“As always, reading gives us the chance to escape, to imagine different worlds with exciting possibilities. Or sometimes it simply reflects the extant world back at us from an angle we have never seen ourselves. Either way, when you spend 99% of your time within the same four walls, reading is simply a way to avoid going postal.”
Category: Poetry & Fiction
[Fiction] Reaping — Hannah Storm
“Now their talk is snatched sentences, words harvested by years. He wants to tell her how beautiful she is, that she should not hide as if she was ashamed of what once made her fly. She wants to tell him she has never forgotten the way he made her feel.”
[Poetry] — DS Maolalai
“a bird lands a moment/on the windowsill./makes footprints in thick/
fallen light.”
[Poetry] — William Thompson
“My father leads me through the geometry/of ploughed fields gone hard after a fortnight/of heat”
[Poetry] — Yasna Bozhkova
“Observe/the winter sea staged perfectly/in all possible hues of white”
[Fiction] The Watchman — Jake Trelease
“At the kitchen window of an upstairs flat, there is a watchman.”
[Poetry] — James Strowman
“soft against the dark and I am gone/drifting to things far removed from prayer/into the silent cinema of my mind”
[Fiction] David Baddiel — George Aird
“I watched it move across the garden, emerging out of grass that hadn’t been touched since Sam moved out.”
[Poetry] — Nora Doorley
“At the apex of joined forewings/Is an exaltation.”
[Review] Slaughter by Rosanna Hildyard — Daunish Negargar
“Hildyard brings a nuanced perspective to both the realities of farming in the United Kingdom and female sexuality, as contradictions are not skimmed over, or resolved, but rather relished and dissected like a bloody carcass throughout this dark tale”
[Fiction] Orts — Meghan Murphy
“Inside this house there is no letting go.”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Fiction] The Roundhouse — Elena Lo Presti
“From that moment onwards, I see lights appearing inside The Roundhouse’s rooms: it is almost like, after discovering its rotating secret, I have broken the enchantment that kept its guests invisible, safe from my gaze.”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Poetry] Moment in Landscape no. 3 — Georgina Watson
“In this moment,/Looking at the photograph,/I am in the same position now as I was then.”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Fiction] Portals to Eternity — Rieko Whitfield
“You are blissfully shrouded in only the present – one day you may not remember where you came from at all.”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Fiction] Seven Sentences from Seven Horses: A Performance on Page — Jennifer McMillan
“We are a fairground ride, am I the only one who knows, who has realised that all we do is go round and round?”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Fiction] Apple Blossom Sky — Laura Moreton-Griffiths
“I have eight weeks before the changes are noticed. In eight weeks I can do a lot of damage. For a little while, the materials will not be missed and my nano sabotage will go undetected.”
Published in partnership with Everything Forever, organised by Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art.
[Fiction] The Doubting Disease — Oskar Oprey
“I suffer from acute anxiety and OCD, but I prefer the old Victorian term for my condition: the doubting disease.”
[Poetry] — Peter Donnelly
“At these minor garden parties,/Wind lushes and lashes/Through tended-to bush/Gusts across tennis courts (the nets slap/And billow); Ford Fiestas at the perimeter/Unmoved by all of this.”
New Critique 