The Scribe: Vol II Issue I by The Scribe

ABOUT US - WELCOME TO THE SCRIBE: VOL II ISSUE I A Leeds University arts magazine dedicated to the publication of student artwork in its many and varied forms, and the representation of arts in Leeds in whatever form that chooses to take. Hello!

Keep eyes peeled on all channels for news on live music & poetry, shows, exhibitions and collaborations over the year.

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Circles are great. Now weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got that out of way, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to personally welcome you all in to the epistemic joy that is this initial issue. After a solid week of flap and fluster, a veritable smorgasbord of submissions great and good, and at least 127 cups of weird green tea bought in bulk from Amazon, we are so so proud to present this formidable creative collection. Heading up a new committee in a new year is certainly scary, but these things are circular. Also they are brilliant. Watch out for happenings in the future! Much Love,

Saddleworth So here we are: You driving me through the narrowest country lanes even the tarmac spreads herself out at speed for you Outside, willow trees stoop as they see you coming Inside, fickle words settle at my boots like blossom The window cleaner lives on the right, you say And this is how you rectify our demise And I know what you’re trying to do Buying love with a French chef and three rosettes As if I’ll pin them right through to the skin of my breast A prized possession; I look away or this body will offer itself Drown out the whispers from bones seeped in love It’s getting dark as cliff tops rise to watch our headlights If I sleep early tonight, I think the world will keep spinning Hafsah Bashir

Holiday Photographs I had forgotten about Avignon – A city to make you believe in god. Jesus hanging gold above the old stones, White bared teeth, panting in god’s hot sun, How nevertheless it cringes at the feet Of a bruise on the universe, a scarred earth’s unease – Ventoux sleeping, pulsing grey-purple, Shimmering insistent as tinnitus in the summer heat. It shivers us to understanding (or at least towards): We and this city are vapour – frail as thought. Nature is much more terrible, sudden. Dying is all that’s proven in marble walls. But I do not believe in any form of god Apart from the aching familiar principle Burned through us at any passing, parting, shame: That anywhere and always we can fall, and we will. I have been very, very happy: now I am not. All life is in the distance, here, from what I have lost. Robert Cohen

Dubrovnik Ruins, David Scourse 3

Roadblock Sami focused his camera, squinting at the mosque. People were staring. Al swallowed. “Hurry up, yeah?” A dusty yellow cab pulled up next to them with blacked-out windows. Two guys jumped out. The tall one spoke fast to Sami in Arabic, pointing at the camera. The fat one stared at Al. He was wearing flip-flops and a stained t-shirt that read ‘Welcome to Paradise’ which didn’t quite cover his belly. Al felt fear grab his gut with cold fingers and squeeze. “Passports!” the tall guy said, palms thrust out. He wore reflective sunglasses; Al could see a miniature version of his own pale face in them. He looked scared. Al handed over his passport and tried not to show his shaking hands. “Is there –” he cleared his throat. “Is there a problem, sir?” He cringed at his voice. “You – Israeli spy.” The man spat on Al’s foot. Sami tried to intervene in Arabic but the tall guy held up a hand to stop him. Al’s mouth dried. “Absolutely not.” He tried to sound final, shaking his head and using emphatic hand gestures. He felt like he was acting. “We’re here for the student film festival. We are directors. We make short films.” He pointed first at Sami then at himself. The guy stood in front of him, the sun directly behind his head. It gave him a halo, and Al momentarily thought it might make a good shot. “It’s the nose. I understand – a lot of people think I’m Jewish,” he babbled. “But this is my first time in – this part of the world.” He again pointed at Sami and himself, slowing his speech down as if speaking to an idiot. “We – both – work – in – cinema.” Shit, that sounded really patronising. The man stared at him in silence for some time from behind his yellow shades. Under his gaze, Al felt guilty as hell. “What film you make?” Al stammered. “Oh, um, it’s... well, it’s about an Arab guy who, um, wants to drive his dad to Mecca but, er, he can’t get through because of all the, um, the – roadblocks.”

The guy frowned. “They don’t have the right papers, you see, so they have to keep going back.” The tall guy and his fat colleague conferred. “This is stupid film.” “Oh. Well –” “The man blows up roadblock and is getting to Mecca. Easy.” “Right! Good idea. Yes. I should write that in. Actually, yes, that’s a much better ending. Thank you.” The man nodded slowly and handed him his passport, then turned and spoke to Sami in Arabic. He flicked his hand; they were dismissed. “What did he say?” Al whispered as he tried to steady his legs. Sami widened his eyes. “Next time, watch out with the camera.” Sara Roberts

the facts are these He screams. And he’s feisty as hell, that’s for sure. He’s clever, tricky, a borderline treasure, but his mind will be his downfall. Born a fighter, raised a fighter; he tends to fight fire with fire. But in his hands he holds a glowing, burning ember whose warmth he saves for whenever the merciless rains beat at his breaking bones. His heart’s a golden light that simmers out every now and then, but five days out of seven it’s electric and more than enough to urge her to move forward. Beware of this boy, beware of them all, and be aware of his whispers and murmurs, like prayers to kindle solace for the night. He praises every inch of her with lullabies: her bravery, patience, and fortitude. And he reminds her that she’s more than an anchor, that she’s sitting in the living room of his heart, and her warm hands are making a comfortable home out of it. But he forgets sometimes that his hands are meant to weave legends and lore but he always remembers that he’s only human. A simple human. He laughs. But the trembling line following the arch of his eyebrows down the slope of his nose and ending at watery irises says differently. Don’t stop laughing, lovely boy, with the lovely hands and the wide eyes that are terrible at lying. He builds walls, but he makes them out of ice so the features of his face are crystal clear. They shield his face from the biting wind but they don’t stop him from slipping and free falling into an unforgiving lake, murky and heavy with all of his insecurities. Don’t drown, lovely boy. Don’t frown, lovely boy. And still he’s a walking miracle because nothing can swallow him whole. She’s reason enough to peel the shadows away from the contours of his face and gently (gently) rise and turn towards the daylight. He pines for sun-kissed skin, and every morning he sings, come on, get higher (higher, higher!), and when gravity gives up, it’ll be easier to watch over her and her warm hands. He’s closer to the sun up here, and before he knows it, his ice walls are melting.

He wounds. So this is what he means when he jokes about heartbreak. He’s just a boy, just a tender age; he’s bright-eyed and wants to “change the world” but he’s just a boy. His biting words that counter her steely tongue will not vindicate him; his palette is overflowing with all the wrong colours, and he seems to have forgotten how to fill in the shades between black and white. But he doesn’t start over, nor does he stop, and he finishes painting her a picture and promises never to make any changes; not to the painting and not to his palette. He keeps his word, but the painting falls prey to the layers of dust accumulating on his collection of souvenir – souvenirs that have lost their gleam and glory. None of that matters anymore. The words in his head have always flowed better than the ones that roll off his tongue. The facts are these: maybe it’s better this way. He loves. In three thousand different worlds, he could be three thousand different boys, but he’ll always come back to her. She won’t forget – can’t forget – the way he holds the weight of the world on his shoulders, waiting until she’s brave enough again to take it from him. He never asked for this, but he’s sure he lives on cloud nine, because here and now, she’s worth more than he’s ever wished for. She is the cold, calculating serenity that defends his confused chaos. He’s a scatter of brains and brawn and a whirlpool of flame and frost; he’s a royally fucked up cascade of What served on a platinum plate but she’s always loved a challenge or two or four. And she will always love the way that painted smirk at the corner of his mouth holds still. There’s a world of hell waiting for him, waiting for all of us, but that’s for tomorrow, and tonight he wraps them not in blankets but in a bubble, so they can still see the world and watch the stars dust the rising sun. Kari Medalla

Alison Levy 8

À la Recherche du Parfum Perdu Back when midnight was at ten and monsters still lodged under my bed, a comforting perfume often lured me into my parents’ bedroom. I would find my father there, sitting up in bed, contentedly absorbed in a heavy book and sucking on a toothpick. He would hear the pitter-patter, but not look up. Knowing the drill – Can’t sleep? – and knowing the answer. I would crawl in and slump against his side. And as I sucked my thumb, he sucked his toothpick and turned pages slowly, having me drift off on the whiff of the familiar smell. My father strongly believed in the insomnia-curing properties of lavender. At every end of another holiday in the Provence, our Citroën would smell of the purple cure. The bundles above me, bobbing up and down on the rhythm of the motorway, lulled me to sleep until the first roadhouse that served what my mother considered proper burgers. Once back home, my father hung the bundles on the walls of their bedroom. He also kept a bottle of lavender oil in the bathroom cabinet, some of which he sprinkled on my cushion before tucking me in. Sleep tight, dear. I think my mother believed in its powers too. She always complained about me warming her spot in their bed – Aren’t you getting too old for this? – but never about the smell. She and my father slept between the same wafting sheets together. Always. Occasionally, I would hear them at it, within the walls of that lavender heaven. I plugged my fingers deep into my ears, but I wouldn’t mind. When midnight became curfew and I a maturing monster, I had to sit through sexual orientation lessons. The teacher has us do a fun experiment and let us sniff different fragrance bags and choose a favourite. She saw the one I picked, bent over my table and whispered that of all scents, lavender most increased the penile blood flow. She gave me a disturbing wink. I didn’t dare pay nightly visits to my parents any longer. Instead, I stayed away most evenings, hanging out with people I had known sometimes a day, sometimes an hour. With them I frequented dingy dance cafés, sweat and smoke numbing my senses until birdsong announced my retreat homewards. As I snuck in, the lingering scent at the top of the stairs attempted to lure me in, but had no power. I’d slip through into my own room.

When midnight became half past dawn and monsters tried to make it into my rickety dorm bed, I let one in. He smelled of cigarettes and driedup raincoat and looked like a potato James Dean. And so often when he came round, I turned him around and massaged his broad backâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mountainous shoulders with the fragrant oil I had stolen from home. He never returned the favour. At least, not to me. I found them one night, him and my burly roommate, flailing between greasy sheets. I cursed and they fled, shattering the bottle of oil on my bedside table, its contents saturating the linen of my bed. In weeks to come, I kept discovering shards in my breast in the mornings, would sob on the phone to my father â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Some things are not meant to last forever, dear â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but somehow, I slept like an absolute dream. Loren Snel

Catherine Fleming

Tie and Suit Those by whom the world is ruled Constrained always are they By tie and suit Their harmony limited only to the God to whom they pray But never grace, mind creates chaos And unto our people they share their gloom I mean, all peoples All constrained by rules of man With foundations of sand So society sways like a weak heart Hanging on a pendulum made of hairs Attached to these shaky grain stilts There’s a high tide of dissent amongst creeds Urged by western winds of a coward’s seed So that those by whom the world is ruled See the soil over which they’ve laboured and toiled Revolt and rebel In a clash of fiery red The colour of the flame of a lowly matchstick A hand of calamity shakes It drops into a pit of doom Filled to the brim with coal and ash Reminiscent of Christmas stockings So to reignite the flame of mankind Shed tie and suit And emerge anew A newborn and blind Taiwo Ogunyinka

A Zone of War When the sky, indecisive almost, is fading to the welcome light of dawn from the indefinite sprawl of black – great brushes of ink across the discoloured canvas of clouds and stars – silence invades. And with the low, groaning hum the silence brings, the world’s youth, caught in their dark, khaki attire, your acquaintances; your friends; enemies; relatives; neighbours; teachers; colleagues; ex-boyfriends; husbands; fiancées turn their aloof faces to the light and pray for the cessation of the noise. They pray. Lord… But still it comes. As ever, it rises. This satanic song. The tumult of the shrill whistle of the shells; the protracted rasping of scummy pools; the subdued clack of boot on wood; the shifting, the shuffling of chafing, mud-saturated trousers; the soft thump of finished bodies as they come to rest in ill-judged heaps of insensate limbs. In response, the incessant, rattling, rat-a-tat-tat of gun fire, like the morbid dirge of an execution drummer, swells and rises and clashes in grating choral harmony. It crests and it slows and finally, it stops. And silence invades. Again. In the distance, frenetic crayon-scribbles of orange that streak and dip and burst as though in the hand of an infant child, dominate the skyline beginning to weep fine sheets of rain. Still, below, perpetual flashes of light illuminate the daubed blotches of pale – the wan faces of the littered cadavers. Dank. Sour. Futile. You can hear the rip of skin from skeleton. The way it sucks then relents with a grunt like calico. As with calico fibres that desperately cling to one another, flesh clings to bone, muscle to cartilage. As water jets through the puckers in the face of a plastic cup, blood ebbs and seeps through the cracks in skin. The humid fog closes in. It envelopes those deceased. It swallows them. Up through the foliage the lithe enemy grows. A grotesque flower. Their eyes are shallow splurges of infant-art-box colour; a range of chromatic baby blues splintered into emaciated faces of child soldiers. These eyes eradicate 13

any sense of blood-lust. These eyes are innocent. So suddenly, the great masses of clumped blacks, browns and maroons litter the mire jungle floor. Skin is stretched reluctantly over angular, jutting crevices in these faces. Those faces. Their faces. Just as abruptly: a lull. A languid, somnolent respite. A welcome, singsong slice of the faint patter of rain, animal purrs and bird-whistled ditties. Through the rain, the sun peeks out defiantly and gently caresses the canopy with long, tender rays. The sticky-sweet atmosphere settles comfortably. Tropical air swirls leisurely down larynxes and collides in nostrils. Hushed. A moment to breathe. A moment to reflect. A moment to a twig is snapped underfoot, a curdled yelp, a rush of air. Soldiers dive and duck, and rise and fall and peel away. Vast hunks of mud gouged from the jungle floor are spat skywards. Voices clash, despondent cries for aid, shouts of tactical manoeuvres, warnings and hums of encouragement, buzzes of mumbled, last-breath whines that go unnoticed in the grand orchestra of the clamour. Soldiers clinging to soldiers, flaccid bodies swinging between the heaving arms of comrades, rushes of slurred endearments for families and friends at home. Bodies crest and fall in dynamic dance, fluttering fingers gingerly probe gaping, open wounds and eyes scrutinize the rust-smelling blood that slithers and licks at limbs. Every sound screams incessantly, as though fighting to be heard. The clashes and clatters and shrieks and snaps and sighs. The rampant rumbling of bullets, the tankâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s struggling roar: the underbelly of a beast, the rhythmic, mesmeric click of revolver after revolver after revolver after revolver after revolver. Here, the notes of pleas begin to fade. The flickers of life in pain-contorted features cease. The faint flares of light in their eyes extinguished. Final breaths expelled. Feeble, hazy reveries of home are summoned as a concluding comfort amid the castanet-clack of ammunition snagging in guns. A final splutter and stall, a concluding stroke of painted light, an ultimate swoop of a bayonet, moans dip in volume and slow and stop and silence invades. Again. Korey Taylor

The Archivist It was dusk when David finally found the address in St. James’s. Dropping his small suitcase on the porch, he rapped three times on the mahogany door. His face was deathly pale and drawn, and the scabby train ticket was still clutched in his hand. His stance gave the impression of a military career, but the calloused hands were those of a carpenter. Physically, he was youthful, but a passing stranger would add ten years after seeing his face. His grey eyes were framed by blotchy, purple bags, and the outward gaze of them showed only a crippling exhaustion. Within a minute, the door was flung open with a surge of enthusiasm. David’s complete opposite stood before him: a small, chubby fellow beamed at the weary man before him. He wore a waistcoat, white spats and immaculate trousers. The defined moustache twitched as the corners of his mouth turned upwards into a grin. “Michael.” David’s voice was unenthusiastic. “I mean… Mr Briggs, sorry, the journey’s worn me out.” “It looks like it, my good man! Come in.” “Thank you, but I really am only here to see the film.” David followed the man through the vast hallway after handing his coat and hat to a sombre manservant, quite out of place amongst the rich décor. Another veteran, poor bugger. Framed photographs lined the walls: smiling women and men, some in uniform, others in pearls. The old man noticed David glancing and stopped to point at some of the characters. “That ravishing thing is Lady Ottoline Morrell, you may have heard of her. We were very close at one point.” Michael’s face flushed pink, as though viewing the photograph had sparked an old flame of desire. “I’m afraid I don’t know who she is,” David responded. “Ah well, she was very sympathetic to-” Michael gestured as if the movements of his hands would speak the words his mouth could not. “To men like you.” A shell-shocked man is easy to spot. I wonder what gave you away. There was a pregnant pause before the old man continued. “Take a seat. I put a screen up ready.” The old man slotted the roll of film into the projector. David’s heart began to pound faster than he’d ever felt. Even the shells hadn’t filled his stomach with such dread. The sketchy, sepia image flicked onto the screen and the village square 15

sprang to life before him. Pangs of nostalgia hit – what played before him had once been so commonplace and yet now seemed so distant. It’s all there. A lot has changed, but it’s still there. The chapel, the horse-drawn traps filled with hay, children playing on the cobblestones. The film flicked from scene to familiar scene, and each one filled David with longing and dread. The busy schoolyard, the bowling green, the lake, the vicarage. Then he saw her. Evelyn stood before him on the screen, as dignified as he had remembered her; the tears came silently and rapidly. “Is that her, lad? Is that her?” The old man stood and pointed at the screen. “Yes…” And it was minutes before he could speak again. She stood smiling at the camera, her fair face and dark hair sketchy in the black and white image, but still as beautiful as he could recall. It had been six years. Six years since she went out to the front, and six years since that shell hit the camp outside Ypres. After that terrible day she had remained alive in his mind. Perhaps it was the shellshock, or perhaps he had never given up the hope of seeing her again. Now that he had, she would forever be rosy-cheeked and grinning in his head, not the bloodied corpse on the mortuary slab. “Anything else you wanted to see, lad?” “No.” David breathed deeply so as not to burst into tears again. “I just wanted to put her to rest.” And as the final frame of the film flickered to black, Evelyn grinned and waved. Goodbye. Her lips traced the outline of the word. Goodbye, David, echoed the voice of the ghost in the young man’s head. Eleanor Healing

Catherine Fleming

Insanity Railway, Miranda Carins 18

Untitled, Miranda Carins 19

Dark Lane Rumours are crafty things, and there are many crafty things about rumours. The best rumours, those tales that set eyes alight, have three properties: they suggest scandalous behaviour, they are roughly plausible, and people passionately want to believe them. Everyone that boards the number 6 bus from Dodworth Bottom stinks of piss, so the rumour went. This hearsay had taken on the guise of a truth. It had mischievously woven itself into the fabric of the community. In charity appeals to their dads, potential boy racers used it as an excuse for why they needed a moped; scrag-kneed urchins from neighbouring Gilroyd chucked piss-related slurs at the bus’ passengers whenever it passed Dark Lane; and old women, wearing shabby coats and wheeling their luggage of market tat behind them, prattled about it at bus stops, adding to the collective chorus that declares civilisation to be in decline in their breathy splutters of Now then, what’s it bloody come to? Contrary to the villagers’ opinion, it is in fact the case that the smothering smell on the number 6 bus was the product of two age-old men: fast friends and neighbours, Eric Crainkshaw and Alfie Pollock. On the bus home from the local working men’s club, after having had quite enough ale to, as they say, sink a copper sideways, these men decided to let go of their inhibitions, and with them went their full bladders. It was Eric, resting his head upon the window, attempting to tread the murky depths of drunkenness, that, with trousers on, began to freely urinate. Alfie, murmuring There’s really no time like the present in his gravel-rattle voice, characteristically followed suit; though, perhaps in an act of one-upmanship, he did so with his tangled genitalia dribbling out from the tuck of his trousers. For many, this act would be something to blame on that raucous, depraved character that dominates the consciousness after having had one too many pints of Mickelthwaite’s Best. However, for these men it was a display of their friendship, a shenanigan that harked back to the shenanigans of their childhood. They grinned, thoroughly satisfied, and watched on as the foul liquid token of their friendship meandered whimsically towards the feet of the nearest passenger. Eric and Alfie had known one another since their first year of Worsborough Juniors. On a fateful day in mid-October, they made a life-long bond. Alfie, tired of plunging his freckle-pepper face into the hedge in search of a lost ball, ambled across the school-field to the iron railings that Eric was leaning against. A smirk of recent wrongdoing curled Eric’s mouth. 20

-Ey’up Eric -Ey’up -What you laiking at? -Wait a sec... Just watch Mr. Pritchard strode towards the stairs to the school classrooms. His glassy eyes, wreathed with enormous, bristling eyebrows, surveyed the fields and school playground as he moved. Mr. Pritchard was a very serious man – he looked very serious, and spoke very seriously – and so it was with a frown rather too severe for the occasion that he called for the end of dinner-break and waited for the children to drift over to the stairs. Each class formed its own little queue at their designated place, facing frontwards towards the impatient schoolmaster. -Ey, Eric, Alfie whispered, what’s idea? -Wait, and watch Mr. Pritchard, standing very seriously, scolded them for the time it had taken to form ranks, and demanded exemplary promptness when filtering into the school. He bent towards the floor to pick up his cap, and, on placing it upon his head, bellowed out in the incomprehensible language of fury. The schoolchildren began to stare fixedly at the cap: it seemed to shimmy back and forth across his head like a sailboat on choppy seas. Emerging from the brim of the cap, taut ringlets began to fall down to the floor, and upon landing they loosened to their full length. Some of the more attentive kids began to shriek with gleeful laughter, whispering a one-word explanation to their oblivious neighbours: Worms! One of the mud-caked critters fell hopelessly trapped into the hairy prison of Mr. Pritchard’s enraged eyebrow, while another navigated the roaming highlands of his earlobe. The two conspirators caught each other’s gaze – Eric’s of self-congratulatory pride, Alfie’s of absolute reverence – and the mutual feeling in that gaze was a covenant of brotherhood. Whenever the two men returned from one of their sessions at the working men’s club, they would once again stain the unloved floor of that bus with their friendship; a few lagers and a pack of pork scratchings would produce a fierce yellow, a skinful of bitter would yield the muckiest of russets. Over a period of weeks and months the smell became a mainstay of the bus: its passengers told their friends, these friends told their nans, and in the judicial hands of the nans of Dodworth Bottom the rumour took form, multiplying outward like a Fibonacci sequence. 21

As quickly as the rumour had blossomed, it withered. On a crisp, clear night, Alfie boarded the bus alone, far drunker than usual. He staggered haphazardly towards the back seats and, after a few moments of pained reflection, opened the fly of his trousers aboard the number 6 for the last time. Slipping out his shrunken mush, he muttered something in that gravel-rattle voice: This is for you, lad â&#x20AC;&#x201C; God bless. To the beat of his steady stream, he began to hum the scraps of a tune, and his absent eyes drifted off towards the tightly-terraced houses that carpeted the landscape as the bus turned on to Dark Lane. Daniel Seddon

Cadence Stark crows and petals sweet, the rainy greens That conjure words; lilting, lazy, saccharine Which curl like trembling lips where trembling hands Are hasty, where I shake the sun from my limbs and stand As the architect of my own designs Keeping the blueprints of her fingers in mind I slip between silence and mumbling through bared teeth Building effigies from the latticed ribs that hide beneath Our skin, a wordless atlas for the sake of those unspoken A flat-line, white-noise - diverted or broken Crossing glances for the sake of the company Soft with fondness, jaded with old jealousies Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ivy itching in red lines across my eyes Across my mouth and wrists, just to disguise The cadence of my chest in whispered halls Just to keep my lips taut, mouthing to olive walls With words like smoke creeping under the door My head is full of fog and still I tear my lungs for more. Laurah Furner

Mechanic Love The world is gone in this mechanic love Songbirds cease to sing the sweet, slow soft We are rigid and rough like the ivory tusks Which are more sought after Than our kind of bond Ours is one Yet ours is one that is quick to break off Break apart And steer off The path Dancing rain upon the sills Counts the beats for every breath Passion tears the heart and rips my shirt Action mends the mind then sheds your tears Now the rain is harsh Upon naked back As the long way back is certainly A long way back Then turn back And return to her The world is gone In this mechanic love But forever, ours is one that After the brutish shove And its are done Returns the meaning of a dove

Through the blackened soot And rotting rust Of our eternal clock Every stumble Is a cog The only way I pray It will ever work Taiwo Ogunyinka

MRI Green waves glazed with piranha teeth rise Diamond claw ripping through thoughts Brushstrokes of indigo vigorously try To stop the stretching of peace so taut But instead a white haze transcends upwards in circles Blending into the plastic cream coffin all stained The slab I lie on vibrates with this mortal While a ship’s foghorn sends warning again and again Like machine gunfire, sound relentlessly pounds Mere flesh never standing a chance I feign immortality and keep myself bound Rigoured more than I care to admit at first glance Pinpricks on the hipbone try to bring me back to reality And the glow of orange fires starts to burn the neck subtly The baphomet’s head balanced on straws, snorts loud His hot breath I can feel through the cage on my face His conquering of flesh makes him stand proud Before he nods and vanishes without a trace My eyes roll, skin jumps, inside this static radio The curve of my back begs to lie on its side Eventually an eardrum bursts with the overload Memories drip into the pad of the poly-voiced earphones Don’t move nearly done, they say through muffled air And the phlegm taps my breastbone, wanting to cough Balancing like the dead, I stay still with great care While nerve endings scrape the inner skull and break off A great pull - labour is over and I emerge reborn from this test And all manic activity, mine and the machine, finally comes to rest... Hafsah Bashir

David Scourse 27

Two Clocks Two clocks sit on opposite bedside cabinets throwing away seconds like sparks into time’s dead of night. The bed: a vast expanse connecting, unifying its two poles. A tapestry of time, woven from seconds, minutes, hours, pinioned upon days, weeks and months spreads while the room its own chrysalis evolves. Piles of dirty clothes rise and fall. Bookmarks journey across pages. Plates and bowls congregate and are disbanded. A couple quotidian protagonists create this room: arguing, making love, exchanging moments and memories on cold Sunday mornings, savouring the heat between bodies. Amidst this stop motion the clocks – serene stalwarts – remain stationary. And yet these clocks, that did so accurately

mirror one another, over time, lose that sacred symmetry. Wayward ticks, misplaced tocks. Heated words and cold shoulders. An extra minute here, an hour to forget there. Time, stretching a discreet yet unmeasurable distance between them, hidden under cover of silence. Two clocks sit on opposite bedside cabinets. One ticks while the other tocks. Stephen Whiting

Imogen Henderson 30

Twentysomething A cold, terrible twentysomething shivering with fear of failed dreams unachieved, visions outspoken and flopped. In a haze of smoky insecurity she holds her red head with her red paint-licked hands to slow it all down, to try to make it stop, the rush of trams and cars and people and planes, the talking jabbering yakking, the day trips in crumble sunny towns, the parties. Oh, the parties, where they walk from room to stuffy room thick with breath, crisscrossed with hungry stares and seedy glances, intersections of raging, roaring pheromones. Offer the blonde a cigarette – too drunk, too steeped in spongy, sleepy alcohol to talk anymore – instead just gaze out the window as the closing walls pass nauseously on either side, moving slowly along the tram lines in a half-remembered dream, passing packed-out beaches, peach-brown limbs writhing, walks in woods with big coats and underdressed girls huddled outside nightclubs. Slow, slow and eventually cease, to wake up tangled in reeking twisted sheets, with a dull ache of dehydration. Knotted to the bedposts, her hateful body, already decaying, decomposes, but her mind keeps whirring, whirring, so much to learn, so much to read in the books that line the walls, in the faces in the photos. In the novels, in the films, in the perfume and the pills and the magazines. Waste. So much waste… she has to use her body now before it dries up and yellows and starts to smell. But how? The door to her friends’ apartment opens to show lines and lines of more doors, all the same, corridor upon ringing corridor, shining metal door handles and numbers 4284 4283 4285 which one is it? The smell of the banana yellow walls, the waxed orange walls, the plastic and the broken wails of the ambulances from the hospital nearby. Face upon face behind those doors, faces laughing, faces sleeping, faces speaking, faces fucking incessantly. So she goes home again, walking through the lonely, threatening night alone again. Indecisively alone. Ellie Parkes

Napoleon It took the top left corner of the bedroom. Intruder, spreading silver graffiti across its space. A black bulge, it patterned the yellow walls with Its fine fence. Busy with its craft, it ignored Her fear of the ceiling monster. She watched her guest. An eight-legged pet, Expertly working on his knotted model, Articulating angles for his creative trap. With mathematical precision, he twirled the thread, Like an artist on canvas. She put down the vacuum, Named him â&#x20AC;&#x153;Napoleonâ&#x20AC;? And let him stay In his delicate design. Hannah Levy

Vestments Am I ‘I’? Or am I ‘me’? Or is it ‘you’ That you can see? Perhaps it’s ‘he’ Or maybe ‘one’ That ‘they’ can hang This body on. Stephen Whiting

Worklight Theatre are a small production company that have recently become partners of stage@leeds, having before taken acclaimed work to the Edinburgh Fringe and other such arts festivals. In the double bill that they performed here at Stage, they used five actors, with four in each piece and one actor alternating. The stage was sparse, and the images were stark. The company’s work involves the use of a wide array of manual lighting. One soft spot was used throughout both the pieces, with all other illumination provided through the use of torches and all manner of light-up objects, including at one point a glowing sex toy, but we’ll return to that later. As such, it was very difficult to get to know the actors you were seeing. For example, I only noticed that one of them had changed a couple of minutes into the second piece. However, I wouldn’t call this a criticism since what they were performing was something that I shall in this review dub “documentary theatre”. There are many things you could call it though. “Political theatre” perhaps? Or “Theatre in Education”. But none of these terms as accurately describe it as much as saying that what you are seeing is essentially a documentary, embellished with theatrical techniques. I must stress that I’m not trying to label their work dull by saying this. It was far from dull, if anything just due to how interesting the lighting setups were! By the end of their first piece I have to admit I was flagging slightly, as a washing line of mannequin heads were illuminated for what must have been the fifth or sixth time, but overall, I stayed entertained. The pieces remained a perfect balance of entertaining and informative, without ever sacrificing one for the other.

--------------------------------------------“How to Start a Riot”/”I Think I’m a Feminist” Worklight Theatre stage@leeds company Stage One, stage@leeds, 8th October Joe Sellman-Leava Michael Woodman Theo Fraser Sam Hollis-Pack (Technical Manager) Callum Elliott-Archer (How To Start A Riot)

The first piece of the evening, entitled “How to Start a Riot” focused on the UK riots of 2011, although much of the material also looked at psychology since the piece was attempting to crack the motives behind the riots and as such explored crowd mentality. The low-level lighting techniques worked particularly well in this piece.to generate the desired atmosphere of unrest, although sometimes they did become repetitive. Whereas this piece was led by one member of the cast, Michael Woodman, the second piece contained segments presented by each member in equal amounts, which I thought worked better as a structure to maintain the audience’s attention. “How to Start a Riot” was the better researched of the two pieces, but it was the second piece “I Think I’m a Feminist” that I was much more engaged with and really cracked the company’s charms. In the second piece, not only did the group make use of interesting lighting techniques but also of projections onto both screens themselves. By using a projector, the group had invented an intelligent technique whereby cast members would “become” another person by having a video of somebody else projected onto them. Describing it in this review, it sounds clumsy and as if it would never work, but on stage it honestly was inspired and I found myself chuckling at how much the group had impressed me. In terms of the actual factual feminist content, the piece did not particularly have anything new to offer, but to be honest, I don’t know whether in this case that matters. Ultimately what we have here is a group of four male performers confidently and without reservations presenting feminism to an audience without having to be prompted by a woman. If there is

anything we need more of in art in general, it’s that. It’s been said that men do not need a space in feminism, and that instead they need to take the spaces they already have and to make them feminist (I got this off Twitter so I’m sorry if I am misquoting any twitter users) and that is exactly what Worklight Theatre have done here. If anything, it’s a shame there weren’t more men in the audience. I really was impressed with Worklight Theatre, and would definitely go to see them perform again. Perhaps I would give “How to Start a Riot” a miss for a second viewing, but “I Think I’m a Feminist” has frankly made a lasting impression. Dylan Marsh --------------------------------------------INTERVIEW: Marcus Marsh, Director of ‘Saved’ - TG [Please note that this interview has been lightly paraphrased for clarity of meaning since it was conducted verbally.] Hi Marcus. Could you tell us a little bit about the play and the characters and give us a little blurb? Okay, well the play is set in 1965 South London, on a council estate, and it follows a group of youths and we see how society entraps the main character, Len. The audience will feel empathy towards him; he gets involved in a love triangle with Pam and Fred. Pam eventually falls pregnant and when the child is born we see the baby get stoned to death. Then we see the results of this on the rest of the characters.

dismissed it and I know people who left at the interval, so I think he was drawn to that basically.

Okay, and you have some interesting stories about how you obtained the rights to the play.

Fantastic. So in terms of your actual production, what’s been the most surprising or the biggest challenge so far?

Edward Bond is a writer who is well known for being quite specific about what he wants when his plays are put on, so to obtain the rights I had to write personally to him. So it’s quite a special occasion for Leeds generally because it was put on in London in 2011 and that was the first time in 25 years, and now we’ve got the privilege of putting it on here in Leeds. So I’ve had to speak to Edward Bond about the production and what we plan to do with it and got his approval, which is really good.

The biggest challenge has been really getting the whole production together. It’s a really big production; there’s a lot of props and set design. The design is really important in this play. You’ll see if you come to see the play that there a lot of props that are very significant to the plot. Things like a boat, and really difficult things that for a student production are really hard. But it’s been going really well. The cast have been brilliant. I think that’s the most surprising thing for me: the talent that Leeds actually does have. So we have the cast and it’s all going to be fantastic.

So what made you drawn to this play, and what do you think Edward Bond liked about what you were going to do with it?

Absolutely. Now when you put it on at Stage One in stage@leeds, what do you want audiences to take away from Saved?

I think people would be drawn to it because it’s something that we can all empathise with. All the characters are all twentysomethings or late teens, so all kind of our age, and I think there’s a consensus at the moment for youths, with tuition fees and everything, that we all feel a little bit hard done by; with the government and what I think the government’s doing at the moment. And I think in this play you see how all the characters are very angry about the society that they live in and Edward Bond has kind of predicted what happened in the summer a few years ago with the riots in London. Hopefully people will relate to it and I think Edward Bond was drawn to the production I’m going to put on because of the anger I felt towards society nowadays and also because when I went to see it at the Hammersmith in London a lot of people

I think I want them to think that they can relate to the situation of the characters, and I think that the important thing is that a lot of people discuss the stoning of the baby, which is a big topic. Everyone talks about how controversial it is, but I want people to understand why the characters are stoning the baby. There’s a specific reason and motive behind it, which is not so obvious in the plot but I think through my production I want the audience to understand the reason.

So you want your production to draw new things out of the play that audiences haven’t seen before? Exactly. I just want them to understand a piece that I don’t think a lot of people do. Finally, in terms of TG and across the university as a whole, what are you looking forward to seeing, outside of your own play? There’s a lot of great theatre that’s going on in Leeds. We’re very fortunate to have so many societies, but I think “Pains of Youth” is going to be incredible, and I’m really interested to see “King Lear” because it’s such a big play and we’ve seen it so many times, so I’m interested to see how [director] Alice Rafter deals with that. And I think on other genres, MT’s “Into the Woods” is going to be brilliant and some of you may have also seen me starring in “Guys and Dolls”, which I’m going to be in! Fantastic. You’ve just mentioned something you’ll be doing as an actor but as a director, what do you want to do next? I have a few ideas about what I want to do. A play that I really want to do by Tom Stoppard is “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”. I’m a big fan of that, so I’d love to do that maybe next semester or next year, but I also really want to direct a musical as well, so that could maybe be my next project that I propose. Absolutely. Well it’s great to hear from you Marcus. Dylan Marsh

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