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Author Archives: The Editors

from ‘The Runiad’ book 10

< from Book 9 A Fortnightly Serial. By ANTHONY HOWELL. ◊ ANTHONY HOWELL writes: My own romantic notion of myself has encouraged me to attempt an epic. It will have 24 books and be the same length as the Odyssey. Each book will be approximately 24 pages long, with three seven-line verses per page. I have […]

from ‘The Runiad’ book 9

< from Book 8    from Book 10 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ANTHONY HOWELL. ◊ ANTHONY HOWELL writes: My own romantic notion of myself has encouraged me to attempt an epic. It will have 24 books and be the same length as the Odyssey. Each book will be approximately 24 pages long, with three seven-line […]

from White Ivory, chapters 29 & 30

< chapters 27 & 28 A Fortnightly Serial.By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Nine. The Blues in Paris HARLIE TOOK his thesis with him. He would give it to Jennifer with all the corrections when they returned. He was still uneasy writing a thesis about the blues, even though it was effectively finished. He always remembered […]

What Is Poetry?

Death keeps — an indifferent host — this house of call, whose sign-board wears no boast save Beds for All. —Sylvia Townsend Warren, ‘East London Cemetery’ And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as […]

from White Ivory, chapters 27 & 28

 < chapters 25 & 26    chapters 29 & 30 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Seven. Black Dog O THE FATHER of Malcom and Jessica Filey was arrested. Suspicion was lifted from Will’s shoulders. The Inspector had been in no doubt that it wasn’t him anyway. As he told his Sergeant: […]

from White Ivory, chapters 25 & 26

< chapters 23 & 24   chapters 27 & 28 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Five. The Dolphin’s Back IS FATHER was in bed sedated, and Charlie was sitting nursing a coffee in his grandfather’s bathroom. The old man seemed to have gone into some sort of trance. Charlie peered through the […]

from ‘The Runiad’ book 8

< from Book 7                                                                                                        […]

from White Ivory, chapters 23 & 24

< chapters 21 & 22   chapters 25 & 26 > A Fortnightly Serial. By ALAN WALL. • Chapter Twenty-Three. Thesis RUE IVORY for the purist comes only from the tusk of the elephant. It’s a modification of dentine which in its transverse sections or fractures exhibits striae which proceed though the arc of a circle. […]

Endangered Antiquarian.

A Requiem for the Old Bookshops of Europe. By WILL STONE. ◊ ne by one, like lights going out in an office building at dusk, antiquarian bookshops are dying out across Europe, but who is even aware of the implications of this decline apart from their struggling owners and that minority of dedicated bibliophiles who […]

Red.

By DANIEL COYLE. ◊ his most ancient of colors, the primal primary, red was the first color humans used, modified, smeared on their bodies, and painted on cave walls. Before ancient languages had words for blue, yellow, green, orange, they had a word for red, the color of blood, viscera, our mortal bodies, the life that […]

The Anamnesiologist.

By JAMES PEAKE. ◊ after Susanna Clarke 1. omeone who recovers what’s been lost, has committed to the steady and dubious art of unforgetting, ways of being, blind spots we didn’t know to compensate for, weight no one thought to infer, things without a name in our language. Someone whose own lives are many, and […]

Five sonnets in honour of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Executed on the Scaffold, Westminster, 29 October, 1618. By Richard Berengarten. ◊ He dresses in the Tower T five, the priest. The prisoner, confessed, Cheers up a little, even seeming merry, Taking his usual care in how he’s dressed, Stylish as ever, fashionable (very)— Doublet, hair-hued; taffeta breeches, black; Waistcoat, embroidered, black; kid gloves, in […]

Three prose poems.

By Mélisande Fitzsimons. ◊ Alone in her Prison Cell, Aliénor d’Aquitaine Reflects on the Randomness of Language and History ngland, England, land of sputum and spit, I love it. I have always loved your spirit, even when your buttery tongue licked me into near losing the deep fur, felt sounds of my own. Against the […]

Imaginator.

By ALAN WALL. ◊ he word has not survived, except in the far reaches of rock music, and some off-beat business ventures. Imaginator. One who makes it all up. The word became entangled in the seventeenth century with the Docetists, which might have led to it being treated warily. The Docetists believed that Jesus was […]

Two cautionary tales.

By SIMON COLLINGS. ♦ The Fish Eye t the bottom of his plate of fish soup Gunther found an eye looking at him. He was horrified. In the local folklore, discovering a fish eye in one’s soup was a worrying omen, and Gunther believed strongly in local lore. He scooped the eye onto his spoon […]