Guest Creative Writing

Wanting: Essay Fragments (Winner of the 2022 PNR prize for Creative Essaying at the University of Dundee)

Burden Goldilocks produces prophesied curls, Snow White becomes a pearly corpse, Thumbelina never grows beyond her moniker. “What’s my name?” The Queen speaks the legendary word and Rumpelstiltskin, crooked imp, boils. Hops on stilt-thin legs, hide splitting. Repel-stilt-skin. I gobble fairy-tales like chocolates, plump with self-appointed expertise. Evil girls pretend to be princesses, masquerade as Read More

Poetry as Acts of Resistance: An Interview with André Naffis-Sahely

Our conversation has covered a variety of topics and his interest in life is both present and contagious. It is quite clear André is a man with a thirst for knowledge, which brings me to ask him why use poetry as your main vehicle to navigate such terrain? He answers succinctly, ‘I have an axe to grind.’ That is followed by his infectious laughter. He elaborates by referring to the Chilean poet, Nicanor Parra whom André tells me once said, ‘a poet should be a thorn in society’s side’. This resonated with him in his teens.

It Ain’t Over Till… by Andrew Forbes

MLITT, WRITING PRACTICE AND STUDY 2019-21 SHOWCASE A small crowd consisting mostly of students sit around the wooden table. Some of them have grown rowdier with each swall sank and there have been a fair few swalls sank by now. I had wanted some time alone before having to join them. I’ve been standing by Read More

Implied (Poetry by Keren McPherson & Images by Scott Anderson)

© Scott Anderson © Keren Macpherson Image and poem first appeared in the exhibition, Shoulder to Shoulder, Higgins Art Gallery, Cape Cod Community College. You can hear both Anderson and Macpherson talking about their work HERE. Scott Anderson received his MFA from the Edinburgh College of Art in 1999 and has been a professor of Read More

Ekphrasis

From Wiktionary: “Ekphrasis”, from Ancient Greek ἔκφρασις (ékphrasis, “description”), from ἐκφράζω (ekphrázō, “I describe”), from ἐκ (ek, “out, ex-”) + φράζω (phrázō, “I explain, point out”). Here are five pieces from a call to respond creatively to a sculpture (circa 1995) affixed very securely to a plinth in the creative writing room at Read More

Writing Practice and Study Showcase 2020: “Through the Looking Glass” (excerpt) by Victoria Lothian

I loved to watch my mother smoke. She looked like Lauren Bacall as she lifted the lighter to the cigarette that perched on her parted lips, then she’d flick the gas spark, a perfect flame igniting the crisp white tobacco paper. As she drew a long deep inhale her cheeks became concave with the power Read More

WRITING PRACTICE AND STUDY 2020 SHOWCASE: “THE BREEDING CAGES” (EXCERPT) BY WANDA MCGREGOR

Aince upon a day my mither said to me: Dinna cleip and dinna rype And dinna tell a lee. For gin ye cleip a craw will name ye, And gin ye rype a daw will shame ye; And a snail will heeze its hornies out And hike them round and round about Gin ye tell Read More

Writing Practice and Study 2020 Showcase: “All Tied Up” and “Hooded” by Collette Cowie

All Tied Up The rain falls in diagonal lines, bouncing off the roof of the car in continuous percussion. Water streams down the sloped driveway towards the house where the front door opens and a figure steps out. A man’s boot lands heavily in a puddle, sending water flying. “For fuck’s sake,” he exclaims eyeing Read More

Writing Practice and Study 2020 Showcase: “Under the Weather” by Rebecca Baird

Under The Weather – KT Tunstall (2004) /on homesickness I inherited my voice from my mum. On the phone, no one can tell us apart. Even my gran, her mother, used to mistake us. She would talk to me for a whole five or six minutes before asking ‘what’s Rebecca doing?’ She thought she was Read More

We Carry Life’s Picture in our Heads

We carry it around in our heads and visit the places where it once visited: Charlotte Square, gates locked to this greenest of glades since the last of the new turf was laid last year; now marked in time as the last time. I mark it idling at high railings reanimating stills of a once-tented Read More