When I was little, the dark staircase between the front and back rooms of my grandparents’ two-up, two-down terrace house had been a mountain. Each step a jagged, granite foothold; the shadowed landing a dark cloud hiding a kingdom of giants, or a castle encased in twisted branches. Their bedroom glowed yellow; the edges of…
Tag: Essays
Beowulf: You Know More Than You Think! – Danny Bate
As a living soul of the twenty-first century, if you take a glance at the opening lines of Beowulf, the Old English poem, the chances are that you won’t be able to understand it. If anything, you may perhaps recognise its famous first word, hƿæt. This is absolutely fine, I should add; Old English is an old…
Acknowledging the River – Natalie Timmerman
“Everyone has anxiety.” “Be thankful for what you do have.” “Others have it worse.” When I sunk chin-deep into my anxiety, when I waded through life with a churning stomach, pale skin, and clenched jaw, these phrases thickened the current; they made the wading harder. Sure, they varied in words, tones, and intentions, but they…
Oysters – Lynne Golodner
The oysters arrived on a paper plate, craggy half-shells pooling ocean brine. A server slung a basket of napkins, vinegar and cocktail sauce on the table. Dan lifted a shell and slurped. I forked one and bit into the softness, closing my eyes. I breathed in through my nose to taste more fully. These were…
Community and Creativity in New York in Patti Smith’s Just Kids – Jasmine Choice
The prolific New York art scene gained momentum in the 1950s through the subversive Beat movement and the experimental first-generation New York School of poets. Both celebrated community and were integral in inaugurating a defiance of the mainstream and the innovation of art as collaborative. These artistic coteries shared geographical proximity; personal relationships; and similar…
Little Big Stories Everywhere – Jen Schneider
With each dawn, dialogue, and downturn – downpours, too ergonomics and economies dictate energy. Economic impacts expand far beyond employment and stories drop – downstairs in the kitchen, too. Hope blooms eternal, the saying goes. Spring, too. Perennials – candy cane sorrels and blue grape hyacinths. Annuals – geraniums, impatiens. Patiently impatient. Waiting for the…
A Perfect Cadence – Sinéad Price
There is an art to falling. Sacrificing soul, limb and touch to the whim of this tempest. To cross that distance, to breach that space is not the effect of passion, but of passivity. It is the ultimate paradox. To shut off all senses but one, to enfeeble the power of the ever-wandering mind, until…
Growing Young – Eve Davies
If there’s one thing one can observe in a residential care home, it is the necessity of humour throughout life. It is true that the human body ages in a cycle. Through life we travel the circumference of a circle. We begin a reliant baby, we start to learn, we grow up, become an adult,…
Frickin’ Lion – Ann Kathryn Kelly
Olive the (lion) dog. Image by Andrea Farrow, via Instagram The mane streams behind the dog as it tears across weathered gray floorboards. “Frickin’ lion.” The seven-second Instagram reel auto-loops on my Thursday lunch hour and I become obsessed with this dog that I later find out belongs to my colleague Jessica’s sister, Andrea. I…
Umbrology – Brian McNely
I stepped off the plane in Helsinki – airport code HEL – and found a restroom. Standing at a urinal, I heard birdsong piped through overhead speakers: odd, soothing, out of place. The train to downtown Helsinki departs from a giant, cool tunnel many meters below street level. The platform is nearly empty. Massive faux-tapestries…
Two Cultures, Again – Kate Venables
I am a student in a creative writing programme, a mature student, from a professional background as an epidemiologist. Amongst ourselves, we students don’t really talk about ‘creativity’. We talk a lot about craft and sometimes we talk about ourselves and the way in which how we feel affects our writing. But rarely about ‘creativity’…
Dances with Rabbits – Walker Thomas
I stood under the alligator juniper that shaded my tent in the oak woods. Effie squatted between my feet. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade called his receptionist Effie. But the Effie at my feet was no lady. I called her F. E. Cottontail in my journals. Cottontails are coprophagous – literally, Fecal Eating. That…
Porridge 