WELCOME! Welcome to the first issue of The Notebook, the creative writing magazine for King’s students. Thanks to the Student Writing, Reviews and Travel sections you will discover, if you hadn’t already, that King’s is a hub of creative talent. The Notebook is keen to encourage all creative writing, so in the Irregulars section of this issue you will also find a selection of poems by students from the University of Durham. Last, but not least, if it’s a culture fix you are looking for, we have complied a list of exciting events taking place at Kings and around London. If you are interested in joining our mailing list or submitting your work, write to thenotebook.kings@gmail.com. We look forward to reading anything you would like to send our way. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this first edition. This is a magazine by King’s students for King’s student and we really hope you enjoy reading it.
The Notebook Team
SUBMIT MORE FOR THE NEXT ISSUE!
4 Poetry
12
Prose
Reviews
19
Martin Amis and Mikhail Bulgakov
TRAVEL WRITING
content
STUDENT WRITING
22
What a Feast : The Lost Art of the Brasserie
Irregulars
University of Durham student poetry
Events
24
28
Exciting upcoming events
Meet the Team
31
Send submissions to: thenotebook.kings@googlemail.com For more information on submissions see the Notebook website: www.thenotebookkcl.ac.uk 3
poetry
A CRANE IN HACKNEY by Frances Peto
looming its neck iron-blue made dull by October Monday grey it divides the sky into three planes in the foreground: a builder leans on scaffolding bricks and clothes sand brown then the crane the middle plane, the focal point straining upwards and backwards lending perspective. A crow in flight bisects the vertical, laddered neck. Finally the third plane making sense of the endless space of sky: an aeroplane journeying through mist
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The poetry section of The Notebook is an occasion to explore the vast cultural, literary and linguistic phenomenon that grows in importance in our student body. The poems that follow display great variety in style and content, and are unified by the poets’ success in creating art out of a wide range of subjects; from human emotions to simple objects of our everyday life.
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4
POETRY FIVE STUDIES FOR A PORTRAIT OF FRANCIS BACON
I People had bled before – like dams that acquiesce to their seams cracking into ruin. People had bled before, and what stared from canvas was more blood than true. What is there, beside questioning, in standing before the screaming man? Could the brush of the painter stretch forward to demand from the viewer? Questions are not much.
Rather than answers there I saw a sort of bread to feed those who, like he and I, had twitched at the sound of their own tread on the road of sleepless nights. II To look at the girl in her chair you’d think she was naked beneath her clothes, her right knee bent upwards across her crux to wink at the sky, and her left foot with a slight twist that points it the other way. A twisting of a young girl, looking at a triptych. She could be beautiful if smoothed away at, but the chair she drives will not link her with any but those at a distance. Say what you like about these leering paintings, they know that she is the mirror of beauty once it’s warped through the heat of passion.
by Patrick Davidson III This one speaks of the voices at nights the audio guide states it might have helped him bear his voices’ weight. And suddenly, I blink to feel, how much louder are my own, when alone I’m stood between the jabbering headphones. IV I wondered about the low rumbling gurgle coming from the pink hung-open mouth of the boy who lets a dinosaur trail at his feet, bored? Oh…he’s deaf… so leeringly dribblingly deaf, and his wet muttering is of worry: here even the deaf can worry, all seeing eyes can find they get V What terror learnt then, that starts when I’m leaving old paintings? The terror coursing through his art was always mine singing within, The terror is in the tired heart that hears evening drawing in.
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POETRY
‘Shiamali’ - Semolina Cakes by Alexander Athienitis
For a lover. For the cake mixture: Two cups of French semolina, One cup of Jamaican sugar, One cup of Onken yoghurt, Half a cup of Iowa corn oil, Half a teaspoon of Irish baking powder, Half a teaspoon of Madagascan vanilla powder, Half a cup of Lebanese rosewater, A quarter of a cup of Iranian blanched chopped pistachios. For the syrup: Another cup of Jamaican sugar, One cup of Thames Water, One teaspoon of Floridian lemon juice. Put the semolina in a bowl and mix with oil, Add all but the nuts, and toil. Pour into a greased tray and sprinkle the nuts on top, Bake on a medium heat for an hour until golden brown, then stop. Boil the water, lemon juice and sugar for about ten minutes, Cut the cake into triangles and drown in syrup. Best served on a British suburban patio Decorated with olive trees.
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POETRY ‘Elegant Friday’ at Brixton by Artinavan Right out of Electric Avenue, in the midst of the mumbling of French Patois, I heard a woman ask for “Some brockley and another whitey”. The market’s outer limit – it spills outside. Those with aprons wheel empty cages past those without, “that’s the way Jah planned it”.
Make every day a Jamaica Sun Day. Plantain – bruised as they are curved and yellow as they are black, bruised as they are curved – yellow as they are black. Grace crisps. Grace crisps. Grace crisps. And fruits I’m sure I’ve not heard of and am slightly suspicious have just been invented for the purposes of this market stall but am slightly embarrassed to enquire about. “That’s the way Jah planned it”.
A man, broken arm inside a sweater, trips out of a room full of hair and pauses by a rack of cross-sectioned yams – a heap of soft ageless trees watched over by a woman, one eye swollen permanently to winking. Trade dead fish for wet paint antlers sunbathe opposite a woman, eating from a tub behind a door, who will be ‘back in five’, “that’s the way Jah planned it”.
And the pigs show up in parts, ten trotters from two and a half pigs. Their tails and their trotters and their skin not to mention that lovely half pig which has no tail and no tongue and only half his skin.
Caribbean African Asian Arcade the time has come search my heart Red Raw on Paradise corner No Admittance for the Sleeping Baby only dry meat for the African Queen the faded textile banners state The time has come for the hairdressing Bonding, Sorry Mama!
“Hot, hot, hot in a Holiday Inn!” Man standing on up-turned red crate holding a broom as if posing for a rousing Socialist mural on the dignity of labour. Brixton we love ya! Hype! Hype! Hype!
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POETRY in a dark room, quietly by Rachele Dini
i want to write something beautiful, today: i want to capture Florence in a line, maybe two then take her home with me and re-read her when the English sky speaks only in grey. the sun: the hot sun— i want to imprint it on the page when i open this notebook it’ll blind my eyes... and I’ll see only Florence, Florence: always and forever, Florence in a dark room, quietly, i’ll move myself to tears feeling nothing but the ache of feet battered by cobblestone streets seeing everything: lampposts churches bridges people so many people - so many people in Florence: tourists artists writers explorers and the Florentines... i always forget the Florentines here i am, ready to write something beautiful – with just a hint of a tuscan accent to allow me to re-fresh my palate when english will have engulfed my senses once more.
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POETRY From out of the faiseurs de clouds and of clay by Felix Franck
From out of the faiseurs de clouds and of clay Dehors des contagions of jewels corrupt The crows and the ravens lentement s’éveillent They convene ils complotent and finally cooptent Cacophonie as raucous que la couronne d’épines Voltigent everywhere des berries rouges Dans un bal indecent the dreadlords convene Une furieuse necktie party inside the Moulin Rouge Tourbillon rises to sneer les canailles Above and within the flux pestilentiel Bald bats s’écroulent as the daffodils fry Broomsticks above comme les Tie-Fighters yell Le nuage all tacky amasse ses consones Which glue à chacun autre the way you would flee Il muster what darkness vous ne pourriez turn on They heed every need et créent chaque envie Obscuring la lune before bursting at last Allant semer discorde black eyes and short years Le huitième fléau burden de notre caste Between dieux et hommes vont gagner leurs demeures
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POETRY I’ve just finished drowning a milk bottle. Jumped in when I nudged it; semi-naked An almost empty vessel. Opals and pearls pooling at its mouth, Baring its body through pale gossamer Brazen, and dripping, ‘til I couldn’t stand it ‘Til I took it by the neck and held it under Until the lathered cavity was filled with water, It struggled. It clamoured. Bobbing at the surface, gurgling like a newborn. How funny. I felt its last breath splutter And muttered, “Ophelia.” Let it sink. Let it settle on steel. I pulled off the rubber mitts I wore for this murder Soon, I’ll slide a glass from the counter, And drink the last of the evidence.
‘Tonight Matthew, i’m going to be Hamlet’ by Rebecca Jane Joseph
The curled up leaf is sleeping in the sun; it closed its eyes, relaxed, and let the heat dry its desires. In sleep we cheat, producing meanings where there are none. The leaf is comfortable; the warmth, the light are anaesthetic. It loses feeling, but believes that this method of healing is working, that the sun is always right. But one day the leaf suddenly awakes or is awoken - by a sensation an overpowering elation, in whose clarity comfort is opaque. A rain drop touches, glides along its back. It rolls between its sleepy curves, and fresh moisture hits at every nerve, marking every pathway, every track.
Dried Desires by Polina Norina
The leaf, no longer hiding its desire, is welcoming; it opens up its curls, it bends beneath the rain’s force as it twirls at edge, at corner, reaching higher than the sun’s brightest temptations. The leaf holds the rain in every pore, and swears, as in these moments it once swore, to never pick comfort over elation.
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POETRY
Druid Tree by Mary Chapman
Magnificent. Barren It had come crashing, breaking the air With dead branches splayed on forest floor Limbs to crack musty wormed earth with sound Only resonant now to silence and peeling bark Yet it was here, waiting Looming from gloom like a thing of wonder Waiting, for us. We crawled unsteady across thick strong arm, safe To dangle laced boots above shallow glass With icy pebbles gurgling hidden under meek water We dreamt of druids in waning russet-blue sky Pale with whispers of vanished people Ancient deep barbarous wisdom, so lost and terrible and raw, Made me think of the power of this moment Of you of love, although I did not say. Time to capture stilled moments for forever, for it was Beautiful, so beautiful in half-light half-knowledge of This silent emotion that stuffed crisp cold air With tentative baby steps until our fingers entwined And you said that now would bring you happiness in sadness I was mute with trembling unsure truth So I said Forever, despite impossible infinity that neither You nor I believe in. And we stayed, Even though I was scared of gentle darkness Cigarette-breath rising ethereal grey from lips That tasted of smoke in lungs, mine, and Bittersweet passion that rose, ghostly, like Those old mystics in The fear of all the things I wanted to do to You.
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prose
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For this very first creative writing prose section, we chose five pieces, mainly short stories, with hopefully distinctive types of style and genre which will appeal to all of you.
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Weave a circle round [her] thrice And close your eyes in holy dread For [s]he on honeydew hath fed And drunk the milk of paradise - Coleridge
Dear Ben,
Flirting with the page by Rachele Dini
I have just come home from a day in a training session about writing for the web: eight hours devoted to learning how to cut out big words, simplify phrases and eliminate unnecessary ‘waffle’. I came out reeling. I wanted to wail: “But waffling is what I do. What am I, without my waffling? Cut out big words? I need my big words.” I saw myself again, age five – Plugging my ears while my father tried to coax me into learning a new song on the violin. Screaming: “I don’t want to learn a new song. I want to play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star!’” Stamping my foot and going red in the face and threatening to smash my violin on the floor if he didn’t let me play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’ right now. Twenty years later, and there I was again, red-faced and wanting to smash something. But it wasn’t all bad. And although our instructor succeeded in systematically shooting to pieces all my ideas about language, the purpose of writing, and what readers want, he also gave us a piece of advice that (of course - what doesn’t?) made me think of you. “Think of your audience – your readers - as one person,” he said. “Give him/her a name - an age - a job. Make him/her real. It’ll make it easier to know what your aim is, if you know for whom you are writing.” Walking home - it was raining, the air was heavy, but I would not be stopped, I had to get the afternoon’s coffees out of my system and my rushing thoughts to abate - I found myself thinking about the myriad of pieces amassed on my desktop that start with the words “Dear Ben”. For example: “I am very judgmental, Ben. The first time I met you I thought you were immensely attractive and as a consequence I assumed you must be an asshole. Then I decided that you weren’t an asshole – but I was still suspicious and figured there must be a catch somewhere. I assumed you’d been popular in high school and had always had it easy. And I equated the fact that I’d been miserable in high school with my being, essentially, a better person than you.” Do you remember this? It’s from one of my very first letters to you. Or: “Dear Ben, How is it that Florence becomes more beautiful every time I see it? If I could marry a city I would already be at the altar. Of the Duomo, of course. No, maybe Santa Croce […] I love Italy, I adore Florence, I love a lot of people and a lot of things. Maybe the problem is that I
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PROSE love too many things.” Two summers ago, this was. It’s true, what the instructor said: identifying one’s reader does help one to focus one’s discourse. I should know: I have been using you to focus my discourse for years. Hell, I have been focusing my discourse on you for years. But not only that: envisioning one’s reader helps to make the fictional seem real. It facilitates the suspension of disbelief: for in inventing a realistic reader, the author makes the narrative itself more realistic. The very existence of a specific reader immediately creates a sense of time and place, of a before and an after. It implies that there is a story that pre-dates the account at hand (the history between author and reader), that there is a reason why the author is telling the story (presumably something between author and reader needs resolving) and that there are loose ends to tie, something to be resolved… and tension in the air (why else, otherwise, would the author be bothering to speak?). But I have noticed something else. Having invented a reader, the author changes the hues with which he or she paints his/her canvas… not to convey his/her message more clearly, as the instructor in my class implied, but simply to convey him/herself in a better light. Because with the invention of the reader, the account turns into a personal affair; a relationship is born, and the author’s mission becomes to appeal to the reader. Appeal both in the sense of putting forth an argument (the reader as judge and jury), and in the sense of rendering one’s self appealing – i.e., luring, attracting, ingratiating (the reader as prisoner). And so the author leaves out material - in some cases, entire pieces of their life - that jars with the idea they wish their reader to have of them. They invent. They elaborate. In the very act of rendering the fictional ‘true’ they find themselves, paradoxically, transforming the truth into a fiction. Sexing it up, so to speak. They find themselves using words and turns of phrase that show them in the best light - the literary equivalent of choosing the most flattering skirt length or revealing the right amount of cleavage. Witness the author, flirting with the page. I imagine you smiling as you read this. I can see the sideways grin as it slants slightly to the left of your face while, legs crossed (your surprisingly feminine Meg Ryan legs… I still remember your bewilderment when I spotted the resemblance), hands clasped around your knee, foot swinging, you lean forward, the better to understand. Intent, as always, on garnering the full meaning – on observing, assimilating, pondering (my opposite, in every way). I imagine you, captivated: my captive audience, my trapped judge and jury. Laughing at the absurdity of what I am saying. But is it so absurd? Rather, is it not inevitable? After all, to write is to perform – and a performer keeps one’s audience enthralled by attracting them more easily than by repelling them (the idea that there is a fine line between the two will have to be the subject of a future letter). Moreover, if to write is to exhibit, bare and conceal, the writer isn’t merely flirting: they are veritably performing a strip tease. Witness the writer, doing the dance of the seven veils. “Think of your audience – your readers - as one person” our instructor told us. “Give him/her a name - an age - a job. Make him/her real. It’ll make it easier to know what your aim is.” And so I have invented you, Ben: conjured a picture of you, the better to do my little dance (I
13
PROSE doubt very much this was what our teacher had in mind). Concocted an idea of your likes and dislikes in order to know what – and what not – to reveal. Propped up your cardboard cut-out, life-sized paper doll figure, then switched on the tablelamp, draped it with one of my fuchsia scarves – the ones that bleed onto my other clothes in the wash and stream scarlet tears every time, like today, I get caught in the rain – and proceeded to grind my hips. Witness the writer, eyes closed in order to shut out the real and better embrace the ephemeral fiction she herself has created. Fiction: in other words, lies. I have a confession to make Ben: I have lied throughout this letter. The training session- it was over a month ago, not today. I didn’t walk home - I went to Russell Square to meet my parents for dinner. It wasn’t raining, and I had not had so much coffee as to be buzzing. I had to invent all of that, to create a scene, to enable the suspense to mount. To draw you in. Writers lie and manipulate even while claiming to confess - and when narrating, the distinction between mendacity and truth is far too easily blurred. But do you know what I find fascinating? The truth that emerges from an accumulation of fibs. There are clues to be found in a fictitious account: the scene of the crime is littered with evidence, and the reader has only to look for what has not been said. To read between the lines, as it were. To envision the naked skin under the veils, and create for themselves a whole from the glimpse of an undulating hip or the hint of a nipple. To determine for themselves the ‘true’ version events. After all, Ben, you didn’t think I’d really strip, did you? Truly, hushawildviolet
You know
The Victim: He pretends to be some kind of artist, hiding under a coat in the corner. He says: “I am a lucky man, a little by Tom Moores splash of happiness and I am a necessary evil.” Well, he likes to talk like that; his self-indulgent philosophy. I, on the other hand, choose my favourite bridge and watch fireworks echo overhead…enjoy the show, even up in the nosebleeds, where riverboats go towing rubbish up the…you know. I walk everywhere I can; taking trains is for tourists, commuters crowd the buses, and these legs were made for travel. The bar I work in’s on the corner of Nebraska Street. The park I walk in’s just behind. And those are my thoughts. But, he is still there, just about, and, after his foray into his own existentialism, to which I am obliged to listen, he settles down again, back to back with his oranges and reds; his doing, not mine. I’d never paint a wall if I could help it but I never get tired of his gentle brushstrokes. I watch him leaning up against his gigantic typewriter. Usually he’s leaping from key to key – QWERTYUIOP – but tonight. Is. Different. Tonight, there are no…
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PROSE you know. He reaches up, puts his ink-stained fingers to the paper thin skin of my cheek and the dark blotches they leave mingle like watercolours as I weep for him. He writes his own bored melancholia, his tired cynicism, into my very bones and I weep for him. But while I weep tears, he leaks ink, disgusting, thick, black ink, into his own porous face from his dark features, leaving smudged black bats clawing at his eyes. He screws his fists into tight little balls and does the same with his rejected, paper wads. He is killing me. Suffocating the life out of us with his constant self-analysis. “Don’t touch me,” he says, “I’m thinking” and we’re back to basics. That is why I have to leave. I see the city open up and I walk. Just how I love. Walk and walk and love and love. He can lie in the bed he’s made from imagery, simile and over indulgence in himself. His self-absorbed sheets sticking to the inky sweat pouring from his limbs all crunched and curled as he tries to decipher some meaning in his own…you know. I’ll take solace in the pavement. The oxygen pours into my blood and my head rushes to be somewhere that belongs only to me. Where my skin can move at the touch of the city’s cold fingertips. And I can love again. Free from the sickly sweet suffocation of the sheets that tangle around him more and more by the moment. I think of him, lying against that wall. His oranges and reds draining out of the brick and plaster and into his fingertips until he releases them in a jet across the room to start a new mosaic of colour on the opposite wall. And, for once, I’m glad I’m not there. The best that I can do for him is to give him the coat that he can lie under, and leave while I still have some sense of the colour he uses but can apply it to my own paper, out there on the streets. My scarf whips against my face, but I love the lash of the weather more than I could ever love his gentle brushstrokes. And while those brushes use whatever it is of me that I left behind in that room, it’s the best I can give and still take myself away, virtually unharmed, the picture he painted of me, tucked snugly under my arm.
In the window
It was in the window. The creeping insect. Between the two sheets of glass. It ran along them, looking for a way out. It must have been her who closed it in there, opening the window to get a clearer view. Now she can’t see what she was looking at, by Rosa Lia just its legs, its ugly body. There’s something detached about its movements, its struggle. Down below her on the street a man looks up. He can see a woman stood by the window, staring out. Probably wishing she was outside. Maybe even looking down at him. Now he thought about it, they were looking at each other. She was wearing a blue dress, it was low, it showed the top of her bra. She was in a spotlight, the brightness of her room standing out from the dark of the street. He imagined himself in the house. Sat down at the table with her family, listening to the sound of the fire. The table slowly emptying, him going upstairs, opening the door to her room, standing by her as she looked out of the window at a man on the street. Pulling her away, even if she didn’t want him to. “Sorry! How clumsy of me.” An old lady stood on his foot. It was a hard foot, covered in new, shiny leather. A sign of the wealth that this respectable gentleman was in possession of. He reminded her of her son. The honest sort of man. Too busy with work to have time for women.
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PROSE She wished her son would find a nice young lady and settle down. But then he’d said something strange the other day. He’d been trying to tell her that their concerns were soon to drift further apart… The young man now behind her might understand. He might understand how it was that people no longer explained themselves properly. She dropped the letter she’d been holding. Her hands were losing their strength. She bent down to pick it up, but it had fallen onto the road. She’d been on the way to the post office, to buy an envelope. A car rushed forwards, the air moved across her skin, she barely kept herself from falling onto it. Once passed, the letter was gone. It had stuck to something on the tyre. It was moving dizzily round, it’s words becoming confused. It forgot who it was supposed to be addressed to. The old lady, she’d written it. Maybe she’d wanted it to fall on the road, maybe she had changed her mind about it. Maybe she hadn’t written anything on it. The roads were dry, otherwise it would have been torn in two by now. It was grateful for that at least. She must have been a mean old lady, the letter thought, turning onto a cobbled road. I never left that drawer until yesterday, and then I only saw her mean old face. She must have lived in that house alone. A cat ran out of the way of the wheels. She must have had no furniture outside of that room. And no flowers in her garden. The car slowed down. The ground beneath the wheels was smoother. It stopped altogether. It started moving backwards and forwards; the letter thought the wheels were trying to scrape it off. It stopped altogether; the air was still. The letter wasn’t going to be tricked; it stayed silent. A foot was beside it. The hem of a blue dress just visible. The foot turned to point at it, bringing another one with it. Then a face appeared. A young woman. Her hands were soft on the letter. The paper was dirty, it looked like toilet roll on her car wheels. She picked it off with revulsion. Then stopped. There was writing on it. She held it tightly, it brushed against the flowers in her garden. Inside, she turned on the lights. The rooms were all empty. Her bedroom was on the bottom floor, she walked straight towards it. She walked past her bed where her husband lay asleep. She lent with her back on the window, wondering what he was dreaming of. She turned around and pressed the letter to the glass, the light from the lamppost illuminated the words. ‘Dear John,’ it read. And nothing more. She sighed, not noticing the flicker of movement on the street below.
man strike
I hate flying. Don’t look at me like that. It’s quite a common phobia you know. I mean, what sensible creature wouldn’t want to hang suspended thousands of metres above stability, with nothing above you and a very steep drop that means you could by Imachibundu Onuzo soon become nothing yourself, smashed to mushy pulp? Except when you fall from such heights do you even get smashed? Does anyone ever find your remains or do the winds take your microscopic remnants and fling then into someone’s unsuspecting face? Understandably I hate flying. Stop laughing. Do you hear me? I said stop laughing at me. My mother laughed you know. That same beaky cackle that you have, that dry sound, in fact, come to think of it, you two look kinda alike. Those glinty eyes, the hard mouth, the pointy beak.
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PROSE She laughed when she tried to push me out of our nest, then off a roof, then off a cliff. You know that homicidal psycho laughed right up to the day I got my stripes from flying school. What’s that you said? Oh you think I’m a bit too old to be just graduating. Did you not hear me say I have a phobia? What have you accomplished against all odds? My first day of proper flying would have been traumatising enough without the incident that gave me these flight scars. Oh I see. Now you’re impressed. No I do not want you to buy me mosquito beer. I can pay for my own fermented blood thank you very much. As I was saying… all the other rookies were going on about the ‘sapphire blue skies’ and the ‘crisp winter air’. Me, I was struggling to stay alive. Doing the breathing exercises that my shrink had recommended, making sure my wing flaps were in time with everyone else. Of course, my flight commander stuck me at the back of the formation. I didn’t mind. A lot of these freaks looked better from behind anyway. Breath in, wings up, wings down. Breathe out, wings up, wings down. Inhale, up, down. Exhale, down, up. Up, inhale, down, up, exhale, exhale. Oh no, I was out of sync with the rest. A sick feeling began to overtake me. I looked down. I know. Despite all those weeks of Aerophobics Anonymous (AA), despite of the many times my group leader had reiterated that I keep my eyes glued to the bum ahead of me, I looked down. It was complete engine failure after that. The wings were still flapping but I knew it would only be a matter of time before I joined my intestines, which had already started making the long drop to obliteration. Then KABBAMOOSH. This huge metal bird appeared ahead of us as if from nowhere, its monstrous body disrupting our whole flight formation and throwing everyone, even our hard nosed commander, into absolute, fluttering panic. Of course, they’d told us about these things in flying school. They’re called pleins. P-L-E-I-N-S idiot, not P-L-A-N-E-S. But no-one had expected we’d meet one on our maiden flight. Another thing, they’d told us in flying school was that meeting one of these pleins, spelt absolute death for a bird. I watched as Breezy Boy- our class valedictorian and second only to the Commander in flight formation- struggled against the pull of the plein enjuns. I suddenly felt pity for this over achiever. He’d met something that his well developed wings couldn’t conquer. When it was my turn, I promised myself that I wouldn’t struggle. One by one we were sucked in, the smell of burning flesh and feathers began to overshadow the ‘crisp winter air’ that some of those now crisp birds had been exclaiming over, just under an hour ago. My turn came as I knew it would and I let myself be drawn towards those enjuns, closer, closer, closer until I could see the metal teeth that would chew me to my Creator. Suddenly, falling to my death didn’t seem to be the worst death I could think of. I began to flap my wings, forgetting my breathing instructions and flapping. I was still being drawn in but it was slower, slower, sloooweer and then I felt a singeing pain, that seared me to the bone, literally. Well this was the end. I was oddly detached, strangely calm about being able to smell myself as I was being incinerated. Then suddenly the pain stopped increasing. I looked behind me. The plane was gone. I looked down and below me I could see the metal continent, growing smaller and smaller as it plummeted to the ground. I watched as the monster hit the water, creating an almighty splash. Surely all the humans inside would be killed. It saddened me. I’ve always liked the buggers, even at times wanted to be one of them so I could be forever weighted to the ground. It was sad. Then to my wonder, I watched as one human climbed onto the wing of the big bird, then another, then another until from above it looked like chain of people were standing on water, it looked like a miracle. The bars closing you said? C’mon, just one more glass of mosquito bru. Okay let me finish my story. So what if you’ve heard it before, these birds haven’t.
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PROSE Ahem. As I said, I was glad to see the humans had survived but I couldn’t help mourning my ashified mates, even Breezy Boy. Yeah, I know we’re small and insignificant and whoever heard of a human signing an air treaty with a bird, but maybe the skies would be a lot safer if they worked out how to make man strikes history! Oi bartender, shut up. It’s a great punch line.
Matinée
Here she comes, leaning gawkily on the café door until it clicks open. Her elbow catches on the frame as she slips in. Charlie stops breathing, traces his eyes across her lips as they by Rebecca-Jane Joseph sharply mouth some silent obscenity. It is the way it always has been; she’s heart-stopping but she never really knew it, he prefers it that way. She hasn’t seen him yet and he smiles slightly at this. He slides down in his seat so she has to stand on tiptoe to see him. As she does so he notices her socks are odd, doubtless she ran out of pairs, but Charlie prefers to think she’s colour-blind. He fiddles with the ashtray, pushing his finger into a cigarette groove, and watches her mismatched feet move towards the table. “Sneaky bastard,” her hand ruffles Charlie’s hair as she leans down to his level. “Two years and I still terrify you eh?” She nips his ear before taking a place opposite him. Inside Charlie falls over, two years is right, and she still breaks the ice like a pro. He hated her biting, perhaps because no one else ever dared; it was one of those gamine moves she seemed to carry with her. He fingered his ear, knowing that underneath the skin his cartilage was pockmarked with serrated indentations where only her teeth would fit. “For your teeth only”, Charlie had a sudden urge to tell her this, but she’d just brush it off, and tell him why Moore couldn’t hold a fairy-light to Connery. Not that she wouldn’t have understood, on the contrary she’d probably thought it before him. He had always been suspicious of her perception, all those naturally empathic conversational skills which led him to question whether he really was as simple and crude-minded as she left him feeling. But she hadn’t always been right, thank God. He hated her for that too; she let him believe she was infallible. She shouldn’t be allowed to make mistakes, he’d decided, only humans do that. She wasn’t necessarily better than anyone, just everyone; he didn’t like to explain it. “Was I offensively late Sir Silence? Or is your Thursday morning gargoyle impression for the punters?” She thumbs over her shoulder at a table of regulars, all men of a certain age eating indistinguishable fried things. One has a bottle of equally unidentifiable ale in his hand; Charlie checks the grease-stained clock just above them, 10:07am. Ha, good man.
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The Pregnant Widow
reviews
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The Book Review section thrives on the discussion of literature spanning all genres, styles, and authors, from the well-known to the newly released. We hope to enlighten readers on a variety of works and encourage discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. In this issue, The Notebook is pleased to present reviews of Martin Amis’s most recent work, ‘The Pregnant Widow’ and of Mikhail Bulgakov’s classic novel, ‘The Master and Margarita’.
‘…what you get when you don’t get what you want isn’t it, experience.’ So bemoaned Jimmy Nail’s Auf Wiedersehen, Pet bricklayer. Yet in the case of Martin Amis’ most recent offering, The Pregnant Widow, we get both what we want and the experience. Keith Nearing, the protagonist of the story, admittedly wears his Amis credentials upon his sleeve, for all female comers to peck at. What we read of him is the summer of 1970: hot, sweaty and very far away from the present aged by Patrick Davidson Keith, who is looking back with the perfect 20:20 hindsight we all love and hate in equal measure about life. I’m not going to rattle through the plot, the traumatic couplings, or to whom the best lines belong. Read the book for this reason: it takes guts to write, in your early sixties, about sex - particularly sex among the young and involving young women, because there’s just no way of pleasing everyone. Amis relies on his prose to silence his critics - which they are. Reading TPW is like learning to read again. I simply didn’t realise that words worked like they do in this author’s hands. The people speak to each other completely differently from the descriptions and narrative updates that they are, due to structural restraints, unaware of. And that is genius. You never notice the switching from one to another, because the thick, lyrical brushstrokes of the landscapes are punctured regularly by the spiky, jolting language of the people. It’s humanism on crack, and a pleasure to read. Essentially, if you have never read Amis before, or have had bad experiences with him in the past, this may be the best place to take him from. You remember when, after six years of doing one or the other, Muse demonstrated that they could write albums with both lyrical and musical strength? Well, this is that, only better. People can like Amis’s early stuff and hate his big ‘American’ novels. They can like his journalism, or that canal-barge, nicotine-dredging voice’s punditry (or both) and hate his fiction. He’s a varied writer. But with TPW, it’s all here – all of it – and the union is spellbinding. On a less highbrow, more sensitive level, the book is important because it is one of the few I
by Martin Amis
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REVIEWS have ever read (and certainly one of the few written by a somewhat masculine male writer) to properly point out the destructive power that sex can have upon on men. Amis reminds those of us who have been caught in the post-feminist no-man’s land between proto-female sensitivity and the expectations of both male and female conceptions of masculinity; it isn’t unusual for confusion, anxiety and the blitzkrieg of a voracious woman to have a traumatising effect on a man. If nothing else, we should be grateful that TPW points out that it isn’t just women who can be the walking wounded of the sexual revolution. It’s a brave and long-awaited pronouncement on the continued difficulties inherent in sex and gender relations – that we are closer through our shared, but unacknowledged, pain and powerlessness. (When I read a lot of the fascist-feminist attacks on this book, it’s not that I don’t think they’ve understood the text, I just don’t think a lot of them have read it.) Beyond the book being a damn good read, there also lies a sadder, more important side: it teaches men to cry, so to speak, at the failings they carry that were never really theirs. A lot of sex is about making men cry, but can a book, through admitting our sexual failings in times of fear, allow men to cry when men need it? That’s unexpected and commendable. It is the sensitivity at the heart of The Pregnant Widow that fulfils another aphorism about experience, this time Aldous Huxley’s: ‘Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.’ The master here has crafted a thing of power, beauty and love from it - bravo.
“Beyond a certain age you no longer know what you look like. Something goes wrong with mirrors. They lose the power to tell you what you look like. All right, they do tell you, probably. But you can’t see it. Beyond a certain age, then, you have neither the means nor the opportunity to find out what you look like. All the mirror will give you (in at least two senses) is a rough idea.” Excerpt from The Pregnant Window by Martin Amis (Random House, February 2010)
The Master and Margarita
It is “at the hour of the hot spring sunset” that the Devil arrives in Moscow. The chaos that follows is moulded by Mikhail Bulgakov into one of the finest literary works of the twentieth century. Bulgakov combines dry humour, a surreal and vivid imagination, moral complexity, and emotional intensity to frame a novel that remains one of the few genuine ‘timeless classics’ I have so far had the pleasure of reading. by David Leak Three narratives are expertly woven into this masterpiece: the progress of a certain ‘Professor Woland’ and his satanic retinue through 1930s Russia, the life of tortured novelist ‘the Master;’ and a third strand, presented as a novel written by the Master, which describes the crucifixion of Yeshua HaNotsri, or Jesus Christ. The opening scene of the book sees the symbolic confrontation between the head of the literary bureaucracy, Mikhail Berlioz, and the mysterious foreigner Professor
by Mikhail Bulgakov
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REVIEWS Woland. Berlioz represents the arrogant atheistic attitudes of Communist Russia, as well as the corruption rife amongst the various elites of Moscow. He is trying to persuade his friend, the renowned poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyryov, to rewrite his description in verse of Jesus’ life to make it clear that he did not, in fact, exist. Woland enters the conversation and assures the pair that Jesus did exist, and the story of Pontius Pilate begins, though not before the professor predicts the death of Berlioz by decapitation. The realization of this prediction is followed by Ivan’s fruitless pursuit of Woland’s retinue and his subsequent incarceration in a lunatics’ asylum. Here we are introduced to the Master, a tortured writer who has turned his back on the world after the rejection of his book, the story of Yeshua echoed by Woland. Ultimately, the rampaging Woland and his hellish entourage serve to expose the excesses and vanities of the nouveau riche; only the Master’s mistress, Margarita, might hold her faith and escape the terrible judgment of the Devil. Bulgakov burned the first manuscript of the book in 1930, despairing at getting it published under the restrictive Soviet regime. Something similar to today’s version was finally published posthumously following the ‘de-Stalinization’ policy reforms of Nikita Krushchev, in the late 1950’s and early 1960s. In this manner, the novel’s own history of repression invests one of its central themes: the attack on the suffocating and bureaucratic society of the Soviet Union with added meaning. In a wider context, The Master and Margarita is made up of myriad of emotional and moral themes. The novel is a riotous foray into the sensual and subconscious, ridiculing the rejection of passion in favour of ‘respectability’ – a tendency Bulgakov sees as endemic in the Moscow bureaucracy - while simultaneously rejecting sexual and sensual gratification without the foundation of love. Moral and emotional contradictions are also represented through various biblical and natural dualities: fire and water, light and darkness, storms and tranquility, and so on. Bulgakov expertly blends these dramatic symbols into the driving narrative, avoiding the stagnation of descriptive overload that undermines many such epic works. Perhaps the most brilliant aspect of the work is its potential for interpretation and reinterpretation. It can be read as a sharp socio-political satire, hilariously highlighting the failings of both Soviet Russia and of human existence in a supra-historical setting. Alternatively, it can be reread as a deep philosophical allegory, calling into question many of the central tenets of society as we know it. And yet, amidst these thematic complexities, the novel maintains a highly entertaining and energetic narrative. Whichever interpretation the reader feels appropriate, one thing is for sure: The Master and Margarita will not disappoint.
“The poet, for whom everything the editor was saying was a novelty, listened attentively to Mikhail Alexandrovich, fixing him with his bold green eyes, occasionally hiccupping and cursing the apricot juice under his breath. “There is not one oriental tradition”, said Berlioz, “in which the virgin does not bring a god into the world. And the Christians, lacking any originality, invented their Jesus in exactly the same way. In fact he never lived at all.” Excerpt from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, trans. Michael Glenny (Harvill Press, 1996) 21
travel writing
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Our regular travel section publishes your memoirs, anecdotes and tips for travel. In this edition Jingan Young rediscovers a Paris brasserie her mother took her to as a child. She learns to appreciate the food and drink like a true Parisienne and discovers all human life can be found within its cosy interior.
WHAT A FEAST: The Lost Art of the Brasserie
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Until last year I was a student living in Paris. Hemingway to heart, I wanted the “feast” which awaited for me thousands of miles on the other side of the world. So I packed up my bags, much to the dismay of my mother and took off to explore a new city, a new world far away from the stuffy roots of my childhood. It may not have been the change I by Jingan Young was looking for, but it did something much to the importantly, it opened by eyes to an exciting new revelation. A place long forgotten: The Brasserie. Below the overpriced box where I lived, on the corner of Avenue de Suffren there is a Brasserie. It’s a neighbourhood place, full of locals, full of Americans, the Eunesco folks, the old folks and the young couples of the 7th and 15th. Old people trump through there like they were being given free Viagra. The Parisian hipsters occasionally take a gander, but with those prices they are few and far between. Nevertheless I liked this place. My mother had taken me here once when I was younger. The insides of the Brasserie were always dimly lit with big black leather sofas and banquets. The bar taking up half the space, black and white photos of farmland, cows, roots of people who worked there. Bright red curtains and wood floors. It felt like home. I often went there with a friend. She always ordered a Cosmo and I a Campari, (always with orange juice). I never really drank properly before I went to Paris, having just turned the legal drinking age. I began to like the taste of alcohol more and more. And French cuisine was also something I was getting accustomed too. My friend and I, we would always order oysters to begin. “Always fresh, mind you” my savvy pal eloquently pointed out, “and always the ones from Normandy.” She was a French “foodie” and I was a novice, it was a perfect match. I will always enjoy the times that were had there. I remember once, on a not so special evening, about three elderly couples walked in as we were devouring our vinegary oysters and buttered brown bread. They were chatty and lively. “Americain.” I heard a man to my right announce pompously to his group. They all sniggered and I just continued to watch. Discrimination is not uncommon in a foreign land. I learned that
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TRAVEL WRITING pretty quickly, and I had grown used to the French customs and adjusted accordingly (like my patience for waiting in queues). My sympathy went out to these poor souls. No sooner had they taken their seats did the “Monsieur”, as I call him, as I never caught his name as he served us every time we went in, rushed over, his million dollar smile screaming “service!” He was a very tall thin man who always wore black: black pants, black shoes and a black tie. His grey hair was the perfect combination with his too dark skin, a middle-eastern version of Karl Lagerfeld. With his large protruding nose and glistening white teeth he was the epitome of “cool”. He often gave us a wave or a wink. We always felt special. The man who was wearing a blue rain jacket and white slacks spoke first. “Howdy Monsieur” he winked to the lady next to him. She had a withered face with pearls around her withered neck. “Now I know you got some of the best drinks ‘round here, so why don’t you bring us some?” His tone was mocking, and his accent southern. We continued to eat our oysters. The woman in pearls sneaked a look at us. Up and down and side to side. She whispered to her friend, I glanced up and saw the words “raw oysters?” like it was something horrific and foreign. I wanted to shout “Hey lady, don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it.” “Can you make a Manhattan?” the blonde woman in white shouted over the clink of glasses and cutlery. “Monsieur” smiled, running his hand through his hair taking the pencil tucked behind his ear. And as although the script had been written, he paused and replied, “But of course.” Minutes later, they were laughing, they were enjoying trays full of oysters. I chuckled, we had just found new converts. After we had our main dishes, her with the roast lamb and potato roti, myself with “moules et frites”, steamed mussels in white wine drenched in onion and garlic served with a pound of golden, glistening, plump chips. We were drunk on Chablis and contemplating going for dessert. Our top buttons already unfastened. I had my eye on a peach torte drenched in sweet brandy; she wanted a chocolate and ice cream sundae made from sweet dreams. I was just about to steal the meringue that hovered atop her glass when we heard a commotion from the other side of the booth. Two middle-aged men at the bar were having a heated argument. Everyone stared and it began to turn violent. Before a single fist was raised we were witness to perfect French diplomacy. Like magic, the owner appeared, a voluptuous though elegantly dressed lady (she had on Prada pumps). Her laugh always reverberated around the room and she spoke perfect English. She muttered something to the gentlemen and with a wave of a right hand complimentary bottles of rosé alongside platters of seafood and bread were brought to the table. They toasted, they cheered and by the end of the meal they gave kisses and hugs to the servers before they departed. Disaster averted. Never a dull moment. The lost art of the Brasserie is a sad and nostalgic one. You see imitations of it everywhere. But there will never be anything like it. I had witnessed so many events there. I had seen proposals of marriage, community announcements and political parties. And what a place a Brasserie is. Full of eating, drinking and laughing. No pretentious façade, no one catered group. And then there’s the waiter who will cater to your every whim while uttering those single most definitive words, “but of course.” What a feast.
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irregulars
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The content of the Irregulars section will constantly change, so you will find something new in every issue. For this first edition of The Notebook, we are featuring poetry from the talented students at the University of Durham. If you would like to read some more, please go to www.dur.ac.uk/grove, the website of Durham’s own literary magazine, The Grove. Enjoy!
Lure by John Clegg
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I changed districts, like you change a new bed for an old bed and a permit to move, and opened a peepshow: between two mirrors, a woodlouse married a flea. The village menfolk bundled in to bitch over kvass or woodchip liquor. At closing time their wives would haul them out which saved the expense of a doorman. I kept it all to bribe the inspector. The reindeer browsed the blueberries outside, unable to identify a mate or foe (I’d read somewhere) except by blurry silhouette - a man can, hence, stand on the skyline, raise his arms for horns and draw one over which his buddy can net. This I never saw done successfully. Both local shamans lurked in their huts, demanded tabs and felt outmoded.
Given the intransigence of the men, the women’s grudges and the cowardice of the children, I’d be hard pressed to determine what I saw in the community. Something drew me into their confidence which wasn’t much - some lying lore and ancient gossip. When we dribbled wax into cold water at New Year I saw the future, holding out its arms to mimic antlers, willing the beckon.
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IRREGULARS What now? by John Clegg
We walked for work. We wore the roads down. Rainy nights we bivouaced in ruins. Dawn would find us studying our beards in puddles, worrying our suit pockets: the man who lay down with a comb or spoon would likely find it missing when he woke. On days the spirit gripped us we robbed farmhouses which, luckily, were mostly bare already I saw men collapse on bags of treated seed, tear down the seam and swallow handfuls. Our boot-soles had worn thinner than luck, it was weeks they’d last, we knew, not months. And worse, more men were joining us at every crossroad, more horrific obligations. Those who looked contagious could be dragged to the woods and discreetly beaten to death, but the rest, what choice did we have except to let them walk with us, what energy to fight them off in any case? There were no leaders. The pace was slouch and even that left a ten-mile column of stragglers. If they didn’t reach the fire that night they were done for. Mostly they reached it. When we came to the sea we stared for a while then picked another direction and started walking.
Tonight I’m eating all the kisses Off the mistletoe Because you’re not here.
Christmas by Kate Hutchings
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IRREGULARS Cod Philosophy by Matthew Griffiths
Porcelain by Amanda Thomas
Ice drops as quickly as any shoal when light punches a hole through water. Swim my sons, swim daughters, swim small fry of indeterminate gender. Brine does strange things up here, the sea twitches its fingers. You wouldn’t believe that those who conceived of our mothers below ice floes above us once thought that hangweed scooped, caught and lifted us into a saltless and sifted up there, expanding our brains with air to show us a face it called sun. We know our place, we know this sun feeds our own menu, the plankton and weeds. Keep your eyes either side of you, fry, all the same, don’t rise beyond the main’s middle – remember we are small in number but once we were many.
My dollhouse sparkles; Sequin birds, crystal hearts, silver cans Blind out reality – an astonishing white – To the realm behind the curtains. Turquoise ribbons seam the walls together, Glitter forms the stars at night, Floral tights with their protective petals Bloom late November as if July. Outside, felt-tip scribbles blur together Fields of green and violet nettles. Golden echoes promise pretty lies That hang in baskets outside the window. Gusts lead me through tangled lines To home. My kaleidoscope eyes See one world glisten, another fade. The beige door is locked by ruby key And I am safe. The seconds sing Into hours and days and afraid I clap and plead “encore!” – This mustn’t end. So next my dreams will play pretend.
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IRREGULARS New Year’s Day by Matthew Griffiths
To some of those in my youth by Alex Carruth
We have spent the sunlight in bed. Some of the moon, too – he’s an indulgent old uncle Who would rather blacken his mouth than tell us Any sort of truthful thing. With little gravity, he tugs the duvet smooth Over our dreaming bones. Yesterday was a long illness And we are bathing in sleep until We are washed clean Of its memory.
I made a terrible mistake. DEFENSE: I was young; to mix metaphors, my teeth were green. In seeing things that were not there I did damage to the dear-to of both you and I. A NOTE: Grammatical ambiguity here permits multiple readings, and so: CLARIFICATION: Preference is given to the second person plural/formal (and there are no ceremonies upon which I stand). To reiterate, here fumbled lies an apology. Then I tended to fanciful destruction now to lyrical re-creation - i.e. “As she played Eve to my Cain, I did all that I was able.” inaccurately, but undeniably, charming.
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events
LITERARY GOINGS ON
King’s Creative Writing Society: http://www.kclcreativewriting.co.uk The King’s Creative Writing Society does what it says on the tin – it supports student writing in both individual and group efforts, as the Society is currently writing a collaborative novel. Whether a seasoned sonneteer or new novelist, you’ll find encouragement aplenty. The Pod: http://www.thepodradio.co.uk/ The Pod is KCL’s internet radio station, and a keen supporter of creative writing – all its existing broadcasts are archived for your pleasure and convenience, and some of the university’s new literary talent is featured in issue 3. Tengen: http://www.tengenmagazine.com/ If you’re a frequenter of the English Common Room (S.2.38) you may already have encountered Tengen, a new literary magazine written by and for London students. As well as featuring student writing, the first issued contains an interview with ‘shaking woman’ Siri Hustvedt and a haiku by Will Self. Anomalies of Autobiographical Memory: http://access.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/ hrc/life/dissecting/ The latest talk in the Dissecting the Self series features Vesna Goldsworth, author of Chernobyl Strawberries (2006), and Michael Kopelman, lead clinician at the King’s Neuropsychiatry and Memory Disorders Clinic, contemplating the workings (and inevitable failings) of memory, and the light shed on these by neurology. 25 March, 6pm, the Anatomy Theatre in the King’s Building. Free, but email susan.christensen@kcl.ac.uk to book. Another Sky: Voices of conscience from around the world: http://www.englishpen.org/events/penevents/anotherskyvoicesofconsciencefromaroundtheworld/ The inaugural English PEN student group at King’s presents a performance of extracts from Another Sky, an anthology of the work of imprisoned writers from across the world. The event will be introduced by Carole Seymour-Jones, the book’s editor, Chair of the Writers in Prison Committee, and Deputy President of English PEN. The PEN group is following in the footsteps of illustrious predecessors, the script having first been performed by Michael Palin, William Boyd and Fiona Shaw at the NT. 30 March, 7:30pm, the Anatomy Museum. £3 on the door. David Crystal: http://www.foyles.co.uk/events.asp The uncontested giant of modern linguistics, David Crystal, discusses his new book, A Little Book of Language, an introductory guide that aims to reveal the mysteries and oddities of linguistics to a young audience. Expect charm, charisma and plenty of amusing language-related anecdotes. 14 April, 6.30pm, the Gallery at Foyles, Charing Cross Road. Free, but email events@ foyles.co.uk to book.
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EVENTS CULTURAL HAPPENINGS Jarman’s Monadology : http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/20934.htm Organised in conjunction with Queer@King’s and the BFI’s 24th Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, this is a unique chance to see some of King’s alumnus, Derek Jarman’s early and rare films, exploring his obsession with alchemy and the occult. Films shown include Ashden’s Walk on Mon, Dance of Death, Journey to Avebury, Sloane Square, and Tarot. 26 March, 7pm, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern. £4 concessions. Spring Storm by Tennessee Williams : http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/56151/productions/spring-storm.html If the constant exposure to adverts for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof over at the Novello, already one of Williams’s most famous plays, is all getting a bit much, try the NT’s production of one of his rarely-performed early plays, Spring Storm. The plot centres around Heavenly’s choice between the respectable Arthur and wild Dick, which has typically dramatic and destructive consequences. From 24 March, Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre. From £10. random by Debbie Tucker Green : http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whatson01. asp?play=579 Previously seen at the Royal Court in Sloane Square in 2008, Debbie Tucker Green’s explosive random is now touring as part of Theatre Local, along with four other plays, stopping off at a disused unit in the Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre. random runs from 3-27 March, Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre. £5 concessions. Crash: Homage to J.G. Ballard : http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-11_ crash#/ Fusing technology and sexuality, J.G. Ballard’s dystopian urban vision was both inspired by twentieth-century art (the futurists, for example), and has inspired artists in turn, as this exhibition explores, showcasing works by such artists as Ed Ruscha, Helmut Newton and Jenny Saville. Until 11 April, Gagosian Gallery, 6-24 Britannia Street.
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The Notebook’s events section is designed to help you get the most out of your time as a student in one of the world’s most culturally vibrant cities. We have trawled the internet to collate the best upcoming events: talks, plays, exhibitions, films, fellow students’ literary endeavours, and literary-inspired places to hang out. If you are involved with a literary event and would like it to be featured here, please email thenotebook.kings@googlemail.com 29
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Photography by Rebecca Kwo