• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Hillingdon Literary Festival 2017 Creative Writing Anthology Championing the diverse voices of the London Borough of Hillingdon Published in 2017 by Hillingdon Literary Festival Brunel University London Kingston Lane Uxbridge Middlesex UB8 3PH United Kingdom www.HillingdonLiteraryFestival.com © All rights reserved The Copyright of each contribution rests with the individual artist and authors and no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the individual artist or author. BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUIN-IN- PUBLICATION DATA A full record of this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-9085493-1-0 Printed and bound in the UK by Minuteman Press Uxbridge Contents Introduction – Sebastian Jenner Foreword - Professor Julia Buckingham Shirley Anne Cook 5 Froth Gael 6 Uxbridge Station 4pm Yasmin Selena Butt 8 Water Baby Jasveena Masih 16 Fleeting Moments of Freedom Marina Cicionesi Jansson 21 leaping out through a window-frame Iris Hontiverous Mauricio 23 the anatomy of a maybe Anujit Kaur 25 The Four Lavaan Devyn Gonsalves 33 Do You Remember? Philip Marriner 41 The Windless Woods Max Hallam 59 The People’s Party Stephen Powdrill 67 D-I-Y Kit Philip Tew 69 Monster Baby Simi Abe 92 You Contain Oceans Momtaza Mehri 94 On Live Tweeting Judgement Day & Other Ways I Fail At Documentation Adam Martley 96 The Cold Caller Joolz Gray 102 Life so Far… Vivien Brown 104 Nine Lives Sophie Perry 106 The Flesh Mark O’Loughlin 110 New beginnings & I want to celebrate the mundane Gita Ralleigh 113 Ghost Writer Mike Beranek 125 Tandoori Dialogue Megan Carter 131 Pay Check Matthew Healing 133 Narrowboat Helen Borland 135 Mirror, Mirror Alison Fletcher 139 Re-Queening Ada Kalu 155 What about a stud? Sam Green 157 Tea Alexander Noir 159 Tanweer Marjorie Bahhaj 173 Family Link Up Vivienne Burgess 177 Venetian Blinds Paul Ryan 193 Walk the road Grace Quansah (aka ‘Akuba’) 195 Bittersweet Carnival Paul Joseph Foley 197 Sink or Swim David E.J.A. Bennett 199 Colin or Colene Marianne Winters 203 The Circus Nerissa Taverner 207 Greatness Bestowed Angela Narayn 213 I am Malala Introduction – Sebastian Jenner Festival Producer and Editor Hillingdon Literary Festival Inspired by the extraordinary talent in our community – so apparent at each Hillingdon Literary Festival – we last year launched a community creative writing competition and anthology, Writing Local | Thinking Global. The volume was such a terrific success, and the submissions of such high quality, that we were keen to offer another such opportunity. This year’s writing competition and anthology, Ordinary People : Exceptional Lives, features stories and poems carefully selected from over three hundred submissions. Every single one of these was read with pleasure and awe, and it’s a great shame that we could not print more. The talent in our Borough truly is exceptional, impressive and diverse – it’s an honour to be able to champion it. This collection is made freely available to the community, distributed at the festival, to all seventeen brilliant Hillingdon libraries, and online for e-book download. We trust you’ll enjoy reading the proud and brilliant voices of our community. 1 Foreword - Professor Julia Buckingham Vice Chancellor and President, Brunel University London At Brunel University London, we are committed to promoting young and emerging talent and to playing an active part in the local community – so I am delighted that this creative writing competition, Ordinary People : Exceptional Lives is a key part of the third Hillingdon Literary Festival. You can see from the entries contained in this anthology that there is no shortage of writing talent in Hillingdon. I understand our aim in launching the competition was to provide a platform for the diverse voices here at Brunel and across the Borough – and as you can see from what follows we have certainly achieved this! Getting published is always a challenge for new writers and any help they can receive along the way is very welcome. I hope those included in the volume – and especially the overall winner – are very proud of their achievements. We are – as indeed the Hillingdon Literary Festival itself shows – determined to be of and 2 for our local community; working to build strong, mutually beneficial partnerships, but we also want to help our students and those we support in Hillingdon achieve and value excellence. The competition and anthology would not have been possible without, on the one hand, the hard work of our judges – Suzi Feay and Professor Benjamin Zephaniah – and Seb Jenner, the Festival Producer, and a Brunel PhD student who has shown himself extraordinarily adept at organising numerous large scale events; and, on the other, our sponsors: the London Borough of Hillingdon, Heathrow and the Arts Council for England. Good luck to all those whose work is contained in this volume – I am sure we will be hearing more of you in the future. 3 Lisa Enright 4 Froth by Shirley Anne Cook I'm sitting in an Uxbridge café drinking a latte, revelling in the fact that I've filled my loyalty card. Next time I'll receive a free coffee. It matters. I lost my job. Lattes are my lifeline. Each sip a shot in the arm. I take out my note book, perhaps I'll have an idea for a poem. There's always that. But today they're testing the fire alarm. A high-pitched scream tears through my head. 'How much longer?' I ask the barista. She's puzzled. 'There’s no alarm.' I gaze at the bottom of my cup and realise that what I'm hearing is the sound of train wheels braking though the white-frothed tidemark of my life. 5 Uxbridge Station 4pm by Gael There’s the twitter-twatter pitter-patter of teens on the move Red buses roar to the station and more pour onto the tube Crushed in till they bust out again – uncorked – ready to walk And run and sing – School’s out! – And the holiday dawns As the brightest Instagram they ever saw… And there’s more… Someone said that golden guys and girls all must Like chimney-sweepers come to dust – but not these kids They’re diamonds dancing on the floor – not rust Their summer to explore- and more – exams are over, aced, obliterated. 6 They’re running to futures in places no-one’s even rated on trip-advisor – to jobs that no-one’s scored – To hook-ups so hot that tinder flamed before it named them They’re scorching the concrete with their super- heroic pace in the race To be bigger, to be better, to be first – But before tonight’s party, tomorrow’s date, next week’s trip to celebrate – Stop and turn to see – the sun glitter in the asphalt – and Before the prosecco bubble bursts, Before the first tattoo begins to hurt, Before the new kiss chafes and bruised skin burns – Feel it Before it trends and turns and it’s too late To see before the curve and see it straight. 7 Water Baby by Yasmin Selena Butt I was told I’d always been a water baby; apparently I’d even swum around gently in my mother’s womb despite the confinement of space. I’d rarely lain still when they’d gazed at me lovingly from the outside, looking in, as she lay in hospital, mesmerised by her distended belly transparent on the screen. As a toddler I’d be the first in the bath, when she hollered for us all to go up and get ready for the nightly ritual. I was the only one out of the three of us that never needed to be told twice. Mary was the one who would have to be lifted in kicking and wailing. She had a morbid fear of the shampoo getting in her bright little eyes, but I think she just didn’t like the water. I liked that I could choose the ‘flavour’ of mine. It felt like a very serious choice when you were four years old. Monica was the quietest of the three of us. She would occupy the furthest corner. I liked to be in the middle, which was kind of apt as I was the middle child. There were no boys in my family, only my Papa, and he left the nightly ritual to Mama. As we got older, we of course learned to do this on our own, and my desire to lie in there, and float would often be disturbed with the anxious 8 knocking on the door from a sister checking to see I was okay I had a habit of drifting off into dreams and had often woken chilled and in the dark. My flesh puckered by the water, shivering and surprised. It never hurt to be safe. So really did it come as any surprise when I reached the age of ten and I noticed these tiny little flaps starting to blossom beneath my budding little breasts? My mother later noticed it when she saw me dressing for school She peered at me curiously and then pulled me to her to gently stroke the smooth, serrations over my ribs with her work worn fingers. ‘What are those?’ she murmured to herself. ‘I don’t know’ I replied, nervous of her gaze. ‘I have to go to school’ I said, buttoning my blouse. She let me go in silence; a furrow creasing her brow. Each night I looked at the marks on my ribs and touched them.

Load more

  248

Copy Link