The Inkwell
presented by
Publish E D
Chris Rubey
THE HIVE AD
The Inkwell Table of Contents 4 Meet the new PublishED team 5
A Note from the Editor
6 Editor’s Pick: “Singed China Doll,” Georgina Sharouni 7 8
“Slightly Bigger People,” Jennifer Hayward
9
“Released,” Lisa Kew
“Singer,” Amanda Stanford
10-11 An Autumn Scene 12-13
“The Poet,” Markus Hell
“Mechanical Jonah,” Helen Smith; “Occupation,” Emma Ramsey; “Chanel,” Fiona Piercy
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16-17 “Butterfly Coffins,” Rosie Hopegood; “I step into a 1920s nightlife,” Georgina Sharouni 18-19 “Ours stars are blazing,” Helen Twigg; “Problem Solving,” Lewis Brown 20-21 Competition: “the door we never opened” winner: “Pandora,” Bethany Williams 22-23 “The Road,” Alice Latchford; “Convience,” Jaideep Warya 24-25 The University of Edinburgh Writing Prizes: Last year’s winners and more 26-27 “On Liberty,” Mike Walmsley; “Tailbone,” Jacqueline Thompson 28-29 “Night Sweats,” Toby Sharpe; “First Love,” Sandra Muhwezi 30-31 32-33
“Cycles,” Jonas Cimermanas; “Selling Doors in Cleveland,” Erika Meyers “Learning the Rules,” Rosie Hopegood
34-35
Griersen Verse Prize-winning poem: Rebecca Tamas
36-37
Upcoming events and competitions
The
Publish E D
Team
without whose hard work none of this would be possible
THE EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-Chief General EDITORS Poetry Editor Prose Editor Drama Editor Head of design
Vicki Madden Kieran Johns on Matt he w B e ven Emi ly McFarland John He witt Jones Jennifer Al lan Kara D uncan
THE SOCIETY TEAM president VICE PRESIDENT marketing & pr events advertising
L iz Eb da le Jining Zhang Henr iette K lejs Engelb erg Mar t in Reid Madeleine L au lund C er ys Mat her Naomi D e wes
secretary
O ona Haas
treasurer
Alex She d lo ck
SPECIAL THANKS COVER PHOTO Key Photography
C hr is Rub e y
Key Photography
Tarquin B er t ram
Artist in residence Wise counSEL
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Lu ke Me ad
Emi ly L ang L ois Wi ls on
A Note from the Editor What you currently hold in your hands is the all-new edition of the University of Edinburgh’s student-run publication, The Inkwell. If you’re familiar with what we do, you might have noticed some changes to the magazine. This year, the editorial team has decided on a new path: we’re cutting down on editorial content in order to make room for more student-written pieces, as we are, first and foremost, a magazine dedicated to showcasing the wealth of talent to which Edinburgh University is home. With, unfortunately, a complete lack of drama submissions this time around, the decisions we made concerned only poetry and prose, but were no easier than they ever are. About halfway through the editorial “round-table,” we found ourselves in heated debate over which pieces should be included in the magazine. Ultimately, we decided that if a piece struck a chord with us, it was “in,” so that if nothing else, others could have similarly excited discussions about the texts included in this issue. Our goal has always been to showcase the best of Edinburgh’s student writing, and we hope that the following pieces, which were selected from a pool of well over a hundred submissions, will inspire you, preferably in a way that will lead you to pick up pen and paper and send us some of your own writing. Without further ado, we present to you our favourites from this autumn’s cornucopia of submissions and hope that you will find yourself amused, delighted, and moved - all at once.
Kara Duncan
Vicki Madden Editor-in-Chief
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Editor’s Pick:
Singed China Doll Everybody’s torn now and then. We tear you now, so that you can be stitched. Skin torn. Lace, laced, not on the hem of a curtain but detailed in the face and the flesh. Not Lo Hsüan; but the body of a child. Doctors stretch the skin the fire shrunk.
A cotton baby, scorched by flame; bleeding scarlet robes. So we tore you and we stretched you and we stitched you. And then we sent you home. Your charred tale shut up, like the hundreds of songs that I have purchased. But have never heard.
When the stitching was done, I painted your nails - like they painted your skin. From pale pink, to warmer tones to match the woman you will be. Go home, now you can, doll. But never again wear red.
Emily Lang
Georgina Sharouni
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Slightly Bigger People Once, when she was little and he was slightly bigger, he had told her that there was a spider in there that was bigger than the whole world. And she’d believed him, because she was little and he was slightly bigger, and little people believe things that slightly bigger people say. Slightly bigger people have more exciting friends, and better tree houses, and far superior collections of Lego. Therefore slightly bigger people are respected authorities on important matters such as the existence of incredibly large arachnids in airing cupboards.
Neither of them knew exactly what an airing cupboard did. They had never seen inside it, so they wouldn’t. Exactly what an airing cupboard did was not of the slightest importance to them. An airing cupboard was an airing cupboard, and it should on no account be opened because you might see an enormous spider, or a conspicuous lack of enormous spiders, and each prospect was equally terrifying and that was all they needed to know. No-one opened the airing cupboard. Well, Mum and Dad did, but they were very big people, so they didn’t count. Very big people inhabited a world in which any door could be opened at leisure without the fear of being confronted by eight-legged monstrosities or by outrageous fibs. Neither Mum nor Dad knew why he’d told such an outrageous fib. He didn’t know either. He was simply abiding by the natural law of families that slightly bigger people will always enjoy frightening little people.
Kara Duncan
Neither of them ever opened the airing cupboard door. She wouldn’t because she was too afraid. He wouldn’t because if he did, it would prove that he had in fact been lying about the spider. At least, that was mostly why he wouldn’t open it. It was partly because, though he’d never admit it, he had almost fooled himself into believing in the existence of an incredibly large arachnid in the airing cupboard, and he was also too afraid.
Even when they were all grown up, and were both, quite demonstrably, very big people, she would always be little and he would always be slightly bigger. And he would always enjoy frightening her every once in a while. Even when Mum and Dad had passed away and she came back, with boxes and dusters and cleaning products, to pack up the old house. Even when she knew exactly what an airing cupboard did. Even when she had little people of her own who thought she inhabited a world in which any door may be opened at leisure without the fear of being confronted by eight-legged monstrosities or by outrageous fibs. Even then she felt a little bit uneasy about opening the airing cupboard door, because she might see a spider that was bigger than the whole world, and because she might not, and each prospect was equally terrifying. Jennifer Hayward
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Singer
Last night I dreamt of my mother. She stood at the window, waist-high in water, watching her Singer sewing machine drown in the currents. “I can reach it,” I shouted at her, jumping headlong into the swollen river.
“Why?” she asked, but in my dream state nothing was more important to me than that old machine. I pushed against the force of the water, my knees obscured by the dark, treacherous eddies. The Singer sat at the bottom of the window box beneath us, surrounded by a strangely calm patch of clear water. I reached for it, holding onto the window ledge for support, glancing back at her apathetic face. She was looking at the Singer, not me, and it filled me with an ominous foreboding. “Just let it go,” she called to me. “It’s rubbish and it’s lost. Why hold on to it?” I was thrown head first into the river, the Singer retreating farther and farther from my outstretched hand. The Singer was an antique long before it came to be with us. We lived alone on a farm my father had bought out of nostalgia, and having moved us there, fifteen miles from the nearest small town, left one day and did not return. Without his presence, my mother’s demons slipped out one by one, feeding themselves ravenously in the dark corners of the gloomy house. She saw herself reflected in my face, and enviously tried to see into my thoughts. The demons would whisper to her, “That’s your body. That girl has stolen your spirit.” There were days she wondered aloud who the old woman in the mirror was, and why was she in her bathroom? At night she would sit up at the old Singer, prodding cloth through its teeth, making bibs for babies she no longer burped, aprons for kitchens she did not enter. She strained her eyes to make frilly dresses patterned on the designs of her youth and dressed me in them against my will, already at the age of twelve too old for flounces of lace and ribbons, smocking collars and ruffled ankle socks.
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She filled the farmhouse with ornate china cabinets populated by a chorus of sternly smiling cherubim, dolls houses four feet high which I wasn’t to touch, Rococo salon furniture, Chippendale dressers, table
runners, doilies, and a stencil kit to paint a menagerie about the staircases of frightening fantastical animals whose beady, unseeing eyes would follow me around the house. I wasn’t to play in certain rooms, nor allow my friends from school to come over. “What do you need friends for?” she would ask bitterly. “They’ll just leave you in the end. All you have is your family. No one will love you like your family does.” I never knew how she busied herself while I was away, except by the evidence of her ambition – the painted minions of strange beasts adorning the wooden panels who multiplied in my absence, the mountains of newborn baby layettes which she folded neatly into cedar chests and rusty filing cabinets. Then as I grew, one by one the old antiques, having been polished until the brass beneath silver plate came through and lacquer dulled with the rubbing of too many dust mitts, slowly disappeared as the demons convinced her they were fakes, worthless, to be thrown into the compost heap like rotten food. They drifted there, bits and pieces of iron and ancient workings, like demented clocks made of splintered chaos, still ticking, until a neighbour couldn’t stand it anymore and had the heap cleared away. It wasn’t until they had taken her to a state hospital and she withered there like a hot-house flower in an arctic garden that I learned how insidious the spectres of her mind really were; whispering, tormenting, accusing her of imagined crimes and imprisoning her intellect behind a veil of paranoia. “Have you met my little girl?” she asked me once, just before she died. “No,” I replied, curious. “She’s a devious one; selfish, beautiful, cruel.” My mother glanced over her shoulder and whispered furtively. “Is she in this room?” “Yes,” I said. “See just there? Look next to the window,” I pointed to the mirror above her sink, “Go and see.” Amanda Stanford
Released suddenly weightless nimble and remote, someone has chucked out the sandbags and cut the rope. vexing and hexing workers and watchers, walkers animate – imagination recaptures. sweeping and soaring all replayable, seeds and spores sprouting sinew stretched, strong and stable.
Luke Mead
Lisa Kiew
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Isabel O’Hagan
An Autum Scene 10
umnal e
“Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.” “Burnt Norton” - T.S. Eliot
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The Poet
by Markus Hell
Once again, as night fell, the poet returned to his village. It lay deserted; the moon lit nothing but the empty street, the ever-same houses, the occasional stray cat. A village without a name, the poet thought; without a history; were it not for him. He passed by the small hotel that had opened a couple of years ago. A few of the windows were lit, curtains chastely drawn. One would think they should love him, the poet mused. To the occasional passer-by; to the tourist couple, that stayed for a day and then moved on to the countryside or the capital; to the fleeting literature enthusiast, that was around in the area and could not miss the village; to them indeed it may have seemed so. The local museum was friendly, open and amiable; it included a few vistas of his life, photographs of his family and school friends; and the museum guide would never drop an unkind word about the poet, at least not to the casual visitor. And his birth-house, it boasted a placard, a pretty gold one with black lettering; it led the visitors to peer in curiously through the windows so as to catch a brief glance of the environment in which the poet had grown up, only to be shooed away by the landlady who always complained about the unwanted attention and yet revelled in it. The poet knew the truth, however. They all assumed he was gone, and so they spoke freely; unaware that he was among them, every night, listening to their talk. He opened the door to the quaint little pub, the only place that emitted some noise at this hour, and as always sat down at the little table right next to the door, without ordering anything, his head buried in his large coat. It was always only a matter of time until they started talking about him. “The village’s greatest son”, scorned one of the drinkers behind the low wooden partition, “give me a rest! A domestic tyrant and an insufferable bore, that’s what he was. Bet his wife’s glad he’s gone; why did she ever marry him?” The poet was used to their talk by now; every night he heard it; what brutes they all were. His poems were read in the literary circles in Edinburgh, Paris and Vienna; his prizes adorned a large wall of his once-home; he conversed at dinner parties with the great Irishman, the controversial German, and the recently-lauded Swede. What did he need those village peasants for, then? Instead, he got up and left, and passed by his old home; the place where he had lived all his adulthood, and written all of his poems, including his magnificent cycle The Twelve Traitors, consisting of six folios. Now the house lay in darkness; his wife was not home, of course. This, too, he knew; she was in town, probably in some nice restaurant, with that new acquaintance of hers. At that very moment he heard the sound of the wheels and knew without looking around that it was the sleek Mercedes he had left her; to think that now she was sitting in it alone, or worse, not alone! He didn’t wait to see her (or anyone else) get out. It was of no matter to him. As always, he concluded his visit with a stroll past the house of his student. A promising young man; maybe another poet. Not as great as himself, of course; but promising; an uncommon sight in this village. He at least still respected his mentor; it was a way of ending these visits on a friendlier note.
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But this time, the youngster’s house, too, lay in darkness; and only about half an hour later did he return, a young woman under his arm (pretty, the poet noted approvingly); and when he opened the garden gate, he said words the poet had never heard him utter before: “Oh you know, I’m glad he’s no longer with us. In my lectures and all that, I still stress how important he was for
me; and sure, he taught me a good thing or two about poetry, but you should have seen him! He was a tyrant who assumed that only his way of doing things was the right one. He’d never have let me develop my own voice!” The poet kept gazing at his student, who was leading his girlfriend into the house. Even after the door had been shut and locked, the poet remained motionless. Only when a cloud covered the moon, did the poet awake; shook his head; snorted; and said: “So now you have forsaken me too, have you?” It was time to return home. On the way, the poet stumbled a few times and even once fell; something that had never happened to him before. The path wasn’t even particularly wet. Maybe I’m getting old, the poet murmured to himself, and then laughed, for genius doesn’t age. When he passed the old village church (unremarkable; small; grey; already falling to pieces in places), he crossed the graveyard; out of the corner of his eyes he read a few of the inscriptions and recognised some of the names; there was Elizabeth Everton, the lady who had owned the grocery store and of whom he had bought sweets when still a little boy; there, Jonathan MacDonald, his old neighbour, a nice enough man who had sometimes wanted to invite him to tea, but who couldn’t recognise the difference between a Lord Tennyson and the lyrics to a new pop song; and there, Douglas White, his wife’s father, who had been basking in pride when his daughter married the famous poet. Usually, the poet just passed by all those gravestones and went to his new home; but tonight, he stopped at one of the rows; and couldn’t bring himself to go on. So instead, he sat down on the bench at the church wall and let his gaze wander across the graveyard, and the now completely dark village below. He should have been surprised but wasn’t when an old man came up to him after a while and sat down next to him. “Still going back every night?” asked the newcomer wearily. “You know, I did too, at the beginning. I couldn’t bear the truth. I had to go back. But after a while, I asked myself the question: why? Who am I doing a favour? None of them; and certainly not myself. So I decided to move on; and I believe you should too.” The poet looked at the old man. Then he gave one last glance at the village; remembered the pub guests; his wife; and, at last, his student. He nodded slowly, and almost didn’t recognise his own voice when he spoke; it cracked and sounded rusty, nothing like his regal timbre he had loved. “I believe you’re right, Jonathan.”
Emily Lang
And so Jonathan MacDonald stood up and asked: “Do you want to go and have a cup of tea?”, and the poet nodded and got up and they left together, and then they vanished into darkness.
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Mechanical Jonah Undulant, man-made fibres swallow me like a velvet mouth: cloaked in the dark sea my spirit sails in an undercover hide-away where I am a passenger propelled onwards by a mechanical current I spiral down busy arteries, which sound with the turmoil of traffic and congestion, inside the whale which carries me and the surge of the tide tamps my thoughts to whether I’m Jonah or Virginia Woolf, in a place where water is air and light is black and did you consume me or I throw myself in when I was saved from the storm? and have I found shelter at last in an iron lung? *
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When the heart has stopped and the metal jaws unlocked to breathe, I am set free: (from the boot of your car) to wherever you were going.
Emily Lang
Helen Frances Smith
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Chris Rubey
Occupation It’s all right for you, up in the light Sprawling on sleeping-bags, clothes Littered; huddles half-human, together With him. You told me he was clever An understatement, I knew – As he’s the fucking editor of the Oxford Left Review. Still my hands went rigid, flesh round metal wire Pressed against a book. A knuckle poked – a spire – Above the bloody mess. They talked – he talked, you kept still Head inclined, indebted smile I saw why. The tap spurted; Water, cold, closed my throat – Held my neck, and gagged my mouth I was metallic. Bitter iron, cool aluminum. No longer those Blushing attempts to explain, so brilliantly – Just his articles. Ink formed A wreath of veins. I struggled Through pages, pages, to feel only Weak triumph at spotting a misplaced apostrophe. I flinched as you glimpsed my lack of integrity Doubtless to him a mark of the bourgeoisie. Emma Ramsey
CHANEL By Fiona Piercy Take in the city that made you, That tore your dreams from the mannequin, Bright lights and writer’s pens toast the queen of black and white, Stuck, now, firmly in the grey. The golden flash of sunlight throws you back, To the seedy stage and flash of lace, Where the fairy-tale began, Began with a Boy and a brilliant lie: Forgotten orphan becomes eloquent mademoiselle, Under uniformed stripes and the cut of black hems. Slamming doors remind you, Of the bangs and shouts, Of wartime’s scarring gaze. And how you hid, Tucked away with the enemy, Afraid, destroyed, the will of France, Etched upon your face, Begging for forgiveness, From those you once despised.
Emily Lang
And now, now, Too scared to sleep. The little black bull, Awaiting the matador. A waning icon, To be remembered, With the spill of amber liquid, And the brilliant snow-white flower. Fashion fades, As does time.
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Butterfly Coffins She was an odd child. She built butterfly coffins. The first time was by chance: a butterfly landed on the porch, and died a silent death on her wellington boot. She found it: wings stiff and papery, stuck out at angles. She sat, haunches on heels, and gazed down at it. I could see her from the kitchen window, where I was washing up. She found a twig and carefully, oh-so-carefully, opened its wings to see the colours it had hidden there. I watched her: dirty blond hair falling in strands across her face, mouth open ever so slightly, thighs splayed and squashed together as she studied the insect on her boot. She sat like this for a long time, and after a while it annoyed me (though I don’t know why). ‘Come Lila, chuck that in the bin now; it’s dead, there’s nothing you can do to help it,’ I called. She jumped slightly, and looked up in surprise, the twig still clenched in her rounded fist. She had knocked one of it’s wings off, but it’s brittle little legs still clung to the wellie, attached somehow. A slight frown creased her brow, and she said quietly, ‘I don’t want to help it. I want to look at it.’ And so I left her there, staring down at the creature, and went back into the warmth of the kitchen. The next day she asked to use the papier-mâché kit that she got for her birthday. She made tiny oval boxes, imperfect eggs, and left them to dry on the radiator while we ate marmite on toast. When the papier-mâché was dry she went outside, and brought in the butterfly: I was surprised to see it; I had forgotten it’s existence. She choose one of the boxes from the radiator, and painted it very carefully, a base of yellow, like pollen, and then, in tiny brushstrokes, the outline of a butterfly. Then she filled in the colours slowly: the soft taupe of its body, the crimson of the wings, and the monotone, lying eyes. She was good at painting and it annoyed me (though I don’t know why).
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When she had finished, she picked up the butterfly and roughly shoved it into the box so that the wings
broke into tiny fragments that scattered across the table, dust once more. She blew them away, and smiled at me. From then on it would be the same every time I babysat. I would ask her what she wanted to do and she would smile sweetly and say, ‘Painting please.’ Then she would bring in a butterfly. There was always a butterfly (where did she get them from?) to paint a perfect picture of on one of the boxes she had already made. She painted a twilight butterfly with creamdipped wings. She painted a black butterfly with fire coloured stripes (‘a tiger,’ she said). She painted a vivid yellow butterfly that was like a buttercup’s glow on skin. She never had the same type, not once (where did she get them from?). When she had finished with the boxes she would bind them carefully with string and line them up on her bookshelf. Sometimes she would take them all down and rearrange them. Once I saw her sniffing one (the yellow one). And then the winter came and the butterflies were gone from the earth. She became melancholy, and I suggested using beetles instead. She looked at me strangely and shook her head. I suggested using spiders instead. She bit her nails down to the quick (but only on one hand). She twitched her feet incessantly and tugged at her plaits while I watched TV. Spring came and I asked her what she wanted to do. ‘Painting please.’ She brought in a chrysalis from outside and placed it proudly on the table. It was papery and insubstantial, could almost have been papier-mâché itself. She painted it flawlessly, anatomically, an x-ray vision of the pupa, a nightmare, a monster. She had painted three of them, and lined them up with the others, before I said, ‘Lila, you know these butterflies won’t be able to fly
away when they pupate, because they are trapped inside your boxes.’ She frowned up at me, paused for a long time and said, ‘But I don’t mind that. Now I don’t have to wait for them to spread their wings to see what colours they have inside. Now I don’t have to paint their wings at all, I can paint them all the same, all the same colours.’ Emily Lang
She was an odd child. Rosie Hopegood
I step into a 1920s nightlife Dapper dancers and shorthaired flappers, mean the night is just a prelude to a kiss. The ticking of the grandfather clock is drowned in the clicking of heeled shoes, to the rhythm of the grandfather blues. And the trumpet and the sax, and the sex and the swing, mean jazz. The haze is of brandy, and of the acrid smoke that slinks through the room, caught in sheaths of red satin sinking down the thighs of women with voices like honey. The women make love to the Gershwin notes they croon, and the men make love to the women. And the clock keeps ticking, unheard, through the Jazz. It ticks through the Gershwin, and the sax, and the ‘dapper’. Hearts tick through the satin, and the sex, and the swing. And when they realize that it’s morning, the women trade their furs for violets; the men, their coats for wives. The night is crammed, like the trumpeter’s brass, into a distant dream, fodder for advertisement and household animosity. And the men and women wait, for the ticking of the clock, for the close of another day, and the Jazz of the night.
Tarquin Bertram
Georgina Sharouni
17 17
Our stars are blazing In the canal, in the shards of sapphire glass, you are cut into pieces. You fumble with your keys, press the sharp tooth into the gum of the lock, and close your door. I am the moon prized in the flow of the water. In the air, in the mug of clay and shale, you are chipped into a crocus. The hairs on your nape like needles of a thistle. Outside your window, I shiver like a bulb on the water lock. I drip with mercury.
In the dusk, I will make a fire for us. All night, I collect copper to meld in the flames, to wear round our necks. I make shadows for you, cut patterns out of metal leaf, make them wink, glint on your door, closed and still. In the fire, I am caught in the tangle of smoke. My wrists, ankles blistered and raw, our metal stars are blazing. My skin screams for you. Your door opens with a fraction of light, but you cannot hear me as I break into the waves.
Chris Rubey
Helen Twigg
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Problem Solving Walking down the street, I met a problem. The mother of all problems. No, the grandmother of all problems. Maternity squared, with a handbag. First, I tried to go around the problem. Then over it, then under it, through it, but the problem wasn’t a bear hunt, or indeed a bear. It was a problem. I tried to avoid the problem. I bribed it with chocolate, dressed up as a policeman, a nun, Scooby Doo. I split up to search for clues. I put on a fake moustache and sunglasses, and pretended to be a Jehovah’s Witness. I threw rocks at the problem. I tried appealing it to its better nature, tried telling it that it had left the oven on, tried begging, pleading, prodding it with a really sharp stick. I took the problem out to the cinema, out to a candlelit restaurant, home to meet my parents, on a honeymoon to Spain, to court. But the problem overruled. I promised to spend more time with the problem, promised it that things could still work between us, told the problem to go to hell, to Milton-Keynes, to get out more, I pushed the problem under a bus. I dropped weights on it. An elephant., a rhinoceros, a hippo, a a million million million tonnes. I told the problem it had won the lottery, an Ipad, a free holiday to Barbados, to Las Vegas, to the space, where no one can hear you scream. I gave the problem every waking hour of every waking day, and then I tried solving it. Lewis Brown 19
Competition: And the winner is...
Pandora
By Bethany Williams
Will woke up and decided to do it, one June morning when the sun was out full, and the day behind the curtains yellowy-hot and beckoning. He went downstairs and told his wife Annie, who said he shouldn’t be so ridiculous. She said, “I know you don’t mean it. We said we wouldn’t do anything about it, we promised we wouldn’t even talk about it so I know you won’t do it, William Jones. I know you.” He touched each of her knuckles with his own bony gentle index finger and said nothing in reply. Her eyes widened into conkers, her lips pressed together and her eyebrows were raised again but she didn’t move her hand off his knee. They sat for a while in bird-scattered silence, then he got up to go and get dressed and she went into the kitchen to rinse out their breakfast cups. He opened the big dark-wooded wardrobe that they’d shared for years and years and let his gaze move carefully along the row of his shirts. Some hung straight and stern, plain white or pale blue, remnants from his time in the Transport Office. Others were a thick plaid, veined through with half-faded smells of sea and hills and marshes. These he’d worn on the days when he and his wife, first alone, then with the children, and then later by themselves again, had driven up and along the map to the countryside and the coast. They’d spent hours tramping their happy boots through mud and sand, thrilling over glimpses of buzzards or seals as their own secret treasure horde. Will sighed for the second time that hour, scratching nostalgically at a wart behind his ear. He had to do it, though. It felt right, it felt settled in his mind and in his stomach and he knew he was going to. He wasn’t even scared, really. He peed and brushed his teeth and then it was time, nothing else left for him to do, and so he went to kiss Annie on the cheek. She was doing The Times crossword at the kitchen table. When she felt him behind her she turned her face up, let his dry lips touch her skin, lightly, then said “Beyond belief, 9. Something something D and that’s all I have.” “Wonderful, love. I’m going to get some pots out of the shed.” His old Hunter wellies were standing to patient attention by the back doorstep. He trod his sockless feet inside them, shivering slightly as a tickle of a creepy-crawly danced up his ankle. He didn’t slap it, waiting instead until it escaped through the rip in his trousers just by his knee.
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He stood for a moment or two watching it fly. Breathing in deep, his ribs moved slow and pronounced as earth plates. The air was good today, sweet and fresh, smoothing his lungs and thoughts into pleased laziness. His lupins were out tall and healthy, Will saw, his sweet peas too. Next door’s baby’s laughter bubbled over the fence and through the air like sherbet. He almost didn’t, but then he did, take one wellybooted step and another across his lawn, crushing grass and leaving a trail of big prints like sunk-in stepping stones up the garden to the shed in the very back, small and squat behind the two birch trees and the pile of compost and broken crock that he kept meaning to sort out.
“ t h e d o o r w e never opened” Emily McFarland
He flipped the shed latch and hulked his shoulders to get inside, pulling the door shut behind him. It was a dank little place, his shed – the one window he’d put in was dirty, and faced away from the morning sunlight. In a corner lay the big piece of tarp he’d thrown as a cover to hide what they’d found in there, him and his wife, all those years ago. Dusty as everything else, it lay, unobtrusive as you like and yet, somehow, he thought, somehow taunting you, teasing, inviting you please to whip it away and deal plainly and once and for all with what was sitting underneath. Now. He had to do it now. He stepped over one plant pot and kicked another two aside crack. His hand was stuck out flat and wide as he grabbed the tarp sheet, yanking so hard that dust flew everywhere, making him close his eyes to sneeze. He opened them again. There it was, exactly the same as the last time he’d snuck in to look. The plug was about four foot wide and looked to be made of black rubber, just like any bath plug, except much bigger. The thin metal ring that hooped up out of the middle was silver and surprisingly shiny, maybe because no one had ever touched it. The lady who’d sold them the house had warned them never to, and said that she and her sons hadn’t during her lifetime there, and the family before that hadn’t either. She’d said. She’d said it held the world in place, the plug, and they had bit their lips to hold in laughs, though her vehemence had stopped them from going anywhere near the thing, worried it could be somehow dangerous – poisonous metal or whatnot. It was out of sight beneath a great tangle of a bramble patch, but Annie had insisted he chop the weeds back and build a shed to keep it hidden, firmly away from the son sitting inside her, gaining steadily in weight and precedence. Will had agreed with her about the need to keep it secret but, over the years, it’d crept into his head, the idea trickling cold and silky even when he thought himself occupied with other things. The plug that held the world together. It made him laugh, but it made him curious. It was impossible, what the lady had said. Obviously. Impossible and ridiculous. But he’d never known for absolute certain, one way or the other, and the years had piled up behind him and days stretched out longer and longer in his old age. He was restless now, and tired, and he wanted to finally know for sure. And so he stood in front of the big black plug of the world and placed his right palm on the silvercold metal of the big ring, then his left, and he curled his hands round with the finger muscles tensed so hard it hurt his knuckles. Then he relaxed. A blackbird chirped thoughtfully from its seat on the roof above. He tensed again, hard, arm skin stretched and what was left of his muscles curved out under thick strands of curly grey hair and dots of liver spots. A grinding sound scraped through his ears but the plug stayed put. He bent his knees and tried again, more effort, spluttering, pulling the ring at a slight angle to maximise his strength and loosen the plug. He could feel it coming now, straining against him in its hole, then the feeling shifted and it was pulling with him, the big black plug was straining to leave its place in the earth. There was a deep pop and it happened. 21
The Road By Alice Latchford
Closing your eyes, you rest your head back on the headrest of your seat. The door windows are open and the breeze flows freely, ruffling your hair and bringing the sandy air into the cabin. The sunlight infiltrates your eyes through your closed lids, turning your vision a deep red.
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Senses flooded, you are aware of the sound of the air rushing past the open windows, the old-fashioned stereo blasting out music and the grind of tyres against the gritty road. The air smells of the heat and light with occasional whiff of hot rubber from the wheels, soaking into every particle of every breath of wind. You lean out of the van to stretch your hand out into the alien land, holding it against the breeze so that your fingers can weave a pattern through the air. You could shout at the very top of your lungs and no-one would hear for miles, no-one would hear for days. Suddenly, for one second, your sight, smell and hearing disappears and all you are aware of is the feel of the sun beating through the windscreen and the air flicking through your hair. In that second, you escape from reality. The anonymity of the surrounding land emphasises the unimportance of your existence on earth; it’s liberating. You feel what it is to truly be free.
Tarquin Bertram
The road is long and straight and dusty. A slash of grey tarmac on the hot, burnt earth; it stretches as far as the eye can see to the shimmering line of the horizon. The landscape flickers in the heat causing the deep blue of the sky and the rust-orange of the ground to merge together in a hazy mass of colour. The dust covered window screen of the once-red truck frames the blurry image; a symmetrical view of the route ahead. All around the vehicle lays the same flat, barren, harsh yet breathtaking land-no civilisation in sight; you could be anywhere, you could be nowhere.
Convenience This morning I noticed the roses were blooming properly. Like they should. Like they do in photography books. The wind blowing in a convenient direction, (my hair away from my face) and the moon, lazy bum, hanging on till longer than we deserve. I said to myself; it’s going to be a wonderful day. It is! Really! I assure you... And I just stood there at the window, careful not to disrupt my own thoughts; arms on hips, smiling, breathing the fresh air polluted only with fumes I was used to. I thanked the lovely, serendipitous world for everything else in my world that would go right over the course of the day. The tea brewed itself, the eggs discovered that getting scrambled can be fun, The clothes and the dishes were happy for once, in their putrid squalor. All because the roses were blooming properly. I called home and didn’t get reminded That I never call home. I looked my dog and saw true love in his eyes Even after I had fed him. All because The roses were blooming properly. Nothing, I promised myself, not even good sense, would get in the way of me enjoying this world today; so beautiful, so enchanting, so perfect. Like clockwork. So...consistent. So unlike what it was just yesterday Jaideep Warya Emily Lang
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THE UNIVERSITY OF EDIN The 2012 Lewis Edwards Memorial Prize Winner
Yuki-onna
Meaning “Snow-woman”; the Yuki-onna is a spirit from Japanese folklore who appears as a beautiful woman, and ensnares travellers lost in snowy regions. I brush my hair with his jawbone. As I wait, in the shimmering air. The tree is mosaic, and I can tell That it will snow tonight. My landscape exists In the quiver of naked trees, anticipating The comfortless blankets of snow. When a breath Of ice blows across this mountain, I am exhaled. Its beautiful sigh.
Now, I touch man’s forehead. This one died Far too easily, a nature-numbed kiss. But I was born for this. The incantation of my lips Pressed greedy hoar-frost on his heart, until There were no beats. I am the palpitations now, Which flutter over his thin soul. We are unrequited. Without snow, I am stagnant. I thrive in these cool winds, which anaesthetise the air.
I file my nails on his traveller’s teeth. Examine my reflection in the mirror of his eyes. My face, charmed with newborn cheeks, is swept In my Mother’s blush, her soft pink hex. If I could cry, my tears would be the gleaming stars In wanderers’ travels. I am enchantment. The wisp of folklore flitting through The minds of men.
Sometimes, I feel longing for the sun-demon And his glaring hands, that humid, guilty heat; I yearn for that headache of sunbeams To pattern my ground in dizzy strips. I will wear him as totem, as a pendant Of some Heaven’s light. The sky darkens. And I remember, as I break his finger-tip: My dark red lips were painted for this.
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Tarquin Bertram
Ruth Mainland
NBURGH WRITING PRIZES GRIERSEN VERSE PRIZE
This prize, estimated value £900, is awarded to a matriculated student of the University of Aberdeen or the University of Edinburgh. The topic for 2013 is “Endings”. Candidates are required to use any recognised verse form but not ‘free verse’. Entries must be not more than 80 lines in typescript. Winner in 2012: Rebecca Tamas
SLOAN PRIZE
This prize, estimated value £1,500, is awarded annually for a prose or verse composition in Lowland Scots vernacular to a matriculated student or to a graduate of the University of Edinburgh of less than three years’ standing. Each competitor must state the particular dialect in which his/her composition is written, as accuracy in the use of the chosen dialect will be a factor, along with the literary and imaginative interest of the composition, in determining the award. Winners in 2012: Mary Mowat and Daniel Shand.
Emily Lang
LEWIS EDWARDS MEMORIAL PRIZE
This prize was established in memory of Lewis Edwards, who died while a student of English Literature at the University. It is open to any matriculated undergraduate student of the University of Edinburgh. The award, approximate value £1400, is offered for a short composition in English verse or prose fiction. Poems should not exceed 40 lines, prose fiction should not exceed 3000 words. Winners for 2012: Ruth Mainland & Tom Fergus Arnott
THE CLOSING DATE for all three competitions is FRIDAY, 25th January 2013. Please see page 34 for Rebecca Tamas’ Griersen Verse Prize-Winning Poem
For a detailed list of rules and regulations, please visit: http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/literatureslanguages-cultures/english-literature/undergraduate/ current/beyond-curriculum/prizes-scholarships/ writing-prizes
Emily Lang
ALL SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO: The Writer in Residence The University of Edinburgh 6th Floor David Hume Tower George Square Edinburgh EH8 9JX
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On Liberty The cold light of the TV danced over the room. It slid into the cracks of the walls, which might have once been a jovial yellow. It darted between the blades of the pair of second-hand desk fans that had been fighting a losing battle against the southern heat since the air conditioning broke again two months back. It twisted around the monitor hanging over the small wooden bed with faded rocket cartoons on the duvet. It made a break for the window but glanced off the metal shutters, down since sunset because you can’t be too careful around here. And it threw a pair of slumped silhouettes against the far wall while Amy and her mother watched it flicker. “There has been a homicide” the light announced. There had always been a homicide. Amy wondered why the news anchor didn’t get tired of saying it. A 5’7” dark-haired Hispanic man had fatally stabbed two people during a botched robbery. “Mom, why is there only ever crime in the news?” asked Amy. “Hush darlin’, I’m watching this” said her mother. The light enthusiastically informed each of them that Snapple is made from The Best Stuff On Earth. “It’s all that ever seems to happen here” persisted Amy. Her mother responded by pointedly saying absolutely nothing. “I’m not going to end up like him. I’m going to go to college, and become a famous lawyer, and then I’ll come back and we’ll be able to move out! Mrs Garcia says that if I study hard, I can make a better life for myself!” Ms Garcia said many things to Amy, when she could spare the time. She cared a great deal for the quiet pale girl who sat by the window and copied out of the least defaced textbook while the others tossed scrunched up paper and obscenities at each other. When you work at an inner city school like hers, describing yourself as a teacher was more of an act of prayer than a job description. “Oh honey, we talked about this! I need you to be here, to look after James while I’m at work! You wouldn’t leave him on his own now would you? Amy’s mother worked nights downtown as a cleaner at the offices of Helker and Smith, a legal firm. She’d gotten the two fans from a secretary called Janet, also a mother, after a senior partner had decided Dyson bladeless fans were much more 21st century and promptly had them all replaced. “And in a few years, once you can leave high school and James is old enough to look after himself, you’ll come and join me. God knows we could use the money.” “It’s okay Mom, it’ll work out. We’ll think of something. Maybe social services will write back and send someone” replied Amy, with a little less conviction in her voice than she had intended. “And how will I afford to send you college? I’m already doing overtime just to bring food in and keep the landlord out. College would be swell, honey, but we’ve got other things to be dealing with right now, okay?” As Amy’s mother looked across the sofa, she saw the spark of her younger self gazing keenly back from behind Amy’s bright eyes, a treasure long since stolen from her by the creeping advance of time and the relentless demands of a life spent counting each dollar. And she saw those eyes fade for a moment as the weight of the world increased by a few more disappointments, a few more broken dreams. And it broke her heart, like it had done every time before. Mike Walmsley 26
Tailbone
Jacqueline Thompson
Drunk and in the dark she slips. She is numb but she knows that something has gone wrong near the base of her back. You’ve fractured an inoperable bone, says the nurse, there’s no plaster cast for this one – you’ll have to wait it out. A month had passed since the festival. They had sat, chin to knee, on the dirty floor of some humid tent, beer cups crushed beneath them, her whole world collapsing outside. Days passed in desperation. Curled on the carpet, no location left untouched by memories. Dreams infiltrated, words cruel as bullets lodged too deep to retract. Emily Lang
And now there is another fracture, one more invisible break within her body. A gulf quite near the start of her spine, a hairline smarting at the end.
Chris Rubey
Not one bruise between them.
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Chris Rubey
Night Sweats
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Here is a fever, in the form of bars across your face, the blinds across the window failing to make you deaf to the sounds of the rain outside, wet shimmer under a gibbous moon, making your splinters of bones into chromium plating beneath the savage armour of your skin, your luminescent scales, by daylight your sword and shield against sunbeams, now a moving cloth where sweat-drops gather, your brow home to a hot flush of tomorrow incongruous in the darkness: when and where you awake, piss-stained and inglorious, you shall wish for another night by the bathroom wall, unable to sleep, moving your arms just for something to do, as you feel your body fight against your not-quite lycanthropy, feel your own form despise the animal you want so badly to see reflected dimly in the mirror opposite the shower-head’s curvature. Toby Sharpe
First Love Shooting pains up her left arm she feels numb in this final arrest. The palpitations at the center are a countdown to an eruption caused by the loss of her senses, clouded by the abyss of her addiction. Unable to seek help because the sting was self-inflicted and she loved it. Returning to the needle time after time simply because 20 seconds of bliss were worth the eternity of distress. Relapses were frequent for her since she never quite acknowledged her condition: the poison trumped the pain so she let it consume her and course through her every vein. She let transgression kiss her in the most intimate places, as she writhed in satisfaction. See what started off as inspiration had turned into heartbreak, and although she tried to renovate, failure was inevitable because heartbreak was now compulsion. Unable to fathom a world without the crimson venom that corrupted and caressed every crook, she drank him. She let him pleasure her corpse, let him touch her essence and penetrate her mind. But what she didn’t realise was that as he entered her he infiltrated her, leaving a perpetual stream that no linctus could lessen. He convinced her that he was the only legal drug, he was satisfaction, and he was LIFE. For too long she’d travelled an endless road that offered no recreation, itching, and craving feeling, emotion, LOVE, so when he approached her in a darkened alleyway she mistook his wine soaked words for clarity. His wet whispers seduced her and she let him have it all, let him know her better than even she could know herself, let him understand her, let him look into her soul when she looked into the muddy waters that were his eyes. And he took. He took her peace as he pleasured her, took her sanity as he seduced her, and took her freedom as he forced her to need him, he had her, he had stared into the all seeing eye that lay at her center and she would never look away. She submitted. And now as she lay here after yet another relapse, she realised her error, but didn’t regret it. She had chosen sin because she feared solitude yet now she lay unaided, in obscurity. He was gone and realisation seeped through the final gap in her mind and offered her escape, she knew now that to let go of him, and to let go of this dependence she had to let go of existence. There was nothing left to do but allow the relapse to consume her, one final time, so she let go of all pleasure, let go of all seduction, let go of the entirety of feeling, and submitted to her decease.
Emily Lang
Sandra Muhwezi
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Cycles When autumn is fading, when leaves drift away, when nightfall arrives so much faster, turn back to the past, when summer was young, when all you could hear was sweet laughter
As in cycles of nature, in our cycles of life, we suffer, rejoice, and then fade when we meet our end, when shadows close in new life, somewhere, will be made
When night covers day, when winds show no mercy, when earth seems so lifeless and cold, remember that beauty, though frozen and still, again will in springtime unfold
There’s no hope in forever, forever’s not real the wheel of life keeps on spinning don’t believe in forever - if there would be no ends there would never be any beginnings.
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Chris Rubey
Jonas Cimermanas
Selling Doors in Cleveland Three lines into my pitch and I’m invited in from the day of selling doors doorto-door when the knob twists off in my hand before I can get to the line about repair services. The knob falls to the porch, the screws to my toes, and the no thank you to my ears. Late April snow moves off the lake and onto foreclosed homes I skip in favor of the woman with the American flag sticker on her door. It opens to let me in to two sentences of my pitch before she interrupts. Tells me she won’t be buying anything from me or anyone else because the house will remain the same until her husband gets back from the war and the flag swings back in my face. 15 houses of Russians who speak enough English to say, I don’t speak any English, 7 straight no’s, 1 fuck-off later and I’m at the top of a ramp to see a man in his wheelchair point to what he would like to fix himself. The tubes from dialysis keep him from moving too much and he settles on telling me he can’t afford it before inviting me in from the cold. I stay to tell him trial workdays will be workdays on trial for crimes against humanity and leave him with pamphlets of other services as my Super arrives with his checklist. I tell him I’m done. This day and every other. He shrugs. Reminds me he is my only ride back home before I follow to watch him stand on the next porch to make the sale to the man with missing teeth and windows, who smiles at me through both.
Graham Duncan
Erika Meyers
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Learning the Rules In a house somewhere, that could be anywhere, a young girl studies her reflection in the mirror as her mother brushes her long hair. ‘Mumma,’ she says ‘I love my hair. It is the colour of leaves in autumn and of the sun setting over water.’ Her mother looks at her with a regretful smile. ‘But darling, your hair is red and lots of people don’t like that colour, so I wouldn’t say that too loudly, if I were you.’ Oh,’ says the girl, and she frowns but doesn’t say anything more. At school her favourite subject is PE. ‘Sir,’ she says, ‘I love my body. I love the way it feels as I swing from the monkey bars, and I love the way I know it looks as I run through the woods.’ The teacher chuckles at the little girl and says, ‘It’s fine to say that you love the way your body feels, but it’s not okay to say that you love the way your body looks, so perhaps don’t say that again in my class.’ ‘Oh,’ says the girl. She feels she is always saying the wrong thing. The girl grows taller and her body changes. When her big sister takes her to buy her first bra, the young girl studies her budding bust in the changing room mirror. They seem to be all nipple and no breast, but she says to her sister, ‘I love my new breasts. They are like tiny flowers growing on my chest.’ ‘The women in our family,’ her sister replies, ‘have breasts that are too small, and yours will probably be the same. Boys don’t like small boobs.’ ‘Oh,’ says the girl, and can tell from the look her sister gives her that she has said something strange again. The first time she bleeds she is very excited. ‘Daddy,’ she says as she bursts into the kitchen, ‘I am a women now!’ ‘Hush now, don’t talk of such things; it embarrasses men,’ says her blushing father, and he raises up the morning paper so that he can see her no longer. ‘Oh,’ says the girl, ashamed. At school, she has few friends, but she tries hard to make them. A girl in her chemistry class is on the school swimming team, and sometimes she goes to watch her compete. ‘I love the way you look in your swimming costume,’ she tells her, ‘your arms are so lovely and strong, and when you swim I can see the muscles moving in your back.’ ‘What are you, a lezza? Girls can’t say things like that to each other. Besides, boys don’t like muscly girls- are you saying that I’m butch?’ ‘Oh no!’ says the girl, ‘I didn’t mean it like that!’ Life is a minefield, and she must learn the rules. She tries again with some girls from her drama club, hanging out with them at break time by the tuck shop. She buys a chocolate bar, an aero (her favourite, the one her mum gets her for a treat sometimes). As she bites into it, her new friend says, ‘Hun, I wouldn’t eat that; it’s so fattening, and your thighs are already….well, you know.’ The young girl looks down at legs, at the bar of chocolate and says experimentally, ‘Oh yes, my thighs are enormous, as big as an elephant’s.’ ‘Mine too!’ says her friend and puts a comforting hand on her arm. The other girls giggle and smile at her. The young girl feels happy- she is beginning to understand. She goes to a party her new friend’s house, and MTV is blaring on the television. A attractive woman, a pop
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star, appears on the screen and tells the world that she is proud of her body, that she is beautiful and that she is fierce. The teenagers howl in derision. ‘What an absolute slag!’ says one boy. ‘I bet she fucks a different guy every night!’ says another. ‘She’s not even pretty!’ says her friend from her drama club. The young girl listens carefully, drinking it all in. By the time she gets her first boyfriend she has learnt a lot. ‘You’re so hot,’ he whispers into her hair, as his snaking hand fumbles with the clasp of her bra. ‘No, I’m hideous! My hair is ginger, my thighs are enormous, my arms are like a boy’s and my boobs are tiny!’ she recites, with feeling this time. ‘Good,’ he murmurs as he rubs up against her, ‘nobody likes an arrogant girl.’ She smiles as he slips off her skirt. At last, she is learning the rules. Rosie Hopegood
Emily Lang 33
Last year’s Griersen Verse Prize Winning Poem Imagining an Ocean Journey, Bucharest 1948. Rebecca Tamas Come home, said a voice; Whom is this mouth calling? Has this mouth kissed the water? Nicolae Sirius I escape the shallows every night unlock the gates, send water flowing come through dark alleys to the light. For the body there is no real goingonly landlocked breaths, walls, lungs, closed and always closing. Instead I turn traffic noise to seagull calls draw up the smell of salt from stone pile driftwood in the cupboards, pour sand into the drawers. I shift the pipes to send in crests of Atlantic foam to douse me in wet scales and brine, and drag me, skinless, from my home. The dark buildings of this city stand stiff, upright they have forgotten the squall and ease of storms blowing of dust fogged windows washed newly bright. Sailing across a star nicked sea would be owning again the freedoms we were made for, to live like youth existed, to put singing before groaning. So I do my damp travelling, holding onto a seed that’s sown from dreams, necessary and kind, not forever mourning hope that’s flown but trying to make an ocean crossing of the mind, letting the heart’s water burst the banks, and blur the lines. 34
Emily Lang
m
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Publish E D E vents A Snapshot of the Future Following on from the successes PublishED has enjoyed this semester we’re now in the planning stages for the activities we will be hosting for the spring. Our peer-led workshops, launched this year, have been incredibly popular and we’re looking forward to hosting even more next term; you may even read in this issue work that has been fine-tuned at one of the sessions. After visits this semester from Vintage, Edinburgh University Press and Jenny Brown Associates, we’re working hard to meet the same standards again for our talks from people in the publishing and creative businesses. Names are still to be confirmed, so keep an eye out on facebook and via email for information. As a free publication which has no corporate financial support (donations always welcome!), PublishED is also responsible each term for raising the funds needed to publish The Inkwell to the highest possible standard. For next semester, we will be looking to hold another bevy of fundraisers, including a pub
Submissions to:
publishedinburgh@gmail.com
Visit the website at:
publishedinburgh.weebly.com twitter.com/PublishEDSoc
And find us on Facebook, of course! 36
Most importantly, we will be holding our annual general meeting in early spring to select the new committee for 2013/14. Now in our third year of existence, we hope to see PublishED and The Inkwell carry on, going from strength to strength, once we hand over the reins. The best way, however, to keep up-to-date with our goings on is to join our facebook group or follow us on twitter, or alternatively drop us a line at publishedinburgh@gmail.com to join the mailing list! We look forward to meeting more of you over the remainder of the year!
submissions.theinkwell@gmail.com
Information:
Follow us on twitter:
quiz, informal open-mics and a large social to rival the Dead Poets’ Ceilidh madness of October. We’re also hoping to host a Publishing Fair again, giving access to information on further education and the chance to talk with local publishers and agents about what they offer.
Liz Ebdale President
UK
COMPETITIONS
We like to keep you up to date on what’s going on outside the student bubble. There are so many chances to get your work published and even win cash prizes. All you have to do is find the information. Here’s just a few upcoming competitions to get you started! The Bridport Prize Deadline: 31st May 2013 Over £15000 in various prizes Poem and short story bridportprize.org.uk
Remember, when one door closes, another opens. Don’t get disheartened by one instance of rejection - having to work for your rewards only makes them sweeter in the end. Then, when you’re sitting on your first hit novel, you can finally sit back, relax, and have a nice glass of wine. The Sophie King Prize Deadline: 10th January 2013 Winner recorded and broadcasted Romantic fiction sophieking.info Poetry London Competition Deadline: 1st May 2012 Prizes: £2000, £75 poetrylondon.co.uk/competition
Thynks Publications Deadline: 28th February 2013 Prizes: £100, £50, £25 Science Fiction Stories ScienceFictionStoriespost.html
The Fiction Desk Deadline: 31st January 2013 Prizes: £250 & publication Flash Fiction thefictiondesk.com/submissions
Chris Rubey
Travel Writing Prize Deadline: 1st May 2013 £250 to make it as a finalist writersworldwideprize.com
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Chris Rubey
Ne xt Issue -
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Spring 2013
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For 2013-14, the Department of English Literature is offering three exciting opportunities for writers who wish to explore their talents, foster their craft, and learn about publication. All programmes are taught by experienced teachers who are also well published writers.
MSc in Creative Writing This one-year, full-time taught MSc offers students the opportunity to focus in depth on their own practice - of poetry or fiction - and develop both creative and critical skills through a combination of weekly workshops and seminars.
MSc in Creative Writing by Distance Learning This three year, part-time course enables students to focus in depth on their own practice from the comfort of their own home. It offers tutor and peer support and provides a clear framework with which to monitor development. It aims to develop awareness of process, to further craft and to raise writing and editing skills to the highest possible level.
MSc in Creative Writing for Theatre and Performance This is a unique practical playwriting course and will appeal to aspiring playwrights, performance artists, directors, dramaturges and critics alike. Taught through seminars, writers’ workshops and practical workshops with actors, directors and other theatre professionals, it will focus not only on the craft of writing for performance but also on how a script plays out in real space and time, and in front of an audience. For more information about these and other MSc programmes in English Literature visit www.ed.ac.uk/schoolsdepartments/literatures-languages-cultures/english-literature/postgraduate/taught-masters