Of Cabbages and KingsJournal of King’s English Literary Society ISSUE 7

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It’s a cliché to say that one be-came an academic by accident, and it masks what it’s really like: there is a whole lot of graft and disap-pointment, of three- and five-year plans, of projects that take a decade (or more!) from inception to com-pletion. But when I think back on how I got started, it still feels like a happy accident, made possible by an excellent public university sys-tem and a lot of outstanding teach-ers and colleagues. I did my BA in English, straight from school, at the University of California at Ber-keley, which at the time offered an extremely good value education to in-state students like me: the Eng-lish department was the top-ranked in the United States, and I paid less than a fifth of the cost of tuition at Harvard. (I also had part-time paid work and lived frugally, and at one point my parents were genuinely concerned that I wasn’t building up enough debt, and that therefore I must be doing something ille-gal.) Fees have tripled since I stud-ied there in the late ‘90s, despite staunch opposition from UC staff and students.

At Berkeley, you didn’t need to de-

clare a major until your third year. So before I decided on English, I also studied (I am not making this up) Astronomy, Cognitive Science, Latin American Politics, and Land Management. I also took language courses (French, Hebrew, and Span-ish) and creative writing, and within the English department I was al-ways drawn to courses on literature from ethnic minority or non-Euro-pean contexts: African-American Literature, Chicano Prison Litera-ture, Arabic Literature in Transla-tion. I also had a range of important experiences outside the classroom: I travelled to Israel/Palestine and Mexico, got arrested as part of a large student protest against cuts to the Ethnic Studies department, and volunteered as a services coordina-tor at a free medical clinic. Most of the other students I knew had simi-larly diverse academic and extra-curricular interests. I didn’t know it then, but all of this would feed into my professional life.

When I finished my BA, I had no plans. I had never visited the careers office, never thought seriously about what I wanted to do with my degree, never spoken to a tutor or advisor

about my future. Part of the reason for this passivity may have been the low financial risk of my studies; an-other was the relative anonymity of going to a large public institution, where no one was checking up on me to make sure that I knew what I was doing, apart from my father, who suggested management con-sulting. (He’s since come around.) I chose to teach English as a for-eign language, and after a couple of years of that I had become nostalgic enough for the literature classroom to want to go back.

I was accepted for a part-funded place at the University of Cam-bridge, to work on a PhD on Pal-estinian writing in the English Fac-ulty. My choice of topic came out of my trip to Israel/Palestine and my studies of Arabic literature in trans-lation and Hebrew, which had fed into my final-year dissertation. At my supervisor’s suggestion, I soon added Israeli texts to the thesis. I started the work in 2003, in the same month that Edward Said died, and at the height of the al-Aqsa inti-fada. I was lucky enough to be at an institution that had a Middle East studies faculty, where I could study Arabic and Hebrew, and to have a supervisor (the marvellous Priya-mvada Gopal) who supported the project and shielded me from some of the politically and disciplinarily tricky responses to what I was do-ing. It was not a project that had a clear correlation with existing fields of study: at the time, postcolonial or world literature syllabi in Eng-lish departments did not normally include literature from the Middle East, and as an English PhD with some Arabic and Hebrew I was not going to be able to teach Arabic or Hebrew literature in a Middle East studies programme. But I was en-joying the work and I felt like it had some value, which was good, be-cause I didn’t know if I would get a job at the end of it.

I spent a good part of the fourth

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e dear literature lovers,

Welcome to our Valentine issue of Of Cabbages and Kings. For lovers alone, we

present to you the creative pulse at the heart of King’s. The cultural scene beck-

ons bright, with upcoming student produc-tions of The Tragedy of Dr Faustus, The Impor-

tance of Being Earnest and The Heidi Chronicles. As rehearsals get under way, we bring you a sneak

peek of some of King’s students’ collaborative efforts, in Dr Faustus and further afield in The Wellcome

trust’s Mortal: a Drama. The King’s Cultural Chal-

lenge is on, the Medievalist Exhibition at the Maughan Library is now open in the Weston Room, and the dreamthink-speak production In the Beginning was the End is beating beneath our very feet. We are happy to announce this competition’s winner of two tickets to see Feast at the Young Vic goes to Hannah Elsy. Let the New Year be full of new hopes, new loves and new scenes. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love from Louise, Bethan and Geri ª

year of my PhD putting in appli-cations for teaching and research positions in the US and UK, when I really should have been focusing on finishing my thesis, but I had a sense of needing to cast my net widely. I was reasonably successful in getting interviews, but it wasn’t until the day after I passed my viva, in June 2007, that I was offered my first job in the Department of Eng-lish and Related Literature at the University of York. I like to think that I did better at interview be-cause I was buoyed by the previous day’s achievement, but having the PhD in hand probably also played a part. I also benefited from the polit-ical climate. Since I had begun my PhD, the ongoing wars in Afghani-stan and Iraq had made the Middle East much more visible in British and American public culture, and in literary publishing. The field of postcolonial studies had shifted fo-cus accordingly, and more scholars had begun to work on texts that were from or about Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern/North African contexts. My interests, which had previously seemed marginal, had become almost mainstream.

I spent five fantastic years at York, and in September I took up the op-portunity to move to King’s to be

part of the expansion of the Com-parative Literature programme. I’m based 50-50 in English and Com-parative Literature, which suits me perfectly: I get to read and teach texts from around the world as a matter of course, while still having a base in my formative discipline. Although my experience might seem very specific, I think there are some general points to take from it. At a time where the funding culture is moving toward collabo-rative and interdisciplinary work, a project that’s situated between fields can have its advantages, as long as you can make a good case for why scholars in relevant fields should have an interest in what you do. I also think there are significant benefits to multilingual work, even in languages that you’re not com-pletely fluent in: it can give your work a geographical range and lo-cal depth that working in English alone can’t always do. Above all, as your resources allow, I recommend trips to other places, electives in other disciplines, and talks outside your research interests: you never know what happy accidents might present themselves. ª

Dr Anna BernardLecturer in English LiteratureKing’s College London

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in the republic of happiness(at The Royal Court Theatre)

Thanks to the generosity of Of Cabbages and Kings, I was able to go and see TheRoyal Court’s Christmas of-fering, which as expected stood in stark contrast to theyuletide festivities. Mar-tin Crimp’s brutal satire on modern life In the Republicof Happiness will divide opin-ions, not necessarily even-ly. It is not an easy watchbut as the play developed, I questioned whether Crimp’s intention was to make aplay that would be comfort-able to watch. It’s acerbic, perverse, brave and aboveall unapologetic.

As one of the many Eng-lish Literature students who pride themselves on beingable to see into the depths of any play, novel or piece of poetry, I hadn’t thefoggiest idea what was going on. There was lots of swear-ing, singing, confessionsconcerning ‘manipula-tive and abusive cats’. It was without a doubt the mostbizarre 105 minutes of my life. However, it was an ex-perience I would definitelyhave again, and I sway be-tween pitying and envying those who haven’t had thesame one.

The play begins with a tra-ditional family Christmas scene. We are presented withthree generations includ-ing grandparents, parents and two sisters. This sceneis soon disrupted by a witty and unrelenting dialogue that includes Grandmaopenly admitting she buys Grandfather pornograph-

ic magazines, which hejustifies by declaring ‘even an imperfect erection can be useful’. The scene takesan even more absurd turn when the leering wordsmith that is Uncle Bob comesinto the picture, to ex-plain to the family before he leaves to start a new andhappier life why his wife Madeleine hates them all. The characters of Uncle Boband Madeleine (played by Paul Ready and Michelle Terry respectively) are theleast likable characters and so are responsible for the more disturbing tone theplay sets. The Uncle is hint-ed at having fathered the child of his younger niece,and having slept with the older one, which does not appear to upset anyone atall. Welcome to Crimp’s Christmas!

If there is one thing that this play cannot be faulted on it is the very slick andimpressive staging. In one such scene, the stage slides away from the traditionalfamily scene into a talk show-like row of chairs, and a cult-inspired earnestnessfrom the actors. It is hon-est, harsh and at times very funny, as the actors thenproceed to recite in an al-most mechanical fashion the ‘Five Essential Freedomsof the Individual’. These take numerous forms and in-clude the right to: write thescript to your own life, to have a trauma, look good, life forever and to spreadyour legs. The final act in-volves my two least favour-ite characters; Uncle Boband Madeleine, with her bullying him into happi-

ness. I would have replacedit with the grandparents who almost certainly steel the show (Anna Calder-Marshall and Peter Wight). It’s an oddly flat end to a play that, if nothing else, isruthless and dynamic.

The script is an uneasy one that includes a number of almost childishly placedswearwords and unsettling subject matter. Each act is punctuated by a numberof satirical songs that vary greatly in quality. The sec-ond act contained at leastfive of these musical offer-ings and as I looked through my notes, scrawled inlarge capital letters the words, is ‘PLEASE STOP THE SINGING!!!’ However, theunpredictability of this play has the effect of making the audience sit-up and payattention, or else risk get-ting even more lost. Many will not have found the playgratifying, but its com-ments on our narcissistic and materialistic society feelsurprisingly fresh. It’s a play that deserves to be seen re-gardless of its difficulty,and pondered over long after-wards. ª

Elena Gillies, 1st yearEnglish Language & Literature

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interview with hilary davies, fellow of the royal literary fund

Of Cabbages and Kings: How did you come to King’s and what sets it apart from the rest of the London Universities?Hilary Davies: Being one of the two Royal Literary Fund Fellow placed at King’s, we are here on a temporary basis, as profes-sional writers to aid post-graduates with their thesis writing, offering advice on how to write, how to construct an argument, and answer any question that they may have with academic writing. The Royal Literary Fund places you at a university, and there are 60 writers all over the country serving universities in the same position as me in any one-year. Although I did not have a choice in my location, I was very pleased with King’s, which would have been the

university I would have selected. I think King’s is very exciting intellectually; there is an enormous buzz of activity all around campus. Being a linguist, the multicultur-alism of King’s interests me, as does the international scope of the student popu-lation. We are very centrally located, and have access to all that London offers, and this attracts all sorts of high-level academ-ics. Most of all, I like being on the Strand because it is so close to the river which is great.

OCAK: As a linguist who translates French and German as well, how important do you think it is to be bilingual? Was it hard for you to become bilingual?HD: Very important. In an ideal world, I think everyone should speak two languages, and most people in the world do. I learnt at school from a young age, and was taught very well so it was quite easy. As a translator and a teacher of these languages, I am also giving a seminar in the Spanish department about my transla-tions of Lorca.

OCAK: What are your main preoccupations of your poems?HD: I use history and geography enormously, and location features very heavily in my work. I am currently working on a poem based in Germany. My published work ‘Imperium’ is set in the Napoleonic Wars, and there are others set in prehistory, at the time when the animals came. Linking history and poetry has been a long-standing tradition, and I use it to say quite large things about the human condition, of which my own experiences cannot suffice. I like a big canvas to say things and use his-torical events to create a backdrop and a wider frame of reference for me.

OCAK: Is there any advice you would give budding young writers?HD: Read a great deal. Read poetry, and not just modern poetry. Read as far back you can go, in as many traditions as you can, in as many kinds of writers and writing, so you become very knowledgeable in every kind of tradition. Writing takes you out of your tradition, no matter what it is, and you need to know what

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that tradition was.

OCAK: Describe your poetry writing process.HD: I like embarking on big projects, and in the case of ‘Imperium’ I did my research on Nelson and the Napoleonic Wars, which had interested me since I was young. I went the places of battles, and read on navy and ship-building which was quite technical., basically England’s maritime traditions. After immers-ing yourself in the time period, you start imag-ining yourself as part of that piece of history.

OCAK: Every poetic movement of history has taken some direction in which poets have united in both theme and style, for example that Romantics focusing on both the lyric form and the preoccupation with nature and the internal self. As a poet part of modern movement, what direction do you think poetry is taking now?HD: It would be difficult to compare the ro-mantics with modern poetry, but perhaps a similar movement would be the ecological movement, which is a bit more sophisticated than anti-industrialization. The same worry of man’s effect on the environment mirror the anti-industrialization thought of the 18th and 19th century, and there is a direct link to the ecological movement of now, existing as a

child or a grandchild of that.

OCAK: What books purely within English literature be a must read for your children, or your wards?HD: That is a very interesting question. I would have her read the bible, although some people debate whether it is fiction or non-fiction. She would also need to be familiar with Shake-speare, my favourite Hamlet, or King Lear. Also, if there were one English novel I had to recommend to a younger person, it would be Jane Eyre. A poet would be T.S. Eliot, perhaps ‘The Wasteland’ or ‘Four Quartets’. Lastly, if one were to talk about 20th century novelists, for me it would be William Golding and any of his novels.

OCAK: Two words to describe the scope of your poetry.HD: Lyrical and narrative, so I suppose that would make it lyrical narratives. ª

Interview by Ka-mern Tan, 2nd yearEnglish Language & Literature

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how to devise theatre: the development of Mortal: a DraMa

Death lurks near the jostling mass of Lon-don Euston station. The Wellcome Trust’s exhibition ‘Death: A Self- Portrait’ leaves no (grave)stone unturned in exploring the visual representation of Death throughout the ages: from contemporary wire sculptures of the Grim Reaper to Medieval tapestries of peasants falling into eternal damnation. A company of young actors, myself included, are using this morbid ephemera as inspira-

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tion for devising a piece of theatre that brings this exhibition, ironically, ‘to life’.

‘Mortal: A Drama’ explores the devastating, gruesome and sometimes humorous aspects of death. Our fascination with death, as hu-mans, has always had a theatrical quality to it: from the spectator sport of medieval witch-burnings to the final speeches of Shakespear-ian tragedies to the cult following behind the ‘Bunny Suicides’ merchandise today.

This entire play has been devised entirely within the company, from discussions about personal experiences and our ‘gut’ reactions to stimulus material. Director Elizabeth Lynch comments on the challenge of broaching such a sensitive subject matter with a group of relative strangers, commenting that ‘people come to different things at different stages of their lives, (someone) may have been bereaved at an early age and therefore have a more pro-found understanding of death than a 35 year old’. Although this is not a verbatim piece, the text we are working with has been taken straight from words spoken by members of the company, or directly from the written comments of visitors to the exhibition, and have simply been transposed into the mouths of different actors. This method, according to Lynch, is the best way of generating words that have genuine emotional authenticity, without there being any pressure on the actor to re- live their individual experiences or ‘bare their soul’ on stage.

‘Mortal: A Drama’ is certainly not a tradi-tional ‘aesthetically pleasing’ piece of theatre. It is jarring and surreal to watch, with peri-ods of destructive dancing juxtaposed with re- imagined reality television that judges the dramatic value of contestants’ deaths. Lynch is firm that she didn’t want to create a piece of theatre that just allows the audience to sit back and ‘enjoy’, but to stimulate in the indi-vidual an ‘intellectual, emotional and sensual’ response.

As a company, our aim is to get the audi-ence to think about the implications of their

own deaths. If you died tomorrow, what are the things you wish you’d never said or done? What would your fantasy funeral be like? What objects would your family keep as me-mentos of you?

‘Life’ is intrinsic to a good performance, be-cause actors need to feed off the energies of the audience and their fellow performers. The physical vibrancyof this piece and the youth of the company mean that this play could be seen to be more of a celebration of life than a dialogue with death. The only thing we know for certain about this life is that we get one shot at it. So let’s make the most of it!

Mortal, A Drama will be performing at the Wellcome Collection on Thursday 14th Fe-bruary at 6.30pm, Sunday 17th February at 1.00pm and Thursday 21st February at 7.30pm. Tickets are free and can be reserved by contacting the Wellcome Collection Box Office. ª

Hannah Elsy, 1st yearEnglish Language & Literature

Death: A Self-Portrait, exhibition until 24 February 2013 at the Wellcome Collection

small town Girl

She watched as the rescue work-ers carefully dredged up her limp body from the bottom of the lakebed. Her skin’s waxy sheen, her rag-like hair and her arms and limb’s contorted position made her look like a broken doll that some kid had played with too roughly and then carelesslytossed aside.

Her next-door neighbour, who had once called her a good-for-nothing juvenile delinquent for walking across his lawn, was try-ing desperately to resuscitate her corpse despite the rescue work-ers repeatedly trying to convince him that she was already dead. Dead, her whole life reduced to one word, dead. Her parents, unamicably separated for ten yours now, but never divorced, because divorce was a sin and they were good respectable peo-ple, huddled together in a cor-ner, their eyes glazing over as they accepted condolences that they didn’t really want to hear.

The whole town had gathered by the lake, some coming so that they can shake their heads and mourn the fact that such a tragedy could take place in their town and others coming because they genuinely cared. Not that anything they said or did mat-tered anymore, nothing but a burial could get rid of the sweet, putrid stench that emitted from her rotting corpse. She sighed and sat down, someone was go-ing to pay for this. ª

Jo Lou, study abroad studentEnglish Language & Literature

the Ghost of love

I watch the morning sun fade in to the evening moon. Sitting. Pa-tient. Waiting. My torn copy of enduring love rests upon my lap as I listen to the familiar rumble of rush hour traffic.Through her soft rose lips she whispered, ‘Wait for me here, I don’t know when, but I promise I’ll come back’.I told her ‘As surely as I exist, I love you. I will wait forever.’Her long golden curls kissed me as she turned her back and walked away.That day I waited, and waited. She never came. So here I sit, waiting, forever. ª

Lauren Lindsey, 2nd yearEnglish Language & Communications

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luck

It’s not just the fact that someone blew out my candle.

A childish flame quivering

inside the delicate iris, sleeping.

That could leap out and engulf the room,

Like thousand blackbirds spiralling down,

chanting the waves of fire in bloom

Spreading its wings.

But in its rest, in the candle’s white cradle;

like a child, still not seen his reflexion in the mirror,

You blew it out, leaving

its dust over all things. ª

Charles He, 1st yearEnglish Language & Literature

a modern romance

Although the girl I’ve liked from afarIs only a click away

Fraudulent grins or pensiveOblivious moments

Tucked behind a backlit screenFor me to browse through at my leisure

I still feel, though I know that face andHerself at-a-glance, this distanceLike hollow lecture theatre seats

Between two pulchritudinous peopleParts us.

Although the girl I’ve seen from afarThat I envisage in climactic

Filmic moments, romantic final embraces,Gives me some secret eyes,

I see we’re not what Hardy wrote about;And that not everything that’s twain

Eventually converges. ª

Joe Prestwich, 2nd yearGerman

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saint fin barre’s cathedral

Once upon a time, in the Story of Isaac,(the stained glass version)His eyes were peas coiled in boot laces;A fact.

Now, the lad’s looped pink face remained,Though features worn away by lightFrom a high window, an uninterrupted stream,That had survived the renaming of civil warAs independence.

Does that make a fool of Kilmainham?Where they inflated the roof, a gaseousPalmhouse, for exotic specimensFrom irksome corners of the empire. Puffed up,That curvilinear iron lung, so that the inmatesCould breathe sunlight and ventilate their souls.Inhale, exfoliate,Before we realise they’re heroes.

Rehabilitation as erasure,Is neither theft, nor fraud,because Isaac’s pointed noseAnd eyes like green beans,Were never drawn from life. ª

Rena Minegishi, 2nd yearEnglish Language & Literature

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it’s raininG in my heart by Paul Verlaine

It’s raining softly on the city.(Arthur Rimbaud)

It is raining in my heart,As it rains on the city,

What is this melancholyEating away at my heart?

Just that softest sound of rainAs on streets and roofs it taps!

For a heart bent-double in painJust that singing of the rain!

It’s raining without reasonInside this poor, sickly heart.

What is this? There’s no treason,This grieving without reason.

This is the worst pain that bitesAnd without quite knowing why,Without love and without spite,Cuts at my heart like a knife! ª

Translated by Serafina Vick, 2nd year

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how to sell your soulOr, the Tragedy of Dr Faustus

George Steiner, in his Notes towards a Re-defi-nition of Culture from 1971, wrote that “Much has been said of man’s bewilderment and soli-tude after the disappearance of Heaven from ac-tive belief. We know of the neutral emptiness of the skies and of the terrors it has brought. But it may be that the loss of Hell is the more severe dislocation. It may be that the mutation of Hell into metaphor left a formidable gap in the co-or-dinates of location, of psychological recognition in the Western mind. The absence of the famil-iar damned opened a vortex which the modern totalitarian state filled. To have neither Heaven nor Hell is to be intolerably deprived and alone in a world gone flat. Of the two, Hell proved the easier to re-create.”

A little earlier, in Polen, in an industrial town about sixty miles from Auschwitz, Jerzy Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory produced Mar-lowe’s Doctor Faustus. Within this specific cul-tural and historical context, Faustus had, since his appearance in 1592, become a spokesperson for the cruelty of God as experienced in the 20th century. As Grotowski wrote in his program to the performance: ‘Faustus is a saint and his saintliness shows itself as an absolute desire for pure truth. If the saint is to become one with his sainthood, he must rebel against God, Creator of the world, because the laws of the world are traps contradicting morality and truth’.

And suddenly, we are now occupying the begin-ning of the 21st century. Postmodernism intro-duced the liberating term relativism, which fits a globalized, multidimensional world, where in theory, everybody can become the person they want to be, by mixing up all the cultural signs available. But is it possible to still claim the exist-ence of one, universal moral truth? Or is the defi-nition of truth something every individual must determine for herself? Why is Faustus selling her self-consciousness, when every whim can be ac-commodated through the Internet?

Last year, a Swedish documentary produced by TV4’s Cold Facts, revealed the working condi-tions of H&M’s factories in Cambodia. 70 work

hours a week give you 50 pounds. People work until they exasperate. Our consumerism has cre-ated an ethical blur, where in the end, we buy that top, because – what can I as an individual do? Therefore, our biggest sin today is that of In-difference. This is the driving factor behind our current social state, and is therefore incorporated in the play. It is the group mentality that makes it possible to suppress concerns, and avoid con-frontation, with all the issues that affect other people, but has yet to affect me, like the melting of poles, and exploitation of workers. Because why should I care, when everybody else chooses to look away?

Using this as our theoretical backdrop, we have begun rehearsing The Tragedy of Dr Faustus. The play is to a large extent written from Marlowe’s particular historical time, when religion and pol-itics were closely united. Secularization put them apart, which means that the qualities Marlowe gave to the Church in the play, is now what keeps politics going: create a view of the world, and try to get as many as possible to live their lives ac-cording to it. The notion of heaven and hell is the ideology operating within the play. Their repre-sentatives panic when one of their subjects try to break away from the jarring images, the empty learning and the accepted truths they have prof-its from proclaiming. Faustus refuses to go along with it, but with considerable personal costs.

Hell, as no infernal physicality, but a psychologi-cal devilry in a world without limits, has become an inseparable product of the secular confusion of mass consumerism. The Doctor- not him, but Her- is in our play plurally manifested, not the voice, but the voices, deriving from an anxiety connected to the un-certain existence of universal truths. ª The Tragedy of Dr Faustus7.30pm 16th and 17th March

Elise Dybvig & Liza Weber, 2nd yearEnglish Language & Literature

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Of Cabbages and KingsJournal of King’s English Literary Society

EditorsLouise Wang

Geri RossBethan Eynon

DesignGeri Ross

Cover ArtworkSam Cleal

PublicityJake Mardell

Contact & submissions:cabbages.submissions@gmail.com

medievalist visions30 January - 22 May, Weston Room, Maughan Library

Medievalist Visions is an exhibition that explores how the art and literature of the European Middle Ages, as well as medi-eval events, ideas and people, have been represented in post-medieval Britain. It has been curated by Josh Davies, Sarah Salih and Beatrice Wilford of the English Department and Catherine Sambrook, the Foyle Special Collections Librarian. ª

in the beGinninG was the enduntil 30 March, Somerset House

In the Beginning was the End is the first production housed by Somerset House, inconjunction with the King’s Cultural In-stitute. The divine, death, and the mys-tery of life are explored in the previously hidden hollows underneath King’s, as the production acts as a walking tour through its depths. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, and blending live performance with film and art, an intimate and unique experience is promised. ªfeast

until 23 February, The Young Vic

Feast, a collaborative production from five culturally diverse writers, explores the sto-ry ofthree sisters tragically separated and scattered across the continents. Their story is entwined with the delights of African dancing and music, as we explore the her-itage of West African culture. With £10 tickets on offer especially for students, there is no excuse to miss this exciting piece of drama. ª