• NEWS
• OPINION
• MUSIC
• CULTURE
• LIFE AND STYLE
• MEDIA & TECH
• FILM
• FEATURES
• SCIENCE
• POLITICS
• SPORT

An Essay on Criticism

Alright, then. A few weeks in and a few issues out, and the New Writing section is ticking along rather nicely. The chances are, if you’re reading this, that you’ve seen something nice over the previous weeks, and have returned in search of more. But it’s always possible, I suppose, [Full Article]

We Were Dancers

Baby, we’re dancers We got that right rhythm That beep bop to the Django Shim Sham down the revue. That’s a beat so special Something spiritual As the tempo slips And our humps bump And your strong hands catch me From a peek toed pirouette. In African pant paces Lets [Full Article]

The Movies, They Lie To You

The movies. They lie to you, you know. What did I expect when I told you I loved you? An orchestral wall of crescendoing violins, a soft-lit montage of moonlight and summer, a falling of the curtain as the story folds gently away, a standing ovation from the gods? Or that other answer. Tragedy and desperation, sobbing in the rain, thunder, lightening, darkness? No, when I told you that I loved you there was awkward silence, chewed tongues mumbled retraction and fumbled reconciliation and beans on toast for tea.

Agamemnon

My heart has been stolen By a prancing puff of a boy, Its tendons cut like moorings, Its thick meat squeezed Like a lump of clay - It throbs, desperately, Like a rabbit’s hide in the fist of a noose. What am I left with? A lad Clutching a sore [Full Article]

April Showers

The macadam shimmers and slides like oil in a hot spoon as drops from the tap in the sky collide into echoes forming momentary crowns of iridescent splash on the surface of murky transparency. The Sun’s light seeps through the soggy clouds: paints all beneath it in a shade of [Full Article]

The Dusk Before The Day

It was beautiful, a moonlit sky streaked with golden Tears, not quite My own, but always there, wonders Never ageing with the years, lost To most. Underneath this light, I fell alone, although there, beside Me, Prisoners of Ineffability, not Speaking, scared to break the spell Frightened of my actuality, [Full Article]

Abiogenisis

There is a sculpture of a man. He has evolved through hammer, chisel, art. Through each his stony feet and hands there bubbles life that flows from stony heart. And grinding diaphragm I hear, as from a baby’s gravel-pit first breath; a wheezing boulder overture: the sculptor Darwin’s banishment of death.

Wrong Turn

Beautifully burnt tinderbox boy - he returns his top-hat to the coat rack, never once touching his sore, red scars. He cries out for socialism to take his shoe-shine hands to a lump of coal. He doesn’t need pushing, just pulling. Full of fear, he can sleep, shivering. More than [Full Article]

Top Deck

The rooftops sliced through the sky. Light peeked its way through every previously unknown, unseen, unheard of corner. The traffic crawled towards the city. Lights moved in procession towards the inevitable daybreak and the start, the beginning, the promise of what today might bring. [Full Article]

October

Anna had read somewhere, sometime, that London was like a fog, and on the first of the October mornings such as this one, she believed it. It was everywhere, though right now it was blanketing the garden with the promise that in fifteen minutes it would be gone, leaving behind those initial, crisp winter days, where you could step out of the house and allow all your senses, for one shiny moment, to anticipate Bonfire Night, or Christmas. [Full Article]

from Glass

These are the messages from the rest of the world. Too fat - too thin - bad hair - wrong clothes. Drunk in the street - drunk in a cab - no knickers - no dignity - no integrity. Pictures of perfection, pictures of degradation. These are the ways in which everyone is wrong. [Full Article]

The crossword setter

I have lived the long life, by now, you know, and its little profits – the arguments it has for me – are no longer so rough. I have taught myself to hold in a glass the saccharine confusion of it all: am I set to reveal or deceive? What [Full Article]

Wings

It looks sore where she sawed your wings off. Sticky, bloody stumps. You were sleeping when she started but you soon woke up. [Full Article]

An extract from Edward Fields

He had utterly no conception of the passage of time. He sat on the sofa and was as still as all of his surroundings, a blue dog, and became merely an inconvenient piece of furniture, his mind as calm as it would have appeared had his reflection in the window been mistakenly examined instead of him. Refusing on grounds of physics to continue into night, the sun had been superseded by the electric light hanging from the ceiling. [Full Article]

The Three Dwarfs

And so, from that day on, Justice Trigger left every decision over to the dwarfs. Whenever he was sitting up in his big stand, banging on his hammer, he would be secretly leaning over to his side, where the dwarfs were concealed underneath his robe, and leaning in would have them whisper what sentence he should pass on the criminal, and so forth. In doing this, Justice Trigger begun to become incredibly respected within his profession as a fair and even-handed judge, with a very intense wisdom about him. [Full Article]

Voci

The sun glints brilliantly off the faces of clustered houses. The bustling sound of a village, crammed on top of itself over and over, rings in the heart of it all. Roof upon roof, wall stuck to wall, connected by a series of ledges throughout. A rooster announces the morning, hours too late. [Full Article]

Shooting the Cattle

Calming the beasts Takes tenderness, Soft words, A white handkerchief Over the pistol. [Full Article]

An Introduction

If the Virginia Woolfs of this world, the Ted Hughes’ or the Jane Austens are green and lush meadows in a grey and dreary existence, please – imagine us as the grass verges along the rainy road that is your busy day, the window box in bloom against the grey horizon of your essay deadline. [Full Article]

Extract from No Wonder

Well – have to fill my days, don’t I? Have to fill them up with you still fast asleep. And so I thought, what’s something I know a fair bit about? Washing isn’t it. I know how to wash the clothes for this whole house full, no stress. [Full Article]