, those who passed through the south of France rarely mentioned the sea. It was a source of fear and a symbol of dark mystery rather than evocative of joy or peace. In fact, those artists who did depict the Mediterranean tended to create landscapes of busy maritime activity in the large ports of Toulon and Marseille. Since the sea was not to be trusted, artists were more apt to portray humanity's management of it, subduing its awesome nature, reducing its scale to one of mundane, daily, fishing scenes.

Cezanne was very influential in leading a vast number of artists to the Riviera, marking its entrance into the world of art. In 187o, he took refuge in EEstaque, a sleepy fishing village next to Marseille, in order to escape conscription. He was so enthralled by the little port that he invited his impressionist friend, Renoir, to visit

on his return from Italy. The two men painted there together, producing many landscape paintings of the bay, the sea, and the rocks. Renoir said that EEstaque was 'the most beautiful port in the world'. Cezanne eventually ceased his visits to the place because of the technological progress which invaded the region, gas street lamps and then the onset of electrical lighting.

Yet these blights to the landscape did not prevent the young fauvist generation from migrating to the south, making a sort of pilgrimage in Cezanne's memory. Tauve' literally means 'wild beast'; the work of the fauvists is characterised by bright colours, abstraction, and simplification. A group of young fauvists arrived in the region in order to explore Cezanne's ideas and develop their own techniques. One of these young artists was Georges Braque. His development of the basis of cubism during his stay in the South marks again EEstaque's involvement in the history of art. Although it was Cezanne who led many of the fauvists to the Riviera, it was what they found there that caused them to stay. For many fauvists, leaving the gloomy Parisian workshops was a revelation and an exaltation. And the vibrancy of the French Riviera, of the red roofs of the houses, of the dazzling waters, suited their need for strong and vivid colours.

And as the north of the Riviera was beginning to be discovered by Cezanne and his school of fauvist followers, the Parisian, pointillist artist, Paul Signac who brought many other artists further south. Signac's pointillist art is quite distinctive, as each painting is made up of tiny dots of colours, and pointillism as an artistic school was a heavy influence on fauvism and cubism. As well as being a painter, Signac had a passion for sailing. At the close of one day's sailing around the Mediterranean coastline, he needed to find an enclosed bay to anchor his boat, and came across a charming little port known as St. Tropez. Signac was

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immediately fascinated by the light and the water of this small peninsula. So, he decided to buy a large house at the foot of the citadel, which he transformed into his workshop, and began to invite his artistic friends to share the glorious light and lapping, turquoise waves. And voila: St. Tropez became a necessary destination for all artists seeking its magical light and colour. Signac's invitees included Pierre Bonnard, Andre Derain, and Henri Matisse. Indeed Matisse, after being dazzled by the vegetation and glorious sun in Corsica, came to stay with Signac in St Tropez in the summer of 1904. He was inspired not only by his surroundings, but also by Signac's style of painting; Matisse's famous 'Luxury, Calm and Pleasure', painted in St Tropez, uses a Divisionist technique advocated by Signac himself.

This first visit to the French Riviera led to Matisse's love affair with its shores. In 1917, Matisse visited Nice in an attempt to cure his bronchitis. After his arrival, rainfall prompted an angry decision to leave. Luckily for the art world, the rain ceased and the sun broke forth on his supposedly final day in the city, delaying his departure by many weeks. From this first visit to the end of his life, Matisse spent the winter months in Nice, saying 'when I realised that I could see this light every morning, my happiness was absolute.' Matisse left a legacy of his love for the Riviera in the form of a chapel in the town of Vence, not too far from Nice. The 'Chapel of the Rosary' or The Matisse Chapel' was his self-proclaimed masterpiece; he designed its brightly coloured stained glass windows, as well as creating the stunning religious murals which decorate its interior. The calming, soothing, restorative nature of the region was a revelation for Matisse.

Another artist who spent the last days of his life on the French Riviera was Picasso, who chose a large villa in a gorgeous medieval village not far from Cannes. This village, Mougins, also attracted many celebrities of the day, including

Jean Cocteau, Winston Churchill, and Edith Piaf. From his arrival in 1961 until the final days of his life, Picasso furiously accelerated his production here, and his creations also become noticeably more Mediterranean due to the intensity of the colours and all-pervasive nature of the light. Picasso was not simply a painter at the time but a celebrity too, and by this point in history, the French Riviera had simply been flooded by so many talented artists that it was a very fashionable as well as a very relaxing place to spend one's last years.

What is curious about all the artists mentioned is that not one of them was born or spent their childhood in the region.

The Riviera was, for each of these artists, not a home, but a retreat. A place for Cezanne to escape involvement in the war, a place for Signac to relax between voyages, a place for Picasso and Matisse to recover from illness, and a place also to live out the last days of life in peace. When the story is explained, it appears to be not so surprising that so many great artists painted and stayed in the region. The major icons of impressionism, fauvism, and post-impressionism were, of course, friends and acquaintances, and it is through their network (as well as a little chance) that such a large number of these artists were given the chance to visit and paint the French Riviera. Along with the artistic centre of Paris, it became a fashionable area for the modern French artist; the coastal village of Cagnes-sur-mer was even nicknamed 'The Montmartre of the Cote d'Azur'. And yet these peaceful bays also gave an artist the opportunity to escape the hustle and bustle of Parisian life. Having spent the past five months on the French Riviera, I have had the opportunity to discover and enjoy its beauty for myself. My stay in the region has really helped to bring the paintings to life and I have come to understand the intangible artistic attraction to this charming part of the world.

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Writing Places ANNE BRINK It used to be Saturday mornings at the West 97th Street Whole Foods, one block from Central Park West. My weekly writing date, that is. The market opened every day at 8:oo AM sharp, desolate but for the few bakers stocking the cases near the door. The average customer wouldn't stumble in for a few hours yet, recovering from a late night out in the city.

I admit that Whole Foods is a bit of a chichi place for a writer, especially in a city like New York. If I were really cool, I would, for starters, have woken up five hours later.

Then I would have headed to some independent coffee shop downtown where the barista boasted about how their beans were roasted on location, the ham in the breakfast sandwiches sourced from across the bridge ("You know, from those two brothers in Brooklyn who butcher it themselves in their apartment"). I knew all this and I didn't care. The 97th Street Whole Foods had everything I wanted and nothing I needed: soy lattes and oatmeal-date scones. Lemon water. A quiet cafe space and free Wi-Fi access.

It was here that I wrote all of my university assignments for creative writing classes like Fiction and Personal Narrative and Essay Writing. It was also here that I completed the majority of my Italian translations with the help of an online dictionary. Saturday mornings at Whole Foods was a precise balance of creative productivity and waffling, with a side of coffee.

I had lots of friends here as well. I didn't actually know most of them, but we were on a face-name basis. There was the group of Columbia medical school students who stumbled in around noon. The pregnant Dutch woman who always ate a blueberry muffin and read a novel and watched my laptop for me if I needed to get up. I did the same for her. There were the parents with babies who came in for a late lunch.

My friend Marion worked for CBS. I met her because she saw the 'N sticker on my laptop, the one from the theatre in Minneapolis. She was from Minneapolis too and had also studied English at university. Sometimes we talked about literary things, but mostly we talked about shallow things. Our conversations often went like this: Marion: How is your essay coming along?

Me: Okay, I guess.

Marion: Well, I saw Woody Allen with his wife-child walking in Central Park yesterday. What a creep.

Me: Cool.

Every Saturday morning for nine months I went here to write, give or take the weekend away, the trip up to Boston. The stupid market was even open when

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Columbia canceled all classes for a few days last winter due to 'blizzard-like' conditions. The professors couldn't get in from New Jersey, but you could still go anywhere you wanted in the city on the subway. I chose to go to Whole Foods and write on each of those snow days.

The importance of Saturday mornings in my schedule didn't occur to me until I decided to leave New York and spend a year studying at Oxford. Going abroad, I suddenly became aware of the fact that I would have to establish new routines, both personal and academic. I quickly realized I needed a new writing place. This prompted a series of questions: how does one find an ideal place to write? And more importantly, when we leave and go someplace else, how do we find a new one?

I decided that my new routine in Oxford would be going to the library every morning to work, specifically to the Radcliffe Camera. No more coffee and scones and Marion. If New York was the place of creative scribbling and people watching, Oxford was my chance to be a `mature student,' to browse stacks of ancient texts in my pink glasses and write in a fresh notebook each day.

I would be the definition of an English student: serious, motivated, passionate about literature.

Going to the library each morning may seem like a simple, even obvious, goal for the average English student. And yet, for someone who only went to Columbia's Butler Library to work a grand total of one time last year, it seemed a pretty reasonable goal to me. You see, I seem to have a history of adverse reactions to libraries in general, kind of like an allergy. I check out all the books I need to and leave. I get distracted by how beautiful the architecture is and start looking at the way everything is arranged inside: the tables, the old stones, the vaulted ceilings and the endless rows of books. I stare at people and make up stories about them. What college are they from? What are they studying that requires them to read about Japanese marriage rites? I like the pattern on that girl's book bag .. .

Unfortunately, the Radcliffe Camera, in all its wisdom and books, proved to be just an even grander version of Butler Library, and thus, that much more distracting.

Besides, I said to myself, I like a bit of white noise, something to remind me that I'm not alone. Soft music.

Birds chirping. Just any indication that the world isn't dead. I thought I'd make one more library attempt before retreating back into cafe life, however. So I settled into the Taylorian one afternoon with my friend Augusta, who studies anthropology at St. Hughes. The study session started out alright, but soon enough we got a little too excited about her dissertation in Tibet, and it turned out the other people in the linguistics room weren't as excited

as we were. We left our things and went on a walk outside instead.

And so I kept searching around Oxford for my perfect place to write: Turl Street Kitchen made the cut for the first few weeks of Michaelmas but turned out to possess too much white noise in all its comfy couches downstairs.

Blackwell's was suitable for a while during Hilary until the children came in with their parents around lunchtime and started throwing the pre-made sandwiches. There was always my room at Pembroke, though I tended to get distracted by my yoga mat or fall asleep on my bed.

Lately, I have been going to the Missing Bean for a few hours a day to do reading, where I have been given the name 'Soy Chai Girl' by the baristas. I'm not sure if this is an affectionate nickname, or a hint that I spend too much time and money there. Perhaps both. It is often difficult to find a table, so I end up on a stool in the corner and avoid making eye contact with hipster graduate students walking through the door, usually all too eager to have a conversation about Sanskrit or the other esoteric subject they have committed themselves to.

Finishing up my last essay for Hilary term a few weeks ago, I found myself asking: 'How has this happened? How can I be at a university like Oxford and have nowhere to write? Am I the only one?!' Perhaps I just have disciplinary problems. This is very possible. I could, in theory, go back to the Radcliffe Camera and just force myself to work. A lot of other people do this and seem to come out in one piece at the end of the day, if a bit unhappy after it all.

My friend Chloe allows herself a sip of illegally smuggled coffee in Is minute intervals. Perhaps I should trade some of my personal preferences in for the sake of work.

That is, after all, what a 'mature student' would do. But I'm afraid my Whole Foods experience has scarred me for the rest of my student career. Because when you've had the experience of a writing place where you are both creatively productive and happy (not to mention allowed to drink coffee nonstop as you sit for five hours at a time), it's a little harder to settle.

And yet, the more I contemplate finding the perfect place to write in Oxford, the more I realize that the factors which make a space ideal for a creative mind might actually have less to do with the act of writing itself and more to do with the connotations I associate with a sense of 'place'. In short, it occurred to me that our ability to be productive may have nothing to do with where we are at all; it's intensely psychological, or rather, the mindset we are in when we sit down to write that matters.

Whole Foods was an ideal place not because there was anything inherently existent within the market that made me write better. The space simply made me feel at ease

because it had giant windows overlooking the avenue, light flooding in. I was wrapped in my corner but didn't feel claustrophobic. The reality was I had once written a good essay at 97th Street and somehow got the idea into my head that in order to ever write well again, I had to go to this same place, at the same time, with the same type of coffee.

Despite advocating the importance of places (and there is a lot to be said for finding that spot you work best in), I would actually argue that productivity doesn't need to correspond to location. In reality, humans can pretty much write anywhere. Think of the times you've written in the car en route to family Christmas in another state (or county). I've written between tennis matches, in the subway and on park benches. Right now I'm writing in a coffee shop in Denver that I've never been to before (they also have soy chai). If the reality is we're capable of writing in many places, the trick then, it seems, is identifying the mindset we need to be in, the connotations of space which free us and allow us to not just write, but write well. Writing is as much visualization and the creativity to imagine ourselves producing good work as it is the place itself. It's a confidence thing, really.

I'm learning to recreate 'writing spaces' for myself in my head, wherever I may be. Whether I'm in a library or a busy cafe, I can take a deep breath and clear my thoughts, creating a blank space to begin from. I can imagine a location that makes me happy - places as seemingly contradictory as the woods of Northern Minnesota in autumn, or the skyline of New York on a warm summer's day. What is important is the connotations to the images that put me in the mindset to write well: landscapes flooded with light; places where I can be anonymous and alone with my thoughts, free of judgement; the anticipation of opportunities existent somewhere over the next hill or down the next street.

Think of it as a giant intellectual game, one where the student creates the setting and defines the rules. If we can create a clear space internally, we can write or work from anywhere externally. I tried this method out recently on a ten-hour transatlantic flight. I took my Norton edition of John Milton out of my pack and opened up a bag of blueberry licorice. I found a pen. I took a deep breath.

I imagined New York in the summer. Trees in the park.

No Rad Cam or couches or linguistic rooms. No Whole Foods, for that matter. Just light and open space. Me by myself I simply refused the outside world of the airplane to interfere with my space-- the couples mulling over their ski itineraries, the guys watching films on their iPads next to me. I could still work. I had created an ideal place in my head, and really, that's all creative writing really is, right? I pulled out my notebook and began to write.

THE PEMBROKE BI.I.LEROG

25

REVIEW FILM Black Butterflies ANNE BRINK

Release Date: March 2, 2012 (limited) Director: Paula van der Oest Black Butterflies Black Butterfliesis not a documentary, but it easily could be. It is directed by award-winning Dutch filmmaker Paula van der Oest, who, coincidentally, was born the same year her film's subject, prolific South African poet Ingrid Jonker, committed suicide. That year is 1965, and Jonker's South Africa is beautifully shot by van der Oest: pale-colored frames of blues and greys begin to blend together images of water and city, until even the interiors of the homes begin to look like the sea.

And so, a story of a woman's poetic success and subsequent mental breakdown begins. A fellow South African writer, Jack Cope, played by a quiet and precise Liam Cunningham, saves Jonker from a deathly ocean current. Jonker (Carice van Houten) thanks him by writing a poem. From this beginning, a tumultuous love affair begins, perhaps a little too quickly fully to comprehend. This pace is how the film continues to play out for the viewer.

We are invited to come into Jonker's life just as it begins to accelerate, learning that she has just left her husband in Johannesburg. 'I've left him, but he hasn't fully grasped it yet,' she tells Cope. She is always one step ahead of the other characters in the film, as well as its viewers, who attempt to run after her as best they can, but never fully catch up, never quite 'grasp' her.

Jonker is sharp and unselfconscious as well as emotionally fragile, and van Houten does well in capturing the depth of these fluctuations. As Jonker is introduced to another writer at a seaside party, she snaps, 'Why are you so short?' What is truly short, however, in Ingrid's own story, her life of prolific talent and drama cut short after thirtythree years. Jonker has been compared to American poet Sylvia Plath, and there are indeed similarities: both were in relationships with fellow writers; both lived in the 196os; and both ended their own young lives. And yet, the comparison most rings true in the film's maternal theme. Jonker's role as a mother, and her struggle to continue writing within this role, is emphasized. Shots of her daughter, Simone, permeate each scene, her gaze following her mother from room to room, hotel bed to hotel bed, a typewriter always somewhere in the peripheral.

The film is as intense externally as it is internally.

Poignant scenes of apartheid resound, carefully woven into the plot so as to be evident without overriding the plot of Jonker's personal struggles.

While watching her daughter swing one day at a local park near the sea, she asks a man sitting on the bench next to her why there are no black children playing there. 'They haven't been given a pass,' he replies; that is, a pass to be in the 'white' part of town.

The film's political undertones are active, most notably in the clashing views between the liberal Jonker and her conservative father, who is a representative in the South African Parliament.

And yet, the film still presents itself as a feminist manifesto in its most accurate political description.

Even as Jonker witnesses the death of a child in street protests and cries to Jack, 'I can't get that child out of my head,' the viewer feels that it is her own inner child which she cannot get out of her head: the turbulent relationship with her father, her struggle to take care of her daughter in her declining mental state, and the small voice as a writer she is trying to get out and make large.

As the film progresses, Ingrid becomes constantly manic, as if she hasn't slept for more than two hours at a time in years. She writes on the walls of her childhood bedroom when she is thrown out of her apartment, muttering the poetic phrases aloud as she scribbles, like an odd sort of artist's schizophrenia. Van der Oest captures these scenes perfectly again, illuminating the words on the wall with pale light and casting Jonker herself, fittingly, in shadow. It is the words which remain exposed.

Just as the film begins with sea, so it ends with it, though this time without a happy resolution. The man who spoke to Ingrid at the park watches her walk down the pier in the middle of a storm, and asks if she's okay. She doesn't respond but walks, The Awakening, Awakening,into in the style of Kate Chopin's The the sea. It is as if Jonker has been denied her own feminine 'pass' to exist in this world. Her body cannot be saved this time.

REVIEW STAGE Hamlet

This production of Hamlet, Hamlet, put on in the depths of Blackwell's famous Norrington room by The Factory, a group of actors attached to the innovative Creation Theatre, was a definite success, one of the best offerings from Oxford drama last term. Despite having seen the group perform a brilliant Dr Faustus Faustus last year, the challenge of an immersive adaptation of Hamlet Hamlet seemed risky, but paid off.

JOE NICHOLS() \

The concept of The Factory is simple, but immensely challenging: The Factory and Creation Theatre an extract from the company's manifesto declares that 'theatre's Blackwell's Bookshop, Oxford very essence as an art form is in its liveness,...too many decisions March 2012 and too much production can kill the spontaneity necessary to fullfil its potential.' Indeed, fluidity is the key component of this Hamlet: audience members (myself included) assigned roles to actors Hamlet: arbitrarily, through games of rock-paper-scissors, and all props used onstage were those brought by us on the night. Still, the invisible direction of Tim Carroll and his team has to be praised for the sheer confidence and skill with which the actors embraced these challenges.

There's something truly exciting in the breaking down of the stage/ audience divide which The Factory embraces in this production, evoking a party atmosphere from the minute the spectators file in through the bookshelves: the infectious joie-de-vivre joie-de-vivre of the players had us grinning from the outset, and the performance becomes reciprocal, an experiment in which everyone in the room participates.

Where possible, the actors immerse audience members in the action directly - I and another were brought to the edges of the stage to illustrate, hilariously, Hamlet's damning comparison of Claudius and his father - and, although sometimes a little strained, this added an adrenaline rush to the production which is often needed in longer plays. It is the actors themselves who deserve the most commendation here: Marianne Oldham's allocation of Hamlet worked excellently, her confident assuming of the character at a whim instilling a sense of wonder at the work that goes in to ensure that individual players can assume, and master, any role from Shakespeare's play.

The combination of the astounding creativity of the performers alongside fluent characterisation was a high point of the play, the only noticeable slips being in one or two of Madeleine Highland's lines as Horatio. Nevertheless, this failed to break the spell of the production.

The flexibility and changeability of this night's play (and doubtless the entire run) embodies a throwback to the original staging conditions of Hamlet: Shakespeare's Globe. In the twenty-first century, we are used Hamlet: to theatres in which the action is meticulously choreographed and controlled, but the stage environment for which Shakespeare's play was conceived and in which it was first performed invited the sort of flexibility that The Factory embraces. The opportunity to stand as a `groundling' next to the stage in Blackwells again recaptures the Globe, a viewing position prized in the Jacobean theatre for its proximity to the surround stage (at points, yes, the leg cramp made me regret purchasing the standing ticket mid-essay crisis, but the overall effect is worth it).

J um. AA v i 101 101

Sometimes, admittedly, the lack of the infrastructure of production in this performance allowed the actors to take things too far: the appearance of the old Hamlet in Act I jarred against my expectations of the scene, and the closing fight between Hamlet and Laertes in Act 5 became more comic than an intense fight for life. Despite these nags, which are undoubtedly a product of over-familiarity with Hamlet, Hamlet, The Factory's production did very well. An exuberant performance from start to finish which exhibited astonishing skill on the part of the cast, this Hamlet Hamlet captured the true spirit of the Shakespearean stage: a daring theatrical experiment that proved a success.

REVIEW REVIEW OF AN AIWI.FRE STOTTOR

amazon

I like books. A lot. I don't just mean that I love reading; I mean that I love actual, physical books. I'm the kind of person who unashamedly judges books by their covers, who buys a new copy of something they already own purely because it's in a different edition, particularly if it's a book I love.

So when I was given a Kindle for Christmas, I was wary. This isn't a book!

It's so thin, it's got weird buttons, won't the screen be all horrible and shiny?

You can't write in the margins, use a photo as a bookmark, there's no nice cover, you can't flick through the pages.

I have to admit, though, that I have become quite attached to King Kindle (my brother named it). The screen isn't too shiny; it's actually incredibly easy to read on. You can put pdfs of articles on there, which saves me lugging my laptop to the library all the time. You can carry thousands of books around to switch between, without needing Mary Poppins' handbag. The battery seems never to run out, and you can fiddle about making categories and changing

fonts. You might not be able to write in the margins, but you can (laboriously) make annotations or mark particular quotations. All very novel.

grown to like the Kindle, in spite of my initial instinctive aversion to the thing.

I like that you can get a new book instantly for not very much money; it's useful, and light, and quite fun.

But it's still not really a book (or books).

Kindles have their benefits; for one thing, all of Shakespeare's plays take up a lot less space in electronic form. But What I also like about the Kindle is once the novelty of it wears off, there's that the books you buy are so much cheaper. Hundreds of old classics are something that just not quite right actually free, because of out-dated about it. You can't flick through to copyright, and I bought the entire your favourite part, have a beautifullyworks of Dickens for less than a coloured cover, or lend a book to a pound; far kinder to my overdraft than friend (unless they have a Kindle, in hard copies. Whether I will ever read which case enjoy — for a thirty-day every Dickens' novel on it is debatable. lending period). I've only actually Likewise, The The Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Dictionary, managed to get through two whole Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair, and Les Les Miserables Miserables(amongst books on it, and am currently stuck very many others) remain as yet sixty-seven percent of the way through Copperfield.The files on a Kindle unopened. But they were were free. As well, David Copperfield. are too clean, too new, too electronic; you can subscribe to daily newspapers, a real book has a history, and a value of which works well. its own as a physical object. The Kindle One thing does annoy me about the is something you use, something you Kindle: you can never really switch read on, or with. It works brilliantly, it off. Apparently, the ever-present and has rekindled my love for books screensaver doesn't use up battery as stories, reminding me that you don't power (something to do with magnetic need a fancy cover for a good story. But fields), but I still don't see the point personally, I'm happier with my mum's Copperfieldin my bag — of it. Apart from this, though, I have tattered David Copperfield at least it has some substance.

POETRY ' !,l v. \\ \i-\ GREEN 1 \\ ,( PERFECT PERFECT MIKE KALISCII

The title poem maps the terrain that much of the collection will occupy: a 'lapsed geography'; an 'unarticled world'; `rooms somehow always at sea'.

If this seems an indefinite, unnavigable locale through which to travel, we should be reminded that Greenlaw is striving for the moment, as she put it in a recent interview, when `things fall into place', whilst knowing this moment is never as stable as it seems. This 'moment' is instead a 'hidden continuous' (`Superlocution), a duality of simultaneous creation and destruction, of satisfaction shadowed by disquiet: 'To move freely.../and so accumulate to one end/ while unmaking ourselves at the other/ as if it were possible to do this/without drawing an old from a new' (Joy and Difficulty'). Greenlaw's realisation is that for things to fall into place entails a disruption of what went before.

The collection thus explores that knotted interstice between past and present, worked at via a 'borrowed tense' (The Casual Perfect'). Greenlaw plays with matters

of time, and of arrival: 'Recently met, they intended to speak' (`Superlocution); Nineteen-about to be described/ and yet to meet her explanation' (`Empty Metaphor'). The notion of linear temporality is for Greenlaw, inadequate; it is impossible to have 'lived in each moment' and to have `carried nothing from/one to the next' ('Whiskey and the Scarlet Geranium'), just as it is impossible to pinpoint the `becoming of quartz or iron' (The Causal Perfect').

This state of perpetual imperfection is felt keenly by the observers in the poems. Frequently they feel locked out from perceptiveness and completion: 'She's dancing to a song you can't hear, to inner signals rather than noise./...You think you know her by that gesture/...but this is routine.' (`Silent Disco'). Such disconnect shrouds the collection, plunging several pieces into darkness in their opening lines -The End of Marriage, Song, Coleridge, Fal Estuary.

But such darkness is not terminal; even Greenlaw's images of solitary turmoil in 'Dreams of Separation'- 'The howling mansion./The hyper-dimensional wood'- hold a promise of connection: note the alliteration of 'howling' and 'hyper', of `mansion' and 'dimension' bridging the caesura. In response to the threat of the lonesome dark, Greenlaw posits 'A Theory of Infinite Proximity', one in which the light of love is 'more than space and time'. The collection thus resounds with hard-fought, hard-thought hope.

REVIEW

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Madonna's MDNA has been on the horizon for quite a while now. Give Me All Your Luvin' was released way back at the beginning of February, and Girl Gone Wild appeared in March; her fans have been waiting a long time. But instead of the sun now rising, we find that Madge's new album is stuck in some kind of bizarre twilight. Clearly, she's not ready to surrender to the darkness just yet, but the innovation that characterised her former works such as Papa Don't Preach and Vogue is nowhere to be found.

Based on its producers, songwriters, and collaborators, the album looks very impressive. After a decade long absence, she has teamed up with William Orbit (who has worked with the likes of Robbie 'Williams, All Saints, and Pink), Benny Benassi, and Martin Solveig. On top of this, both Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. feature on the album. With such big names, MDNA should be brilliant... but it isn't.

There are several things which annoy me. Firstly, Minaj is used on not one but two songs — Give Me All Your

Luvin' and I Don't Give A. Whilst I enjoy the fast-paced, lexical mashup that Minaj provides, there's no variation here; her presence is used in exactly the same way. In contrast, take her appearance on David Guetta's Nothing But The Beat: whilst she raps in both Where Them Girls At and Turn Me On, her vocal range is put to good use in the latter, something that Madonna misses.

Her misspelling of Luvin' in the first single, and the underwhelming abbreviation of her name to MDNA as the album title grates on me not only because I'm an English student, but because it screams out as a woman trying to be `down with the kids'. It doesn't work, and lessens the integrity of the work. In the past, Madonna has used `hooks' from other songs in her own (such as the backing to Abba's Gimme Gimme Gimme in her 2009 hit Hung Up), but in MDNA she takes it too far. Superstar begins in exactly the same way as Martin Solveig's Hello, I'm A Sinner sounds like Beautiful Stranger, and, betraying an obvious penchant for Abba, Gimme Gimme Gimme is used once again in Love Spent. It seems that Madonna's originality and distinctiveness is waning; is 'There's only one queen and that's Madonna, bitch' really necessary at the end of I Don't Give A? Perhaps she is aware of the rivalry that Miss. Gaga and her 'little

monsters' pose, and is attempting to highlight her superiority.

Having said all that, there are some absolute gems here, which nearly outweigh all of this negativity. Whilst Some Girls and I'm Addicted look grossly clichĂŠ, they are wondrously catchy, light, and typically 8os, but infused with a notably rave-worthy tune. Likewise, I Don't Give A and Turn Up the Radio are both highly memorable. Moreover, Madonna should be praised for the amount of raw emotion that she has injected into this album. It is her first work since her split with Guy Ritchie, and the impact that it has had upon her is clear. Gang Bang contains the lines `Bang bang, shot you dead shot my lover in the head', and her desire for sexual gratification is made explicit in B-Day Song. Although it may not be to everyone's taste, her openness is praiseworthy.

Madonna's new album is curious: it almost delivers but it's not quite there. Madonna has always been a master of re-invention, but the recycling on MDNA defiles the Queen's credibility. Whilst I'm sure her fans will be pleased with this output, those who are not such avid followers will need to listen to the album at least twice through in order to appreciate it fully.

REVIEW EXHIBITION

Lucian Freud: Portraits 11 11iRIET BAKER The National Portrait Gallery, February - May 2012 Lucian Freud famously said, 'What do I ask of a painting?

I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.' To stand before his portraits is to affirm Freud in his very belief of what a painting should be. The exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery Lucian Freud• Portraits, which opened after the artist's death in July 2011, displays a vast body of Freud's works, revealing the artist's ability to scrutinize and realize the human form, and the extent of his genius.

The exhibition charts Freud's development from detailed portraits on a smaller scale, through to the vast and expressive canvases for which he is best known. Among the first works on display, are portraits of the artist's first wife, Kitty Garman, whom he often painted with animals, a juxtaposition that tends to the quiet surrealism of his earlier works. As in Girl with a kitten, 1947, Kitty's features acquire a feline expression, mirroring the kitten, which gazes directly at the viewer. Kitty's gaze is directed away; she is remote, somewhat vulnerable and pale. In another work, Girl with a white dog 1952, Kitty gazes directly, baring one of her breasts from beneath a green bathrobe, the dog in repose across her leg. The earlier works are meticulously detailed through the use of fine brushes, yet there is an awkwardness about them; an absence of lighting, coupled with unnatural juxtapositions of subject, the subjects seem to be alert and yet on edge. This psychological intensity of subject is something that would carry forward to Freud's latest works; it would be something that, in part, earned him his fame.

Freud's nudes are his most recognizable works. They are honest to the point of being discomforting; depicting flesh

Girl with a kitten, 1947 Photo: Courtesy of the Lucian Freud Archive

in a style that Freud himself argued was 'visually aggressive.'

From the 196os onwards, Freud painted large-scale nudes, depicting skin tones in deeply saturated hues, and flesh with impressive brush strokes. The evolution in his style was due in part to the materials he chose to use: coarse, hogs-hair brushes, and a granular pigment called Cremnitz White, a paint he then reserved for skin tone. A single portrait encompasses both translucent pale hues, drawing the eye to the fragile nature of the human form, and also vibrant areas of dark red, bringing to life the muscles and blood of the sitter. Through the technique of impasto (the layering of thick paint) Freud's works achieve a tactile element, the sitter's flesh raised above the canvas, carved and moulded into the contours of the human form. These canvases are vast and their effect on the viewer immediate; standing before Rose, 1978, a nude portrait of his daughter, is to witness the psychological intimacy of the moment between artist and sitter. It is an enduring relationship, one born from long hours of patience and labour from both participants, over the course of the painting's creation. Amongst his later canvases are the nudes of Sue Tilley, a benefits supervisor with whom Freud worked repeatedly. The fame of the paintings such as Benefits Supervisor Sleeping 1995, derives from Tilley's form; she is twenty stone, and Freud became fascinated with the new textures that her flesh enabled him to paint. As he argued, it is 'flesh without muscle', giving it a delicacy and translucency that does not appear in his portraits of vibrant, active figures. Alongside the paintings of Sue Tilley are a series of works of Leigh Bowery, the performance artist, who again allowed Freud to paint on a grander scale due to his physical enormity. These vast canvases dominate the final rooms of the exhibition; regarding each in turn is like turning to face a character for the second time. The effect of each series is to create enormous empathy with the figures; we see them standing and aware, then sleeping, bodies relaxed; they are posed in different fashions and lights, building a multiple picture of their whole person.

Painting for Freud was a psychological process; the successful completion of a portrait could not be achieved without a certain level of psychological penetration. He scrutinized

Relleciion 'Self-pm:ft:1U 1985 Private Collection, Ireland The Lucian Freud lrcIin Photo: Courtesy of the Lucian Freud \ rellk e

his subjects, the results visibly evident in the nature of flesh depicted on the canvas, whilst also contributing to his notoriety as a womanizer. Freud, more often that not, slept with his subjects, fathering between thirteen and forty children, some of whom he simply ignored for decades.

While these figures are extraordinary, they are the result of a process which Freud thought completely natural. In his final interview with Michael Auping, Freud commented on the necessary tension between painter and sitter, 'I need to be in a room with a person. I don't want them to be passive... There has to be a living presence for my paintings to be successful.'

Commenting further upon the nature of this tension, he said, 'If you are not particularly religious or prudish or shy, eroticism is a part of ordinary life.' The paintings are not for the viewer that is particularly prudish or shy; the figures in Naked portrait, 1972 and Naked girl asleep, 1968, invite the eye directly to the pubic area, secondly to the stark ribcage and finally to the head of the figure. Freud viewed his subjects in their most animal capacity, undressed and alert.

In a single room of the exhibition, the portraits of Freud's mother are shown, revealing a striking capacity for tenderness. Freud painted his mother several times before her death, as she deteriorated in health. Her skin tones are milder; in The painter's mother; resting 1976, she is a figure unlike his main subjects: fully clothed, passive, disengaged.

This reveals not so much his tenderness towards her, as the

problematic nature of their relationship.

Lucian Freud has become a myth. His extraordinary relationships led to a reputation that served only to exemplify the intensity and genius of his painting. The collection at the National Portrait Gallery celebrates a lifetime of devotion to portraiture, a stunning output that leaves the viewer star struck, as if they are in fact standing in front of living celebrities, so familiar and so commanding are the paintings.

Yet there is an element of Freud's work that is impenetrable; it is the intimidating nature of their genius, characteristics belonging, too, to the artist. In a fantastic documentary aired on the BBC, Lucian Freud: A Painted Life, sitters, lovers, and daughters speak of Freud 'the man', rarely divisible from Freud 'the artist'. When talking, his eyes would suddenly widen and he would stare, while the women described their nakedness under his scrutiny. Freud wasn't interested in clothes or attitudes; only the naked form beneath a person's entire cultivated exterior. In the documentary, one of the artist's daughters, the fashion designer Bella Freud, speaks of going to cut her father's hair when he was in his eighties.

She talks of his remoteness throughout her life, and that on running her hands through his hair, it is one of the first times she had ever touched him. Such a comment brings to light the underside of Freud's celebrity and genius, of total devotion to a single occupation; he was impenetrably remote.

When an accelerated film Shows us the unfolding of a flower, We receive a sublime image of offering, Of a euphoric gift to the world.

But when the same accelerated film Shows us the fast-emerging of a snail from its shellWhat an image of aggression!

What flooding fear we must feel at the very sight!

A Morality of Shells In Leonardo's notebook we find a sketch Of an oyster below a full moon.

A crab has moved to jam the shell open Like the bonnet of a car, Like a mouth at the mercy Of an indiscreet listener.

After Legende Waking to the radio I know I am in another country And that my wallet is empty Of anything that tells my occupation I do not know the hand that has left the note but I hear the sea and for a moment recognise my shell, surrendered to evening sands I am waking up and down POETRY MIKE KALISCH THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

31

Each morning I walk through the meadow, following the road to St. Margaret's Church.

It is comforting how the road remains the same, as trees live beneath the snow in winter.

December the light still slips through the thistles, illuminating the shadows in the branches.

Night comes earlier than it used to, the light and dark struggling to reconcile their differences.

In the image of the field I see myself and think if I were ever to return to the land, this is what I would like to be.

This is where I would like to rest.

The silhouette of the church appears at the end of the road, the small tower and her bells peeking through the treetops.

The stone walls tilt slightly toward the graveyard now, a cadence to her decay.

It makes no difference to the goats whether she remains.

I am reminded that we have only to rely on essential things; it is the images inside and not the structure itself we carry.

Through the windows we can see the darkness beginning to settle, and we understand that we have arrived.

ANNE BRINK ART EMIL) ALLISON ART (;OM

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Steam rises, lethargic, froze 'n movement, the sharp ai ushing silentl rom car exhausts on a quiet street. morning panter jogs: I, teeling teeling the cold through gloves.

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Our trip to the other side WILLIAM DIB I woke up on the morning of Saturday 8th October, looked at my alreadypacked bag and smiled. Today the infamous and eagerly awaited trip to Cambridge with Pembroke's football team was finally here. After my morning rituals, I put on my black suit, white shirt, and a new pair of black shoes — we'd agreed on a formal dress code in order to deliver the best impression of the College. I must confess that I hadn't had the chance to buy the college tie, but I hoped it wouldn't be a problem.

I gathered all the remaining 'necessary' items for a good trip: my camera to capture the upcoming unforgettable memories; and my cell phone, to call my loved ones and tell them about the wonderful time I was having.

The air was fresh and full of life.

Everyone was filled with enthusiasm and, at the bus station, we met the rest of Pembroke's football and rugby teams.

We boarded the coach and left our duties and worries behind us in Oxford.

The day before us was to be very memorable - but for the wrong reasons.

Watching the English landscape from my window as we journeyed, I was taken by the beauty of the moment. As a visiting student, I had only recently arrived in England — and Europe, for that matter — for the first time. Before long, we were there, on the 'other side', as it is called. Our trip was to begin with a football match against Queen's College who, according to the older members of our team, were beaten on the same trip the previous year six goals to one (or perhaps two).

As the match progressed, it became apparent that their team was much improved this year. Pembroke's talented footballers fought hard but, despite our best efforts, our rivals were gaining, and we were under pressure. Shortly after the start of the second half, it was obvious who the

winner was going to be. By the end of the match, Queen's had taken their revenge, beating us by six goals to one (or perhaps two). The match may have ended with even more goals to Queen's, but my unconscious reluctance to accept that possibility leaves me believing they stopped at six. After shaking hands with our opponents, we headed back to the coach; though the trip had begun with a defeat, our spirits remained high. We still had a warm shower, exquisite dinner, and exciting bop to look forward to.

Our first stop of the night was, unsurprisingly, a local pub. But not long after we had walked in, we walked out; one of our team members having lost his ID, so drinking out was off the cards. Eventually, after some roaming around the city, we ended up at Queen's College, and made our way to their spacious and impressive bar.

With plenty of time until our dinner reservation, we raised our glasses to a good night spent with good company.

Little did we know what awaited us.

The time came for dinner, but the noise we could hear from outside the curry house, our illustrious booking, told us that this was to be no ordinary visit. The two neighbouring tables were home to around forty intoxicated, rowdy, and aggressive Cambridge athletes were there to have a good time. 'Good', in their dictionary, had a completely different meaning to that used by normal people. Their sconcing traditions extended the usual drinking punishment to guests standing on chairs, taking off their clothes, and even putting naan bread on their heads. We Oxford ambassadors did not stoop to their level but sadly, as our glasses went up and down on the table, we became unable to resist revealing our secret to them, and finally, one of our beloved team members blurted it out: we are from Oxford.

To this day, I am still not sure exactly what happened next. All I knew was that just as a storm can begin slowly, with sporadic drops of rain, little by little we found ourselves under a waterfall of curry (yes, the food) being thrown at us across the room. With my back to the neighbouring table, I didn't suffer too much, but, unfortunately for many of my teammates, their lovely suits were soon covered in curry sauce, chicken, onions, and the like. At one point, a plant was removed from its pot and thrown into the lap of the person sitting in front of me. The humiliation was ineffable. Needless to say we did not reciprocate, but instead held on to our higher moral standards.

Retreating from that unpleasant war zone, it was time to pick ourselves up and save the night. We regrouped, and headed to our much-awaited bop at Murray Edwards College, an all-female college. How I wish I hadn't gone. A local band composed of two amateur musicians was blasting disturbing music to a large group of reserved and unconcerned girls. How we survived for forty-five minutes or so in that dull hall I don't know, and we left with the outcome of our trip at stake.

We managed to get a few taxis to drop us off at what was sold to us as a 'brilliant' club. Despite blithely believing that we could skip the long queue because of an advance booking, the bouncer denied our claims, and sent us to the back of the line where we waited. And waited. When it finally was our turn he took one look at the identification of the teammate next to me and announced that it was '21 and over only'. We couldn't believe it, but quickly realised that arguing wasn't getting us anywhere.

Our little protest was crushed. This trip was turning into a disaster and we were desperate. Morale was low, and we were walking aimlessly through the

THE PEMBROKE BULLFROG

37

town, panicking. I accompanied a couple more people to nearby club; our final hope.

It was now or never. Cash was low by this stage, and the pain of handing over £8 for the entry fee was sorely felt. My college dad, also on the team, declared in a forlorn voice: 'This better be good. Seriously.'

We arrived upstairs hoping to find the dance-floor bursting with enthusiasm, fun, and people. To my disappointment, however, the total number of people on the dance-floor did not exceed two. The rest of the (few) people sat at the bar, shooting cold looks at us. At that point I had to hold on to my college dad, who seemed about to have a mental breakdown, and guide him to a table. But as soon as we sat down, we were told that the table was reserved - like all the other empty ones. We were speechless.

The rest of our time at the club was miserable. Eventually, we left, found a taxi, and headed back to our hotel. Arriving, however, we saw that, just a few metres behind our hotel, was a club buzzing with enthusiasm. Excitement could be heard from outside, and the line was so long that we could only be sure that our salvation was inside that club. We looked at each other in disbelief. We had exhausted our feet in search of fulfilment when it was right there behind our hotel. But, after sharing some silent looks we said nothing, retreating to our rooms and closed our eyes.

Early the following afternoon, we arrived in Oxford. I thought back to my last twenty-four hours and found that I was thankful, despite all that went wrong. Thankful that the bus had not broken down on the way there or back. It had happened the previous year.

A contemplation of the similarities between modern man and the mop (after Swift's Meditation upon a Broomstick) ROBBIE GRIFFITHS

I ask you to think upon the mop, which now sits in your garage or shower room, or is perhaps tucked out of the way in an upstanding cupboard. This household necessity has a handle that is straight and true; and whose function is clear — the cleanliness of a mat floor or any other surface, of the choice of the appliance user. We observe that the mop is at any man's beck and call, and will agree to suck up whichever stain one decides is its duty to eliminate.

But think more deeply about the modern mop. A mop's handle in days of yore would have been hewn from the single tree in the forest, perhaps by a carpenter who would bring it home to the wives in his community for their grateful use.

Now this rod is manufactured out of poly-glysemate plastics in an unknown factory, perhaps miles from the area of production of its partner, the yarn (which, as any gentleman knows, does the actual cleaning). What's worse, seas separate the line-creation of thousands of British-used mops from the site of their eventual vital service in kitchens and bathrooms from Durham to Dagenham.

When the modern store-bought mop arrives at the home, it is first cleanly and new, its spongey hair fresh and magnificent, ready for its conscription, and making clearing-up look attractive. Yet before long active service in a centrally heated terrace home means a fresh mop is soon confined to regular squelches in murky liquid, and is forever ruined simply by doing its job. What is most arresting about the mop is its inherent bind — with every submergence in the dirty water that is its bounty, the mop itself becomes more physically disgusting, and blacker with every sweep, while performing its supposed duty.

Therefore, it must be becoming clear to the dear reader, the author came upon an analogy, for this is not simply a useless discourse on a household appliance. No: looking upon my vodka-stinking mop this morning I thought ah! Surely modern man is like this mop — made stupid and impersonal by modern modes of production, and sordid through constant contact with the grim sticky liquids of the 21st Century.

The modern man, like the modern mop, is in the hands of a corporate aggressor in his production and in his working life; and both in doing his duty and living in the modern world he is forever falling in moral and actual cleanliness. Once a true man would not have touched a mop, for he would have been out in the fields hunting for his family before dawn. Now a man wakes up alone with a teeming headache at half eleven, and must attend, with his mop, to the left-over chaos of the night before. Good day.

38

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