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The NAWE Young Writers’ Hub Myths of the Near Future App Edition, Issue 1, Spring 2013 Š Myths of the Near Future 2013 and contributors Published and distributed in association with DEAD INK Publications and the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE) Editor: Hannah Pollard Patrons: Alan Bennett, Gillian Clarke, Andrew Motion, Beverley Naidoo Submissions should be sent as an email, with a jpg portrait and brief bio of your writing life to myths.youngwritershub@gmail.com Only very exceptionally will be consider work that has already been published elsewhere. Translators themselves are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions. Contributors should be aware that works published by Myths may also appear on our website and may be made accessible to subscribers online. NAWE is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England and Wales No. 4130442 Membership As the Subject Association for Creative Writing, NAWE aims to represent and support writers and all those involved in the development of creative writing both in formal education and community contexts. Our membership includes not only writers but also teachers, arts advisers, students, literature workers and librarians. NAWE, PO Box 1, Sheriff Hutton, York YO60 7YU Telephone: 01653 618429 Website: http://www.nawe.co.uk
By Hannah Pollard Welcome to Myths magazine, in its new and futuristic form. The ISSUU edition of Myths will always be there, because we believe that young writers should have a platform for their work, and it should be available to as many people as possible. But this platform is noisier and more beautiful, so that the poetry, prose can look and sound their best. Ladies and gentlemen, Myths magazine is now an app magazine, and we’re pretty excited about it. But back to the matter in hand. We’ve been able to weave together a beautiful third issue, thanks to our excellent young writers. Behind the soft electronic flick of these pages you will find March sunshine and Shanghai smog, fragments, splinters and petals, the British Library, the night sky, explorers, Patagonia, an Amazon jungle and wild garlic. There are some pretty exciting interviews too. Award-winning poet Kim Moore talks to us about wolves and perfumed sonnets and CJ Flood tells about her bittersweet coming-of-age novel Infinite Sky. So what are you waiting for? To the future!
By Cara Brennan I would wait up for you, I’d wash my hair, put the make-up on so it looked like I wasn’t wearing any but looked better than wearing none and sit on my bed reading, watching catch-up TV until you texted ‘hey! I’m outside x.’ That bit was never a surprise I’d trained myself to know the sound, you getting out of a taxi; an engine muted a door slam footsteps. I couldn’t be mad if you were late we were so new you weren’t yet mine, you changed my candlelit scowls with cherry beer in bed. We would familiarise our day tearing wrappers from bottles, alternate sips and kisses before dawn where I would fold the scrunched red paper into cranes and hold them after you left.
By Paridhi Agarwal Here! I see you there – at the city top, pouring out your heart as rain, as if the world pressed the sky in between your heart. I saw you bending over the apples and oranges of the fruit vendor – you left, though, quickly, and I shrugged everywhere, even my heart. Yet as my lungs, grateful, inhaled tofu and exhaled surrender, your restless moseying, your worn face, rapt, stirred my heart, which creaked, loud as the crooked leg of the coffee table. I stopped by the window, as if to peer into fog, into your heart – and morning, I saw you, stooping over Shanghai, miserable, unwilling to leave the pockets of the city's skysmog heart.
By Anne Rutherford
Did you see her? That child stretched out in the puddle of sunlight on the sofa? Did you notice rivers bursting through rock in her head? Plants unfurling, wrapping their tendrils round her fingers? Butterfly blue brushing inside her hand? I plotted my way across that woven sea, following sirens’ calls to a golden theatre sprouting green. But now those sirens have lost their power or gone away or changed: within a tighter compass my nomad wanders and that coveted postcard hesitates
on my patchwork map of childhood.
By Hattie Grunewald
Brother, today I pressed my spine against where your growth marked notches on the wall. I could see paper gulls in our garden, chained to the notions of their species; because they cannot think, bird-brained. My skin is rebelling against me, it has stretched away from these ballerina bones; it swells and sobs red tears. I can scream all I like, it won’t listen. I wake with a mouth full of pillow. Next summer I will go to China and teach children to sing the weather. If you tell them to speak out because their voices will be heard, you will be deported for your lies. I splay my hand against the window and leave a ghost there. Brother, you are so tied up in spidersilk and shoe laces, I don’t think you have noticed how big your little sister has become.
By Stephen Pester He looks at the trees and sees train maps A logic to every twist in every branch. She looks at the trees and sees parasols, Or climbing frames, or sketching spots It was under a map and a parasol they meet, Their worlds colliding as they speak. She tries to sketch his boundaries, And he to find her centrepiece. As they find the subtleties in one another – The hidden exceptions to lifelong rules – They are filled with the desire to discover The explorer’s gleam in their eyes. This is where they begin.
By Benjamin Schwartz You have to disconnect, Put the volume on mute to see The sea-weed growing through cracks. In Northumberland Street, they wave at shoals, Each movement rippling its frequency. The stones vibrate through each other, Each footfall An epicentre. Each laugh barks out like a drum Pulsing from one fish to another. As we walk past, our ripple-quakes Expand like balloons, unseen beneath our feet And where they meet, their skins will quiver, Vital and fearful, Simple. But on the land Our eyes do not meet, There is no flicker of recognition. I can find no reason for the shiver That clambers up my spine. I jerk on my lapels As if affirming that they're mine.
By James Giddings
Some days I collect fragments. I find them on trains, on busy pavements; some are from my brain.
I collect them sitting in the pub; latch onto the leftover conversations of couples and spurned lovers. Others come from airport layovers, parting through the tears in terminals, then sobering, sharing beers. I pocket the little scraps at home from Freudian slips and make them into poems; some of them like this.
By DS Maolalai One of the more magic things that I have sen as I've walked this spittle and ashen landscape was a couple of years ago when there was a hurling match between two teams, I dont remember which, although one of them may have been Cork or somewhere, but during one of the clashes when you see men and sticks collide in the real momentum of the sport and you cannot see the ball but they sure can, cause they certainly swing for it, there was this one guy who caught his hurley high up on someone elses and it splintered around where the grip starts knocked itself v shaped with a blade side on the end no lift in it, not even able to catch the air,
and I think if it had been me, I would have dropped it (not a criticism of myself, you understand, I imagine most people would have done the same) but this guy refused to give it up kept swinging kept whirling tried to catch the ball on the
split end of his stick up there close to his hands. I was watching on the television and the camera moved onwards but you saw his eyes just for a second and he didnt know or care that the stick was broken maybe he was a dumb piece of shit or maybe he was above man fingernails, ash trees, fire in the knuckle he kept swinging to take that ball with his mouth absurdly open. I think about that now, and I think of the people I grew up with splintering like that hurley into Galway and Argentina and Valencia and there's a girl that I used to know and she's gone to Switzerland, too. People flying all over the damn place without any sort of concern for me. I say that guy was probably a dumb shit but he knew,
in those seconds he knew what it was to lose what you thought you needed and not to care Sometimes I get a feeling like that, but it's a difficult one to maintain and of course, he got a new hurl when it occurred to him to ask for one. in those seconds he knew what it was to lose what you thought you needed and not to care Sometimes I get a feeling like that, but it's a difficult one to maintain and of course, he got a new hurl when it occurred to him to ask for one. Like I say, I dont really remember who's side he was on or what teams were playing, though one might have been Cork, but I think that expression will stay with me a while longer though again, I can't really be sure of that either now, can I?
By Daniel Anderson
A strange March sunshine dangled over Bankside today. It was definitely emitting warmth, and people smiled and talked of spring; but it wasn’t that blinding sunshine, on high, white and squint inducing, sulphur. Nor should it be, but it was almost orange, like a disposable air freshener, and the people seemed to be looking it straight in the face. They walked up and down the Thameside South Walk, some wearing skirts and coloured shorts, but it was now approaching late afternoon, and the weather was becoming blowy. One man had clambered up the steps to street level, carrying odd-sized bags, and was now making his way across London Bridge: the Sun lapping in the water, spherical, like a dog’s ball. He busies past the people, his load skewing him to one side. Sweating, he relieves himself of his sacks, untangling a cord from around his neck. London Bridge running straight ahead and parallel; panning left there’s the BT Tower, St. Paul’s, Southwark Bridge; pan right HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge; the ship’s superstructure overlapping the horizontal midriff. A pause, the wind on his face, and he’s scrambled off
again – an army ant clutching its haul – and he’s almost lost amongst their swarm, further down: groping past straw hats and flailing fabric. On top here, over the Thames, you can feel like you’re above the mainline. You can tell by the peoples’ posture. The wind up here is rife though, of course, being over
the river, and one sudden blow and you’re in the slipstream; sucked below the tight shoulder blades and triumphant posing. It takes some people by surprise, but this man doesn’t seem fazed, spiralling the stairs to underneath, at the bridge’s far end and below. His hand balancing on the rail, winding down the concrete, his facial features merge into the sullen grey walls, his body sinking into a black outline. He walks on down the steps and through the dark passage, the Thames pounding away into a narrow channel at river level: lit in green by a ‘Fire Exit’ sign, drifting past. Coming through the
passageway into fading daylight, he emerges on the Thameside North Walk amongst the dwindling parade of sightseers and tourists. A man with his arm wrapped around his girl’s satin dress glides through, both of them laughing, his wide mouth opens, his
hand squeezes; but it has come time for them to leave.
water, a fading blob of orange. Behind, in the mini-labyrinth, the circular stairs are lit in rhythmical neon green, the ‘Fire Exit’ light Our man shuffles along adjacent, bearing his buzzing, and a kind of artificiality starts to bags, and seemingly flows through their contake over. The tide starts to pick up in the joined figure. There’s no blinks between them, labyrinth’s small channel; the water’s surges lit the man’s profile frozen in wide-mouthed joy, by the flashing bulb, pounding over the a burst of smoke, and they’re on their separate stairway, sometimes four at a time. This ways – the river as backdrop now starting to channel is blocked off by a fastened gate shiver – and our man disappears, unseen by – ‘access to river only’ – the stairs leading the couple and pedestrian eyes; jutting into an down into the froth, and it will probably archway, an indentation in the stone. pound all the way into night time, unseen. As dusk approaches, and the shapes become If there was ever any warmth it seems to have uncertain, a sole tourist walks along the been washed away, down here. The great grey parade, his voice loud and sharp, piercing the shaft of the bridge runs overhead all the way subdued rhythm, stabbing in an Asian dialect. to the other side, and the people opposite on A bandaged hand immediately darts out of the the South Walk appear like dark insects, their archway, in response, with a moist finger held antennae pointing home. Halfway across the out to the wind, to calibrate. The foreign river a giant support pillar is plunged into the voice is gone though, and the overripe Sun water – a simple engraving reading ‘London has all but joined him, sending its final rays Bridge’ – and the waters dance around it like into the walkway in a freshless tinge. Over the wet diamond. As the water darkens and bobs river London Bridge hospital, framed in white, the man remains hidden, in his stone compart- is one of the last easily discernible structures. ment. A clanging, metallic sound comes from The Sun melts away like fuzzy mango, like there every now and then, and it seems as tropical sauces left out to fester in the hospital though he’s unsealing the contents of his canteen, forming a skin around the ladle, sacks. mushy eyelid. The image of the Sun starts to swim out of view, towards Tower Bridge, hovering over the
That taste on the tongue: as water sloshes in and out of the channel and the man tinkers
By Katherine Henderson Eerie Haughty and delicate, more delicate than Mother. Branches wither beside blossom Petulant tongue of colour ignites geisha face. Petal. Lead face powder, poison, you melt to the ground, forgotten quickly by fickle human. Yesterday I was admired. Tantrums turn you tree brown and you kamikaze, to be eaten triumphantly
By Jack Little for Don Cellini Beyond my window, the sky swirls night black shadows, I trace my reflection in the windowpane before turning hastily to bed. Puzzle pieces, dream formations, images of the moon at different latitudes: Caracas, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Panamá and São Paolo my mind awaits them all, the visits of feather capped
Gods of heavy ancientness, the smell of other worlds that cling to my bedclothes: the heat of night and journeys to far away Sun temples of unknown people… I await Bogotá I await Lima, Barranquilla, Brasilia, Managua, Bucaramanga… Asunción… and on and on – all memories learnt from news stories, a crack of light breaking the sky and reminding me of the classroom globes of childhood.
By Sam Caleb A lot of people spend time outside the reading rooms of the library, outside the building, in the foyer, in the corridors, toilets, cafés and designated crawl spaces for the inquisitive and agoraphobic. Many people work in the library. Some are students, some professors, few journalists, some unemployed, some homeless. Security crawl through the crawl spaces at closing time.
The open space appears to be roofless, with sky, clouds, birds and aeroplanes passing above. Yet, no rain water, droppings, or shrapnel have fallen when I have been in the open spce,traces of rain water, droppings or shrapnel can be seem to have been left. Either it is cleaned regularly or there is a thin sheet of non-reflective glass or perspex at the top of the open space.
I spend much of my time in the designated crawl spaces of the library. I may be inquisitive but I am not agoraphobic. I have mapped many of the crawl spaces, which often connect onto other crawl spaces situated on the library’s several floors. It is most unfortunate when I come across someone travelling in the opposite direction to me in the crawl spaces, doubly so if someone else is travelling in the opposite direction to me or to the person who was first travelling in the opposite direction to me dependent on which one of us – the first two people who met travelling in the crawl spaces in opposite directions to each other – has turned around to let the other person go in the direction they wish to go. But these are minor issues.
The top is too far away for me to inspect thoroughly whether this is the case.At the top of the open space are three other openings or exits into the open space. I cannot find how to reach these openings or exits although I would dearly like to.
There is one part of the crawl spaces I have not been able to map sufficiently. From the crawl space in the lower left corner of the far right café on the first floor there is a crawl space which leads up and to the left in a spiral fashion into a long partitioned straight that opens onto an open space clearly encompassing several floors of the library, and much wider and taller than the confines of the other crawl spaces. I know the tube that leads to this space is partitioned because of the hollow sound the right hand wall makes and also because of the other hole that opens onto the open space adjacent to the hole I enter the open space from. This tube though does not go anywhere.
My dream is to one day find a path to one of these openings or exits, then to bring someone, or three, or two, or more, whatever sufficient, to the open space, through the original crawl space through which I found the open space, with pillows and blankets and arms and legs, and leave them there and go to the one of the three openings and exits I have found a path to and jump, or dive, as the size of the opening and thence exit will dictate, into their legs and arms and blankets and pillows. I calculate the drop will not cause damage. However, I am routinely frustrated in my search for these openings that become exits – maybe they are dead ends too – and sometimes huddle in despair at the bottom of the open space until security come to tell me to leave. Sam Caleb is a graduate of Oxford and UCL. He currently
spends his time between London, Berlin and Wiltshire. He is a
freelance writer for The Oxonian Review, The Literateur,
and Review 31. Likes David Foster Wallace, Lydia Davis and
Samuel Beckett. Dislikes Zadie Smith.
By Juan David Immigrant that I am (not from here or there), I can at least, with pride and resolution say: that you--are my fatherland my sod—the apple of mine eyes my sunshine, mine flower and the kings and queens of Scotland. The fortitude once forged by treasure hunters and conquistadors, and so we want to get to know you even more; my Spain, my England, you, are my continent, all we want to know about La Patagonia, all they’ve yet to know about the Aegean Sea. So, Immigrant that I am, not from here or anywhere, I can with pride and resolution say: that I love you.
By Flo Reynolds I point out to you seakale and phormium. Our fingers are magnetised. Yours follows mine. We climb concrete steps past knee-high temperate jungle. Daisies and celandines jumble at the edges. It’s early. They aren’t open yet. I remember thinking that it is too early for bluebells or white bells, and what is that smell? City boy, you are buoyed up on the concrete. You reach the top before me. I am bumpkinning my way up, slow in admiring foliage and loam. You spread a towel on a clifftop. When we kiss I am scared to fall. Below the sun is too orange in the too, too grey. A hare turns to stone in the long grass and sand. The sea exhales. We are sliding over one another like snails. The wind is warm and the grass is freshly mown, damp, too, too green. The reflection of the sunrise on your hair, eyelashes, freckles. The smell: warm and sweaty, yet here we are on an Irish clifftop with grey wind fanning us and sweet clean saltiness. Our bodies are magnetised, lining up like stands of wild garlic undulating up the sides of a set of concrete steps.
By Sam Elmi At the starting line – a pool of orange a mother rushes with a spare but its too late the race is over. I remember one kid turning up with a tea spoon ‘sall me mam ad in’ the silver bowl invisible beneath a dinosaur egg. Next to him, the custom-made rowing paddle, one for Goliath – an egg-craft carrier. And he still kept dropping the bloody thing lucky he brought his butler catching and replacing the egg - “Sir that’s Faberge!” Most of us had table spoons if you were smart you boiled it first Lethem glued his down. Some were born to run – rare, balanced kids shifting their weight like ostriches. But others thought ‘fuck it’ and threw down their eggs, or ate them or tried to interrupt the race by swerving into other lanes. The pissed off parents could never understand the impulse.
I was more about the egg than the race, its sensuality strength and fragility an oval in the space between life and death its suitability for metaphor.
Hannah Pollard talks to to the award winning poet Kim Moore Kim Moore was born in 1981 and lives and works in Cumbria. She writes poetry, teaches brass
instruments and runs poetry workshops. In 2012,
her first pamphlet ‘ If We Could Speak Like Wolves’ was a winner in The Poetry Business Pamphlet
Competition, judged by Carol Ann Duffy – the pamphlet was published in May 2012.
In 2011 she won the Eric Gregory Award and the
Geoffrey Dearmer prize, and was a winner of the
Fermoy International Poetry Anthology
Competition in 2012. Her poems have been
published in numerous magazines, and have been
anthologised in Salt’s ‘Best British Poetry 2012 and
Oxfam’s ‘Lung Jazz’.
The title of your first and most recent
collection (which won the Poetry Busi-
ness Book & Pamphlet Competition) is
'If We Could Speak Like Wolves'. I'd love to hear more about what the figure of
the wolf means to you and your poems. Wolves often creep into my poems – I'm fascinated by wolves and their place in fairytales and stories and one of the poems in the pamphlet 'The Wolf ' runs through lots of
fairytales that wolves appear in - but the title poem 'If We Could Speak Like Wolves' comes from reading an autobiography of Sean Ellis, a man who lived with wolves for a long time. Throughout his book, he complains that if people behaved more like wolves, then we would all get on better – and part of me is inclined to agree – I have two dogs – and the thing I most admire about them is their ability to live in the moment – they don't let the past or the future bother them. As to what the wolf really means to me - this might sound ridiculous, because they do creep into my poems a lot - I've never actually thought about it before. When a wolf comes into a poem - it seems important to not question it too much or ask what it is doing there! How would you characterize your own
work, if you can? What are your aims
whenwriting, what do you try to capture
or explore?
Again, this might not be a very helpful answer, but I try not to have any aims when I’m writing! I do a lot of 'free writing' where I try and write without thinking.
Then afterwards I will go back and edit a huge great block of prose in my notebook down to something shaped like a poem. I often write about power and how this manifests in relationships – but again, I don't set out to do this – it just comes out anyway in what I write about. I'm also fascinated in my normal life with people who have obsessions and I've written quite a few poems in the pamphlet about strange people that I've come across in books or on the radio. Sometimes, something will happen to me, and I think, yes, this is a poem – but then I'm not above elaborating and embellishing what actually happened to get to the real 'truth'. I like poems when I read them and think 'yes, I've thought that' and that is what I would like my poems to do – but that wish comes in the editing, and never in the writing. Every week your blog features a 'Sunday Poem', always an interesting selection – how do you go about choosing them?
The Sunday Poem's on my blog are poems are shamelessly gathered from friends and acquaintences. It started out with me asking friends if I could have a poem of theirs that I admired or remembered. I started to enjoy doing the write up and explaining why I'd chosen that poem and that poet. I enjoy being nice to other poets – and saying 'hey, I really like this poem' - people seemed to be genuinely happy - even though it is only my
personal blog, rather than an important magazine – maybe we don't do enough of this in the poetry world - appreciating each other, I mean. Saying that, I have to like the poem just as much as I like the person, if not more! The blog is a bit like my diary as well – obviously not with all the confessions, but probably just as rambly, and this rambling of my real life hangs around the poems. I have thought about putting a call out for random submissions - but then I decided against it – it's much more fun to ask someone out of the blue for a poem. I shouldn't really havefavourites - but I do really love the Nikolai Madzirov poem on the blog. I met Nikolai at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and then got in touch with him over Facebook and was really excited when he agreed to me posting one of his poems. favourites - but I do really love the Nikolai Madzirov poem on the blog. I met Nikolai at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and then got in touch with him over Facebook and was really excited when he agreed to me posting one of his poems. He's widely published elsewhere in the world, but has his first poetry collection in the UK coming out with Bloodaxe next year – really interesting poet, who deserves to be more widely read over here.
You run many poetry workshops for
several different organizations. Is there
a piece of advice you find yourself giving
over and over?
Part of why I love running poetry workshops is because you don't find yourself repeating the same piece of advice! Every workshop to me (so far at least) feels different. Saying that, I do like to harp on about line breaks - I love working out where they should go – in my own poems and other peoples. It feels like a musical puzzle, and if
you get it right, the poem just slots into place. Have you any advice for our young writers?
Read, read and read! I think reading is the most important thing that you can do as a
writer. Read every day – if you have to choose between reading and writing because of time, I would pick reading every time – and reading aloud as well is so important. Make poetry friends – part of why poetry has changed my life has been the amazing friends that I've made – find people you can show your work to whose opinions you trust. What can we look forward to, what are you working on at the moment?
I'm very slowly writing poems which I hope will start to come together to be my first
collection. At the minute they feel like isolated poems rather than a collection but I think that might be because I've not written the poem that will start to bring them all together, which is what happened with the pamphlet. I also don't feel in a great rush either – the pamphlet came out at the end of May 2012, and I'm still just enjoying reading from it and the feeling of exchanging poetry for money, which is novel in itself. The poet Ian Parks has just bought a pamphlet out with Rack Press called The Cavafy Variations – which are versions of some of Cavafy's poems and I've started writing some poems in response to this which we are hoping we can weave together in to a reading – which might involve us reading a poem each or me reading Ian's poems and him reading mine – we haven't worked out the fine details yet – but I'm enjoying the process. I'm also taking part in the 'Penning Perfumes' project, run by Claire Trevien – lots of poets have been sent a perfume and we then have to write a poem from it. Mine is becoming a sonnet with lots of 's' sounds in it. Don't ask me why – s sounds are just what came into my head when I smelt the perfume. Kim Moore’s If We Could Speak Like Wolves is pub-
lished by Smith-Doorstop.
Wes Brown talks to leading young novelist CJ Flood CJ Flood graduated from an MA in Creative Writing at UEA in 2010. Her dissertation, a section of
Infinite Sky, won the Curtis Brown Award for best student as judged by a panel of agents. She was a
mentee on the Jerwood/Arvon Mentoring Scheme, under Bernardine Evaristo, and a recipient of an
Arts Council grant.
Infinite Sky, her first novel, came out in February.
The Telegraph called it "a powerful and impressive
estranged mother. It wasn't very good, though I didn't realise that until I submitted it to be workshopped at UEA a few month's later. Disheartened, I began writing about my adolescence, and my classmates seemed to like it. At some point I merged these two things, and infinite sky – or Silverweed as it was called then – began to emerge. In the end, did you still see Infinite Sky
as a book for a YA audience? Or had it
debut," The Guardian said it was "brilliantly visual grown into something else?
and full of feeling" and The Times selected it as their
children's book of the week. CJ is currently working on her next novel, which will come out next February.
When did you start writing Infinite Sky, how did it come about?
I started the novel that would become infinite sky a little while before I began my MA at UEA, which was 2009. I'd been reading YA, and really liked the immediacy of the stories and the strong voice and relatively fast paces, and so I started playing around with one. A story about a girl being raised by her father, who was desperate to find out more about her
That's a really interesting question as in the process of merging the two pieces of writing, I did sort of forget about the YA element. I thought of it just as a novel with a young narrator. When my tutor, Andrew Cowan, suggested I flag it as children's fiction for my dissertation, I was really surprised. It took me a while to understand what it was that made it
not just a novel. I don't entirely like the distinction because I know that some adults won't read YA. Some will think my book isn't for them, when it might be.
I don't like that. But in terms of marketing the book, it seems to be a really good thing. And the YA people I've met are really lovely too. What I was trying to do more than anything else, for the most part, was write a classic novel that human beings would love. That's not to say I achieved that, but that was my brief. After the realisation, did it change your writing style?
I didn't have a young adult reader in mind ever, but I did sort of channel my teen self, so it felt quite different to my previous stuff, which has always been fairly bleak and plotless and existential. And after the realisation, no, it didn't change my writing style. I had already struck on the voice and tone, and so I just carried on. I did simplify the voice and prose further as I went on, but that was just a style choice. I really like clean, unfussy prose. And I'm quite a harsh editor, so I get rid of so much. I got really into minimalism as I was writing the book. Some of those simplicities of voice, the perceptions of a teenage Iris, add a greater layer of depth too. I loved lines like, "His chin had a left, like the tiniest bum" or '[Her] accent was different. Messier and more Irish'. The novel is very tight structurally. It
comes in sort of waves. This must have
been a change from bleak and plotless?
It was a change, yes! I'm glad you think it's tight structurally. It's certainly different to anything I've written before. To be honest though, if I had had a structurally tight idea before I would have been delighted to write it, but this is the first time that has happened to me. My previous stories and novel attempts were simply character portraits or explorations of a theme. Infinite Sky is the first strong idea I've had, really. I hope it isn't my last. Would you say Iris's Dad's prejudices were self-confirming?
I suppose they are self-confirming. But then, what was he supposed to do? Leave the travellers living in his paddock for the rest of his life? I tried to set up a string of cause and effect, and stay away from blame. Yes, I thought that was interesting. He
wasn't typecast as the 'baddie' because he doesn't share cosmopolitan shibboleths. How has writing Infinite Sky
transformed you as a writer? Are you
thinking more structurally about your
follow up?
I'm glad you see him that way, that's how I see him. It's easy for Iris not to see the Travellers as a problem, because she isn't responsible for anything – that's the child's luxury – it's a different situation altogether for her dad. I feel like I learned how to write a story during Infinite Sky. That is the main transformation. This came about from studying plot and structure, as they are my weakest points, more seriously than I had before (surprise – studying works!) And yes, I am thinking more structurally in my follow up. The main work of my first draft has been to get the structure tight, and then I can hang all the cool, fun stuff that I enjoy so much from that. Once I have the structure in place, which I now think is so important, I really enjoy the writing. I love coming up with the detail that makes it all seem real. I'm much better at the small stuff than the big stuff. I also learnt how to find the natural conflict within the story by getting to know my characters. Andrew Cowan, who was my dissertation tutor at UEA, taught me a lot about this. Are there things you can do now you couldn't before?
So, can I do things now that I couldn't before? Hmmm. Yes, I think so. As I've said, I don't think I really knew how to write a satisfying
story before. What else? I think I'm much better at writing scenes. In fact, no I don't think there's new things I can do, except story, just that I'm a bit better at my old repertoire. I still have so much to improve on though. Just two additional quick ones, too. I collate all this together. When and how do you write? I write in bed, on a laptop. This is my winter style, I think, as it's just so cold I can't bear it sans duvet. Also, I'm a disgustingly lazy individual. I used to have a shared studio where I went every day, as I wanted to feel a bit more like a proper person with a life, but I've now given it up, and admitted defeat. There is no life/work separation if you're a writer, and that's that. In my case, anyway. Would you recommend the experience of a Creative Writing Degree?
I did a Creative Writing MA, and I would rec-
ommend it, but only if you are at the right point with your writing. You need to have a clue about the sort of writer you are, and the sort of thing you want to write, but not be so certain that you're barely malleable. Also, you need to be good enough that you don't get ripped to shreds, and confident enough that when you do get criticism, it doesn't kill you.
A thing to point out about CW courses, or UEA's anyway, is that they don't really teach you. They just give you space and time to work things out for yourself. It's a very hands-off approach. I sometimes wished for a bit more teaching, as I felt so clueless, but looking back, it's the best way. Not to say I've gone plot mental, but I’m definitely more about structure and rising drama.
I think it's a really natural arc. It sounds like we've been on a similar journey. At first, I was so resistant to 'plot' and 'structure', but it was only because I didn't properly understand what they were, and like you say, I hadn't realised how inherent they were in all the stories I loved. Do you worry about or expect that
people will assume Iris is you?
I don't worry that people will assume Iris is me. To be honest, I don't even know how much she is me or not, myself. I worry about other people a lot, as she does, and played the mediator as a kid, but I was also capable of meanness. I was less innocent. But, you know, Iris is such a cutie, it's no bad thing if people think she is me. I liked what Brett Easton Ellis says in the
Paris Review interview you recommended about this: "Well, I write novels, and though there are autobiographical elements in them, who really cares how much of me is in the book?" Maybe in the future, I'll grow a vagina, and start throwing out lines like that. What are you working on now? As for what I am working on now, it is the second book of my two-book contract with Simon and Schuster. It's another stand alone novel, but it has similarities with Infinite Sky. More brother/sister stuff and also masculinity stuff, which I seem to like writing about. Plus trees, and nature generally, my favourites. It's about a teenage girl whose soldier brother doesn't return from Afghanistan when he is meant to. He makes it back to the UK, but never turns up at home. She hears a rumour that he is hiding out in the woods they played in growing up, and sets out, with her friends, to find him and bring him back. It's about friendship and bravery and adventure. Infinite Sky is published in the UK by Simon & Schuster.
Nathan Ouriach enjoys ‘Definitions of Distance’ – a debut pamphlet of poems from Jake Campbell Definitions of Distance By Jake Campbell
Red Squirrel Press, 36pp In Definitions of Distance, young poet Jake Campbell tracks the geographic and psychic space that has surrounded him his entire life and seeks to articulate all of its endearing intricacies. Campbell candidly poeticizes his Northeast and suffuses the minor moments of life with acute thematic depth. Appositely placed in the centre of the collection is the pamphlet’s heart, Campbell translates space into a swimming pool where ‘we / float through each other’s ripples; / kicking, pulling / over this chasm / of loving from far away’. The collection’s title poem establishes the over-arching agenda of his poetry, the tension of how to maintain an attachment to a space you now only fleetingly inhabit. With its confessional tone, the reader is repeatedly reminded that it is Campbell’s voice talking to them as if reader and poet are walking together along South Shields beach and trading stories. Each poem hosts a s incerity that brings the reader imaginatively into Oakleigh Gardens or underneath
the ‘piss-steam’ of the Stadium of Light or the warmth generated by a polystyrene cup of Bovril. Campbell’s skill rests in his ability to invest the smallest action with enough weight to shift the reader’s spirit. In ‘The fall’ the poet details a dog falling from a cliff as if ‘an envelope slipping / down the back of a radiator’. The poem closes with the collection’s most memorable moment: ‘He took a solitary black
hair from the edge / of the passenger seat and rolled it till / his fingers ached’. Vignettes like this define Definitions of Distance; the poet initially places himself in the corner of events as a witness to his father, as well as his grandfather, and then gradually there is a movement toward the centre and, therefore, a progression toward resolution. Beginning with ‘My Granddad Buries King at Souter Lighthouse,’ continuing with
‘Stadium of Light, December 1999’ and concluding with ‘Heredity Seen Through an Eight Inch Mirror With a Disposable Razorblade,’ the narrator moves from a young boy with ’a strip of mud awaiting its turf delivery’ to inheriting his father’s Fusion Power. There is maturation over the collection. In an effort to measure the space separating himself from the refuge of his home, the poet swims in the sensuous drench of memory and comes out accepting that the ‘face in the glass becomes / Dad and Granddad before me.’ The collection ends with an acceptance of this uniquely depicted experience. Conceding that there is space left to find, a space full of information that ‘each omit[ed] to tell the other,’ like the ‘scuzz of stubble / combed through her hair / in a cuddle / will need washing away’. Campbell in his final poem, ‘At Land’s End,’ suggests a negotiation of distance as the poet can control the distance in front of him through a viewfinder ‘ready, whenever we want / for us to zoom.’
Campbell successfully casts unpoetic objects like Reeboks, Four Four Two and Safeway Bags alongside moments of familial togetherness. His collection attempts to define a distance that stretches geographically, psychically and even through time and arises at a moment of clarity. By the end of the collection Campbell’s poetic voice has turned into the Narwhal, as he himself can now ‘emerge unfased’ from those ‘huge caves / of water’ redolent of the swimming pool that later grows to surround him. Nathan Ouriach is a writer and former intern at
the Young Writers Hub. He can be found on Twitter
here.
Katherine Horrex considers literary voyeurism and the latest
satirical novel from Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child
By Alan Hollinghurst Picador, 576pp
Hollinghurst’s latest is a sharp satire of media presentation and myth-making, positing the existence of a literary voyeurism as prevalent and keenly felt as more recently railed against concepts of Big Brother. One of the things that interested me most, however, was that all of the writers in it became parents of their words, eventually estranged… John Updike wrote famously about the sexuality in Alan Hollinghurst’s novels, complaining ‘they are relentlessly gay in their personnel, and after a while you begin to long for the chirp and swing and civilizing animation of a female character’. Were Updike alive today, he might think more favourably of ‘The Stranger’s Child’, in which gay love is a little less visible if only because the protagonist’s presence allows it to be observed from the complex standpoint of heterosexual lover, naïve sister and friend.
Because Bloomsbury and the myths surrounding that group could never be far from the minds of English authors writing about (even fictional) twentieth century literary circles, Vita Sackville West’s Knole springs to mind during initial depictions of Corley: the country home of Hollinghurst’s poet, the comically, romantically named Cecil Valance.
As it turns out, Cecil’s mystique is non-existent but for the thoroughly exotic licence the young Sawles think he should have as a poet and, indeed, the fact that he comes from a very beautiful home. This is enough to sow the seeds of intrigue in the 16 year old Daphne, who, somewhat like Nabokov’s Lolita, is found lounging in the garden of her widowed mother. Unlike Nabokov’s Lolita is that Daphne’s thoughts themselves are revealed, unfolding in a heady hysteria influenced by the summery torpor of her surroundings: waiting for Cecil ‘with sudden
grave excitement she pictured the arrival of a telegram… imagined weeping wildly; then saw herself describing the occasion to someone, many years later, though still without quite deciding what the news had been. In the sitting-room the lamps were being lit…’ So starts the book’s journey through 100 years of family and fame.
Class and class awareness continue to be themes of massive importance to Hollinghurst’s narratives. The artifice involved in ignoring societal tensions is dealt with playfully in dining room scenes full of covert, under-the-table flirting; all the while, the young masters of the house are privately gossiped about with reference to night time bodily functions shown-up on their bed-sheets: a gruesome, and sobering scene in which a servant invites another to smell the bed for evidence of ‘nocturnal mission’: a job as necessary as it is degrading, presented here with the camply hyperbolic suggestion that the servant’s
mockery constitutes a crude subversion of hierarchical power. Surface glamour is undermined. Whereas Hollinghurst’s previous novel, The Line of Beauty, shows the calm seriousness of Nick Guest’s fascination with the ogee curve, the architecture at Corley – namely the ‘jelly mould domes’ of Cecil’s home – becomes a prop in the satire, gaining almost ideological significance for Cecil’s future readers, one of whom considers re-installing the domes. For the Sawle family in 1913, these domes were symbolic of Cecil’s own grandeur. When Cecil writes an ode to the Sawle home at Two Acres, it is not just Daphne who grows to find herself exasperated by the burden of other people’s surmisations concerning her role in the poet’s life. Jonah, a former valet at both Two Acres and Corley, becomes disgruntled during an interview with a critic. He is conscious of the madness involved in trying to recall certain details from a life that has grown so distant. Hollinghurst leaves a great deal of this past ambiguous: are there other reasons for Jonah’s apparent distaste? Or is he simply and understandably disillusioned about a life lived in service for people who continue to overshadow him, even into his retirement? The search for Cecil causes discomfort to these characters: if his work does not seem purely circumstantial to them it is at other times a millstone, reminding them of choices
they made, which rose out of their former inexperience. But then perspectives change more than the concrete facts: that Cecil wrote a poem in Daphne’s autograph book cannot be disputed by the characters, while whatever it was that prompted his writing becomes hashed over, caught up in a mill powered by people’s personal interests, jealousies, hopes and agenda, affected by silence as much as it is by gossip. And so one effect of this book is that it makes the academic quest seem both comically futile and irresistibly challenging. While the celebrity that fuels the critical quest turns out to be a very human artifice, The Stranger’s Child repeatedly shows the de-humanizing effects that it can have, via wonderfully effective juxtapositions of personal tragedies with journalistic concerns. Researching material for his biography of the poet, Paul Bryant discovers an account, written by Cecil’s brother, detailing the effects of Cecil’s death upon his mother, whose grief drives her into a dependence on stichomancy – the use of books for divination of Cecil’s afterlife, his thoughts and state of mind. With subtle irony, parallels are drawn between the individual searches made by these characters, and, in each case, books carry dangerous potential. Art is shown as a labour of love that runs its course, and its creators find themselves coping with the effects it may or may not have. Here, art is still a child. The artist, all the stranger for it.
Katherine Horrex is a songwriter and poet based in Manchester. A few works-in-progress from an
upcoming album, demo-ed so far on BBC6music, can be heard on her Stickpin Soundcloud. Her reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement.
Nathan Ouriach appriciates Destroyed Dresses — an ambitious and assured debut from Cara Brennan
Destroyed Dresses By Cara Brennan
Valley Press, 22pp
through the recycled dresses. Remnants of old dresses are still perceptible in the quilt’s
Destroyed Dresses represents the first time that all of Cara Brennan’s poems have appeared in a single volume. Like the subject of ‘Freight Train’, the poetic voice in Destroyed Dresses seeks to reflect the “small parts of your existence / Tracking a life”. The young poet from North Yorkshire softly traces the development of an intimate voice via the leitmotif of dresses and, more thematically, the insulated skin that both encapsulates and then eventually dissolves as we grow. Brennan has an assured poetic voice and asserts herself in the opening stanza with the sibilant: “The October sun breeds / cataracts, the breeze / freezes my bones.” There is a euphony in her words that sweeps past the reader and brings them intimately into the very breeze that causes the figure to pull the eponymous quilt over their body. The opening poem establishes the theme of protection and hints at the eventual denouement of renewal
patchwork like the silver tracks left in the snow of ‘Fifth Birthday’ and suggest a nostalgic past encroaching on the present. It is fitting that Brennan has her poetic ‘I’ “clutching…skin, pin-spotted with fire” in pain, bereft of her mother’s eyes whilst she instead slept inside the walls of a blue tent.
With the desecration of the skin, her collection thematically accelerates as, like the sticks in ‘Pooh Sticks’, she floats downstream alone and towards maturity. Roles change, emotions evolve and the outer layer of our ineffable emotions mature. Despite appearing frequently in the early poems, the poet chooses to remove the presence of adults. ‘Nibbler’ has the protagonist maternally protect a five-week old animal and “trace his dreams in the ghost of trees.”
of a Duffel coat or a fake-fur. By synthesizing her jackets, her history alongside the ‘the suede bomber, denim jacket with cord trim’ of another shows how no longer is there a need to feel like ‘an animal in a strange habitat’. There is calmness to how Brennan closes her collection. Without sensationalizing her poetic vignettes, Brennan explores the disconcerting feeling inside us as we grow and suffuse and stretch new dresses, new jackets. Nathan Ouriach is a writer and former intern at
the Young Writers Hub. He can be found on Twitter
Destroyed Dresses suggests a need to affirm here. oneself and to define the entity that inhabits these changing dresses. As the voice looks into a mirror which “is from / the thirties because of its edge” there is the moment of lucidity as the voice appreciates that the frame “changes / era with the things it frames”. ‘Attic’, ‘Sequin Dress’ and ‘Missing the Walk at Nabb Hill’ all “trace the soft outline” of the voice’s experience and provokes the collection’s thematic conclusion. ‘Cherry Beer’ shows Brennan at her attentive best, rendering the most minor moments of experience with discerning sensibility the poem announces a sense of maturity: “we were so new“. The nebulous emotion depicted in ‘Nibbles’ and the vulnerability of ‘Quilt’ have evolved and transmigrated. Brennan’s poetic ambition is fulfilled in ‘Wool, Skin, Fur’ as she thematically fuses together dresses, emotion and maturity. History ties itself to the tangible materiality
Kate Wilson an unsentimental account of drug-addition in her retro review of William Burrough’s cult classic ‘Junky’
Junky
By William Burroughs
Penguin, 208pp
Burroughs’ first novel, a largely autobiographical account of the constant cycle of drug dependency, cures and relapses, remains the most unflinching, unsentimental account of addiction ever written. Through junk neighbourhoods in New York, New Orleans and Mexico City, through time spent kicking, time spent dealing and time rolling drunks for money, through junk sickness and a sanatorium, Junky is a field report (by a writer trained in anthropology at Harvard) from the American post-war drug underground. A cult classic, it has influenced generations of writers with its raw, sparse and unapologetic tone. This definitive edition painstakingly recreates the author’s original text word for word. My first encounter with William S. Burroughs’ was whilst reclining in an artist’s studio. The fabulous Piran Bishop always provided an array of interesting music and material on my visits and he had a recording of Burroughs that I listened to a number of times. It was surreal, mad, and strangely beautiful.
At that time, I was still studying (weighed down with other books), and had not yet had the opportunity to discover that brilliant group of artists known as ‘The Beats’. Setting out to tell the truth of addiction, “Junky” introduces us to the bleak world of opium addiction. Having very little experience of drugs, I found it quite enlightening.
In fact it was (rather appropriately) during my
first visit to New York that I became attracted to this period of literature. A friend and I had been walking all day, searching out such literary sites of interest as W.H. Auden’s old flat, when we ended up in a book shop. I picked up a copy of “Howl” as we had discovered the film of the same title was playing at an authentic New York movie theater later that evening. We then proceeded to drink tea while taking turns to read the poem aloud in preparation. I loved it. And I loved the film. However, this is not a post about Ginsberg. Having delved into the fantastically illustrated graphic history of “The Beats” by Harvey Pekar, Ed Piskor and Paul Buhle, and read, and listened to more of Ginsberg’s and Kerouac’s work, I finally turned my attention to Burroughs. And I’m very glad I did. The two titles I chose were “Junky” and “Naked Lunch” and it was the former that first arrived in the post. Setting out to tell the truth of addiction, “Junky” introduces us to the bleak world of opium addiction. Having very little experience of drugs, I found it quite enlightening. It certainly framed addiction in terms I could understand. I love the description of Burroughs “junk cells”, which seem to rightly place this type of addiction at an extremely physical level. The reader experiences the torture Bill experiences when being forced to steal money from drunk bums in order to feed this habit, as well as the intense reaction to withdrawal from the drug. I
liked the book for the same reasons I like Bukowski’s books: the author does not shy away from writing about the mundane. This is not a romanticized presentation of this underworld, but rather aimed to clarify the nature of this particular addiction. My Penguin Modern Classics edition is particularly interesting, as it includes Burroughs’ original introduction to the “Junk” manuscript, where he outlines and corrects a number of misconceptions about opium addiction (see appendix 2). However, he con-
cludes this introduction with the following: “I am using the known facts as a starting
point in an attempt to reach facts that are not
known.” (143)
The impetus for writing seems to be discovering truth, and again highlights the ‘Beat’ preoccupation with discovery, alongside their presentation of the rough edges of existence. Indeed, the reader leaves Burroughs’ narrator on a quest to discover a drug named ‘Yage’ which is purported to increase telepathic sensitivity… I think it is this persistent belief in the possibilities life can offer (despite the harsh realities of life) that is what I love about reading these writers, and I can’t wait to dig into ‘Naked Lunch’, as I know it will be a different experience entirely. Kate Wilson is a writer and Co-ordinator at Litera-
ture Works. She blogs at One Day Perhaps I’ll know.
Young Writers’ Co-ordinator Wes Brown gives us the latest news
from the NAWE Young Writers’ Hub
In March, I travelled to Sheffield’s Electric works, an office space for creative and digital businesses sporting the UKs largest indoor helter skelter and a venue for Arts Award training.
Arts Award is a new Arts Council initiative to support young people aged between 11 and 25 who want to deepen their engagement with the arts, build creative and leadership skills, and to achieve a national qualification. My first experience of Arts Award came from working with Sheffield Youth Justice System and Off The Shelf as a practitioner called in to prepare a group of disengaged young people to perform at the festival alongside Benjamin Zephaniah. Somehow, after weeks of inspiration and disinterest, the kids managed to write, read and perform their poems to an electric atmosphere of parents, support workers, councilors and the general public. Benjamin was so impressed, he invited us on to his guest edited edition of the Today Programme in December where our fearless young writers performed to millions. These Awards in themselves may not be altogether different from a great deal of the good work writers have been doing across the country for decades, but they are accredited and
provide structure, and, importantly, the potential for funding and supporting more young people engaging according to their own ability and ambition levels.
Next month, I’ll go through Gold Award training, back down the helter skelter and make sure NAWE and the Young Writers’ Hub will be fully equipped to run Bronze, Silver and Gold Arts Award courses and make the Young Writers’ Hub a fully-fledged Arts Award Centre. • Along with Jamie McGarry of Valley Press, I will be Co-Chairing the Society of Young Publishers in the North (SYP). This position will compliment my work with the NAWE Young Writers’ Hub and we hope to host a number of challenging, innovative and informative events for any young people interested in writing and publishing.
• The NALD Futures fund has supported a number of interesting and innovative
projects. Including The Writing Platform Bursary, designed to support inter-disciplinary learning and collaboration between writers and technologists. When NALD closes, NAWE will be taking on some of their news sharing and include more literature development listings as well as our professional development and digital opportunities throughout the Writers’ Compass and the Young Writers’ Hub. • After some sweating, much anticipation and plenty of self-taught digital making, the popular NAWE Young Writers’ Hub magazine for under 25s Myths of the Near Future is now avail-
able as an app edition for Android and Apple devices. The magazine features new poetry, prose and reviews and interviews with Curtis Brown Award winning young writer Chelsey Flood and Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Award winner Kim Moore. For those of you without smart phones and tablets, a PDF version will be made available to download or print from the online publishing platform Issuu. Myths is edited by Hannah Pollard and
illustrated by Estelle Morris and we hope that the app edition can expand on the already exciting work that we’ve published together over the last year. The app edition will be published quarterly at 99p per edition or £2.99 a year with full access to any previous issues. All
funds raised will go back into developing the publication and opportunities for young writers. • Somewhereto_ is an excellent project liberating underused, disused and empty spaces in the UK and connecting young people with creative and organisations to do the things they love. Venues voluntarily give up their space, organisations lend their support and engagement and young people get involved. The cost of space is increasingly expensive, and working with Somewhereto_ ensures we can broker spaces for our Arts Award courses, the launch events for Myths of the Near Future and any other workshop or projects some of our young writers may be interested in creating for themselves. As Somewhereto_ have said, it’s about turning space into stories. Wes Brown is a novelist and Co-ordinator of the NAWE Young Writers’ Hub.
Myths of the Near Future e-magazine publishes young writers that deserves to be read. It’s really as simple as that. We’re published in association with Dead Ink Books and the NAWE Young Writers’ Hub. We believe in young writers – specifically those aged between 16 and 25 – no offence to the other – and want to give them a space to display their work. This can be fiction, poetry, literary reviews, and discussions about writing itself. We’re quite greedy! Myths is about good writing, but we tread the tightrope between demanding quality and encouraging talent. There are friendly editors behind the email, and we have links to the writers’ development agency NAWE Young Writers Hub. Read more about submitting to us over here. You could pop round and see us on twitter or facebook, if you like. Or we’re at myths.youngwritershub@gmail.com Images by Estelle Morris Illustration
The NAWE Young Writers’ Hub is a writer development agency and leading publisher of contemporary writing from 16 to 25 year olds. They publish Myths Magazine, and link our readers to their many resources.
Please read the Myths of the Near Future guidelines and send us your work! 1. We publish writing by young authors aged 16-25 (though we might push those boundaries slightly sometimes.) 2. There are no requirements for the theme or the form of your submission. Myths magazine publishes fiction, poetry, sound recordings, video of performances, literary reviews, and discussions about writing itself. 3. Send with your submission a short biography of your writing life (approximately 100 words), and a photo (in .jpg format) of yourself or representing yourself, for us to print with your piece if it is selected. Note that we may edit your biography and photograph for size. 4. You may send multiple submissions. Please be aware it is unlikely we will publish more than one work by the same author in an issue. 5. We do reserve the right to edit your sub-
missions, but will not do so substantially (beyond grammar and spelling) without
consulting you. We may sometimes offer some suggestions about your work, but this does not guarantee we will publish any subsequent drafts you send us. 6. Myths magazine does not have ‘deadlines for submission’ in the usual sense. We will draw a line in the sand on certain dates to allow us to distinguish between issues and concentrate on the current one. But submissions are continually open and you may send work at any time, we are always glad to hear from young writers. 7. We do our best to answer any queries or requests as soon as we can. Please be patient – giving your work the attention it deserves takes time. myths.youngwritershub@gmail.com
A little bit about the contributors to our first app issue... Paridhi Agarwal is a 16-year old international student, currently occupying space, time, and other dimensions in Shanghai. She comesfrom India and grew up on the sea, on container ships. Her poetry hasappeared in literary e-zines and journals such as Uroborus and Wordsmiths, and is set to appear in another e-zine.
'Cherry Beer' will appear in her debut pamphlet Destroyed Dresses, to be published by Valley Press in September 2012.
Sam Caleb is a graduate of Oxford and UCL. He currently spends his time between London, Berlin and Wiltshire. He is a freelance writer for The Oxonian Review, The Literateur, and Review 31. Likes David Foster Daniel Anderson started scribbling down Wallace, Lydia Davis and Samuel Beckett. scraggly sentences and impressionable words around five years ago when studying English at Dislikes Zadie Smith. university, leaving them in polished Juan David was born in the city of Manizales, Moleskines and private online storage areas. Colombia and immigrated to the United Bowled over by Bob Dylan, the beats, and States of America in 2003. He is currently other predictable late-teen influences, he’s working towards his Bachelors’ degree in since added a respectable list of esoteric English Literature and a minor in Cinema authors to his list of ‘all-time favourites’. He Studies/Journalism at the University of has been concentrating on writing a short Central Florida in Orlando. Most recently his story, when not sitting in an office – the first poems have appeared in Cadaverine part of which is printed here, with his Magazine, Young Poet’s Network Imagined apologies for the pretentious working title. Lives Poetry Challenge, 20×20 Magazine Issue Cara Brennan is 22 and lives in Newcastle. She 7 in London, The Shine Journal Poetry Award has been published in various e-zines 2009 and Commended Foyle Young Poets of including The Cadaverine, Pomegranate and the Year 2009. Ink Sweat and Tears. She has recently graduated from Writing Squad Five and has read at Ilkley and Morley Literature festivals.
Samatar Elmi is a poet and a playwright of Somali heritage. He is the current poetry editor for Helicon magazine and also runs the Bristol Poetry Stanza. He has been mentored by Dorothea Smartt for three years on the prestigious Young Inscribe programme. An experienced workshop facilitator, he has performed and taught creative writing in schools, youth clubs and for the Arvon foundation. Poems have been published in the Young Inscribe Anthology, Scarf, Decanto, and Exiled Writers Ink. Samatar also translates Somali poetry, especially the work of Osman Gabyaee. James Giddings is a third year creative writing student at Sheffield Hallam University and a student of The Writing Squad. He sings in the shower, play guitar badly and have a bad case of disco disorder. He doesn’t have many writing accolades as yet, though if he hadn’t moved house at the wrong time he would have been published by Forward Poetry. However he has won a silver medal in swimming, so every cloud and that. Hattie Grunewald is 19 years old and comes from Barnsley, South Yorkshire. In 2009 she was a Foyle Young Poet winner, and in 2010 she was one of three winners in the Young Poets on the Underground competition, with her poem published on tube trains throughout London. She is currently studying English and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, where she is secretary of the Creative Writing Society. Her work has previously been
published by YM. Katherine Henderson (18) is a spoken word artist/ writer from South Yorkshire. She started to work on poetry when she joined Rotherham Young Writers, and she started performing shortly afterwards. She has gone on to win two slams in the last two years Pick Up Your Pens: Young Writers' Festival 2010 and Best of Sheffield Poetry Slam 2011. She is currently a member of The Writing Squad and hopes to bring out a collection of her poems, as well as a CD and some short stories within the next year. In November she will be performing as a support artist for Benjamin Zephaniah at the Lyceum in Sheffield. Katherine Horrex is a songwriter and poet based in Manchester. A few works-in-progress from an upcoming album, demo-ed so far on BBC6music, can be heard on her Stickpin Soundcloud. Her reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement. Jack Little (born 1987) is a Geordie poet and editor based in Mexico City. Jack is the founder of The Ofi Press (theofipress.webs.com) which publishes international poetry each month and o rganises regular cultural events in Mexico's Federal District. His poems have been published in several magazines including 3:AM Magazine, Scissors and Spackle and most recently in Bakwa Magazine (Cameroon). He also has forthcoming work in Wasafiri. In March 2012,
Jack was invited to the Linares Literary Festival in Northern Mexico and as well as his literary related activities, he also manages the national cricket team of Mexico. D.S. Maolalai studies English Literature in Trinity College. He has been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five years, and has only recently started to submit his work for publication. So far, feedback has been positive, and he has some fiction forthcoming on several e-zine websites.
Anne Rutherford is 22. She graduated in German and Russian from the University of Edinburgh and is now on her way to Germany to do a Masters in Comparative Literature. As well as managing the poetry blog for cafebabel.com, an online European magazine, she writes and translates articles about pumpkins and guerrilla art for the magazine itself. She wrote stories throughout her teenage years, but only started writing poetry as a student and is now a convert.
Ben Schwarz is a soon to be graduate of NewNathan Ouriach is a writer and former castle university's MA in Creative Writing. He intern at the Young Writers Hub. He can be is currently working (and hopes to work more found on Twitter here. permanently in the future) in Newcastle as a freelance writer. He has written poetry which has been accepted into various e-zines such as Stephen Pester is 20 years old and living in Cadaverine, Pomegranate and Aspidistra. He Norwich. He has been writing poetry for a few years now, beginning with when he figured also writes drama for the stage, and recently out he couldn’t write songs. Like many others put his play The Midnight Oil on at the Northern Stage. This year, he his heading to he aspires to publication, and enjoys sharing the Edinburgh fringe festival, where he will be his work when he gets the chance. He performs his poetry in Norwich fairly frequently, acting in an hilarious comedy play (which he did not write) known as The Ride of the Blueand often through the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Society, for which he is bottles. Come see! the Union Rep. Kate Wilson is a writer and Co-ordinator at Flo Reynolds is a student of English Literature Literature Works. She blogs at One Day Perat UEA, knitter and beekeeper, proud poet haps I’ll know. and secret songwriter. She has a debilitating obsession with Virginia Woolf, and when not reading, writing, knitting or keeping bees, she blogs at literania.tumblr.com.