Posts in Fiction and Poetry
Georgie Brooke

I wrote ‘Owed Summer’ to remember what a Summer free of restrictions feels like, and how our generation is missing these shared experiences. It is also about how we grow, after living for so long without these experiences; touching friends, seeing live music, the pull of a communal pool of people.

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More by Helen Heggadon

I wrote a similar poem years ago, called Another Generation. It was about a friend who was upset at herself for overspending on make up while in debt; that poem is embarrassingly outdated now, so I have re written it and changed it. This one adds in my recent efforts for minimising my life, both digitally and physically.

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Somebody’s Son by Ben Blackwell

They leant their bikes against the mouth of the cave, sheltering from the weather. The change from the breathing forest to the stagnant air in the cave was not particularly pungent but noticeable. From the mouth, the cave led off in a fairly straight direction and, in the dim light, the two women could just about see a smaller tunnel meandering off to the right.

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Why I Love ‘The Lady of Shalott’

The image of the Lady of Shalott sat in a boat, floating down the river to her death, famously captured the pre-Raphaelite imagination, successfully ticking all their boxes with Arthurian legend, the natural world and a mysterious, ethereal woman at the centre of the action. Personally, I adore ‘The Lady of Shalott’ for its fascinating, complex and multi-layered web of imagery and symbolism, that is just as bewitching today as it was to readers in the 1800s.

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Claudia Rankine Bristol Poetry Institute Annual Reading

This was my fourth year attending the Bristol Poetry Institute’s Annual Reading. Normally, we would be gathered in the great hall of the Wills Memorial Building and, upon arriving barely on time, I would be sat in a row towards the back of the hall, rummaging around my rucksack for my glasses. This year, I was sat at my desk staring at a Crowdcast on my laptop with Claudia Rankine on my screen.

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