In response to these troubled times, The Oxford Blue culture team has started a new creative writing project: ‘CREATIVITY IN CRISIS: a writing collective’.
Here are some of our favourites from the work we received, illustrated by Fred Seddon.
Virus – Joy Hunter
Things are changing fast
Mutating
And we’re waiting, but not sure what for
And we’re grasping at the air
For something less
Or something more
Loss and loss and loss,
Gain and gain and gain
Mad world goes mad
And asks us to stay sane
For now, we cocoon ourselves
And before we can unfurl
We stop to think new thoughts to fit
A brave new world.
To stop a river – Mattie O’Callaghan
The light tickles the water as it breaks apart
it giggles and laughs, holds shadows of a start
a hope in its flow
When it just wishes to curl under the bridge
desperately wanting
the banks to merge
the bed to kiss the surface
yet the more it fights it
the more we’ll be submerged
How to accept
now living in a valley
trapped by time
sent back to the source
no longer knowing
if its mouth will open
or it will have to
take a different course
Its channel now empty
consumed by troughs of remorse
Yet the crests still exist
and to settle in a lake
to save the sea
will be perfectly ok
for the drought might stay
and the drought will kill
but we can be fine
if we stop the river
and shower all
our love online.
The House – Joseph Geldman
A weird piece about a weirder house.
Consider the house:
You’d best start making it your own because it’s where you’ll be spending awhile. Though perhaps you should not worry too much. It’s a comfortable house, a two-upstairs-two-downstairs, with some rather pleasing period features. The banisters on the stairs, for example, are polished walnut. You will have the luxury of polishing them a lot, and that is a good thing, because if you are living in this house longtime, why live with unwanted guests: like spiders, or dust, or small children?
In the back, through the period arch, there is a kitchen, where you’ll be spending awhile. Whoever was here last has left the cupboards well-stocked. The stove is a perfectly vintage-able piece, a few decades old. There is a crack in the worktop but it is more comely than anything: you do not worry, you cannot imagine gas seeping through it, filling up your house and taking your space. There is a larder, too, in the back. Your provisions are arranged in a comfortingly medieval fashion: a big hunk of ham is strung up with bunched sage and there is a lot of green tea. We have many beans: kidney, Borlotti – and does that say Montesorri? Why not make green beans and ham?
The front parlour: you’ll be spending a while there, too. I say front parlour, but there is no back parlour, so it is really just a thing we put in the property brochure to make it sound more desirable. There is a sofa but it is covered because of all the dust, and it looks weird and lumpy anyway; maybe there are people inside it? There is no television because that will rot your brain. Instead, there are books which are good for the soul. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is such a book. Lolita is another. We have many volumes, so you can sit down with a friend and read into the small hours, except you cannot, because there are no chairs. But maybe you could uncover the sofa, and sit there?
If you are tired, go upstairs. There are four bedrooms, but three of them belong to the ghosts. Please do not disturb the ghosts, as they are very old. To make sure you do not, we have helpfully hung blood-coloured tarpaulins over the doorways and have installed radios behind them to play the sounds of ghastly moaning (you can find this on Spotify). You can turn these off if you want to, but then how will you explain the howling?
In one of the bedrooms, in a drawer marked “OPPORTUNITY”, you will find a key so that you can leave. But why would you want to leave?
(There is an attic, too. You will not be spending awhile there, unless it is the last while. Please do not go into the attic.)
Lost in Thought – Theadora Foster
Yawn headache tired
is he angry with me
shadow on the wall
coat hanger bamboo
gripping the table leg
it shudders
what time is it
a clock plastic sequins
a girl with dark hair
sitting on the grass
daises lighting cigarette
wind in her hair
rocking back on a chair
staring into space
his glasses like square books
serial killer rash on neck
metal poppers pain in toes
sound of the clock what
time is it there is it hot
how many clothes is she wearing
insect bite on collar bone
dog’s bone fish bone human bones
archeology Pompei mummies
a word association game
posters wood and itch
is he angry I heard him slam
the door and play music loud.
Moon amongst Clouds – Klara Zhao
The moon hung over an empty town that night. And it was a full moon, too, glowing brighter than ever in a sky free of dissipated human waste and the accumulated fumes of dogged cars chasing each other about during the day. Yet it was not so much the moon itself as the clouds that framed it, which instilled a strangely mystical element into the scene.
From a distance, as one wandered in the middle of the empty roads of the silent town, there seemed to be a curious, wispy glow – so fibrous that it appeared almost tangible – being emitted from somewhere behind the spires of the old, limestone edifices. These glowed, too, vaguely in the moonlight, and still more in the sleepy orange light of the lonely street lamps standing nearby. But let us turn our attention back to the clouds.
This curious, pearly ray of light in the night sky, too fine and freely formed to be anything with a definite origin, revealed itself at the end of a narrow lane to be a perfectly situated patch of cloudwork. It was a single stroke of Cirrus fibratus, just to the left of the moon, so that it projected its light in the manner of a curtain call, a companion signaling to the night sky that the show of the evening was to begin. And it was, indeed, quite a show. A fine veil of Cirrostratus nebulosus was born over the visage of the moon, yet rather than obscuring it, the delicate glow of light was in fact projected further, its pearly sheen exaggerated and overshadowing even the sharpest winks from Venus. It was a strangely affecting scene, as the moon hovered above the stone eagle, occasionally catching the eye of the buds that peeped out from behind the new sprouts, which grew along the worn walls, somehow still so brightly green even in the darkness of the night.
There was surely not a single another breathing soul in the town that night. No conscious human eye for miles; no wandering mind, even. There were only the blackbirds in the shadows, singing to the moon their seasonal hymn. Their voices ripe from daytime concerts, the notes echoed into the silent night with a sense of profound intimacy that erased all the world from one’s mind. In that moment, the universe revolved around the blackbird’s song, which the moon regarded in quiet contemplation.
An hour later, somewhere above the meadows, the moon could be seen perching atop a fair Cirrocumulus lenticularis. Having made a resting bed for itself, the night ambled on in contented ignorance of the myriad unhappy lives that plowed on below. But this was also the case for all the eyes who followed the journey of the moon and the stars that evening, or any evening, and listened to the narratives dictated by our cloud companions. For who could remember, as the mind wanders into the heavens, the wretched realities that taint our most distant fantasies?
If you wish to be published in next week’s edition, submit your work to the link below. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjN2VQtMq6l4Ytq5bnMs2mNSEilQl3znxPei3tJOLVdqzNsg/viewform?usp=sf_link