Journal booklet 8

Issue 08

THE JOURNAL

Writers' Bloc

Welcome to the eighth issue of The Journal!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to the first issue of this academic year. For you new readers out there, The Journal is an anthology of work showcasing the best writers at the University of Birmingham.

The new year always brings exciting new writers with fresh ideas and familiar names from the year before return. This issue contains a fantastic blend of first timers and veterans, narrowed down as the best from a large batch of great submissions. If you sadly didn't make it this time don't be disheartened! There will be other opportunities throughout the year to get your name into this publication.

If you like what you read you can find more work on our website at www.writersblocuob.com and can follow our society's activities on Twitter @WritersBlocUoB and Facebook at Facebook.com/writersblocuob.

Happy reading!

Andy Cashmore, Editor

Special thanks to Charlie Dart 2

The Journal

Contents Noemi Barranca

A Guide to Procrastination Bobbie-Ann Jones

Coward's Dance

Alexandra Robinson

Coffee Shop Drama Charlie Moloney

Powercut

Jenna Clake

Scenter of the Universe (Feature Piece) Elisha Owen

When the light behind my eyelids is still pink Georgia Tindale

A Revelation

Fabio Thomas

Reading and Ordering Rhyme David Robson

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Charlie Dart

The Dying Earth

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Writers' Bloc

A Guide to Procrastination Remove all reminders of urgent work, Allow stress to dissipate, Apathy should soon kick in.

Seek social Networking, Flick through endless pictures; Babies, Brighton and beer.

Ignore emails from anyone and everyone, They will be damning: Another peer review?

Panic sets in, Refocus attention, To re-runs of Dr Who .

Organise your sock draw; Pink, Green, Miscellaneous, Calm yourself.

Twiddle your thumbs, Whilst debating your spirit animal, Pub. Drink with fellow procrastinators, Reassure yourself They have done far less than you.

Return home, Intoxication should help?

Glance at horrific list of tasks.

Climb into bed, Allow yourself a cry, Promise yourself tomorrow will be different.

Repeat.

Noemi Barranca 4

The Journal

Coward’s Dance The titans sit in a uniform pattern with maximum separation and little intrusion.

They hate each other by instinct; they share no smiles and exchange no words.

Any eye contact made between them is immediately aborted: like cowards they avert their gaze to another item of fixation, like the floor, or the changing view of the world outside.

But today, a tiny creature enters their mist: an abhorred wasp- a monster.

It is trapped in a foreign realm and desperately trying to escape. They watch its frenzied hunt for freedom, wanting more than anything for it to miraculously disappear or die, yet they are unwilling to free or kill it.

The wasp travels from side to side, each time halted by an invisible barrier which taunts it with transforming images of the world it craves. It cannot understand as the titans do, that things are not always the way they seem, that the promise of freedom is in fact the prison itself. However the titans know this, and as the creature slowly destroys itself in search of its own freedom they just watch.

They are called titans because they are capable of great things, yet they remain locked in a coward’s dance. They fear what they do not understand and that is why they watch the tiny creature suffer.

Their eyes sport a flash of triumph when the wasp finally ends the search and dies.

Now tell me. Who is the real monster?

Bobbie-Ann Jones

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Writers' Bloc

Coffee Shop Drama Coffee, A free-for-all at the coffee shop, A queue backing out of the shop, A queue forming at the side of the shop, Mocha, frappe, caramel, latte, Vanilla, mint and chocolate sundae, Names of drinks shouted over the noise, Cups with names, Caramel-banoffee-blends passed from behind the counter, To each new customer, A smile.

Cupcakes, lemon-cakes, fruitcakes, cheesecakes, savoury or sweet cakes, Chocolate cakes and cream cakes, More names shouted behind the counter, What’s the next order?

All I wanted was a coffee.

Alexandra Robinson

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The Journal

Powercut The lights went out, and all that I could see was illuminated by the faint green glow of a security light. I had a roast chicken in the oven which was only half cooked. I was hungry and in distress, and I cursed the day I was born. The fridge suggested that I should be patient; there was heat enough in the oven and the chicken may yet cook.

I felt the door of the oven. It was warm, but that was the end of it. I stood up straight and listened to the horrible silence around me. I considered the superfluous nature of my endeavours, past and present; it’s only alone in a dimly lit green florescent darkness that a moment can be taken to face up to the terrible magnitude of our own despair.

‘For what avails it then that I have fried onions sautéed, and vegetables microwaved, with boiled rice and a sauce ready prepared? My chicken, my roast, the heart for which my other foods would make a home, will never be carved and served and complemented by cheap wine. For fault of this weak oven, I cannot hope to dine.’

They all listened to me. The boiler sighed and clicked in an exasperated manner. I noticed with annoyance that there was a general murmur from the direction of the cupboards directly below him, and some of the members of the spice rack let loose derisive chuckles. They were a heartless crowd, without culture, without the appreciation of philosophy and art; everything they talked about was stupid and meaningless, particularly the cutlery who were obsessed with football. I’ve lost count of the number of times that the knife with the serrated edge has cornered me and vomited nonsense about how Torres just isn’t the player he used to be.

Enraged, I picked up the biscuit jar as if to smash it, but then remembered myself and put it down, a gesture which was reward with hysterical laughter.

More furious than before I kicked the oven and berated it for causing all of this.

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Writers' Bloc For a long while, as the laughter peaked and then began to die into exhausted sighs, the oven maintained a dignified silence. I waited expectantly, until at the last it chose to make reply: When I was young and took no care In what I said or did, I ate a meal of taste so good It should have been forbid.

I had it at a restaurant One bright and sunny day, And finished it in record time; I ate without delay.

When finished, I was restless and I heard the outdoors call!

I asked my leave and turned to go, But then I had a fall.

I heard a crash of broken glass And felt the waiters glare, For now upon the floor there were His dishes everywhere.

I did not move, I could not speak Fear blossomed in my heart.

I was led away while mother made Excuses on my part.

So hear my words and save yourself From such a situation; Take heed from this, the oven’s tale To help your education.

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The Journal I couldn’t really understand the relevance of the Oven’s tale, but for politeness sake I nodded and smiled, pretending that I understood where it was coming from.

It was at that time that I knew my life needed some change, some new direction to take me as far away from this place and this feeling. Something was terribly wrong, wrong as if I were ill, and yet I knew that I could live like this forever; maddening as slowly as a chicken cooks in a warm oven, my own oven, that void where future happiness was impossible, and past sorrows stalked me through the dark house like insidious spectres in a pale green light.

Charlie Moloney

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Writers' Bloc

Scenter of the Universe

Feature Piece

In a high street gift shop, Jenny searches for a scent to best sum up a friendship. ‘Something that belongs in a bedroom,’ she says. The candles are lined up on the shelves like bottles of antidepressants in a bathroom cabinet.

‘November rain,’ I say, noting the name of a fragrance, ‘is not blue. It’s grey.’

‘Someone used to buy me candles to match the colour of my lips,’ Jenny says.

‘One for each shade of lipstick, one for their colour when I was cold.’ ‘But which one smelt best?’ I ask, feeling like I have accidentally walked in on my best friends kissing. ‘They all smelt of my perfume,’ she says with a shrug. She turns and walks further down the aisle. I have never bought her candles, but then she hasn’t bought me any either; this year she stuck an old relighting candle in my birthday cake and it refused to light at all.

Not all Coffees are Created Equal Last night we went to the theatre. It was a comic-tragedy. As an actress made a joke about fried potatoes and a handbag, Jenny leant over, placing a hand on my knee and said, ‘You could never have been an actor. You could never lie,’ in the same tone as my teacher used to write, ‘Good effort’ in my Maths book. My knee twitched. She knows nothing of the time I went to see an ex-girlfriend, who used ground coffee like you use instant, making a sludge that resembled my childhood mud pies. I drank it and said it was delicious. She believed me. There was a clown convention in the building opposite hers. As we watched them all exit like a container of brightly-coloured rubber balls being poured down a hill, I thought about taking all of Jenny’s socks and balling them up into odd pairs.

Jenna Clake 10

The Journal

When the light behind my eyelids is still pink The wind through your hair when you run to catch that train is the same wind that dragonflies ride on.

Have you ever noticed how they laugh horizontallyhow they play black-eyed susans like trumpets?

There are days when the lines in your forehead are ski slopes for my fingers.

I think then of migrating geese — the way all day they shout back at the beating, weary heart of the world ‘Keep flying. Keep flying.’

I think of how hard it is to carry the weight of making something of ourselves like a spider’s web captures the morning dew.

How your diary and my untidy room thread together to form patterns of inside jokes and differences we can’t always solve with cheesecake.

When some mornings you touch my earlobe and say it is the softest thing you have ever felt the wind grinds to a halt.

You forget your hometown for a moment and pronounce the ‘t’ in beautiful.

Elisha Owen 11

Writers' Bloc

A Revelation Inside the church, distant traffic rumbles and high heels clack against the tiles.

The church is equipped with automatic doors and a projector, gargoyles and pews. The artificial glow from the overhead lights illuminates the pictures of the saints. A man stands alone in the midst of incense and silence wearing a brown leather jacket and shabby jeans. He stands alone with his eyes closed, his hands clasped into fists and raised up in the air. The pews around him are empty. Nervous tourists walk the perimeter in silence, staring up at the polished wood and wishing they could take photos.

He feels the spirit filling him up but remains still. His face is creased up in ecstasy. Around him shadow people sit on wicker chairs, heads bowed. After a while the man in the leather jacket pulls his rucksack back onto his back and leaves without a word. Behind where he was standing the sound of sobbing can barely be heard above the traffic.

In the heart of this urban metropolis, the citadel of worship stands apart, away from the shopping centre, the traffic and the takeaways.

Georgia Tindale

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The Journal

Reading and Ordering Rhyme You’re butter in an egg cup that, To me, circulates through Too much residue, flowing Into a vivacious maroon. But you Read too much. You sporadically blew This cup over, despite that you knew Trying would result in a splicing of thy wool fat Much like your prolonged sense of knowing.

Fabio Thomas

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Writers' Bloc

2 The huge blush of vermillion was welded into the ground. Gargantuan branches swayed with regal grandeur. The roots cried as the heavy limbs rocked back and forth. Institutionalized by five hundred years of uninterrupted growth, the imbrication of brown and red stoically refused to move for anyone but itself.

The leaves, Singular, Cocked like the countless Labouring cogs of a Man-made machine.

They shined, well-oiled with nature’s Virility. As they shook, a Thousand pearls of water fell From all But one Leaf.

Their eyes turned, and in shame, cast their Brother from their Brotherhood.

David Robson

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The Journal

The Dying Earth We, all of us, left the dying earth as heroes.

Songs were sung of our departure and we saw them carried with us to our future beyond this mortal matter, our future so blindingly bright, reached by the power of the ether coil, the machine soul, that binds us, our mind together, as data is bound in the cloud.

But we left behind our songs and stories, our personalities, our input signal, formed on the carrier wave of our lives.

We left them to the erasing power of background radiation, that radio crackle that covers all, it is the competing ballads of the stars endlessly droning on; a song of entropy; singing of and thereby causing their own deaths, which approach, inexorably.

We are meaningless fluctuations on a lost carrier wave.

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Writers' Bloc We left the dying earth as heroes, not seeing in our blindness what came in behind us, what was placed in our stead from an outer realm like the one we now inhabit, foolishly stripped of our input signals, our humanity.

Crushed into this realm as one, we are MP3s; we have lost our inaudible beauty and been uploaded to the cloud.

There is no way home; the unabidable vacuum we created by leaving has been filled.

Something else squats in our place, Beady eyed, it eats our remains.

Charlie Dart

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The Journal

Step 1 : Feel inspired.

Step 2: Have great idea.

Step 3: Start writing here...

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Writers' Bloc

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The Journal

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You can start submitting to the next issue now!

Please send submissions to writersblocjournal@gmail.com Maximum two submissions per person, up to 1 500 words per prose piece and 50 lines per poem.

DEADLINE: Thursday 1 9th December Thank you for reading.