VOICES
WRITERS’ BLOC 1 JOURNAL 24
Welcome to VOICES, the twenty-fourth issue of the Writers’ Bloc Journal!
In my first attempt at this introduction, I tried writing a response to Rebecca Watt’s controversial criticism of young female writers’ ‘amateur’ poetry which was recently published in the PN Review. However, everything I said felt somehow inadequate.
The great thing about the poetry community is that while everyone shares a common link (to say it in a cliché: a love of words) the number of perspectives on poetry as a ‘scene’ are as numerous as there are poets. I therefore feel uncomfortable voicing my personal opinion on such a wide-ranging debate, particularly on a platform where my views might be mistakenly interpreted as representative of Writers’ Bloc as a whole. For what I will say about Watt’s article is that it is always risky taking the ‘voices’ of a few choice poets and using them to support arguments on the state of poetry as a whole.
With that said, I really hope you enjoy the brilliant variety of young voices featured in this journal. To name just a few, there’s the wonderfully satirical ‘Tea with Chocolate’ by Spandan Manwatkar, the tragically comic ‘The World According to my Chicken’ by Sophie Laing, and the quietly moving ‘Left Brain, Right Brain’ by Sean Colletti.
Huge thanks again to everyone who contributed to this issue, and to Luke Kurowski-Ford for his stunning cover design.
If you would like the chance for your work to be showcased in the next journal, keep an eye out on the UoB Writers’ Bloc Facebook group or the weekly email newsletter for updates on the theme and submission window!
Editor Hannah Ledlie 2
Contents
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The Self-Righteous Sinner / Luiz Felipe De Souza
Tea with Chocolate / Spandan Manwatkar
Express / Emily Sumpter
Twin Speak / Chloe Bettles
The World According to my Chicken/ Sophie Laing
That Silence / Jonah Corren
Lost in Translation / Kate Avetoomyan
This House We Built / Emma Thompson
Left Brain, Right Brain / Sean Colletti
Haiku
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The Self-righteous Sinner Luiz Felipe De Souza I speak more Cain than Abel,
Though I am a younger brother.
I speak more Cain than Abel,
Though I have no love for soil.
I speak more Cain than Abel,
Because sin chases us the same,
Seeking shelter in our silence.
And because I have no interest in appeasing tyrants.
Because I speak when I should,
And so just as he responded to disrespect,
By spilling less able blood,
I’ll too respond.
My vocabulary is limited through selection,
Through the muting of the lies.
I skip past the word for murder and land at triumph.
I pronounce envy as justice and fleeing as wandering.
I say sin with pride and reverence with resentment.
I leave the praising of the shepherd to his sheep.
The mark upon my tongue promises less,
Than sevenfold vengeance.
For now.
Until I’m fluent in the true words of Cain,
Until Abel’s weak syllables lie extinguished,
His martyr-speak seen as the bleeping of weaklings,
His mother’s grieving cries forgotten,
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I’ll struggle on in broken.
Because Genesis is libel,
And the Shepherd speaks in slander,
Against the one who coined freedom.
And who whistles liberation.
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Tea with Chocolate Spandan Manwatkar You told me
To have tea with chocolate
Because biscuits are
Too mainstream.
You’re probably someone
Who calls charity shops ‘thrift stores’
And goes to Starbucks
To whine about coffee.
You likely go on nights out
And get trash drunk
Just to complain later
About alcohol.
Today you go around criticising
The development of a country
You’ve never been to
You say you know things
And watch the news everyday
But are unwilling
To even suggest a change.
And as you sip your tea
And dip your chocolate
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I finally realise
You’re unaware
Of how unaware you are.
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Express Emily Sumpter I'm sure I'd like the sound of my own voice if ever I really heard it. Perhaps it's the voice that I'm writing in now. Do I sound assertive - are my words striking out a resonant chord as your eyes follow them across the page?
Presumably not. These meagre lines are just a regurgitation of utterances that are not, cannot and will not ever be my own. I must always appear incapable of finding a voice I can claim.
Not for lack of trying though (I'm deliberately speaking in recycled phrases now). My unsuccessful search has taken years, skipping over childhood and pulling me ungracefully through adolescence. Now in my twenties, it seems I must seek new ways to establish a credible form of self-expression.
In the early stages, it occurred to me that, perhaps, I could plagiarise. I became obsessed with reading, clinging to those stories in which the voices of author and character intermingled. Compressed within the pages of a book, they couldn't stop talking - whereas I, supposedly liberated in reality, remained speechless. Over the years, these writers and the people they depicted had loaned a voice to millions of readers by expanding upon a shared human experience. Why shouldn’t they do the same for me?
Of course, this didn't work. This was not originality - I was just speaking with their words in my mouth, expressing common opinions without real authenticity. I didn’t want to be a yes-man, feebly murmuring phrases whose only comfort was that they were familiar. By the same token – how easy these clichés can be – I wasn’t nearly confident enough to go beyond what was facile, common… boring.
And so I resolved to close my mouth for good. As good as gold, as white as snow, as black as pitch – how could you ever escape it? And even if you could, what was left to be said? Sitting at home with folded arms and a permanent scowl, the radio seemed to be answering my question. It crackled on relentlessly in the background, lazily 8
dripping out voices; musical voices, political interviews, opinion pieces, words of the day. An endless stream of streams of consciousness, fulfilling the needs of those wanting to listen and those desperate to be heard.
That is what I have become – against my will, against my inner need to speak what can only be traced back to me. Now, I belong to the indistinguishable. I lurk in the chatter of microphone feedback and the rehearsed lines of a thousand predictable novels, despairing in the knowledge that the search for a voice is the most unoriginal idea of them all.
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Twin Speak Chloe Bettles My brain is being colonised by voices of the past.
They speak in the tongues of forged friendships,
Those curse words without the punishment
That we’d whisper into the night light of our youth.
They tell tales of a girl like me but smaller,
Who bent the fabrics of reality with a loneliness
So in company that our playground became society,
Guzzling on the poisonous berries by the lake
Until it gorged itself on its own imagination.
They have waited by this tarmac for me,
Sitting on the swing set to coronate me again,
Begging that I push them harder! faster!
Off the bridge over the old quarry
Where even the flattest stones don’t skim.
I sit on the see-saw and look up at them,
Those smiling notes a high pitch scream
That is either the fireworks or the gunshots
Of this playground revolution.
The air grows heavy.
The see-saw does not move.
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The World According to my Chicken Sophie Laing that fucking cockerel why did I ever go out with him screeching away again like we get it it’s dawn cock a fucking doodle do now it’s too light to go back to sleep but hey no fox last night so another day survived and oh look time for lunch ergh these humans keep giving us pellets instead of corn cause it’s healthy but like come on I’m trying to have kids here or at least get these fucking eggs to lay themselves a bit quicker now they’re walking that beast of a dog they bloody well better have it on a lead or we’re done for phew it’s gone oh look time for more pellets or maybe some leftover veg and now a well-deserved dust bath cause some might say I have an easy life but I tell you what it’s fucking stressful and now it’s dusk so more stress like every sound we hear we think is going to be a fox so yeah excuse me for taking spa time every once in a while to chill out wait what the fuck was that oh shit this time it is a fucking fox that’s great I guess my family isn’t going to get any descendants after all at least I won’t have to hear that fucking cockerel tomorrow good fucking riddance
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That Silence Jonah Corren You know that silence?
Silence on the end of your tongue,
Like a child at the end of a diving board?
Silence that condenses on the mirrors of a room
Like a winter morning,
Or a long car journey?
The kind of silence you can stick your heel through?
That's where I live.
I live in the holes in your conversations,
In the mismatched friendship groups,
And the long-lost knowledge of what to ask.
I curl up under the blanket that drapes a room,
When the mutual friend leaves you two to
'get to know each other',
I sit on crowded trains,
Swimming through gazes into the distance,
And I walk, when the weather is clear,
(Which I'll know, because five dierent strangers will scare me
away with the news)
Between the couple holding hands, looking directly forwards,
And leaving it all unsaid.
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Lost in Translation Kate Avetoomyan -- Over yer.
-- Over year? Over ear?
-- No, over here.
You look at me confused
by how I make the same noise for three different words.
How I can understand the same noise for three different words
When I’m yer,
I learn to pronounce year, ear, here,
Three different ways
So it’s easier for you
You ask me ‘oh, what’s occurrin’?’
In an accent of imitation, exaggeration
I tell you that I’ve never seen Gavin and Stacey.
You tell me I sound too English to be Welsh –
You tell me I sound so Welsh, now I’ve mentioned it
I say something in Welsh
Even though I barely understand it
I tell you it means something complex
You look really impressed
Even though it means ‘I like coffee’
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This House We Built Emma Thompson Is it too much to ask that you love me for me?
The living, breathing thing that I am
And not just this caricature you’ve made of me
Is that too much to ask?
Or did that become an unreasonable expectation when I wasn’t looking?
I don’t know who you are anymore That’s what you say, what you yell in my face
While we argue for the umpteenth time this week
A small voice sounds in my head and questions whether you ever did
A pity, really, when all you had to do was ask
I gave you every line of small print, every disclosure:
I am difficult, I am brittle—tread with care
But you smile and say I’ve got you
And for a moment I feel that I’m home and I’m safe
And as a girl who’s never known a home that’s felt like a home
A home has never felt so much like a loan
That I’m forever forfeiting the interest payments on
You and me, we made this home
But the mould set in
And the plaster peeled off
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And the colour underneath was all faded and mottled
So we covered it with wallpaper
Strip after strip of good intention
Gaudy and floral because it’s loud enough to mask the discontent
We laid them over any surface we could get our hands on
Our own personal collage, all light and bright
Anything to hide the ill-feeling lurking between the frame supports
You see my scars like stratigraphy
Empirical evidence that yours aren’t nearly as deep
Or as ugly to look at as you think they are
I’ve had worse, so you must be fine
I’m stains and cracks
And exposed wires left to rot
And I insulate myself with whatever material I can find
Like a magpie in search of something shiny
Work, sex, alcohol — regret
But you were shiny once too
Then you cored me out, left me hollow
Filled me with the air from your lungs
And the words off your tongue
And expected me to be grateful
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You said to me: You’re a pretty thing It’s a shame you’re so empty And I replied: You’re a clever thing It’s a shame you’re so full of it Is it too much to ask that you love me for me?
That you play connect-the-dots with my heart
And stop making circles out of my squares
Because I may be difficult
But at least I’m honest about it
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Left Brain, Right Brain Sean Colletti Yesterday, your dog died. Today, Left Brain and Right Brain will not shut up about it. Right Brain sits in the back of your head, clutching his knees and addressing no one in particular: why did this have to happen to us? Left Brain walks over, puts a hand on Right Brain’s shoulder and says Look, none of this is our fault. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Right Brain stares at Left Brain for a moment and then literally starts to beat himself up. Left Brain turns to you and says Well, hey, at least now you don’t have to find someone to watch the house when you go on vacation. You are just trying to finish your breakfast and get ready for work. Your cereal has gone soggy. When Right Brain sees this, it sends him into an even darker state of mind.
At work, you go to the bathroom and see that someone has had very poor aim. Left Brain suggests that this was likely Mark from accounting, because—let’s face it—it’s always Mark from Accounting. Meanwhile, Right Brain does some rewiring so that you perceive the toilet as a fire hydrant. He then pulls aggressively and ceaselessly on your heartstrings until you have to sit down. Left Brain rolls his eyes and sighs and you realize that you are likely sitting down in Mark from Accounting’s piss. Right Brain also notices this and pulls even harder on those heartstrings to distract you.
After work, you go to your favorite Italian restaurant for dinner and order lobster ravioli
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and a glass of pinot noir. When it looks like you’ve finished eating, the waiter walks over and asks Would you like a doggy bag for the rest of your food? Left Brain has to physically hold back Right Brain from punching that stupid waiter in his stupid fucking face. You leave way more money on the table than you need to and run out of there as quickly as possible, all the while Right Brain is shouting expletives at the waiter (criticizing him on his low social status as a waiter) and you and Left Brain both think that Right Brain’s points are not well-made, but the way that he says them is terrifyingly earnest.
It is late before you decide to drive home. You come to the last stoplight before your neighborhood and run a red light, because who’s going to stop you? Then you pull over, because the police have stopped you. Do you know why I pulled you over, the officer asks. You look for help, but Right Brain is peering over your shoulder, trying to see if the officer is part of the K-9 unit, so Left Brain tells you to play dumb. No, you say. You ran a red light, he says. I’m colorblind, you say. But surely you can tell when the top light is lit, he says. Everything is upside down right now, you say. The officer gives you a strange look and a ticket and sends you on your way.
When you finally arrive home and go to lie down in bed, Right Brain points out that you have left the bedroom door ajar and Left Brain points out that this doesn’t matter anymore. Right Brain stares off into space for a minute before sinking back into the pillows and you want to say something to him, but all you can 18
do is replay videos of walks in the park on the ceiling as the three of you fall asleep with the faint-but-distinct feeling that you are not alone. There is no lapping of water at the bowl in the hallway. There is no scratching at the front door. There is no shifting at the foot of the bed. But you are not alone.
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Haiku Lottricia ‘Lotty’ Millett This haiku can’t speak
Without your voice. You want my
Death but I, a choice.
This haiku can’t live
Inside your head. If not told
May I please be read?
Isla Dexter a true confession
love reads the wrong time in me
silence traps my heart
letters blur in sea
they meant something, somewhere else
all i see is black
Emily Hana (viral infection)
i wish to remove
my tonsils and boil them down
into two white globes