p l a y

University of Bristol Creative Arts Magazine Summer 2010

Poetry Prose Art Photography Features

Editors

Anisa Ghuloom

Sarah Sternberg

Poetry Editors

Rebecca Jewitt

Claudia Tobin

Art Editors

Tom Brooks

Emma Davies

Helen Graham

Photography Editors

Jessie Atkinson

Sophie Wright

Features Editors

Hannah Alton

Isabel Blake

Prose Editors

Jack Castle

Eleanor Fogg

Promotions Officers

Arabella Field

Tom Strickland

Imogen Schäfer

Poetry Events

Kit Buchan

We’re being replaced, so watch

this space and keep a weather eye

on the website to keep up to date

with the new editors. The end is

nigh. Go forth and play.

Love as always,

Sarah and Anisa

E D I T O R I A L

Cover Photo : Tristan Martin�

Rosie Levine

�

When do we lose it? That total concentration on the object of our attention, the game we’re playing. Somewhere in the crucible of adolescence we surrender that sense of joy, that innocent abandon.

Reclaim your birthright, relearn how to play. The silly jokes, the childish antics, aren’t these the times we remember with the greatest fondness? In a world where being laughed at is seen as some form of social death, have we sacrificed that most humanizing of traits?

Gideon Shapiro

Rajitha Ratman & Alex Sheppard

Emma Davies

�

What do you do when children cry after seeing you? Sometimes I cry too. Or I squirt

water or fall on the floor or take down my trousers. They like it when I pull things out of their ears.

Generally making myself seem like a fool and showing inferiority is the key. The fear of clowns is

called coulrophobia. Some people literally have panic attacks and stuff when they see me in costume.

That used to be pretty scary for me but I’m used to it now. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in a circus tent? My appendix practically exploded once whilst I was juggling

knives. That was bad. I started screaming, then all the kids started screaming as well. Why choose clowning? In every year at school there’s one isn’t there? In every social group you find a clown. It’s

an essential component. Someone has to act the fool to reduce tension. People need to laugh, people need

to see an exaggeration of life. It’s a conduit of release. I’m not going to change the world but I can make

people happy. Behind the face paint I’m just an ordinary guy, but no one wants to know that. Being Mr

Twizzle is freedom for me. I paint my face and I can adopt this colourful and noisy character. I love it.

Hannah Alton

A Brief Interview

with Mr. Twizzle, Clown

Emma Davies

�

The galli were men who pretended to be women for a while and then actually made themselves women

by cutting off their own testicles. They were the priests of the Roman Magna Mater cult. Part of their

initiation consisted of auto-castration. Then the men threw their testicles down the street and took the

clothing of the women of the house whose doorstep their balls landed on.

When stuff like that gets done, and people think that it’s important, its impossible not to think of

everything as play.

Thus spake Johannes Huizinga. Huizinga says everything is play. Religion is play. Language is play.

Society is play. Anything that does not pertain to real life, anything free, anything with no material

interest is Play. We are the featherhead hominidae. I don’t really know if Huizinga’s ideas are outdated or

unfashionable or wrong. But it’s a fun idea, that idea that it’s all a big game.

NB: Play is not as fun as it sounds, though. It can be seedy or gory. Sexual deviants always call it “a bit

of fun,” but everybody knows experimental sex is for saddos. Capitalists talk about “games,” but only

shitbags mean business. Play bleeds people. Play nightmared neanderthals. Peoples always kill each other

because they disagree with the rules.

�

Actually killing each other was initially another game. I heard that before Shaka came to

power, the Zulu used to engage in ritual warfare. They would have battles were nobody

really died and the point was just to make sure everybody knew not to fuck with you. The

Cold War was one of the biggest games I ever heard of. About twenty years after the real

playing is over, you’re allowed to make little models and games about them! How fucked up

is that!

There is something citric and burlesque about stuff like the Spanish inquisition, that I would

basically call fun. There are pictures of the Manson family and Nazis and Cecil Rhodes

at play. I know that’s not quite the point but think how fun it must have been to be in the

Manson family. For that matter, think how fun the British Empire was.

I suppose a part of looking at stuff they done in the olden days is forgetting the bad bits and

just remembering the fun, but even now there’s stuff that feels fun. We should really bin the

House of Lords, and the American dream and papal infallibility but they’re such fun.

Israel is a pretty fun idea. So is tweed.

I know I didn’t really make a point, it’s just fun to think about the permutations of shit like

that. Be nice to me, anyway. I just pawned my typewriter so that we could go and weekend

together. Aidan Cottrell Boyce

Illustration by Menna Cominetti

�

p l a y i n g i n t r e e sLooking out of the

window I get jealous of

the pigeons, except when it rains

and they scrunch into themselves defiantly.

Maybe they think that if the clouds don’t recognise

them then they won’t get wet. There’s something really

sexy about wings. Once my friends and I got drunk

and watched some porn with an angel and a man in a

warrior costume. In retrospect I think that when you

start playing in bushes you stop playing in trees. It’s

a shame really. I miss sap-stained palms and bark-

rubbings for knees.

The correct term is ‘Frottage’. An indexical image of

crumbling wax crayon and crumpled paper. See Max

Ernst. See also Max Ernst: Surrealism and Dream

Imagery. When he was young he dreamt that he had

a pet bird. The night that it died he awoke to his

father announcing that his sister had just been born.

Sometimes he paints this bird into his pictures as an

extension of his ego. It’s called Loplop. I wonder what

I dreamt of the night my sister was born. I used to

have an imaginary friend called Michelangelo. After

the mutant ninja hero turtle, not the artist.

Tom Brooks

10

p l a y i n g i n t r e e s

Sophie Wright

11

Tristan Martin

1�

1�

This is the Second Act.

The cross-eyed ache and tight dry lips,

picking the fat dried on my jeans

from a hazy feast of chips

in the last bold hour of teens

for our ‘beat’ Birthday Boy who

chucked his gutful into the dark.

Today we dig for gold.

Rooting through the scattered frames

to find the clearest gems to mould

and polish in memory’s name.

For all we know tomorrow could be the end of it.

The years we lived outside the sad cycle

from number to title;

The days we will know as the Prime of Youth

and exclaim over working lunches

who we were once, as if it were a role

we played, and never really truth.

Last night we danced and drank in heated sways,

pulled the puppet strings of smiles,

blinked at the moon eclipsed by the dial

then woke for a part in the matinee.

Patrick Burley

p r i m e o f y o u t h

14

Jessie Atkinson

15

Sophie Wright

James Wright1�

“Monopoly was my favourite game as a child. I loved those little houses. Sometimes, I would steal them

from the box and build miniature cities in shoeboxes hidden in my wardrobe. I still dream of owning a

whole row of townhouses on Park Row. If I don’t win this, I won’t have a house at all.”

When I was seven I was convinced I needed to learn chess. I’d watched a news report about a chess

championship which had shown a room full of men staring intently at black-and-white boards. Enthused

with girl power I persuaded my encouraging grandmother to buy me an ‘Introduction to Chess’ for my

eighth birthday.

One night soon after my eighth birthday I followed my mother out the front door, suitcases towed behind.

I left the book by my bed with a bookmark just past the introduction. I left home with only a slight

understanding of what seemed a trivial hierarchy: queens, bishops, pawns. I could align the figures in the

correct order on the board but I didn’t know what came next.

I never learnt to play chess. Never had the patience to understand why some pieces had to move in one

way and the queen in another.

Eleanor Fogg

Anisa Ghuloom

g a m b l i n g

p l a y i n g c h e s s

1�

The finger’s hovering

but the foot stays still

The room is full

but the seats are kept warm

The glasses are empty

but the bottles are in hand

Press play so we can all dance.

Gary Harten

d a n c i n g

1�

1�

Playing is not a choice.

Time is mother,

A released child’s hand.

Bonds of wax

Between each sun.

Rules are a reflection

Buried in the sky.

And cross-dressing Night

Encourages deceit.

Red button – faulty,

Losing is the currency.

A team yields hope,

Some play with time.

p l a y i n g w i t h t i m e

Lara Kennedy

�0

Up and down, back and forth. From blue sky to green

grass and back again, swings, like roundabouts, have

a tipping point. There is a split second when you’re

moving so fast and going so high that you think that

this feels like what you think it might be like to fly. It’s

exhilarating and utterly terrifying. When my father used

to push me on the swings, I would shout to be pushed

higher and higher, until suddenly that point loomed so

close that I would shout stop, stop: delight had spun

into horror and I felt perilously out of control. Then I

would lean far back, letting my head flop back from my

neck, rocking backwards and forwards with deliberate

slowness, feet ground into the grassy floor, and watch

the parallel sky moving in front of my face like a slide

show, safe in the knowledge that the distance between

us was now fixed.

Ella Frost

Sarah Sternberg

p l a y i n g w i t h t i m e

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Lizzie Wheldon ��

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