The Inkwell: Unravel

T H E

I N K W E L L

u

n

r

a

v

e

l

U

N

R

A

V

E

L

UNRAVEL

U

N

R

A

V

E

L

u

n

r

a

v

e

l

Yasmin Kanaan

An Ode to the Boys who Won’t Wear Pink Izzy Ponsford

Pg.2

Pg.4

Editor’s Note

I

Snow Cooper King

Pg.6 Aestas

Grief’s Reprise

Alexandra McFarland

Anna Philpott

Toby Appleyard

Pg.9

Pg.12

Pg.14

H a v e a Question

On ‘The Knot’

The Leash of Life

HowAbout Your Dad?

Flame Darinov

Hannah Naismith

Klara Winther

Pg.16

Pg.19

Pg.21

D u s t o f Dry Fields Samuel Oliver

I, of the Heath Armaan Verma

Harry Leeming

Pg.25

Pg.26

Pg.28

Shortcomings Eleaor Patrick

Pg.30

Floodgates at F...

Rosie HarrisonNiarawan

Pg.33

A Boy of Paper

President’s Note Jana Phillips

Pg.40

C

o

n

Artwork by Maria Park

t

e

n

t

s

1

Editor’s N o t e Yasmin Kanaan

The impact of this extraordinary 2020 will live with us forever. It is a year that marks the unravelling of a new decade – a new era. One hundred years ago, the twenties were roaring times filled with change, growth, music, and optimism. In the 21st century, we have found ourselves similarly experiencing seismic shifts that will change the course of human history. From the emergence of a worldwide pandemic to radical political developments, revolutionary social movements, and hard-hitting economic depressions; we have all undoubtedly been affected in some shape or form. This year has caused us to question our very core. To unravel our emotions, pasts, beliefs, and identities to find peace in this new and unforeseen world.

2

Amid adversity, great minds have emerged to express and immortalise these moments through the written form. The rebellious language, unconventional phrasing, engaging dialogues, powerful imagery, and personal themes present in Inkwell’s ‘Unravel’ may surprise you. It may anger you, excite you or even tear you apart. Our writers will quickly make you realise that this is not just another issue in some magazine. Instead, it is a rather exceptional memento of what the students at the University of Edinburgh have chosen to reveal, preserve, and emphasise during these strange times.

I want to thank the members of our committee for their dedication and commitment to making Inkwell a successful platform for expressing passion for writing. I can safely say that without their hard work and contribution, this issue would not have been possible. We all collectively thank our writers and all of our submitters. Without you, we would not even have anything to publish! Last but not least, I would like to thank our readers for supporting us by reading our magazine. I hope that you will love the works of our writers as much as we do.

3

An B o W o P

Ode to the y s W h o n ‘ t W e a r I N K

Izzy Ponsford

Undo your thoughts of expectations Ignore those needs for explanations.

You’re allowed to be stressed and mad and ashamed.

You’re allowed to get excited and glad and inflamed.

Don’t let that manly pretense weigh On every evening and night-time and day.

Don’t just wear grey, blue and black.

Wear green and pink, a backwards hat!

Tell me all your hopes and dreams.

Throw forth your feelings in shouts and screams.

Unknot that tightly coiled persona.

Don’t drink gross beer and warm corona.

Have a pineapple mai tai or a porn star martini, Enjoy the fun glass and dry ice all steamy.

Oh! Have a moan, a cry and a bitch!

Have a whine, stomp your feet, come on! Throw a fit!

Please allow yourself to have all this, Don’t stop yourself, for then you’ll miss Out on all life’s greatest joys.

Do not just let these boys be ‘boys’!

4

But also see what you can do To unlearn how it is you view Your mothers’ girlfriends’ sisters and aunts.

How all these women bear their hearts.

See just how much they care and give, See just how much they cannot live The lives that they might have dreamt they could.

Think on the times you might’ve stood Up for the girl who was catcalled in class, Who was touched under the desk or slapped on the ass.

That one showing strength was mannish and bossy And her who ignored you was boring and frosty.

The one who was taken away on that night , And was asked if she screamed and put up a fight?

Think of her, think of them, It is them we are all fighting for in the end.

Let us untwist this bias we’ve learnt from before It will not be easy, and it will take more Than saying ‘yeah sure I believe in that’!

More even than wearing a pink backwards hat.

It demands we listen and learn and speak , To tell our own stories and let people be weak.

If we can all come together and say ‘Hang on, no, this isn’t okay.’

Then maybe our children, Our boys and our girls, Won’t have to have to unravel their roles in this world.

5

S

n

o

w

Cooper King When the snow came back, the people rejoiced.

Here was a liquid, unpolluted, free, and cold. They all donned their jackets and ran into the streets, jobs abandoned for tins, bottles, pans and pots.

Their soles hit the dry earth in excitement, their souls lifted high, the murmur of voices drowning out the bubbling of the thick river beside their town. Dark and with the consistency of peanut butter, it was usually ignored as a source of hydration. Not without due cause, it stained the mouths of those too poor for another option and you could see them chewing, shoving fistfuls of river down their dry throats. When rain occasioned the town, they attempted to collect it, but it was never enough to satisfy long term thirst.

The buckets and pots and jars were out now, poised upwards in the centre of town as the snow began to pick up. It hit the coats with a wet slop, turning immediately to water on impact. The containers would be quick to fill.

A man lifted his face to the snow, tongue extended. When the frozen water hit his unprotected skin, it turned red. The crimson snow dripped off his face and hit the brown ground. The man

6

began to scream, cheek melting away until bone and sinew were all that remained. White burning through to the whiteness of bone. The screams echoed, the wet sound of snow accompanied by their pain and the sound of flesh dropping to the ground. The shock of the impact left them motionless, watching their friends and family melt, their exposed skin dissolve, painting the ground with splatters. A woman collapsed; bloody handprints followed her four-legged scramble back into the safety of her home. More people fell, and the helpless motionless was broken, their feet stomped and slid on the red smears, hands clawing their way next to feet to desperately pull themselves inside.

Only a single figure remained in the centre of the town.

A child, no more than five, looked around them in wonder. The splatters and smears of hands and blood on the beat dirt ground resembled a maple forest. The snow continued to fall as they peered around in misled joy. They had never seen a forest, had never seen the pointed leaves, much like the five points of the handprints. But somehow, they understood and felt the peace from it. They turned their face upwards to look at the falling snow as it harmlessly slid off their mask. A lowering of their head brought back that peaceful feeling, taking in this primal association with nature long since lost.

They had never seen anything so beautiful.

7

8

Artwork By Maria Park

I H a v e a Question Alexandra McFarland Are you comfortable, sweetheart?

Why won’t you look at me? Are you ready to listen?

Can you hear me? Is this loud enough? Shall I scream?

You think I’m overreacting? Overreacting? How dare you? How is this an overreaction? Would you rather I under react? No reaction? Would you prefer that? If I’m not allowed to overreact and you don’t want me to under react then what’s left? Would you like me to ‘through’ react? Shall we go on a bear hunt, dear? You think I’m being ridiculous? I am, aren’t I? Would you like me to be more serious? Or should I act my age?

You can never let me forget how young I am, can you? Does it give you some sick buzz to remind yourself what a child I am? Does that get you going?

Oh, you think this is cruel? Am I being too mean?

But it is the truth, is it not? Did you lie when you told me you were drawn to my vivacious youth and fresh face? You know that made you sound like an arsehole, right? Was I easy prey? Did you think you could treat me like this because I’m young and inexperienced?

No? Are you sure? Have you ever thought of me as an equal? Or have I always been your little pet?

Was I too infatuated to see it?

You think I’m being ridiculous? Isn’t it ridiculous

9

A r e

y o u

a f r a

that every time I try to tell you how I feel, you dismiss me? Isn’t it ridiculous that every time we argue you speak over me and tell me to stop being a child? Isn’t it?

How does it feel to be spoken at and not spoken to? Do you feel powerless? Do you feel scared? Do you?

Why are you nodding?

Did you ever love me? How could you treat me like this if you love me? Did you know how much I loved you?

Are you afraid of me? Why are you crying? Do you know you’re ugly when you cry?

Who is the child now, darling?

That night at your sister’s dinner party, do you remember it? Do you remember what I was wearing?

The purple silk dress... any of that familiar? No? Well, do you remember the matching purple bruise you gave me in the car ride home? Were you proud of your handiwork? Can you not remember how tightly you gripped my arm?

Do you remember any of your hissed insults and threats? Surely you remember how much I embarrassed you? My god, how much had you had to drink? Are you trying to say something? Do you think I care about your apologies now? Could you please spare me the waterworks?

Do you know how degrading it is to have to ask you for everything? Why did you want me to stop working? Was it so you could completely control me?

Was it so I would be utterly dependent on you? Was it so I would have to bend to every one of your whims?

Because I did, didn’t I? I made myself your plaything, which was exactly how you wanted me, wasn’t it?

Why are you struggling? Am I hurting you?

Don’t like the feeling of the shoe being on the

W i l l I 10 give you a

a i d

o f

m e ?

other foot now do we? Is this degrading? Are you ashamed? Do you feel how I felt every second of our relationship? Do you know what the tipping point for me was?

Will you stop sobbing? Do you know how distracting it is? Do you want my hand to slip?

Where was I? Oh yes, do you know what really pushed me over the edge? Can you guess? Do you want to play a guessing game? Sorry, I’m acting like a child again, aren’t I? Anyway, do you remember last Tuesday? I was waiting for you at home and do you know what I found?

Will I give you a second to think?

Have you thought up all your excuses and lies?

May I proceed?

What story could you possibly have to explain the credit cards in my name that are stuffed in the back of your sock drawer? Was my dignity and independence not enough for you? Did you really need to steal my identity and ruin my credit score too? Please can you stay still? Do you realize how tricky this is?

Which of our holidays did I pay for? How many of your suits are actually my suits? Will I ever get a mortgage now?

Did you think I would never find out? Do you regret it? Any of it?

Are you nodding or trying to head butt me? Are you surprised I tricked you? You never thought your sweet, simple girlfriend would turn on you, did you?

Did you know it’s surprisingly easy to get Rohypnol? And the knots, didn’t you know I was a girl scout back in the day? Are you impressed?

God, you do bleed a lot, don’t you? Do you think I’ll get the blood off this top?

a s e c o n d 11t o t h i n k ?

A e s t a s Anna Philpott the thread of fate that ties our souls is wire; who knew? we’d know. we’d fall in just one summer. the murmur in your eyes; soft hearts on fire. the lovers’ dance. your lips. unquenched desire; lost paradise is found in one another. the thread of fate that ties our souls is wire. the whispers of your tears seem to conspire; his words invoke the image of your father. the murmur in your eyes; soft hearts on fire. i try as best i can to play advisor; intentions clear and yet i seem to falter. the thread of fate that ties our souls is wire. the poison on your lips befits a liar; things fall apart. better sooner than later. the murmur in your eyes; soft hearts on fire. you leave without a word. fuel on the pyre; the love we shared—so briefly—torn asunder. the thread of fate that ties our souls is wire, the murmur in your eyes; soft hearts on fire.

12

Artwork By Funmi Lijadu

13

A r t w o r k

S a r a

b y

D o b b s

Grief‘s Reprise After Christopher Isherwood’s ‘A Single Man’ Toby Appleyard

14

George lost his Jim, but he still tries— gets up each morning, stays alive, once in the car he joins the race, forgets himself, stares into space.

His body turns chauffeur, he thinks, drives to the past, tips over the brink his face contorts – who’s to blame?

Uncle George says they’re all the same.

At work he performs to win their praise, A student approaches – those halcyon days!

His mind diverts to concupiscent dreams but then there’s Jim, that night, those screams.

Lifting weights, he finds relief, heads home; grabs a drink and weaves the shaded tapestry behind his eyes, another night for grief’s reprise.

Restless, he hits the freeway once more, makes for Silver Lake with his chauffeur, he drifts from his lane into the dark, ignores the numbness, the pain in his heart.

Somewhere outside the City of Angels, He gives up the fight and feels oddly grateful, George follows the scent of Jim’s cologne and smiles at last – no longer on his own.

15

O n ‘T h e K n o t’ Flame Darinov

‘Who has blessed the sacred bond you share, oh married Bachelor?

Who let you catch Laurette as her, to you, you, to her— Eternally devoted? Many witnessed Your vows unsecular, but who promised to protect them?

Who promised to resurrect them if you choose To unravel the knot you tied?’

-‘Many questions you ask,

Ye lonely viper of no purpose!

Life itself is not worthless without marriage,

But like any and every experience, marriage is a culture

To be sowed and reaped; and you, single bachelor,

Have sat alone and weep’d.’

‘Not untrue nor ingenuine is your discourse, But of course you know the saying: A knot under pressure will wear the ropes.

And though no one might know the saying, its truth is doubtlessly true!’

16

-‘Truth, truth… you espouse truth just as I have espoused Laurette.’

‘Little you know of me, O married Bachelor, For I match the rhetoric I hear: Truth begets lies, and lies beget thrills.

With this I mean no good or ill, Rather merely search for thrills of pleasure; I don’t aim to unravel your knot, And I’d ne’er plot to tie it to another!’

-‘Yet you vile viper desire to decipher the weakness of my faith.’

‘Verily so. I’d never be sate thinking you’re unable to a viper a viper become; We can poison our sum For a moment of thrill; and thrills Beget pleasure.’

-‘I seek no pleasure!’

‘Then, I cannot measure: why did you espouse Laurette And not truth? Why did you waste your youth On a single tree? Fecund she may be, but what good is a plot of land Which you must guard for life? Why’d you get a wife if she’s all you’ll ever have?’

-‘Hark, ye boy-manifest-viper.

I never strive for impeccable morals,

But on floral fields when snakes

Invite me to taste a fruits forbidden, I reject.’

‘I so object that you’re different from Eve, The one who’d tempt and weave humanity After being tempted and woven into humanity.’

17

18

Artwork by Joanna Hooper

T h e o f

L e a s h L i f e

Hannah Naismith

turning my skull over like a pebble in the palm of my hand, the contour of serrated edges outlining concaves. together: plunging down the nook of a crack we examine the midsection of (my) x and (your) y. if I’m the coils of hair at the back of the throat you’re the veins in the clouds that cannot be roped down. here: the consummation of this black hole, your knuckled fist in the inky soil groping for a spiraling cord.

I watch you elope in my thoughts while you molest pockets for headphones that are dripping down your neck. the trembling of my veins as they grope down streets, dragging themselves like bodies to the unfolding of now. the words we litter, for me to collect, suspended from the flaking trees, in the streetlights that blink.

19

P h o t o g r a p h y

A

i

y

a

h

S

20

i

b

b y

a

y

H o w A b o u t Y o u r D a d ?

Klara Winther Growing up without him was not exactly an issue: I am not now someone scarred by his absence. He simply did not exist as far as I was concerned—if anything, his presence would have made me less irregular and I preferred a bit of irregularity, being otherwise utterly common. His introduction into my life began on a short walk from school to my childhood home. The girl walking next to me was younger than myself, trotting along and chattering incessantly about this and that, and I was letting my thoughts drift elsewhere when suddenly a question fractured my state of calm.

‘What about your dad then? What does he do?’

I was not looking at her but I knew she was observing me, intently. She was too curious for her own good: a gossipmonger, a blabbermouth, a tattletale. I felt the fire rising to my face, my complexion telling on me before I had even opened my mouth.

‘What?’ I asked faintly – a weak attempt at distracting her from her new topic of interest.

‘Well, I’ve never seen your dad before…’

‘I don’t have a dad.’ I said it so definitively, with such true conviction that no one but her would have dared ask another question. No other person would have ventured further into my personal life,

21

concluding, rather, that I must be depressed or traumatised in some way or another, demanding to be left to myself.

‘What do you mean?’ She giggled incredulously: ‘Everyone has a dad.’

Reluctantly, I shook my head. My ‘dad’ was a phantom; someone I would never know. He had chosen long before I was born that he would never know me: a stranger selected on the basis of his physical features. What did that make me? At best, some sort of medical wonder, a product of modern technology fused with medicine. At worst, a deviant to be scrutinised or pitied.

At a time when I barely understood it myself, I sensed her wonder at my simple explanation something to the extent of: ‘the doctors gave my mum some sort of drug so she could have me on her own’ – and her questions carried on, each one more uninhibited than the next. I walked faster and stumbled through the answers.

How about your dad? The question has accompanied me ever since it was first asked, but it has not brought me shame since. I have mostly forgotten that I am some sort of half-human, created in a petri dish but inserted with love.

When I must tell this story, I tell it casually, as if it was something that happened to me by chance and could have easily happened to anyone else.

In a twisted way, it is the sort of story with a

22

happy ending: I never knew my dad as a devious sort of man who left me or caused me any form of emotional distress, as fathers often have done. Instead, he became ‘someone out there’: a mysterious figure on the edge of my existence; a shrouded personality with which I would never be able to associate, perhaps even the genetic reason for any physical or mental ills I would suffer from in the future, but how could I ever know? And how, I wonder, does he picture me, the child he helped bring into the world, now an adult and a stranger to him? The one paradoxical thing that seems to link us together, creating a common trait in a vast stretch of obscurity, is the fact that we will never know or understand one another.

I was too young to express any of these ideas on that particular day as I was on my way home, the girl walking next to me continuing her questioning despite my reluctant explanations and her eyes following my movements as my very existence slowly disentangled itself in front of us. As time went on, the absence of my dad, having first been a cause of embarrassment to me, became an engrossing riddle that I yearned to solve. Yet, to this day, he still exists only as a mystery to me, and I suspect that he would entirely cease to be if I were to finally unmask him.

23

A r t w o r k

M o l l i e

b y

R u s s e l l

24

D u D r y

s t o f F i e l d sSamuel Oliver

See, scattered to sky, the severings Of red earth, bright as ochre dust, And old pony carts, full-laden, Lounging at the boundary— Then on, through the dust And the floating Shelta, on To that homeward gyre of road beyond.

Down I go and there I find A picture, softly slanted down, Beloved but with complexion grim, Like a tired face at a wake— That Yorkshire green is weaker now, The dust has rusted at its shade; All doors are daubed with hidden signs, A black cross etched in each.

I wish I could see sweetness here As I have done a thousand times, But as I walk my garden, with My stiffly skipping dog beside, The notion lingers with a sting: This sudden ochre-clouded wind Has spun my little nest apart.

25

I, of the Heath Armaan

And then the trail disappears into the rock like a wisp of smoke; eyes betray an acquaintance with the stinging squall and mellowed sun, eardrums know and love gravelly steps and staggered breath.

A hundred hikers clawing up the earth for a view of a land painted in dark hues.

The red gradient peels out into the Glens like mangoes—bare earth And nothing besides.

On the top of the ben, at the end of the trail, I see myself upon the heath— haggard eyes, smoky breath, holding tangled webs in my hand.

26

The land comes undone before me, and I, in complete outlandish fashion, pick out flies, loosening cobwebs upon the heath: where the likes of me are from, I’m told, where my faith resides.

Above cleft land, rivers raking through, Under a taut sky, almost emptied of blue.

Wherever I am, that is the heath, loosening webs and picking out flies in unlit streets and shops that smell funny, in unfriendly bars and diversity programs.

But on that heath, there are none.

There, on the tossing hills, the emptiness is not foreign. I look at myself from afar, from the ben.

Webbed hands can move themselves again, coming undone, undone, undone.

27

A Boy ofPaper Harry Leeming A paper boy with glassy eyes That gleam with a lift’s soft vacant light.

Walking in circles under hammered, grey skies, He looks for a form in which he can hide.

That pale finger, that scrunched wrist, Not an inch of self he knows, till it be kissed.

He finds reassurance in the fumbling of hands; A hand on his hip helps him understand That he is the apple of the other boy’s eye: The sparkle on dark tarmac That’s otherwise choked by road-trudged black.

When face to face, and loners alone – together, He lives as a glimmer in the eyes of another.

While watching Netflix in the pose of love, His lover can feel his willow ribs rock: Stiff jerk of breath in, Stiff jerk of breath out,

28

When his lover left him, his eyes clamped up; Like an off oyster, too stubborn to be supped.

Who am I if he is gone?

I was the sparkle within his stone.

But now I’m confined in my own bones: Dull and heavy, like a mermaid’s grave.

My wallet a gift marooned on me; My jacket an aching memory; My hands the ring that held his arm; My bed the place I dissolved in his charm; My smile the shadow his sun-face cast; My mind the dreamer of his will wished.

Without him as bolt I am fallen apart— An assortment of limbs that do not fit.

Scattered through memories that retreat from me: I am a wilderness of echoes, lost and so free.

29

Artwork by Maria Park

Like an empty carton pressed on by a thumb.

So filled with the wish to be something, For you.

S h o r t c o

Academics like interruptions But life doesn’t when it’s speaking to itself And I don’t recite in tell a story about how it changes No exclama in the same language everyone thinks in A q have to translate words from English to Engl

30

m i n g s

t have commas Your brain doesn’t use periods n quotation marks Just describe their face and ation point needed What’s wrong with writing question mark lived here Life is too complex to lish And death is too simple to care Dot dot dot

Eleanor Patrick

31

32

A i y a h

S i b a y

P h o t o g r a p h y b y

Floodgates

at

F...

Rosie Harrison-Niarawan The mystery had always been this: what went on within the artist’s mind? I never really had a chance to understand since everything was filtered through the delicate lens of childhood. But children make good judgements of character, and my unwavering verdict that he was a good, profound, intellectual and revolutionary man has only strengthened in adulthood.

After dinner he would make a mug of coffee. Always the same mug, the tall one with the straight sides and a small circumference, so that it would remain hot for longer. Every act was carefully considered. Then he would sit down in the armchair in the corner of the living room, the one with a small wear in the stitching on the right arm rest that he had covered with a perfectly sized piece of cloth. He would cross his right leg over his left and simply look at you.

Sitting opposite him on the sofa you would feel perfectly scrutinised at this point. He was the kind of person you wanted to impress, you see. He was stern but not severe, although I have since heard that he had this side to him if you so pressed him to reveal it.

For as long as you might be capable of looking back at his grey eyes and slender figure, you would unquestionably wonder what went on within the artist’s mind.

His paintings hung around you on every wall; deep, unparalleled insights into his past and thoughts. And yet they have always been utterly impenetrable, just as he was.

When he passed away, I looked at one of the paintings on the far wall above the fireplace, ‘Floodgates

33

at F…’. How typically him, I thought, not to tell us where the floodgates are. He would always give away so much as to make you feel as though you knew him in a way others were not permitted to, and then stop short of revealing the important bits. Perhaps there was a creative arrogance in his delighting in your intrigue.

‘Floodgates at F…’ can only be described as a self-portrait. The older artist, the one I knew, sits in a room with his back to us, entirely absorbed in regarding a portrait of the boy artist, the one I never knew. The two figures look at one another, immersed in a dialogue only they will ever understand. Behind the boy, floodgates open to release a rush of dark water reflecting the black sky above.

He always loved the sombre.

I could not, upon looking at this curious painting, unravel much of its meaning. It was undoubtedly about him – so many of the others had been about the artist’s wife, you see. Although I suppose those were also about him.

More than anything I could not escape the troubling, overwhelming sense of sadness that imposed upon the entire canvas. I never saw this in him when we had our time together. It made me angry that he had been so sad, and that he was telling me so aggressively now that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I had the same feeling at his funeral. The three women he left behind cried to Strauss’ Four Last Songs and mourned the greatest man that had ever occupied their lives. I think the artist’s wife believed that he died as he had lived: selfishly.

The truth is that the artist found the entire process of dying utterly humiliating. Perhaps he did not see himself as capable of corporeal decay, since his consciousness remained constantly undamaged by anything and

34

superior to us all. He learnt of his vulnerability with shock, I think, and yet the reality of sickness had been such an enduring anxiety for everyone else around him.

I say ‘everyone else around him’ but there were only really the three of us. He adored solitude and now I see that this too reveals a certain standard of self-satisfaction: the ability to be so content in one’s own company. He travelled the world – from Berlin to Geneva to Bangkok – and always returned to his small, white house surrounded only by rape-fields and haystacks. This was the artist’s haven.

He showed me that his favourite things were Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (especially the Liebestod), Il Postino, George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Paul Cezanne.

This of course had repercussions in that, to this day, if anyone even so subtly gestures towards these things being ‘bad’, my opinion of them instantly lowers. This is an awful crime of cultural snobbery that I cannot escape because, well, that’s the kind of man that he was and the kind of impact that he had.

To this day I wonder where he came from. I know that he was born in the small, fenland village he worked and died in. But I will never be able to deduct where his soul came from and how he came to be the extraordinary human he was. The mystery continues to unwind itself, even after his death, the more I think about him and his quaint life.

I fear I have not painted a positive portrait of him.

In my child’s eye, he was nothing less than a god. In my adult’s eye, certain faults have revealed themselves that I willingly reject. Because what good is there to be had from unravelling such a perfect mystery? I knew the artist, the man who taught me how to take pleasure in the feeling of life. That’s all that really matters. And that is the only solution.

35

T h a t ’ t h a t

r

m a t t A i s

n

d

t h e

s o l u 36

Photogr Aiyah

e

s

a l l

e a l l y e r s . t

h

a

t

o n l y t i o n. aphy By Sibay

37

T

e

President Vice-President Secretary Treasurer First Year Rep Editor-in-Cheif General Editor Prose Editor Poetry Editor Copy Editor 1 Copy Editor 2 Head of Design

38

a

m Jana Phillips Lara Farrow Panashe Ndou Olivia Johnston Dalia Impiglia Yasmin Kanaan Maria Garcia Valdiva Olivia Johnston Aarti Mukhedkar Abigail Blades Lauren Galligan Emily Hughes

39

P r e s i d e n t ‘ s N o t e It’s incredible to me to be writing this note now, knowing another semester is coming to an end and that this is the second issue of ‘The Inkwell’ for which we will be unable to hold an in-person launch. This last year, I think we can all agree, has been one of the strangest and most tumultuous in our respective academic careers.

We returned this Autumn to a fragmented University experience of online classes, ever-changing guidelines and a student body connected only virtually. With all this in mind, we sought to choose a theme for this issue that would encapsulate all the many layers of experience this ‘pandemic-time’ has brought up for us.

In our theme decision meeting, a lot of us expressed similar feelings of things devolving and spinning out of control, of life as becoming somewhat porous but also maybe knotted in some places. We thought this theme would open up consideration of all these ideas for our prospective writers. In this vein, I would especially like to thank our Editor in Chief, Yasmin, our Head of Design, Emily and the editorial team for all their hard work putting together such a wonderful issue.

As a whole, I am so proud of our committee for rising to the challenge of running a society under these mitigating circumstances. We regretted not being able to open up the semester with our usual (wonderfully chaotic) ‘Bookshop Crawl’; however, our Welcome

40

Week ‘Writing Workshop and Q&A Session’ over Microsoft Teams was a resounding success. Due to a high volume of interest, this event became a fortnightly workshop which we continued to hold over Teams.

In mid-September we also held an EGM to fill our remaining committee positions, in which we elected to create the new role of 1st Year Representative (Dalia Impiglia) as part of our commitment to reaching out to those freshers who are finding it especially difficult to join societies and meet people this semester. In October, we were disappointed to not be able to host our annual ‘6x6 with SYP’ event; however, we are hoping to be able to arrange an online event with SYP sometime late this semester or the next.

It’s with a tentative hope that I look forward to semester two. As a society, we plan to continue our fortnightly writing workshops and perhaps revive the open mics, which were so successful last year, in an online format. We would also potentially like to host some online speaker events and have talked about ways in which to run a virtual ‘Write Drunk, Edit Sober’.

It would be wonderful to be able to have in-person events again at some point next year, but, regardless, I know the committee is dedicated to continuing to engage with our members online and make the most out of these strange times.

Best wishes, Jana

41

Cover Artwork Adapted from

Joanna Hooper