Summer 2009
Hello Puppeteers, Welcome to Summer Puppet. We hope you like it. Summer is a hazardous time of year for a magazine, so in case you lose your copy in the four months between now and Winter Puppet, you can find a pristine edition online at www.puppetmagazine.com Love, Puppet. image: sje
This Puppet was made by: Sam Elle Ottilie Becky Binky
FEAR MY
text: rachel chew / image: ethel hepelthwaite
I fear that one day I will lose the facility of Words. ‘Come,’ I would call, beckoning them from my memory, but they would not obey, refusing to surface from the crevices of my mind; Locked in. Unused. Abandoned. The f w that do esca e would pres nt the selves as fr gm ts, not wholes. And so n, wo ds w ld be no hi g to me but mea ingl ss st ok s g ntle, acc n u ted, b ld. Me maladyV n sh ng voc b l ry, Grammar s h at t e r e d; b o Ken daown. renIncohece I fe r the entrapment of lit r ry c ma, the los o exp es i n, t e t rm t of th dem n of dem nt a t ina il ty to
POET LAUREATE?
Luke Wright is a 4Talent Award Winner. He’s the newest poet-in-residence on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live.
Q: Do you believe that poetry is at its best when it’s performed? A: It depends on what poem it is. For example, I love loads of Larkin poems, such as The Old Fools or High Windows - I love the sound of them when I read them out in my head, but I don’t think they are best when they are performed on stage. On the other hand there are loads of poems that feel really flimsy on the page and benefit from being ‘completed’ by the poet when they read/perform them.
Q: What is your greatest source of inspiration when writing? A: Big skies, fresh mornings and good music are the starting point for much of what I write. When writing I like silence and coffee.
Q: You’ve been dubbed as the Alternative Poet Laureate. Do you think this title is a fitting one? A: I’m not important enough to be any kind of laureate but stuff like that sounds impressive, it’s flyer bumpf. I guess my view on things is a bit left field.
Q: Who do you most admire in the poetry world? A: I have a lot of respect for Tim Turnbull, he’s blazing a trail at the moment, he writes really rigorous, technically brilliant poetry that delights on the page as much as it enraptures an audience. That kind of duality is appealing to me.
text: samuel evans / image: lukewright.co.uk
ALTERNATIVE
text: edward randell / image: rebecca brewis
The Outsiders’ Beach Party So Meursault turns a somersault In summer’s salty breeze; The Arab dances arabesques “You kill me!”, he tee-hees; Camus amuses everyone By walking on his knees; While Sartre, chuckling, places film In camera. “Say cheese!” Now even Robert Smith has found The cure to his disease: Slap on the Factor 45 And lighten up, mate, please.
YOUR SECRET’S SAFE WITH ME Students were asked to anonymously and creatively disclose a secret on a postcard. Here are some of the results...
SPILT
INK
In a world where some divorce rates are nearly fifty percent, a tattoo presents a truly permanent marriage - albeit to yourself. Traditionally, tattoos have signified myriad indelible meanings, sometimes marking social acceptance, and sometimes marking total social exclusion. For Maoris and some African tribes, tattoos were traditionally signs of tribal belonging, inter-tribe status, and interfamilial descent. Outstanding warriors in North America were also marked out by their tattoos, and Thais used tattoos on men to represent bravery– but not on women, who were seen to have quite enough courage without being tested by the tattoo gun. Thus tattoos could traditionally signify identity with a community, which could either be inherited, or proved by courage. So too have sailors historically created a community when far away from home, by collecting tattoos as tokens of courage at sea, and souvenirs of distant lands. Now, in an age where alienation of the individual is a common complaint, people are increasingly turning to tattoos, either to identify themselves to a common cultural cause and avoid alienation, or to declare (and, by declaring propagate) their own subcultural alienation from the mainstream. Increasingly, too, tattoos are a way of making art of the body, of having a pretty picture (picked out of course to complement skin and hair colouring), as a skin-deep statement of aesthetic appreciation, branding the body to add to a personal brand. As tattoos have become increasingly common, people have resorted to bigger and bolder statement pieces. All-over body tattoos, once largely the preserve of some circus performers, along with scarification and body modification, have been gaining more and more publicity. ‘Cat Man,’ 50 year old Dennis Abner of San Diego, has elected to take the advice of a Native American chief, and ‘follow the ways of the tiger.’ His body modification includes striped tattoos covering the whole of his face; numerous facial piercings, to which whiskers are attached; silicone cheek and forehead implants to make feline contours; tooth filing and extension to create fangs; splitting of his upper lip to create a Cheshire-cat smile; and surgical pointing of his ears. ‘Cat Man’ stands as evidence of the potential addictiveness of tattoos, and evidence of the need for some people to address the symptoms of alienation by embracing them. Tattoos can be a way of obtaining self-control, and a way of obtaining control over other people’s reactions to you: define yourself, and define the way the world perceives you. As Pamela Anderson in her wisdom states, ‘tattoos are like stories.’ Especially now, tattoos are like stories, as they define their author, and seek to define their audience.
text: lucy clark / image: sophia k-f
SLIPPING In the mangle of my mind where ill-placed dishes drip monotonously, some drop inopportunely, shattering where bright fishes swim the roily tank trapped by the wall dividing one fluid and the thick unthinkable other.
text: eleanor mor timer / image: claire price
PANGAEA A Short Story
From Pangaea to being Gondwana without Laurasia. Dinosaurs; champions of evolution. There’s this game we play. All of us. We do it all the time. With many variations. This time we have a tennis ball and it gets thrown against the walls in our living room. It bounces off the floor, around corners and on tables. The tables are covered in glasses and mugs. There’s an ornamental plate on the mantel piece. The ball gets thrown harder and harder and sails closer and closer to the glasses and mugs and that ornamental plate. It’s most exciting when things nearly break and we all look at each other naughtily; smile wide grins and let out short yelps and the like. Someone usually suggests we should stop and depending on what mood we’re in we either stop or we don’t. Some people always suggest that we should stop, some people sometimes suggest that we should stop and some people never suggest that we should stop. If we stop then we end up doing something else and forget all about throwing the ball. We also forget why we stopped throwing the ball last time that we stopped throwing the ball so sooner or later we end up throwing it again. Or, we don’t stop throwing the ball and something gets broken. Usually a mug gets knocked off the table and it doesn’t matter because at most it just gets chipped at the part you put your mouth on. Sometimes it’s a glass that gets smashed and that’s worse because you have to sweep it up into a plastic bag and tie it up so that the pieces don’t cut your hands. You also have to remember that there’s broken glass in a plastic bag in the bin so that when you empty the bin a few days later you don’t cut your hands then either. Occasionally though it’s that ornamental plate. When that breaks some people say that it’s bad, some people don’t say anything and some people laugh a little bit. Usually the person who directly caused the ornamental plate to smash is the one that says nothing. The others either enjoy the fact that it wasn’t them or they don’t enjoy the fact that it happened at all. The ones that enjoy the fact that it wasn’t them are often the ones who have broken an ornamental plate before or know that it’s only a matter of time before they themselves break an ornamental plate. It’s usually these people who laughed at the point at which the ornamental plate was broken. The ones that say it is bad that the ornamental plate is broken are the ones who have never broken an ornamental plate and are unlikely to do so in the future because they are also the ones who suggest we should stop throwing the tennis ball around the living room in case we break the ornamental plate.
text: kit monteith / images: venetia thorneycroft They enjoy throwing the ball but always do it with measured precision and thus limit the likelihood of ever allowing the ball to come anywhere near the ornamental plate, let alone break it. Some of us don’t care so much about breaking the ornamental plate because they care more about hitting the picture rail, which is a difficult target to hit, and as a result often causes the ball to bounce off it at unusual angles increasing the likelihood of the ornamental plate being left in pieces. Others in our party just like to throw the ball hard and fast and don’t care where it hits the wall as long as it hits it and we all get to enjoy reeling back in terror as the ornamental plate teeters ever so perilously on its mantel. After the ornamental plate gets broken everyone is bummed because it was a nice ornamental plate. We all know that we’ll get another ornamental plate but just that there’ll be a period of time that there is no ornamental plate in the living room at all. Except the pieces of the one that was broken sitting inside a plastic bag in the bin until the bin is emptied a few days later. In the meantime it just causes everyone to become more reckless because there are only mugs to chip and glasses to smash. However, the game lacks a little something in the absence of the ornamental plate. Especially when a mug or glass is placed where the ornamental plate once sat; a natural place to put a mug or glass seeing as there is nothing else occupying the space. When that particular mug or glass gets broken everyone remembers the ornamental plate. Some of us say it’s a good thing that the ornamental plate is no longer there and at least it was only a mug or glass being broken. Some of us don’t say anything and some of us are spurred on in the task of acquiring a new ornamental plate to occupy the space. Both for aesthetic reasons and so as to reignite the fun we all used to have when playing our ball game. When the new ornamental plate is placed on the mantel piece everyone agrees that we should be extra careful not to break it. The game is played again but everyone is too conscious of the new ornamental plate. Those of us who always suggested we should stop the game are as keen as they ever were not to see the ornamental plate get broken. Those of us who targeted the picture rail to see the ball fly around the room at unusual angles don’t care much for targeting anything now that the new ornamental plate would be at risk. So, those of us that laughed when the first ornamental plate got broken and enjoyed throwing the ball as hard as they could around the living room now feel the weight of disapproval from the others bearing down on them. This results in no one breaking the new ornamental plate because no one enjoys the game anymore. We all just sit on the sofa admiring our new ornamental plate; fondly remembering the days we used to throw a ball around our living room.
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cover images: meyoko
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