I have never felt it so clearly: the field of independent, potential affirmatives, the ‘yes’, the ‘yeses’ to all of the pleasure and power, freedom, purpose and desire that is mine to choose and discover.
Category: Essays
It’s hard being a poet in 2020 – David Giles
It’s hard being a poet in 2020
Which is when this will be published
If you have the GUTS to publish it
Which I doubt
Being bitter & twisted
Leaving – Yin F Lim
Glossy lips, upturned in a cheesy grin. This is what I see when I think about the morning I left my country. The lips of a Ronald McDonald statue, painted red to match its garish hair and its clown’s outfit. Broad lips stretched into a smile that seemed much too bright under soulless eyes. I…
COMFORT FOODS // A History of Goulash – Maryana Lucia Vestic
My earliest memories of goulash are full of warm, satisfying sensations—soft, chewy egg noodles draped in thick brown gravy and big chunks of beef adorned with a few key ingredients like green pepper, onion, and paprika.
The Red Daisies of Prague Spring – Garrett Zecker
An exploration of feminist indulgence, excess, and gratification via the colour red in Věra Chytilová’s Czech New Wave masterpiece Daisies (1966).
REVIEW – The Liars’ Asylum (Stories) by Jacob M. Appel – Vanessa Braganza
Appel turns his professional interest in the workings of the human mind to a narrative exploration of the reasons we tell lies.
Body Positivity and Fat Acceptance – Changing the World to Suit Personal Grievances? – Catherine Drysdale
I originally wanted to write an article about how different diets suit different people, and how breaking away from my father’s belief in the Atkins diet and doing my own research was liberating for me. I had hoped that those reading this article would find a similarly freeing effect, and it would give them hope…
COMFORT FOODS // Tortang Talong — Sadia Pineda Hameed
I receive a call from my mother. It is to tell me a recipe for tortang talong, which she learnt last night in a dream.
Feeling Myself – Dolly Church
When my body was made up of straight lines it felt boyish and uninteresting, and when those lines finally bent, they felt uncontrollable.
An Argument with a Photographer: Thoughts on Autofiction – Alice Attlee
How would it be to find oneself reflected as “both handsome and unexceptional”, or find one’s back captured unawares from behind, “broad and fleshy, leathery with sun and age, and marked with numerous moles and scars”?
A Corpus Stylistics Study of the Biased Narrative Voice in Jane Eyre – Yifan Zhai
Yifan Zhai is a young critic from Beijing. She is currently pursuing an MA in English Literature in Beihang University, China. She used to be in an exchange program to the St.Mary’s University of Texas, USA, where she developed an interest in studying and criticizing literature. Her focus is reading the classics with new…
The Equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius: A Hero over the Regal Complacency – Freya Zhang
Freya Zhang is a young critic from Shanghai. She is currently based in London, pursuing an MA in Comparative Literature in King’s College London. After being awarded a scholarship under the State Scholarship Fund organized by China Scholarship Council in 2017, she pursued her further study in University College Cork for a semester, where she…
Porridge 