#Poetry Beyond Print

[nicholasandriani]

Poetry Does Not Exist- Poetry’s Renaissance in the Digital Age, and What You Must Know

Title: The Sine Qua Non of the Art and Science of Poetry Writing Introduction: Poetry, often described as the language of the soul, is a unique form of expression that marries the artistry of words with the precision of science. To craft a poem that resonates deeply with readers requires a delicate balance between creativity and structure, imagination and technique. In the world of poetry…

[mentalnote1]

Infected by Love ~ Poetry

I sacrificed myself on the altar and begged God to give me back my soul

I wondered this wilderness I was lost in the fold

I wrote pages and pages till it became a scroll

***

Love had games

Hung me by nooses and invisible chains

I’ve become a walking noise maker from the residue that jingles in my hollow veins

***

Love took its toll

Felt lessons left mud prints in my fractured soul

Half of a heart does not make a whole

***

Sadness compromised me times 3

Left miles and miles still cleaning up debris

August was a long month felt like years

Found myself floating on a life raft

Damn near drowned in my own tears

***

Till life felt like a plague

So I saged

And I saged

I burned incense

It lingered

But the hurt still stayed

I was compromised and delayed

Rigamortis set in and even the neighbors could smell the decay

***

I sacrificed myself on the altar and begged God to give me back my soul

I wondered this wilderness I was lost in the fold

I wrote pages and pages till it became a scroll

I fasted I starved myself and I paced the floor some more

I talked to myself and searched for riddles beyond hidden doors

I spoke to the gods and whispered to the moon

I cried rivers and laid prostrate singing holy across empty tombs

I bled myself trying to rid myself of this atrocity

I showed my self approved spewing with generosity

I walked on hot coals I detoxed myself I stopped eating meat

The congregation stood in line while I washed every members feet

I even cut my locs out

But I was still left

Hung

Heavy

Burdened

I was without

I did all this trying to replenish my broken soul

I will one day find a way out of this deep dark lonely hole

I’ve been infected

By

~~~

Love

[nico-nico-suavecito]

I am so excited to announce that my full-length poetry book "The Weeds Grow Anyway" is available for preorder. This first edition handmade Iimited run is going to feature a linocut printed soft cover and I will be binding the books at home.

A blurb about the book, by Mallory Everhart:

Nico Wilkinson's debut full-length poetry collection "The Weeds Grow Anyway' is a celebration of that which lies beyond resilience in the face of adversity: audacity. Writing from Colorado Springs amidst a time of anti-trans violence, they examine the relationship of trans people to this world through the lens of nature's relationship to humans. What makes a plant into a weed, something deemed unacceptable to the landscape? The poetry within much like the local flora and trans people who live there is rooted in the experience of queering the inhospitable landscape that is Colorado Springs.

About the book's creation:

Last year I made one hardcover copy of The Weeds Grow Anyway (pictured above) to visualize the manuscript I'd been working on as a real tangible book. In doing so, I remembered just how much lenjoy the bookmaking process. I realized it would be a joy to make these books myself.

I will share the book-making process as I go on my social media, mostly Instagram (and possibly YouTube, coming soon). If you are a poet who would like to learn how to create their own books, follow along and show you how.

This book is made possible by community. By the people I create alongside, the people who support my work, who connect with me about the experiences we have living in this world. It is such a gift to finally be able to share these words with my community, including poems that have been known and loved, and many, many poems that have never been seen before. I can't wait for you to read them.

The photos of the first hardcover handmade book above are by my friend Corri Mercy.

[wannab-urs]

For the sleepover

Do me a favor

My baby boy, Dieter

Congratulations again babe! I love you!

Thank you bb I love you and I'm really excited about this fic

For the Record

Pairing: Record Shop Owner!Dieter x f!Reader

Summary: You go to a record store looking for something specific and end up on a date with the owner. 

Warnings/Content: Dieter Bravo being Dieter Bravo, excessive name dropping of bands I like, grungy Dieter wearing Doc Martens and covered in tattoos, reader going to a strangers house like an idiot, kissing, fingering, oral f!receiving, unprotected piv (this is not real life. Don’t be dumb), one tiny little ass slap, praise, creampie, no use of Y/N, WC: ~2900

Notes: Bravo Records is based on Grimey’s in Nashville, TN which you should absolutely visit if you get the chance. Unfortunately it isn’t owned by Dieter Bravo. Thank you @theywhowriteandknowthings for the beta read and the encouragement <;3

Dieter Bravo Masterlist | Main Masterlist | AO3 | Kofi

You’re on the hunt for a Replacements' album, Tim, specifically. Ironically, you’re replacing it in your collection, having lost it to your ex boyfriend. Note to self: never combine your record collection with anyone ever again. 

This morning you’d googled “record shops near me” and scrolled past Walmart and Target, no thank you, and settled on Bravo Records. The blurb advertised it as a “Laid-back music shop specializing in vintage, pressed recordings, CDs & cassette tapes,” and mentioned a bookstore in the basement and a consignment shop out back. 

Pulling into the gravel parking lot, you take in the building. There are murals depicting perfect recreations of album covers on the brick walls of the store. If you couldn’t see the brushstrokes when you got up close, you’d think they were somehow printed on. The bright yellow of Metallica’s 72 Seasons, the hands reaching for the sky on Boygenius’ The Record, both newer releases. But there’s also The Clash’s London Calling and The Stooges’ Fun House. 

Whoever owns this place has taste. You step into the shop, eyes immediately drawn to the oddly curved ceiling and the exposed brick walls, covered in posters and random paintings. There are 6 sets of shelves running almost the entire length of the store up to a small clearing in the back. There’s a surprisingly large stage beyond that, someone playing the guitar and reciting poetry, a smattering of people leaned against the shelves, listening. 

“Welcome to Bravo’s,” a deep but cheery voice rings in your ear. You let out a small yelp and turn sharply to face the source. “Oh! Didn’t mean to scare you. I was just downstairs and heard the door… I’m Dieter, by the way.”

You take in the man now standing in front of you. He’s wearing a very faded Nirvana shirt stretched within an inch of its life across his broad chest and shoulders. It probably used to be black, but now it’s a bit gray, and there are holes in the seams of the collar. His wide legged pants are black and flowy, you almost mistake them for a skirt until he leans against the counter and crosses his legs. His Docs are scuffed, clearly worn in, maybe vintage. You trail your eyes back up his body, noting the various tattoos on his hands and arms, all black ink and thick linework. You settle back on his face and find his eyebrows arched over deep brown eyes, plush lips in a pout. His beard is scruffy, patchy, and his hair looks like he just rolled out of bed. 

“Find anything you like?” He smirks at you and you suddenly realize you just silently checked him out for a good 10 seconds. Your cheeks heat and you clear your throat. 

“Um… I’m looking for Tim? The album I mean, not the guy, I don’t even know a Tim. By the Replacements? Do you know it?” You sound like an idiot oh god. 

He barely restrains a chuckle, mirth dancing in his eyes, “Yeah, I know it. I only have a first pressing in the original sleeve… is that okay?” He crosses his arms over his chest and holy shit. His biceps are huge. You bite your lip and nod. 

“Yes! Er… um. How much is it?” You wince. There’s no way it’s gonna fit in your pitifully small budget. 

Dieter tilts his head to the side and scrunches his eyebrows up, two lines forming between them. He brings a hand to his unruly hair and tugs. So that’s why he looks like he just got thoroughly fucked. He perks his head up suddenly, almost like he heard your thoughts.

“Do you wanna go out with me?” 

“What?”

“Oh! I mean go out for coffee with me and you can have the record.”

“I can’t just take it for free, Dieter!” 

“Of course you can. I’m the owner. It’s my record. Do you not want to go out with me?” His face scrunches up again and fuck. He’s really cute. 

“Of course I want to go out with you,” you splutter, shocking yourself. 

“It’s settled then. Let’s go!” He turns and walks out the door and you scramble to keep up with him. 

“Now? Don’t you have to run the shop?” 

“Nah, Chrissy can handle it,” he waves his hand like it’s no big deal and heads for the street. “It’s just right down the road.” 

–-

Coffee with Dieter is amazing. He orders a sweet monstrosity, frozen, topped with whipped cream and 3 kinds of syrup. You try to order your favorite drink, but he insists you get the same thing as him. 

“Just trust me!” You’ve literally just met the man, but you think you do trust him. There’s just something about him. He learns your name when you give it to the barista and you apologize profusely for being too flustered to properly introduce yourself. 

He just laughs and guides you to a pair of armchairs in the corner, kicking off his boots to reveal mismatched socks – one a dark purple tall sock with embroidered grapes on it, the other an ankle sock with a print of Starry Night on it – and settles cross legged into the chair. You tell him you like his socks. 

He asks you about what you do for work, where you’re from, what your favorite movies are, an endlessly easy and flowing conversation, peppering in his own answers and arguing with you when you tell him that Judd Apatow movie about making a movie during covid was awful. He asks you what your holy grail album is, the one you’d kill to have in your collection. You don’t even have to think about it.

“The Velvet Underground and Nico, original pressing, with the sticker still on it. I’ll never be able to afford it though. I’ve never even seen one in real life.”

“Do you want to?” He looks at you with a shit eating grin and a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

“What? Want to see one in real life? I mean… yeah?” 

“Let’s go then!” He jumps up, pulling his boots back on and heading for the door. You’re again hustling to keep up with him. You follow him out onto the sidewalk. 

“Dieter! Go where?” 

“To my house!” You grab his arm and pull him to a stop. 

“Why are we going to your house?” You’re exasperated.

“To show you the record. You wanted to see it right?” 

“You do not have it. Dieter, there’s no way… One of them just sold for 25k.”

“I do have it. My dad bought it when it came out and now it’s mine.” He takes off walking again, grabbing your hand and pulling you along with him. 

“Is this some sort of ploy to get me to go home with you? You could have just asked.” 

“I know! I mean… fuck. I’m being serious. I have the record upstairs.” He suddenly comes to a stop in front of an apartment building. “If you want, you can wait here and I’ll bring it down. Just promise not to rob me, yeah?” You huff out a frustrated breath. 

“No, it’s fine. I’ll come in with you.” 

His face lights up and he threads his fingers through yours again. It feels nice, holding his hand. He pulls you up the stairs with him and unlocks his door, and you step into his living room. His apartment was clearly supposed to be one of those industrial chic, modern type spaces, but he clearly didn’t care for that style. There are paintings and posters covering every square inch of wall space. “I take it you decorated the shop then?” 

“Yep! I do all the murals too.” Fuck, he can paint too? The concrete floor is covered with rugs of all different shapes, sizes, and textures. There’s a blue couch and some clearly thrifted armchairs off to the left. The right side of the room is absolutely dominated by his record collection. There’s a shelf running the length of the room, standing taller than you and absolutely stuffed with records. On the floor around it are milk crates filled with even more records. 

“Jesus Christ, Dieter, how many records do you have?” You wander over to a crate and start flipping through, finding that he’s organized them by genre. This one is folk punk you notice as you flip through albums by AJJ, Violent Femmes, The Mountain Goats, and more. 

“I genuinely have no idea. I stopped counting back when I was a teenager.” He goes to the shelf, and you decide it must be more organized than it looks because he quickly pulls two albums out and presents them to you. One is the album you asked about in the shop. The other one… 

“Holy shit.” You stare up at him from your crouched position. “Holy fucking shit Dieter you actually have it.”

“I fuckin’ told you! Do you wanna listen to it?” 

“Do I want to listen to it? Are you actually kidding me? Of course I do!!” He grins at you and walks over to his record player beside the couch. He slides the record out of the sleeve gently and places it on the turntable before dropping the needle. You join him on the couch as the first notes of “Sunday Morning” drift into the room. 

“Dieter?” He hums and smiles at you again. “I could kiss you right now. Fuck. Can I kiss you right now?” He looks shocked for a second before taking your face in his hands and pressing his lips to yours. You kiss him back hard, licking into his mouth. He drags you into his lap, your knees settling on the outsides of his thighs. 

You bury your hands in his wild curls and gently tug on them. He groans into your mouth and trails his hands down your body, pulls you even tighter against him. You can feel him getting hard under you, his soft pants doing little to conceal his arousal. You’re not much better off as his lips leave yours and trail down your jaw, your throat, his teeth catching skin as he goes. When “I’m Waiting for the Man,” starts to play, Dieter brings his hands back to your face and pulls you away from him, staring deep into your eyes. 

“Do you wanna have sex with me?” 

You stare at him, shocked for a moment, and then you laugh so hard you fall sideways off his lap. “You know what, Dieter? Yes. I’d like to have sex with you.” 

“Cool,” he breathes out, turning and settling his body over yours. He presses another kiss to your lips and you tug on his shirt. He pulls back long enough to strip it off and you take yours off too. He lays sloppy, open mouthed kisses on your throat and chest, mumbling praises into your skin as he works your jeans and panties down your thighs. You kick them off as he makes his way down to your core. You’re wetter than you’ve ever been in your entire life. He’s so fucking gorgeous. All golden skin beautifully covered in black ink. 

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” Dieter whispers into the space between your thighs. Your hands fly to his hair as he licks a stripe from your entrance to your clit, immediately closing his lips around it and sucking lightly. Your head falls back and a moan rips from your throat. 

He presses a thick finger into you and it’s fucking bliss. He feels so good already. He curls his finger upwards, swirling his tongue in circles around your clit at the same time. Your hands drop to his shoulders as he adds another finger and starts thrusting them into you, curling on every upstroke into your g-spot. 

“Fuck! Dieter… feels so good. Don’t stop.” 

“Shhh baby, I can’t hear the song.” 

You dig your nails into his shoulders, laughing and on the verge of coming at the same time. He slips his tongue down to join his fingers at your entrance and buries his nose against your clit and you’re gone. The shaking of your body from laughing at him quickly gives over to shuddering as your core tightens around his fingers. You cry out, pure euphoria washing over your whole body. 

“That’s it baby. Fuck, you’re squeezing my fingers so tight. Look so pretty coming for me.” Dieter talks you through it until the haze of your orgasm fades. “Here or the bed?” 

“Here. Get in me. Now.” You grab at his hair, pulling his face back up to yours. You kiss your own slick off his lips hungrily as he clumsily shoves his pants down far enough for his cock to spring out. He slides it through your folds a few times before notching it at your entrance. 

You grab his hips and pull him into you, throwing your head back and arching your hips up into him. “Impatient.” He grumbles it into your neck, but thrusts himself into the hilt, clearly as desperate as you. He barely gives you a chance to adjust before he’s drawing back and thrusting into you again. His breath leaves him in a low growl that has a new gush of slick coating his cock. 

You wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him back into you every time he pulls out. His thrusts are shallow from this angle, but he’s slamming into you so hard it doesn’t matter. You slot your lips together, not really kissing, just breathing each other in. 

“Dieter, I’m gonna come again,” you can feel your walls tightening around him, drawing him deeper into you. He shifts his angle slightly so that his pelvis grinds against your clit every time his hips meet yours. Your nails dig into the meat of his shoulders, dragging down to his lower back as your whole body tightens and spasms around him. 

For a moment, as you catch your breath, you think your hearing must have gone out. Dieter is buried to the hilt inside you, torso pressed flush to yours, but you don’t hear the music anymore. “Want me to flip it to the B side?” Oh. He just fucked you for the entire A side of the track and he’s still not done. 

“Yeah sure,” you huff a laugh into his hair. He lifts up, presses a kiss to your lips and pulls out of you with a groan. Your cunt flutters around nothing, missing the feeling of him inside you already. You get a good look at his cock now – thick, uncut, drooling precum and covered in your release. He’s so pretty. 

 He flips the record to the B side and then pushes his pants down the rest of the way, leaving them in a black puddle on the floor. He grabs your hips and flips you over onto your stomach. “Thought I’d get a look at your B side too,” Dieter says and you can hear the smirk in his voice. 

“I think I hate you,” you mumble into the cushions. He just laughs and settles one knee on the couch, his other foot planted on the floor. He taps your ass cheek lightly.

“Up on your knees, pretty girl.” You shift to comply and he settles his hands on your hips, helping you up and burying his cock in you again in one smooth motion. 

“Fuck!” Your arms buckle and you drop to your elbows as he rails you. The new angle is so good it almost hurts. He uses his grip on your hips to pull you into every thrust, punching the breath out of you and turning your brain to mush. You couldn’t tell him what song is playing right now if your life depended on it. All you hear is your own strangled moans and the praises he’s crying out into the air. 

“So fucking beautiful. You’re so tight and wet, fuck. I’m gonna come baby. Can I come in your pretty pussy? Please?” You nearly come again at that. The thought of being full of him. 

“Yes! Yes! Dieter. Come in me. Need it. Please!” He buries himself inside you and stays there and you can actually feel his cock jump inside you, hot spurts of cum filling you up. He curls himself over your back and you both collapse into the couch. 

He rolls onto his side, pulling you with him and tucking your back to his chest. He doesn’t pull out of you, just tangles your legs together and wraps his arms around you. You both just lay there in a daze, listening to the rest of the album. When “European Son” fades out and the record starts clicking, Dieter finally slips his softened cock from you. He stands up and puts the record back in its sleeve, filing it back on the shelf. 

“If I go to the bathroom, will you still be here when I get back, or are you gonna steal my record and break my heart?” 

“Of course I’m gonna steal it,” you smile at him, still stretched out on the couch and not really planning on moving any time soon. He rolls his eyes, laughing at you and disappearing into the hallway. 

Maybe combining record collections isn’t completely off the table. If it’s with the right person. 

[wedarkacademia]

dark academia stationary tips? ideas? please? i beg of you.

Deepen Your Dive into Dark Academia Stationery:

Crafting the Canvas:

Paper: Embrace the tactile – rough-edged parchment, marbled sheets, hand-dyed linen paper. Seek antique ledgers, vintage score sheets, or maps for a truly timeworn effect.

Ink: Let your words drip in history – deep emerald greens, rich burgundy, charcoal grey. Discover shimmering gold or silver for elegant annotations. For an extra flourish, explore calligraphy inks and vintage fountain pens.

Beyond the Basics:

Washi Tapes: Forget the neon, embrace botanical prints, celestial patterns, and antique library stamps. Layer them for depth, use them to seal letters, or decorate journal edges.

Stickers & Tags: Pressed leaves, dried flowers, and ephemera from library archives add a touch of natural mystery. Vintage anatomy diagrams, constellations, and old library catalog cards offer an academic flair.

Sealing Secrets: Wax seals & ribbons elevate simple letters into heirlooms. Choose deep green wax, embossed with a raven, a quill, or your own monogram. Tie with silk or hemp twine for a finishing touch.

Unleashing the Scholarly Spirit:

Journals & Notebooks: Opt for leather-bound volumes, with aged paper and ribbon bookmarks. Decorate with antique maps, pressed flowers, or handwritten quotes from your favorite poets.

Organizing Knowledge: Index cards, vintage library pockets, and antique file folders help categorize your studies. Label them with elegant script and adorn them with botanical sketches or scientific diagrams.

The Scholar's Tools: Antique brass compasses, vintage rulers, and magnifying glasses add a touch of academic ambiance to your desk.

Whispers of Antiquity:

Poetry & Letters: Handwrite in a flowing script, penning sonnets or letters to fellow scholars. Let foreign languages add a touch of mystery, or slip in quotes from forgotten classics.

Ephemera & Found Objects: Tuck pressed leaves, antique botanical prints, or ticket stubs from forgotten museums into your notebooks. Let them spark inspiration and evoke past journeys.

The Art of Storytelling: Create your own dark academia-inspired stationery. Make vintage-themed envelopes from maps, decorate boxes with constellation patterns, or craft your own wax seal stamp.

Remember, dark academia is about embracing an atmosphere. Let your creativity flow, curate your collection with intention, and transform your stationery into a portal to an enchanting world of forgotten knowledge and secret societies.

[cicelythereaper]

If I wanted to get really into medieval welsh literature instead of just reading everything in our beloved Hergest duo, do you have any recommendations on where to begin?

hi! sorry it took me so long to answer this but hopefully the length of the answer means it's worth the wait. by "our beloved hergest duo" i'm assuming you mean the white book of rhydderch and the red book of hergest, and more specifically the texts collected as the mabinogion from those two manuscripts - if i'm wrong let me know. i'm also assuming that you mainly want to read in english translation, at least to start with.

there is a LOT of medieval welsh literature out there beyond the mabinogion but a lot of it is harder to access. this is a rough menu of options with my honest opinions about how easy it is to get at these things:

the triads of the island of britain (trioedd ynys prydein), aka a big long list of People And Things From Welsh Tradition (Some Possibly Made Up). for this you want rachel bromwich's edition and translation: there are four different editions of this and all of them are expensive (and three of them are out of print). i recommend keeping an eye out on secondhand book websites for the 2nd edition (1978) or the 4th (2014), or bugging your library to see if they have, or will buy, either of these. if you're currently at uni you may be able to get access to an electronic version of the 4th edition.

material about merlin. maybe start with geoffrey of monmouth's latin vita merlini - this is less a reflection of welsh tradition and more an extremely lengthy riff on it, but still very interesting. a new translation of it can be found here! medieval merlin material in welsh is basically all prophetic poetry, mostly from the black book of carmarthen. at the moment, the best place to find translations of this is in the romance of merlin, ed. peter goodrich (1990) - again i recommend looking out for a secondhand copy or talking to your library. hopefully the myrddin project at cardiff will soon have fresh editions and translations for us available online! (in the meantime, here's their twitter.) there's also armes prydein vawr, a somewhat different type of prophecy poem also associated with merlin/myrddin and generally dated to the 10th century, which you can find on archive.org here.

material associated with taliesin. this comes in many shapes and sizes. first of all, there's praise poetry attributed to taliesin and addressed to the 6th-century king urien of rheged: this is mostly translated in the two clancy anthologies i'm going to cite further down, but if you want the welsh text, the best place to find it is probably in ifor williams' edition (translated into english as the poems of taliesin by j. e. caerwyn williams, available from the dublin institute for advanced studies). second of all, there's All The Other Poetry Attributed To Taliesin: for this you want marged haycock's legendary poems from the book of taliesin and prophecies from the book of taliesin. again with these i recommend the secondhand or library approach. THIRD of all, there's a relatively late folktale about taliesin (this is where ceridwen and gwion bach come in): this you can find translated in patrick k. ford's the mabinogi (which it looks like you can get as a kindle or paperback comparatively cheap).

y gododdin, the massive poetic text attributed to aneirin about A Lot Of Dead Dudes In Southern Scotland. this is a tough one to get to grips with, i'm not gonna lie. if you want to get at the welsh text, the massive modern welsh edition by ifor williams (canu aneirin) is still the best there is, but he reorders the stanzas of the poem from the manuscript pretty radically. (to see the stanzas in order, look for daniel huws' facsimile edition of the book of aneirin - or, depending on how well you read medieval welsh handwriting, check out the manuscript itself.) for translations, i recommend joseph p. clancy's, which has multiple versions floating around - there's one in the triumph tree (ed. thomas owen clancy) and a slightly less full one in medieval welsh poems (joseph clancy's big anthology, now out of print). this is the most poetic while still being largely accurate, but if you're concerned about academic levels of accuracy, then i recommend balancing clancy out with kenneth jackson's the gododdin: the oldest scottish poem, which has the advantage of being designed to be used alongside ifor williams. FOR ALL OF THESE you'll need to hit up secondhand booksellers or libraries.

early welsh englyn poetry: by this i mean poetry in englyn metre about historic figures and landscapes. as academic sources/translations, if you can get your hands on them, i recommend jenny rowland's early welsh saga poetry (1990) and patrick sims-williams' new englynion y beddau (2023), but both of these are massive and expensive. a more approachable way to get at this material may be rowland's a selection of early welsh saga poems, which is intended more for classroom use - this you can get for relatively cheap as a paperback. you might also want to check out kenneth jackson's studies in early celtic nature poetry (dated, but i think he translates some of the less-studied englyn poetry in there: again, check with secondhand booksellers) and nicolas jacobs' early welsh gnomic and nature poetry (cheaper and easier to get, but untranslated, though he gives a useful glossary so you can attempt it yourself).

additional arthurian material. this is scattered across various places and manuscripts, but some good places to learn about it, if not necessarily read it, are o. j. padel's arthur in medieval welsh literature (2013, heavily recommended, you can get it cheap as a paperback); bromwich et al's the arthur of the welsh (1991), which iirc includes patrick sims-williams' translation of my beloved arthurian poem pa gur; and the new and exciting arthur in the celtic languages, ed. ceridwen lloyd-morgan and erich poppe (2019), which is going to give you a BIG and comprehensive overview of every text arthur has ever shown up in in welsh. for the last two you definitely want to go secondhand or through a library. EDITED TO ADD: [LOUD BUZZER NOISE] I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT NERYS ANN JONES' ARTHUR IN EARLY WELSH POETRY which came out in 2019! go buy it it's a £15 paperback! an absolute steal for what you get!

high and late medieval poetry of praise, lament and love: the bread and butter of the professional poet. these can be found in various places. for the gogynfeirdd, the high medieval poets, the medieval welsh texts (+ modern welsh paraphrases) can be found in the absolutely massive series cyfres beirdd y tywysogion, but this is not something to attempt to get without a powerful library on your side. the late medieval poetry, on the other hand, is edited in cyfres beirdd yr uchelwyr and can be found online here - which was news to me! much of this material has never been translated into english. for a good selection of translations of some of the best stuff, i really recommend joseph p. clancy's medieval welsh poems (find a secondhand copy or get your library to do it for you), and/or tony conran's welsh verse. a couple of good selections of the later medieval poetry are: the poetry of dafydd ap gwilym, ALL of which is available online in translation here; loomis and johnston's medieval welsh poems: an anthology; and dafydd johnston's galar y beirdd: poets' grief, which specifically collects poets' laments for their dead children.

RELIGIOUS MATERIAL, of which there is a shit-ton. my recommendations are definitely going to be missing some stuff (e.g. soul-and-body dialogues, descriptions of purgatory, etc) but here's what i've got. for material to do with welsh saints, i recommend this website, where you can find translations of a lot of the latin prose lives of saints and quite a few welsh poems about saints as well - and if you look at the bottom you'll see it lists a few more books you might want to look into. if you want an even fuller look at welsh saints' latin lives, albeit dated, see if you can get your hands on a secondhand/library copy of wade-evans' vitae sanctorum britanniae (1944). if you like genealogies, barry lewis i believe has just put out an edition and study of bonedd y saint, the genealogies of the welsh saints, available from the dublin institute for advanced studies (though it's not the cheapest thing out there).* there is also a lot of general religious poetry, which you can find edited in marged haycock's blodeugerdd barddas o ganu crefyddol cynnar (1994) and translated in mckenna's the medieval welsh religious lyric (1991).

*i should also say that if you're interested in medieval welsh genealogies in general, you want ben guy's medieval welsh genealogy - this is very technical and probably expensive but if you really need to know who's related to who in the welsh historical imagination, it's a great resource.

(pseudo-)historical texts: there are various of these. the most famous is geoffrey of monmouth's de gestis britonum (also known as historia regum britanniae, 'history of the kings of britain') - this you can find edited and translated by reeve & wright under the latter title. if you want to know about geoffrey's work but you can't get your hands on it or don't have time to read what is honestly a massive text, then i recommend karen jankulak's book geoffrey of monmouth - super useful and you can get it cheap as a paperback. then there are medieval welsh translations of this text (all known as brut y brenhinedd), some of which go on to become chronicles in their own right (brut y tywysogion). off the top of my head there are three different versions of brut y tywysogion which you can find in a good english translation: the peniarth 20 version (edited and translated by thomas jones, edition 1941, translation 1952); the red book of hergest version (ed. and trans. thomas jones, 1955); and brenhinedd y saesson (ed. and trans. thomas jones, 1971). you might also want to check out the medieval biography of gruffudd ap cynan (king of gwynedd 1081-1137), which starts as a latin text and is later translated into welsh. the latin text is edited and translated by paul russell as vita griffini filii conani (2005); the welsh text is edited as historia gruffud vab kenan (1977) and translated as a mediaeval prince of wales: the life of gruffudd ap cynan (1990) by d. simon evans.

edited to add: [LOUD BUZZER SOUND] I FORGOT ABOUT HISTORIA BRITTONUM AND SHOULD BE PUBLICLY SHAMED. this is a ninth-century latin historical text from north wales, it's weird as hell, i love it to bits and should probably actually read more of it. currently the edition everybody uses is john morris's nennius: british history and the welsh annals (1980), which is not the most expensive thing out there but certainly not the cheapest so get it through your library if you can. this is especially useful in conjunction with geoffrey's de gestis britonum because he was absolutely using it as a source.

the hardest thing to get at on this list: translation literature. by the time we get to the red book of hergest there's been a huge boom in medieval translations of french and latin texts into welsh - and these are often really fun and interesting to read, but under-studied! this is an issue because it means i basically cannot recommend you any english translations of them. if you're still interested and you want to plough through the medieval welsh yourself, here are some texts:

cân rolant, a welsh version of the 'song of roland' aka Violence Violence Violence, edited and translated by a. c. rejhon (1984) - the only thing on this list to have a recent translation, alas;

ystorya de carolo magno, edited by stephen williams, 2nd edition (1986) - a welsh version of the charlemagne legend, this is where cân rolant comes from;

ystoryaeu seint greal, a welsh translation of two french romances, queste del saint graal and perlesvaus: you can find the whole thing in the (very old, undoubtedly outdated) selections from the hengwrt mss volume 1, y seint greal, edited and translated by robert williams (1874-6), which is on archive.org here, and the welsh text of the first part is edited as y keis by thomas jones (1992);

ystorya bown de hamtwn, a welsh version of the romance of bevis of hampton, an absolutely insane text about the worst man in the world which i love dearly: the whole thing is edited (but not translated) by morgan watkin (1958); selected bits of it are edited with a useful glossary for classroom use by erich poppe and regine reck as selections from ystorya bown o hamtwn (2009);

a welsh bestiary of love, ed. g. c. g. thomas (2008) - a translation of the french bestiaire d'amour, aka Do You Want To Hear The Worst Man In The World Tell You Dubious Animal Facts? Of Course You Do;

kedymdeithyas amlyn ac amic, edited by patricia williams (1982), a welsh version of the french tale ami et amile about two identical friends;

chwedlau odo, a collection of fables, edited by ifor williams (1958);

chwedlau seith doethon rufein, edited by henry lewis (1958) - 'stories of the seven sages of rome'.

and finally, medical texts! if you want a look at medieval welsh medical practices and you want to learn a lot of plant names in middle welsh, check out diana luft's medieval welsh medical texts, which you can find online for free here.

i hope this is helpful! enjoy Experiencing Welsh Literature and best of luck getting your hands on it!

[nanowrimo]

A Letter to Writers who are Parents

Can you successfully write while also being a parent? NaNo Participant Desiree S. Brown confidently says yes, you can do both. Desiree offers heartfelt words of inspiration to other author-parents out there. My eyes were heavy with sleep as I plodded over to my son’s crib. I remember holding him in a state of awe, but I was also terrified. I hadn’t written in months—not from lack of trying—and had just emerged from a digital rabbit hole.

Desperate for pointers from seasoned author-parents, I asked Google, “How do authors write while raising kids?”

I expected encouragement, but found Lauren Sandler’s essay The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and Mother: Have Just One Kid and Cyril Connolly’s famous quote: “There’s no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.”

You can write and be a parent.

Many authors opted out of parenthood, believing each birth cost them a book. Doris Lessing, for example, had abandoned her children with their father in favor of her writing career.

It’s heartbreaking, but untrue. Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison, Jodi Picoult, Ursula K. Le Guin, Sarah Manguso and other authors managed to have successful careers while raising children. Manguso wrote in The Grand Shattering:

I used to believe that maximizing the number of hours reading, writing, and thinking about writing would make me the best writer I could be, and that my friend who had chosen to have three children just didn’t value being a writer as much as I did. Then I had a child and found that the amount of time I spend writing isn’t the only thing that makes me a better writer. I also grow by weathering trauma, practicing patience, being seasoned by love.

Parenting will help you grow as a writer.

Many author-parents noted an enrichment in their writing. In his essay, The Pram in the Hall, Shane Jones wrote, “I’ve discovered many writer-fathers who not only continued to produce work, but produced work that is richer and more interesting because of their fatherhood.”

New life moments create powerful experiences and what is storytelling, poetry, or essays but the exploration of those experiences? Parenting shaped me and my writing in a way that childlessness couldn't. I’ve learned to be more empathetic and honest with my time management (why didn’t I write during my son’s two hour nap?).

Jodi Picoult learned to be “hyper-aware of relationships between people,” Jane Smiley’s kids exposed her to new ideas by forcing her into the world, and Maggie O’Farrel learned “to concentrate with the intensity of a telekinetic.”

You’re not neglectful for prioritizing writing or parenting.

There’s a constant tug of war within writer-parents, not to mention the crushing weight of social expectations: writers need silence at all times and parents prioritize their kids.

But that's an unrealistic standard that will ruin any parent’s mental health, resulting in a loss of self, depression, and frustration. O’Farrel writes:

Don’t feel guilty about taking time to write. Guilt is no use to you here. Throw yourself headlong into whatever is in front of you, whether it’s writing or doling out small bowls of pasta or making potato prints. It’s good for your children to have a fulfilled parent, not a frustrated one. A child witnessing their parent working and being gratified by that work is an excellent lesson for them.

So, what’s the answer to the big question? How do authors write while raising kids?

They do it like anyone else: stealing time between diaper changes and naps; juggling housework, parent-work, and writer-work as best as they can; and realizing that they have the potential to create a fulfilling writing career like anyone else.

That’s the answer I will carry with me into Camp NaNo, the next project, and beyond.

Desiree S. Brown is an author that lives in the sunny state of California with her husband and son. She publishes her work on her website, desireesbrown.com, while also sharing her passion for reading and writing. Photo by SHVETS production from Pexels

[aeaean-witch]

"All languages have powers, for example, Latin is used to summon demons. You've just found out what English is used for."

This is something I wrote based on this prompt. I got this prompt from @writing-prompt-s but can't find the original post, therefore am unable to reblog from there.

Here's an excerpt,

Once language had no power beyond the power of communication, which is by no means a lesser power. Many languages were spoken far and wide, languages that changed form when you moved just a few miles, languages with arbitrary rules courtsey of the ever-changing cultures, languages that changed so much they became unrecognisable like a ship in the Aegean , languages with a horde of dialects, accents and idiosyncrasies. The language shaped the culture and the culture shaped the language, each a nurturing mother to the other, and poetry existed.

However, it all changed when a shadow fell upon the world.

Do read and enjoy:)

A scritch of matchstick lighting, a whiff of sulphurous smoke and a steady flame burning as you light the lamp beside you. Satisfied, you take out the thick sheaf of papers from under the floorboards where you had stashed them in a hurry the night before. The pages are dusty, and a cloud of smoke blows upwards when you place them heavily on your desk. It smells much like any stack would after years of disuse, lying locked up in a library. The smell makes you cough and you look for a cloth to cover your mouth and nose with. Spotting a towel hanging from the rudimentary drying line set up in your room, you wrap it around your mouth and begin turning the pages carefully one by one. It is a thick stack of papers and would take you months to just get through but just going through it is not your plan.

No, you need to master this.

This is why you came here to this university. You flip back to the start and start reading. The words are in small print as if the writer wanted to condense all information in as few pages as possible. A sure indication that this was written during the Unlearning Era which proves its mere existence to be nothing short of a miracle. You suddenly feel guilty for just having placed it on your desk with no ceremony or preparation. You are certain you are doing some irreversible damage to these pages but what's done is done. It isn't as if it was flourishing in the university library. You bring forth another stash of papers and mutter some incantations in some long forgotten language, Czech you think it was called, and watch the contents of the stolen pages get copied down as they were. The print is still small, to your annoyance, you will have to pour over it with a magnifying glass. As you are about to finish, you hear a shuffle of feet coming down the hallway outside your room, in a flash you pick up the sheaf of stolen documents and put them inside the loose floorboard under your bed. A knock sounds on the door, you take your lamp and make sleepy shuffling sounds for a decent amount of time before opening the door.

The warden stands outside.

"Good evening Ackster, sorry to bother you in the middle in the night but we are conducting a search of the university dormitories", he says in crisp tones.

Two senior prefects stand behind him.

"Why?", you ask through bleary eyes. "Um...may I ask the reason sir?"

"Well, I am sure the reason doesn't concern you. Now, if you'd just scoot over and let the boys enter."

The goons enter your room as you barely suppress an eye roll. They go through your closet, your cupboards, underneath the quilt and find  nothing more worth of notice than a few loose quills and pieces of parchment ubiquitous to any student's room. Then one of them peers under the bed and says to the other, "Hey, there appears to be a loose floorboard here."

Your breath almost stops.

The prefects turn to look at you, smug smiles on both their faces as if they have found some heinous secret of yours. Together, they shift the bed off to one side and remove the floorboard.

"Sir, look."

The warden steps forward into the room and peers into the little nook.

"I would say I am surprised but that wouldn't be the truth", he says. "Confiscate the items and bring them to the office. Ackster, I am afraid you will have to pay a fine and serve detention for a week."

You breathe an imperceptible sigh of relief. The goons lean down and take out a stash of weed and some explicit magazines from the nook. The warden leaves to go to the next room. The prefects, sniggering, put their exploits into a sack which already looks near bulging. More of the same, you suppose. "Who knew little Acky here's all grown up now," they say. They leave ruffling your neat hair and shoving and patting in the way they do with their lot. You again suppress the urge to roll your eyes and shove them away in turn. Rolling your eyes, you've learnt is a bad way to respond in situations meant to incur trust. So you say goodnight instead and shut your door amiably with no semblance of hurry.

After, you rush to the nook and say a few soft words that sound almost like a hiss, Mandarin. The nook reveals its true contents that you had hurriedly stashed there five minutes ago. You hope you didn't damage the papers anymore in your hurry. Those fools had hardly ever learned a language other than what would be required to pass the course but you had always strived for complete knowledge, studying night after night and day after day and look who had outsmarted them now by creating an extra dimension to hide the stolen papers. The weed and porn had been a necessity, nothing new or surprising if found in the possession of a teenager, perhaps more surprising if not found, for that meant they had a better place to hide it. You carefully put the room back in order and go to sleep. Tomorrow, if the clamor goes down, you will put the papers back in their exalted grave. You had no use for fragile pieces of paper, just their contents.

The next day, when you go down for breakfast there is a new buzz about the room. Sitting down with your tray, you overhear snatches of it in conversations. "Did your room get searched too?" "Yes, everybody's got searched far as I am aware. " "Did you know what they found in Micah's room?" "All my wizard cards were confiscated. What is their problem?" "My quail also, what had she ever done?" "You know you can't keep pets in the dormitory. They are dangerous, their language causes unpredictable effects."

"Saera's toad set her whole room on fire in junior year. It only stopped when the toad itself got burned." "His name was Sir Bernard and you will call him so. " "Oh welcome, Saera." "But why the sudden search? Do you think something happened?" "Yes, I wonder why?" "I heard someone stole the principal's wig. To be honest, I haven't seen her all day." "Well I heard someone is secretly performing dark magic in their rooms. Using voodoo dolls to control people..."

So they were not letting information slip out. You wonder why?

An age old university with a vast library and something gets stolen from the library. From the forbidden section too. The way it had looked like a desolated cavern when you had first stepped foot in it did not encourage any possibilities of it being used well. So what if someone had stolen some things, it's not like they were making use of it anyways.

Knowledge and studies were, to these people, merely a means to secure social standing, gain an upper hand in conversations or, at the very most, a trick to impress people at parties with, but they made it as exclusive as they could, especially ever since languages gained powers. Once language had no power beyond the power of communication, which is by no means a lesser power, it sure is overrated however, you've always thought. Many languages were spoken far and wide, languages that changed form when you moved just a few miles, languages with arbitrary rules courtsey of the ever-changing cultures, languages that changed so much they became unrecognisable like a ship in the Aegean, languages with a horde of dialects, accents and idiosyncrasies. The language shaped the culture and the culture shaped the language, each a nurturing mother to the other, and poetry existed.

However, it all changed when a shadow fell upon the world. The Shadow wished to learn everything, for understanding everything was the key to freedom. True freedom, not the store bought ones that is present in the minds of a few overzealous lot that makes and breaks nations. A noble pursuit when taken up by the less powerful, but in its quest the Shadow broke the world, it sucked in everything and no one quite knows what happened but when the Shadow cleared, every language had changed, not in its structure but in what it could do. The power of language was no more bound to the confines of communication, it broke free and when people tried to use the languages to speak, it was the equivalent of using swords to cut vegetables, it sure did cut the vegetables alright, but sometimes it also cut the wielder.

Chaos reigned again, the world burned, people had to unlearn everything and communicate through the years via the grunts and crude hand signals reminiscent of their ancestors. Scholars worked hard to preserve what languages they could even as a new language was formulated, one that through careful consideration could transfer ideas from one mind to another by pushing the air particles in between them. That sounded magical enough, after all. It should do that and nothing more, so meek should this language be that the thaumatic fields should not even detect it, it should pass right through the gaps of its fibers. And that's the language everyone spoke now, it was standardized and tampering with anything was strictly illegal upon the pain of death by having your tongue pulled out.

Slowly, the powers of those ancient languages were tamed enough that one could use them as basic spells without flaying oneself. But legend has it that if one could master all languages, they can become powerful beyond measure. Now the study of languages was regulated, confined to just a few universities in the world. And confined to the rich and influential as most nice things tend to be. Oh, there were scholarships and patrons and the likes to keep up the ruse of benevolence, but the sheer number of rich doofuses studying in this place betrayed the facade of equality. Some folks liked to say that the poor were quite satisfied with their simple lives and did not wish to pursue such an arduous field.

Lies. Everybody wants power.

There was chatter and theories being sprouted all around the school that day. Rumors were rife and each one more colourful than the last. A murder that was being covered up, leaked question papers for the upcoming exams, someone digging up a tunnel to escape the dormitories. It was truly wondrous to see the tales that the human minds can conjur at the slightest incentive. The principal was nowhere to be seen all throughout the day but you see her towards the evening during supper time. Her wig sits snugly on her head alright, but she looks worried and distracted.

You also notice the heightened security around the library in the morning. The guard is not sleeping outside the door for once. But you know it's more than that, there are perhaps several traps placed around the area and especially around the forbidden section to prevent any more thievery. It will take time to figure out what wards are in place before you can by-pass them and put the papers back in their place. The authorities are just making their lives harder by taking such measures but that's to be expected. You would have simply put everything back in its place but now, until security laxes you are stuck with those papers.

Once back in your room, you open up the copied text excited to finally get to it. You open the part where the archaic language has been written out, finally paying attention to it in earnest now that the adrenaline of stealing it has finally subsided. Funnily enough it's written in the same script as a lot of other ancient language, you remember learning about. So not so archaic after all. One language, Latin it was called is used to summon demons so it is not taught in schools and only specialized individuals learn it. So perhaps this language can do something equally fascinating as well. But there was another one, French, which is used to add flavour to desserts but you really have to get the enunciation right. There is really either way things can go. But it was placed in the forbidden section so there is some hope. You peruse the text, the basics you are somewhat aware of, there is a lot of similarity with a few other languages. You start reading the letters and the words. A for Apple Applie? Appley? Aappal? B for Ball Baall? Baell? The pronunciation might give trouble. You decide to just go along with it and continue reading.

That is when you feel it.

Hair on the back of your neck stands up and you suddenly feel uneasy as if you are being watched. You look up and around the room. Nobody there. You get up and check behind the curtains, outside the window and inside the closet. Nothing there either. You continue your perusal, wary this time and you feel it again. There is someone watching you. You  are sure of it. It's in the way your skin tingles and your neck pricks, you sit up a bit straighter and call out, "Who's there? Show yourself. Don't let me catch you on my own. I know you are there."

No reply.

The shadows in the room remain silent. Not even a giggle or a sound of breath. It's none of your classmates. None of them would hold for this long. You decide to use your incantations. Murmuring under your breath, you cast a spell. But it brings no one forth. Frustrated, you get up and move out of your room. Maybe being cooped up all day is making you see things.

The fresh air outside feels nice and cool against your skin and clears up your mind. Soon you are wondering why you were intimidated so much for no reason. Just nerves, you guess. You go back inside and open up the manuscript again to start reading. No sooner have you started than you feel it again, it creeps up slowly like a fever till it is hard to ignore. You turn around determined this time. But there's no one there. You pick up the bundle and put it in your bag and move outside. You walk to the library and pick up a corner with your back against the wall and the room laid out open in front of you. Discreetly bringing out the manuscript, you start reading again. Again it goes well at first, you learn of something called prepositions when the oppressive feeling starts again. You are being watched. Not just watched but something deeper than that. Scrutinized. Whoever it is, you did not feel them follow you on your way here but here they are nonetheless. Between here and there, the only thing  that's common is the manuscript you brought along. You look at it, its not the original thing but maybe the writing was laced with some sort of curse. You spend some more time in the library picking up books on spying and stalking and such before making your way back to your room. You try out some basic revealing charms on the manuscript, but whoever it was they did a good job of hiding it.

You sit and read the books on spying and the feeling doesn't return, confirming your hypothesis. Taking out the stolen papers, you give them a read too and, sure enough, the feeling starts up again. It is most definitely the writing that is creating trouble. Briefly you wonder if it's just some stupid harmless charm to ward off unwanted readers but there is no need to take a risk. You will wait to see if you can find any curse related to such a thing.

You spend a few days trying and testing the manuscript. Countless trials on your part yield nothing, there is no curse of which you are aware of, so you decide to just head on in, you'll take care of issues as they crop up. Learning languages and becoming the most powerful mage is all you have ever wanted and you won't let go of any opportunity that comes your way, further, one can't attain such ambitious goals without taking a few risks. You read slowly, carefully making notes here and there. The feeling of being watched persists, but you persist too. You will not let them win whoever they are, they want to seal knowledge and secure all the power for themselves and you will not let that happen. So you read. You read everyday, so much so that your actual studies are in jeopardy. Once a star student, now you barely pass university. Flunking out has no effect on you. You forget about the papers you had once stolen, those precious pages rot under the floorboards until some poor innocent kid finds them and throws them out to store his fine collection of mushrooms instead. You continue learning the language residing in a cheap flat with poor plumbing, master it as much as you can through a few sheets of loose paper. You become a librarian to secure more books. Everywhere you go, everything you do someone watches you. The feeling has grown stronger now, it is present even in your dreams but it has stopped terrifying you, in fact, you have grown quite used to it. You are in search for something, what, you are not entirely sure yet. Many a times when things got tough, you contemplated letting it go, but the language has such a grip on you that you can't. Not anymore. Twenty years have passed and twenty more might but you won't let go.

Finally the day comes, the day on which you will speak your first incantations in the language. The day when you find out what special powers it has granted you. The fruit of your decades of hard labour. Now that the time has come, you can't wait any longer. Right there in the middle of your dingy apartment, you brace yourself.

And say, "Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur."

Silence.

Nothing happens.

Then you collapse as the weight of a thousand eyes pin you down. You register a few words being spoken in your mind along the lines of

What's happening? What's going on? That was a pretty stupid spell… You hear these words and look around sharply but they aren't being spoken by any people around you for there are none. You are all alone in the room. But these voices are there most certainly, they echo in your mind like a sudden clamour. I wonder what's going on? There was the voice again. In your head. You wonder if you've gone mad. You are hearing thoughts in your mind that aren't yours. That's a sign of madness, isn't it?

I need to finish this soon and go eat dinner…

How much longer…

The voices speak in a multitude of languages, you recognise some of them, but most of all you recognise the language you have spent so many of your years learning. You hear other sounds too. Dogs barking, rain pattering, someone calling out for dinner, a clacking sound. You listen and you think and then you stop thinking because you don't have to think. No. You just have to listen and be still and the answers will come forth themselves. In the clamour, the answers come forth from minds that are not your own. It doesn't take you long to piece things together and when you do, it hits you like a truck.

They have been watching this entire time, since the moment you struck a matchstick to light a candle and open a dusty bundle of papers under lamplight. The only times you felt them was while reading the language but they have been watching the entire time. The only time you felt them was when you could see them too, not fully, not in a substantial way but you did see them, or rather feel them. Watching you.

You know what the language does now. It connects you to your Watchers, they have been seeing you, but now you see them too, oh yes you do. They are in your mind seeing everything through your eyes but you are in theirs too now, and you see.

And hear.

The clacking sound that had been up until now regular and rhythmic like the beating of a heart, skips a beat. Some fool is writing all this down. Other fools are reading it, blissfully unaware of their fate. Their minds are open to you, all their darkest secrets and deepest fears splayed out in the open, but you care naught for those. No, what strikes you the most are the many beautiful languages that reside there. You breathe in deep as the languages open themselves to you, you have to exert no effort to understand them since you are already in a mind that does. Through their eyes, you see many different lands, different languages that grow even as they change, you see people without a single care of what comes out of their mouths, unafraid of what curse their tongues might weave, for this is before the fall of language, before Shadow, before you, you realise. And feel like laughing. The first time in many long cold years. Now you must learn, know it all as you have always wanted and be free finally. Words and worlds lie open in front of you. To burn or to freeze as your heart desires. From the minds that read a third rate account of your life since the moment of lighting that fateful matchstick and are now at your disposal, you begin to feel hints of apprehension, maybe even fear. It makes you, in turn, feel giddy. You carefully reach inside and there are many minds floating around, unspooled like threads, tantalizing in how they offer themselves up to you. You reach out in your consciousness and catch one. Hello Watcher, you say and hear your voice echoing back to you through their mind. It is I, Shadow.

The clacking sound slows down and then dies.

*****

You can send me feedback if you wish to, I am fairly new to this and would love some constructive criticism to improve. Hope you enjoyed:)

[damnfandomproblems]

5168

That One Anon: Get the fuck out of fandom then if you are That against "theft". Your blorbos aren't yours, then, they belong to the original creators. Go pick up a pen and write your own characters, thief. Never make a creative aspect without citing every single possible subconscious influence you took for it. That head tilt you drew? The concept of a sad backstory? Proper credit only, you thief.

Oh, what's that? You don't count?

I read books daily. I write and draw from pure imagination, and study artists on youtube to get better at drawing.

I also think AI is a tool that can be used for good or ill, and it's how people use it that matters. Much like how a keyboard doesn't stop a human from sending anon hate.

I'd commission artists if I could! I've done so in the past. But guess what, I don't feel safe asking for commissions now on the off chance a artist realizes I think AI is a tool like any other and harasses me when I never would have brought it up. Despite the fact many artists both fandom and original have tons of influences both credited and not. I've seen human artists and writers get accused of AI for STYLISTIC CHOICES that anyone with half a thought should be able to tell was artist intent and inline with previous works.

I can count on one hand the amount of collage art/blackout poetry/drawn over photographs I've seen in public museums that were properly credited beyond the editor. I can't count the amount of media I've seen that nudges at other pre-existing works that was either hyped up for it or was said to justify that aspect.

Ko-fi tipping, Patron subscriptions, sales of generically labled charms and prints and fanart to get around what's Actually being sold. Art style memes, art referenced from canonical works as intentional homage uncredited. Uncredited style inspiration. The entire existence of unsourced, constantly remixed memes.

You gonna claim that's all fine, but anons should expect to be accused of being "techbros" and linked to foreign words meaning "masturbating and crying" for just asking what an artstyle from a artist is called? That it's actually FINE to drive off people wanting to be creative no matter the medium because that particular one 'isn't art' and so no one can want to be a artist and use it?

I swear I've gone back to the 2010s and 'is digital art REAL art though? the computer draws the line for you? You aren't a REAL artist, you just use photoshop to edit things.'

"That's still done by a human person though-"

Hypocrite. Get the fuck out of fandom.

Posting as a response to a previous problem.

[aeide-thea]

beautiful & also terrible to have the sort of brain where you find yrself at 4:30 AM looking up intersections between jewishness & arthuriana. like. fucking amazing rabbit hole but. why am i not asleep. my head hurts and my eyes are sandy.

however. some cool things (that probably some of you knew abt already, but i did not!):

King Artus – "a 'Hebrew Arthurian Romance of 1279… Judaized and transformed.' […] Although the story in 'King Artus' is fairly straightforwardly Arthur’s as we know it today, there are little touches that tie it to Jewish literature. When, for example, Arthur’s mother, the Duchess, learns that her husband is dead and she has been deceived by the shape-shifting Uther Pendragon, she tries to figure out how that could be possible. 'No sooner had he gone more than a bow-shot’s distance away from the castle than the messenger came straight to my chamber.' That bow-shot’s distance comes not from Arthurian legend but from the story of Hagar, who sits a bow-shot’s distance away from her son Ishmael when Abraham casts them out and she does not want to see her son die."

Bovo-Bukh – "a chivalric romance adapted in 1507 by Elye Bokher (Elijah Baḥur *Levita) into 650 ottava rima stanzas in Yiddish from a Tuscan version (Buovo d'Antona) of the early 14th-century Anglo-Norman original, Boeuve de Haumton. This tale of the heroic adventures of the noble Bovo, exiled from his homeland by the machinations of his murderous mother, his wanderings through the world (as far as Babylon), and the love story of Bovo and Druzyana, their separation, his triumphant return home, and the final reunion with Druzyana and their two sons, proved to be one of the most beloved tales in the Yiddish literary tradition over the course of more than two centuries."

Vidvilt – "anonymous 15th–16th-century Yiddish epic. This Arthurian romance of the chivalric adventures of Sir Vidvilt (and his father Gawain), based on Wirnt von Gravenberg's 13th-century Middle High German Wigalois, proved to be one of the most enduringly popular secular narratives in Yiddish literary history, with numerous manuscript recensions, printings (the first in an extensively expanded version by Joseph b. Alexander Witzenhausen, Amsterdam 1671), and reprintings, in rhymed couplets, ottava rima (Prague 1671–79), and prose, over the course of three and a half centuries. The anonymous poet of the earliest Yiddish version composed more than 2,100 rhymed couplets (probably in northern Italy), following Wirnt's plot rather closely through the first three-quarters of the narrative (abbreviating much and generally eliminating specific Christian reference), before offering quite a different conclusion."

Sir Gabein – "from 1788-89, a tale in which the Arthurian knight Gabein does not return to Camelot but – via Russia and Sardinia – reaches China and ultimately ascends to the Chinese imperial throne as the new emperor." slow blink.

also this is getting beyond arthuriana into just epic poetry generally but. literally all of this sounds fascinating.

anyway. literary scholar manqué.e hrs as always here at k dot tumblr dot edu obviously! however. my ear is open like a greedy shark, &c.

[strangestcase]

I’m trying to start reading gothic literature, but I don’t really know where to start. What books in the genre would you recommend?

Cracks knuckles.

Start off with a selection of Edgar Allan Poe short stories. There's a reason he's considered the best Gothic writer. Most if not all of his fiction falls squarely into the gothic genre, even his non-horror production. The more you read the better, but The Fall of the House of Usher is one of the best representatives of the Gothic you can find. Also check out his poetry and scientific essays, if you can, the guy was a real Renaissance man. He also wrote one novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which, along with Lovecraft's In the Mountains of Madness and Cambell's Who goes there? aka The Thing From Another World constitutes some sort of "trilogy" (since each story was based on the one prior).

Then you can move on to other short story selections. Short stories are easier to read and digest, I think, and plenty of fun. I recommend the following authors:

J. Sheridan Le Fanu- Irish writer that took a page from Irish folklore and legends. Madam Crowl's Ghost is a favorite of mine.

R. Louis Stevenson- usually a children's author, Stevenson liked to merge genres and used pretty interesting concepts for his horror production.

Guy de Maupassant- he was commisioned to write, so he often recycled entire concepts and plots, leaving us with many different versions of the same story (and a lot of heavy-handed morals. god bless).

Charles Dickens- predictably enough, he specialized in ghost stories

M. R. James- James' short horror stories have some of the most interesting monster concepts I've ever read, from a haunted dollhouse that recreates the events of a real-life haunting, to a possessed pattern print.

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer- little man puts the "Dark Romanticism" in, well, Dark Romanticism. If you know Spanish, do yourself a favor and read his short stories untranslated.

Elizabeth Gaskell- wrote plenty of good horror stories, and often from a female perspective, which is always a treat.

Bram Stoker- his stuff is very hit or miss, but when he hits, he hits hard. Read The Judge's House for a very nasty ghost story and then toss Stoker into the garbage because everything else he wrote is either comically racist or just dumb.

And now as for specific must-read short stories:

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman- maybe the true monster was medical misogyny all along! (Obvious content warning for graphic medical abuse, misogyny, and domestic abuse.)

What was it? by Fritz O'Brien- short story in the vein of "hey wouldnt it be fucked up if this happened?" Don't read if you have sleep paralysis.

The Open Door by Margaret Oliphant- a missing child, a mysterious door, and forces beyond human comprehension.

The Empty House by Algernon Blackwood- would you spend a full night in a haunted house? (Very paranoia inducing, it's such a treat.)

The Ghostly Rental by Henry James- in which the "ghosts" aren't actually ghosts, but something far, far weirder and cooler.

The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs- this tear-wrenching and suspenseful little tale will forever remind you to be careful what you wish for...

The gothic literature "classics", as in, full lenght novels and short novellas, can be a bit difficult to read due to length. My personal recommendations are:

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley- a foundational text of science fiction with a nestled narrative frame and themes of personal and social responsability, bodily autonomy, and freedom. Young alchemist Victor Frankenstein attempts to blur the line between life and death, and unwittlingly sets off his downfall in the process by creating a humanoid creature he can't control and won't respond to. CW child death, death by axphysiation, incest, description of unsanitary environments.

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R. Louis Stevenson- it is considered the first modern psychological horror story, and, while it's a mere sixty pages long, each and every one of them is packed with a dark revelation about tight-laced Victorian society. When his lifelong friend writes up a suspicious will leaving everything to a stranger, a lawyer decides to look into it, leading him down a spiral of discoveries all related to a disturbing experiment. CW suicide, graphic descriptions of violence, drug abuse.

Carmilla by J. Sheridan le Fanu- very much a classic vampire tale, with an interesting sapphic spin, in which the predatory lesbian trope bleeds, pun intended, into a twisted love story. Laura is a young girl who considers herself prim and proper, until the day the charming Carmilla stops by the family manor claiming to be her soulmate, sparking off a romance marked by a series of strange events. CW implied sexual assault, gore.

The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde- I consider it an early attempt at daylight horror, and while the plot is mostly romantic drama (canonically bisexual romantic drama!), the descriptions make everything else worthwhile. Beautiful model Dorian Gray's life is changed when he befriends a cunning aristocrat, which prompts him to wish to remain young forever while his portrait ages in his place... and his wish is granted. CW extreme antisemitism, suicide, graphic descriptions of gore and violence.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James- a ghostly classic which is marked by its ambiguity and the opacity of its plot, all which make it all the more disturbing, if a little hard to follow at times. Bly Manor has appointed a new nanny to take care of a pair of twins, but soon enough, she finds out not all is well in the house, and a dark force might be preying on the children. CW implied incest, implied child abuse.

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen- technically an example of very early cosmic horror, sitting at the intersection between Poe and Lovecraft, and clearly influenced by late Victorian scientific advancements. Some particularly gruesome deaths lead a group of men to slowly uncover the past of a one Helen Vaughan, and nature of a procedure performed on her mother before her conception. CW implied child abuse, suicide, sexual harrassment, human experimentation, extreme intersexism.

And those would be it!

[upismediacenter]

FEATURE: Blessing the timeline: Poetry in online spaces small and wide

It has been nearly half a decade since our workdays as students, teachers, and staff were pushed into a migration to online platforms, due to the uncertainties of circumstances beyond our control: a global pandemic, harsh heat indices, and inclement weather, to name a few. We reflexively seek information and guidance on the Internet from a place of necessity. While the World Wide Web is an incredibly efficient place for conducting business and studies, it is rarely an equal substitute for human-to-human interaction.

Rarely. It can be, if we know where to look. 

One of poetry’s many beauties is that as it is a personal expression, not much is required for it to be poetry—it just has to be human. Below is a list of poetry sites and creators pulled from various platforms, some less obvious than others, from the writer’s little corner of the Internet. All poems mentioned strive to align with the theme of finding hope and humanity amidst solitude, loneliness, and unexpected change. Keep your eyes peeled for places mentioned where you may submit your own works as well! 

Note: Due to the wide variety of poets and poems who have published or submitted in any of the platforms on this list, please keep in mind that mature themes will be featured or even central to some works. The specific examples of poetry on this list have been curated by the writer to be as safe and non-triggering as possible. 

For Your Perusal (Familiar Favorites) 

• Spotify 

Aside from songs and podcasts, poems spoken and/or set to music are widely available on Spotify. Recordings of legendary poets reading their works and current artists covering these are beautiful ways to keep old poetry alive, especially through a medium different from print. Likewise, spoken poetry is an emerging medium perfect for writers, speakers, and musicians alike. 

To start our list off on a personal note, below is a playlist of the writer’s favorites. 

Please note that these poems cover themes such as injury, grief, and death. 

But, as it also is in our lives, hope gets the last word. 

Here are two poems to sample the playlist: 

You Darkness, That I Come From 

You darkness, that I come from,

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes

a circle of light for everyone,

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything:

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them! —

powers and people —

and it is possible a great energy

is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

-written by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, performed by Meryl Streep, and set to music by Robert Benford Lepley

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-written and performed by E.E. Cummings 

• YouTube 

Button Poetry is a channel on YouTube, the Internet’s largest video-sharing platform, that features performance poetry, which is spoken poetry delivered in front of an audience. Poets can read directly from their own poems in print (or from memory), using variations in diction and body language to heighten the impact of their words. 

Andrea Gibson is a poet and activist whose poems frequently touch on the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. Their poem “Orbit”, written below, details a lifetime of infinite space, spirit, and love. 

You were born 6 years before I was.

In those 6 years, and a trillion years before that,

I was floating up in space

all light and bliss and orbit,

no grief or hurt or bitterness, all poetry

and no language, not a single need

for words like forgiveness.

I was up there making snow angels

in the star dust

when i glanced down and saw you on a playground

shy as a comet, chewing on your hair.

I turned to the Milky Way and said

I found her. Get me down there.

The first time we were face to face

it was a Sunday in New Orleans.

Holy as you are, i’m pretty certain

you were high as a kite. And i wanted to be the key

tied the end of that string catching all of your electricity.

When I finally got the nerve to kiss you

we were in the Colorado desert

beneath the same night sky

you would point to the months later and say, Baby,

we could make any of those specks of light

the Big Dipper if we drew the lines right.

I suppose it was all that possibility

that made us both so bad at actually knowing

where to draw the line.

Me, running down the street chasing your taxi,

crying at the top of my lungs. I mean

the absolute rooftop of my skyscraper lungs.

You deboarding the airplane

with your suitcase still on it,

racing back home to find my heart

a burning piano.

We were never easy

We never slept like rocks

without worrying we would wake like volcanos?

We could be so explosive

I started thinking a good day is a slow burn.

But then we would start talking about the ocean

I remember how the salt curled your hair,

or how you blushed in the kitchen

when the radio show

on the stereo started making you cry.

I got so desperate to learn

how people reach each other

I couldn't stop running around

cursing our city for the day it started burying

the telephone wires underground.

For that crushing first fight

when we spent all night trying to gather the wine

back into the grape

For every promise we broke

like bread in hopes of feeding ourselves better

The last time I watched you paint your toenails in my bed

I remember the first time I heard someone say half the stars we see in the sky are already dead

Maybe that's what happened

maybe we were already gone

Before we ever met

-Andrea Gibson 

Watch the performance version of “Orbit” (featured on the Spotify playlist above) here. 

• TikTok 

Performance poetry is also popular on TikTok; however, creators are opting for one-to-two-minute-long videos due to the fast-paced nature of the platform. 

The poet Whitney Hanson posts videos of her reading her poems, some of them coming from her books “Home” and “Harmony”—both of which tackle loss, grief, and healing. Listen to her tackle the question of, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” in one of her poems here,

• X (formerly Twitter) 

the lickety~split is an account that accepts poems that can fit into a single tweet—that is, currently, nothing more than 280 characters. This practice fits in the genre of micropoetry, which has found a home particularly on X as a response to and embracing of the prevalence of short-form content online. Below is one of their published works, 243 characters long:

LILACLESS

All my friends are sick

or busy or both,

and even the sky

can’t see me today,

pale and sniffling as it is;

I walk alone, jealous of the raindrops

picnicking together on lilac leaves,

their faces shining, though the lilacs

are gone, long gone. 

-Aimee Lowenstern (@everyepithet)]

• Instagram 

While Instagram is popular for being a visual platform, it also hosts (and is a great domain for) literary journals and individual writers. 

Alex Dawson of alexdawcreates takes full advantage of the platform by mixing photography and poetry. Most posts of theirs consist of two slides: a picture (usually of a bird seen in Toronto, Canada, where Alex is based) on one slide, and an observant and heartfelt poem on the other. 

Below is an example—you have to visit the link to see the photo, though. :) 

Things are often what they're not 

A firefly is not a fly, it's a beetle that can't stand the dark. Also, a funny bone isn't a bone, (and it's not really all that funny). A silkworm is not a worm, it's a caterpillar whose cocoon costs a fortune. And a shooting star isn't a star, it's a piece of space dust that we wish on. And that little creature, hovering around the purple blooms, humming quietly to itself, isn't what you think it is, either. And isn't that incredible? And doesn't that make you want to know this world, and maybe even yourself-

-Alex Dawson (@alexdawcreates)

• Facebook 

Recognized as one of the pioneers in the social media stratosphere, Facebook is home to countless personal pages and professional blogs. 

Malamaya by Sydelle Santos is a page run by Sydelle, a writer and physics student from UP Baguio, for her poems, musings, and digital art. Below is a poem about the randomness of connection, and how mathematics is simply another form of love. 

i wrote a code. to predict the probabilities of two people growing up in the same town meeting each other without them knowing.

cuenca’s total land area is 58.18 square kilometers. there are thirty-six thousand people living in this town in the year 2020. population density is 623. the total number of barangays—twenty-one.

the distance between our homes is 1.3 kilometers. we both did not live in cuenca when we were in high school. you were born in 18th of june, year 2002. i was born 11 months early. year 2001, 26th of july.

there are probabilities that we met on a local weekday. a local weekend. in the two years where we commute and ride the same route from cuenca to lipa to go to school. on special ocassions. town fiesta. unexpected 7-eleven encounters.

three hunded sixty-five and one-fourth days per year. eighteen years of walking the same streets.

apparently, if the code that i wrote is correct, because (sic) i’m a frustrated physics student, we had forty-nine estimated encounters. without us knowing. 

-Sydelle Santos

• Tumblr 

The good news is that right now, you're already on Tumblr! 

Just a few clicks away lie Ang Aninag’s literary publications containing short stories, comics, and of course, poems! Read the Media Center’s (MC) latest publication, #MakingChanges, here. 

For Your Perusal (Hidden Gems) 

• Letterboxd 

Letterboxd is a website where users may log movies they've watched in a diary, along with a rating and a review. While popular reviews on Letterboxd vary from punchy one-liners to multi-paragraph essays, one user, JBird, writes theirs as limericks. Limericks are oftentimes humorous and consist of just five lines that follow an AABBA rhyming scheme. Here is an example:

Daisy and Glen face their fear,

When a tornado is near.

Instead of hide,

They’ll go for a ride,

Whether the weather’s severe.

-a review of Twisters (2024) by JBird 

Read JBird’s other limerick reviews here! 

• Science.org

There is a book called “Elemental Haiku” published by poet Mary Soon Lee in 2019, in which all 118 chemical elements have a haiku (a three-liner poem, the lines consisting of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively) written about them. These poems have been laid out on a digital Periodic Table on Science.org, where viewers can hover over an element and read the haiku assigned to it. Talk about a creative way to familiarize yourself with seaborgium!

Seaborgium 

Out, out, brief candle!

Mere minutes upon the stage.

Strut, fret, and exit.

-Mary Soon Lee

The website also invites you to make your own versions of elemental haiku with the hashtag #ChemHaiku on X! 

• E-mail 

Rattle is a poetry website that publishes daily. Getting your update is automatic if you choose to sign up for their newsletter—you will receive a poem, once a day, in your digital inbox. 

While you consider signing up for the newsletter, here is a sample poem:

WAITING

My daughter is with me in the car.

She does not wait for anything.

She sleeps.

Sleeping may be waiting to wake up.

But I do not think it is.

I think it is something else entirely.

The clouds fill the plate glass window

of the store my wife has gone into.

There they share the sky

with teakwood bowls and brass candlesticks,

with rattan chairs and dried flowers

that look like tennis balls

sliced in half and painted impossible green,

with soapstone lion paperweights and

vases of colorless colors and shapeless shapes.

How serene they are as they float

in their twin heavens, in front of and above me,

these ghosts of the ships that we have

waited for all our lives but have never come in,

these blissful hosts for whom waiting

is the end-in-itself, O blessed end without end.

-J.R. Solonche 

• Blogspot 

Before Ang Aninag Online was on Tumblr, it was on Blogspot! Just like how it is on Tumblr now, from 2011-2021, the Blogspot hosted hundreds of articles and literary posts a year written by the students of UP Integrated School (UPIS)—MC members, primarily, and students who submitted for the yearly project MC Pakisabi. During MC Pakisabi, literary submissions are open to all UPIS students for a certain period of time. Writers who submit, just like MC members, choose a pen name to maintain anonymity for their lit. These submissions are edited by the MC and returned to the writers with feedback for revisions, if needed. This gives UPIS a peek behind the curtain of MC work and the Social Sciences and Humanities track. 

Here is an example of an MC Pakisabi submission in 2019—a poem, of course, entitled “Seasons” by “Hagulgol”. It speaks of the constant cycles on our Earth, and of the ones inside us. 

For Your Practice 

Continuing the mood from the submission-based Blogspot entry, it's time for you to try writing some of your own poems! Literary magazines all over the world, as well as some sites listed in “For Your Perusal”, are constantly on the lookout for poems that will fit their vision and themes. 

• Eunoia Review 

The Eunoia Review publishes poetry and short stories from submissions to their website four times a day. You may submit up to ten poems in a single attachment through e-mail! Check out their full guidelines here, and read a sample poem below: 

Blooming Lessons 

To be the California poppy,

tangerine hair on a lush hill

in summertime. A thousand

tiny suns once a single seed,

all that light free to sway in

the wind. What bliss to bloom

for the summer. What would

a body grown in endless

summer know about change?

More than anyone would think.

-Luna Moore Latorre 

• MC Pakisabi 

As mentioned earlier, MC Pakisabi is a yearly project by the UPIS Media Center that accepts literary submissions from all students. Media Center 2025 will be launching it soon this semester; stay posted on our social media for announcements! 

The next time you find yourself at home, perhaps with a heavy heart, consider pulling up a poem (or a pen) to keep you company. 

P.S.

The writer is always looking for another poem to read. Should you want to share anything, please feel free to send her a recommendation at ailahauora@gmail.com! 

References

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2024, July 12). limerick. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/limerick-poetic-form

The Sciku Project. (2019, September 30). On Writing Elemental Haiku — Mary Soon Lee Interview, Part One. The Sciku Project. https://thescikuproject.com/2019/09/30/mary-soon-lee-interview-part-1/

[russingon-week]

🔥Russingon Week Challenges!🔥

Looking for something beyond the prompts? Wanna go out of your comfort zone? Look no further than these nifty challenges! These do not correspond to any specific day, and can be combined with any prompt.

Writing challenges:

🔥Write from a POV you haven't written before. 🔥Write a poem, or include poetry in your work. 🔥 Remix (with permission!) another author's work. 🔥 Co-write a work with another author. 🔥 Write a deliberate pastiche of a different genre/book. 🔥 Write a letter, legal document, historical account, or another form of epistolary. 🔥 Write a characterization that is uncommon in fandom (ex. gloomy Fingon, Maedhros who is not politically savvy, etc) 🔥 Write a fluffy/hopeful fic that heavily features/references the nirn. 🔥 Tell the same story in two different ways (switch points of view, change setting, reveal new information, etc). 🔥 Write fic based on a work of art (with permission!). Bonus points if the artwork was created for the event. Art challenges:

🔥 Draw a different design for the characters than the one you usually use. 🔥 Draw another artist's design (with permission!). 🔥 Collaborate on an art piece with another artist. 🔥 Draw fanart of a fanfic (with permission!). Bonus points if the fanfic was created for the event. 🔥 Use a limited palette. 🔥 Draw a pastiche of a work of classical art.

Misc. challenges:

🔥 Make a physical, 3D fanwork. This could be clay, 3D printing, paper mâché, etc. 🔥 Make an audio fanwork, such as a fan song or a podfic. 🔥 Make a type of fanwork you have never made before. 🔥 Make something that you can wear.

Appreciator challenges:

🔥 Read and comment on a work from an author you've never read before. 🔥 Read and comment on a work under 500 words. 🔥 Read and comment on a work over 5000 words. 🔥 Find and reblog fan art with less than 10 notes. 🔥 Find and reblog fan art that makes you sad/has a sad tone. 🔥 Find and reblog fan art that has a happy/hopeful tone. 🔥 Go wild in the tags of a fanwork. 🔥 Make a rec list of your favorite works from the week/day/etc. 🔥 Comment on an unusual type of fanwork (not art or fic).

[truthofherdreams]

poetry, beauty, romance, love

also on ao3

Belle stops in front of the door to the lecture hall, trying her best to calm her laboured breaths as she presses a hand to her chest. A group of students walks toward her in the corridor, so she takes a sip of her water as to hide her discomfort, although she is certain her red cheeks are betraying her anyway.

The walk from her College to the Medical Sciences building is a short one - on purpose - but she is yet to get accustomed to the strain on her heart every time she exerts herself, even slightly. She tried a bike instead, on her very first day in Oxford, but the results were not any better. Hopefully, her body will get used to those brisk walks across the city.

Thankfully, the lecture hall is almost empty when she enters, a whole half-hour before the lecture is actually meant to start, so Belle takes her time going down the steps, all the way to the very first row.  She selects her seat slightly to the left of the room, close to the still empty lectern. Behind her, two other students talk to each other in small whispers, while a girl at the very back is busy typing away on her phone.

Belle gets her own out of her pocket, checking for her latest messages. Despite the early hour, she has one unread message from her sister - a picture of Fanny’s current art project, one that has Belle frowning at her screen as she tilts her head to the side, trying and failing to guess what the meaning of the painting is meant to be. Maybe she will ask Fanny later, or maybe she will let her sister to her deranged phallic art pieces and sculptures.

Instead, Belle opens her laptop, hoping for at least twenty minutes to work on the assignment she was given yesterday. Barely half a way in Oxford, and she is already drowning in a sea of essays, reading assignments and lab notes. Well, any other student would be drowning. Belle is doing just fine.

“Seat’s taken?”

She looks up from her laptop, blinking in surprise at the boy next to her. She belatedly notices the room has filled up by now, whispers of two turned into a cacophony of voices. And this boy, still staring at her, now with his eyebrows raised.

“Hm, sorry, no - no it’s free.”

“Cool.”

He plops into the seat next to her, his long legs stretching in front of him under the table, as he drops a laptop right next to hers. The thing seems almost broken beyond repair, with faded stickers all over the back, one broken corner, and some tape keeping the screen from escaping from the keyboard. Belle forces herself not to comment, thankfully distracted from the acidic words on the top of her tongue when students start passing around piles of printed-out syllabi for the course.

Belle grabs one, even though she’s had it downloaded onto her iPad since last night. IPad she now fetches from her bag, along with a paper notepad and her pencil case. She neatly lines up her three favourite highlighters - blush pink, lavender and soft green, before she takes a sip of water.

And notices her seat neighbour staring at her.

“Problem?” she asks him, raising an eyebrow at her.

He shakes his head for a moment, tongue against the inside of his cheek, before he thinks better of it. “Have you watched any of those videos about those Sorority girls?”

She frowns. “I fail to see your point.”

“Bet you do.”

Then he turns his focus back on the (still off) lecture screen. The way he does it, so casual - too casual, even - immediately gets on her nerves. So what if she likes her notes to be neat and organised? So what if she will spend another hour after the lecture, going back through what she’s written, just to ensure everything is written well, colour-coded, highlighted, sticky-noted? She huffs in frustration as she turns back toward the front of the room too, but not before noticing his smirk from the corner of her eye. The jerk.

Professor McGregor chooses that perfect moment to make his way to the lectern, and all other thoughts leave Belle’s mind as she focuses on the man’s lecture. For the next hour, she dutifully takes notes, nodding to herself every time she remembers one of the facts from her past readings.

The professor might not be the liveliest, with the monotonous drawl to his voice, but his insights into the field still are satisfying to Belle. She does make a mental note to check his research papers later, out of curiosity more than anything else.

When Professor McGregor finishes his speech for the day, her ever so delightful neighbour jumps right out of his seat, broken laptop under his arm. He gives her a salute, as lazy as his grin is mocking.

“See you on Thursday, Bama Rush.”

“Fucker,” she grumbles.

He’s too far up the stairs to hear her.

…

Professor McGregor, as it turns out, also happens to be her tutor. Which is how, the next week, Belle finds herself in the professor’s quarters, overlooking the gardens of St John’s College. Despite being of a decent size, the room feels stuffy, with its large mahogany bookcases on every wall, its displayed human skeleton in a corner, and its wide array of nicknacks on every possible table, desk, and shelf. Very much absent from the room, though, is Professor McGregor himself.

“Do not touch that,” Hetty hisses.

Belle looks up, just in time to see Sneed’s hand retract from a large jar with what seems to be an embryo with two heads floating inside. Bell wrinkles her nose.

“What a waste of time,” Sneed complains, moving on to his observation of a polished skull on one of the bookcases. “At the price of tuition…”

“Cry me a river, Sneed,” Hetty replies. “We all know daddy dearest paid extra for you to be here.”

Belle stifles a laugh as Sneed glares at Hetty, who replies with her most condescending smile. Even though they’ve barely interacted so far, Belle enjoys Hetty’s company - she’s smart and sharp and unafraid to speak her mind, when the occasion calls for it. They could make great friends, given time, and Belle hopes this tutoring group will give their friendship the space it needs to blossom.

Hetty winks at her, and Belle smiles.

She is about to say something, when the door to the study opens, and all three heads snap to that direction.

But the good professor still is yet to make his entrance. Instead, the boy from last week’s lecture stands in the doorframe, blinking at the darkness of the room.

“Old git still not here, huh?” he says as he enters, door closing behind him. He didn’t bother with his broken laptop this time.

Actually, he didn’t bother with anything at all, strolling through the room with his hands in his pockets until he drops himself unceremoniously next to Belle on the small settee. She glares at him. He ignores her.

“They let anyone in these days,” Sneed mumbles, before he turns back to the bookcase.

“Indeed. Remind me, how many A* did you get?” the other boy retorts. “Three? Four? Oh no, wait. That was me.”

If looks could kill, Sneed would have murdered him on the spot with the glare he throws over his shoulder. Hatty rolls her eyes.

“Yes, Dawkins. We all know how smart you are,” she says, but her tone is more exasperate than biting. Like an old argument, repeated too many times.

Has Belle already missed on that much drama, even after only a week, by spending time between her bedroom and the library? Has life gone past her so fast, that enemies were made already?

Dawkins bumps his shoulder with Belle’s conspiratorially. “You heard that, right? She calls me smart!”

He offers her a shit-eating grin, the kind that makes Belle’s stomach do a little jump. Despite her best try at stoicism, she smiles too. The grin grows bigger.

There is a twinkle in his eyes, when they drop to her lips, a flash of something Belle doesn’t quite know how to name. It’s there and then it’s gone, his eyes meeting hers again - and here’s that mischief again, the boyish stupidity that fits him like a glove.

His mouth opens, slightly, like he's about to say something, and…

The door slams open.

They all startle.

Professor McGregor enters, his steps unsteady, his hand wrapped around the neck of a wine bottle. He stops, blinking at them in confusion, before he mumbles something that both his beard and the alcohol make inaudible.

Hetty is the first one to jump to her feet, to spring to action. “Should we come back tomorrow, Professor?”

He waves her off, before he drops himself in the closest chair and takes another long sip of his wine. Sneed can barely hide his grimace of disapproval, a reminder to Belle to smooth out her own features.

The professor gives them brief and confusing instructions on readings and reports to be completed for the next session, and research to be done in pairs. He vaguely points to Hetty and Sneed first, then to Belle and Dawkins, with some misogynistic comment about making it equal, giving a chance for the ladies to learn something. Then he waves them off, and they all scramble to escape as fast as they can.

Belle runs down the stairs, only allowing herself to breathe once she is on the lawn of the front quadrangle, head down and hands on her hips. She inhales deeply, to calm her heart and will the annoyance away.

“Here.”

She turns around, facing Dawkins. His arm is stretched toward her, paper in hand. She takes it carefully, then frowns down at the scribbles that make up a name - Jack, she guesses, even though it reads as Jeck - and a phone number.

“Got that doctor’s handwriting locked in,” she comments.

“Thanks, it’s the dyspraxia.”

She blinks, and swallows back a curse to herself. Of course she had to make a fool of herself, and insult him in the process. He may be infuriating, but that doesn’t mean she has a right to be that rude.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean…” “It’s fine,” he waves it away. “Just text me when you’re free for a trip to the library.”

…

It’s funny, how quickly new experiences become habits. How the unknown turns into the familiar in the blink of an eye. How Jack makes his way into her life, one infuriating jab at a time. 

Every Monday, ten o’clock on the dot, they meet in the same study room of St John’s College’s library, to study and work together on Professor McGregor’s assignments. The study room allows them privacy, so Jack can use the text-to-speech tools on his computer, or so Belle can read out loud some passages for the both of them. She proofreads his essays when his dyslexia gets the best of him, and he always brings her favourite snacks to avoid her sugar levels crashing.

Despite what she thought, it works seamlessly.

They fight, of course. On new medical research, on which technology to use, on grammar and methodology and whether Star Wars or Star Trek is the best. They argue, and yell, and get stern reminders to be quiet from the librarian. They help each other up, fact-check everything twice, and motivate each other when the burden of first year medicine becomes too much, the pressure, the workload, the late night study sessions.

One Monday at a time, he becomes part of her life, of her universe.

“Why don’t we ever study at yours’?” she asks him one particularly chilly November morning, when the library is so cold their fingers turned blue, until Belle gave up and dragged him all the way back to her dorm bedroom.

He lies down on the floor, fluffy blanket on top of him as he hugs one of her Squishmallows to his chest. “You don’t want to come to my place, believe me.”

“Why is that?” She puts her laptop aside, cross-legged on her bed, peering down at him. “Live in the dungeons?”

He scoffs. “Worse. Subletting from some old fart who used to be a porter for St Cross College till they caught him stealing from students.”

“What is he doing now?”

“Working at Costa.”

“And how did you meet this lovely gentleman?”

Jack’s smile is wry. “Working at Costa.”

Belle snorts a laugh. Not for the first time, she is reminded of the socio-economical differences between her and Jack. How she was sent to boarding school to Cheltenham Ladies’, while he did his studies in some no-name high school in South London. How her parents pay for her tuition, but he got in on a full scholarship. How she spends the summers in Greece, or Spain, or back home in Australia, while he’s stuck here, working to make meets end. How she has a loving mother, and a fool of a father, and a crazy sister, while he’s all alone.

They never properly agreed not to talk about it - not in so many words, at least - but sometimes, like today, it hangs between us. Heavy. Obvious.

“Do you fancy some tea?” she asks, to change the conversation, to lead it back to more comfortable topics, like anatomy and lab reports and lectures. Not Jack’s misfortune in life. Not Jack’s empty bank account. Not the way her heart misses a beat when he looks at her like that, open and vulnerable and oh so eager.

Her heart is used to skipping beats.

Not like that, though.

Never like that.

…

“The WHO defines health as…”

“A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being,” Belle recites as she walks up and down the corridor.

Hetty hums at the back of her throat, before she switches to another card. “Decline in deaths from infectious diseases in the second half of the nineteenth century was mainly due to…”

“Improvements in diet, housing, and public sanitation.”

She is wringing her hands now, the motion nowhere near as soothing as it ought to be. Her bottom lip is raw from biting down on it and picking at the skin, and her heartbeat is going way faster than ever recommended by her own doctors.

“What is NOT a task of a sociologist in medicine?”

Belle pauses. Stops. Stares at Hetty. Hetty stares back.

“Develop theory that assists in understanding social issues related to health,” comes from behind her.

Belle sighs, and turns around. “Just because you can memorise everything by heart…”

“Please, Belle. We both know your memory is far better than mine could ever be.”

She wants to tell him that is not true. She wants to remind him he got better exam results than her last year. She wants to pout and says that he’s better than her at sociology, period. She wants…

He hands her a chocolate bar, and all her worries go away.

“Jack Dawkins, you are a blessing.”

He laughs, even though his cheeks turn red “Can I get that in writing?”

She waves him away, more to dismiss his unwanted silliness than anything else, but still has a moment of panic when he indeed starts walking away from the exam hall. From the corridor. From her.

Mouth full of chocolate, she gestures vaguely at the door. Jack grins, and walks back the few steps separating them to boop her nose with his finger.

“Different room. Extra time. You knew that, Fox.”

She did know that, indeed, knows his SPP by heart - the 25% extra time he gets for every exam, and the text-to-speech machine to help him go through the papers. It doesn’t make it any less difficult, to know he will not be in the hall with the rest of them, that the sight of his mess of blond hair will not be able to sooth her nerves during the exam. He’ll be right next door, but she might as well be all the way back in Sydney, for she will feel his absence just as well.

“You got it,” he says, and it’s soft and quiet and full of emotions she refuses to question now. “I’ll see you when I’m done, alright?”

She nods, and swallows around the chocolate pieces in her mouth. “Good luck.”

“No need for luck when you’ve got talent,” he winks at her.

…

She passes with a 96.

He does so too. With a 99.

…

Belle doesn’t remember how it happened.

Well, that is a lie. Her memories may be fuzzy around the corners, but she remembers every second, every moment, every word and every touch and every tiny, single detail of that afternoon.

It starts, as it so often does, with the end. The end of exam week, the end of an academic year, the end of their first year of medicine. It starts, as it so often does in Oxford, on the banks of the river, where the grass meets the water, where boats move lazily and students gather, bottles of cheap wine and packs of snacks in hand.

It starts on the bank of the river, laughing as Hetty kisses girls after girls after girls, and makes fun of Sneed for having no game, and no girlfriend, and no summer internship. It starts with a bottle of rosé against Belle’s lips, warming her stomach and her cheeks and her brain.

It starts when it ends, when the sun is so low everything turns golden and beautiful, like a painting from an era long gone. It starts with Jack and his golden hair, and his shining eyes, and the smirk he keeps just for her, for when she’s happy and carefree and on the right side of tipsy.

It starts with her laugh.

“Jack Dawkings, everyone!” she exclaims as loud as her lungs will let her, “Top of the class!”

People cheer and whoop and toast, any reason good enough for yet another drink. Belle’s arm is flung around his shoulders, her body pressed into him, and he chuckles against the mess of her hair.

“How much did you drink already?”

“Enough,” she replies, smug and proud and laughing.

“Yeah, right,” he says, and takes the bottle from her.

She pouts, but she doesn’t fight back, not even when he hands the bottle to some random guy just passing by. She’s tipsy but not drunk, and she’s fine with it - especially when Jack’s side is pressed against her chest, against her breasts, when his arm is wrapped around her waist and he holds her to him, strong and solid and present.

“Top of the class,” she whispers to him, softer this time.

He looks down at her, and he’s soft too. Bright eyes, even brighter smile. “And yet, you’re my number one.”

She kisses him. Or maybe he kisses her. Not that it matters, when his lips are on hers, when his fingers are in her hand and on her neck, when he grabs her and pulls her close, close, closer until she forgets where he stops and where she begins, until it’s only them, them, them.

When he breaks the kiss, it’s to rub his nose alongside the ridge of hers. Delicate. Loving. Adoring. She kisses him again, just because she can.

Hetty yells at them to get a room.

Belle happily obliges.

[germanpostwarmodern]

As a constant wanderer between the worlds of East and West Iranian sculptor Parviz Tanavoli (*1937) has developed a multilayered oeuvre that relates as much to history as it does to modernity. Trained both in Iran and Italy, he basically from scratch created modern sculpture in Iran upon returning from Italy in 1959 and shortly thereafter started teaching at Tehran College of Decorative Arts. Here he also became head of the sculpting department, a position he held until 1979 and which was only briefly interrupted by a two-year stay at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, a brief but important residence as it got him in touch with Pop Art.

For the last two decades Tanavoli has been based in Vancouver and is currently being honored with a retrospective at Vancouver Art Gallery: titled „Poets, Locks, Cages“ the exhibition gathers more than 100 works from all periods of Tanavoli’s career also including prints, paintings and mixed-media assemblages. The exhibition’s title plays at the three major themes in the his work, namely the poet, the locks and the cages with which he creates a connection with pre-Islamic Iranian traditions. The poet e.g. represents his deep identification with poetry and the poet as "annunciator of freedom, peace and love.“ Locks on the other hand are both a pet issue of Tanavoli, who has long been a passionate collector of all kinds of historic locks, but also take on a symbolic role in his art: they codify genitalia, protection, prohibition but also serve as a symbol of healing and hope, just like they did on the grillwork of ancient temples and tombs. And just like the lock the cage in Tanavoli’s work takes on a different meaning that is more about safeguarding than imprisoning and also make for interesting shadow plays.

These insights (and more) a further elaborated in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition which has recently been published by Hirmer: it contains four insightful essays that beyond Tanavoli’s symbology also address the different contexts in which his work came about as well as the important role Abby Weed Grey played for his career in the US. A beautiful way to get to know this pivotal Iranian artist!

[rainydaypaperback]

April 17, 2024

When LittlePuss Press opened in 2021, it had one completed book that had been published elsewhere and fallen out of print and a plan to focus on trans authors. Fledgling as it was, LittlePuss was able to get its book into stores through a company called Small Press Distribution, and LittlePuss has grown steadily since.

But late last month, S.P.D. shocked its clients — about 300 small publishers — by announcing that it would abruptly close, leaving the presses scrambling to retrieve their inventory before the books were destroyed and wondering if they’d ever be paid the money S.P.D. owed them for past sales.

The effects could ripple far beyond those tiny companies. Small presses play a crucial role in the American literary landscape, publishing books that have artistic merit but little commercial potential — like poetry, for example, most of which doesn’t sell much. Without S.P.D., it could be far more difficult for small presses to get their books to readers, or for those books to exist at all.

“Smaller presses like the ones distributed by S.P.D. are willing to take chances on labors of love, or books that are weird or strange or that readers don’t necessarily know they want,” said Casey Plett, the publisher of LittlePuss. “S.P.D. was an enormous under-the-radar institution to help fill that gap.”

In order to get their books to brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers, publishers need a distributor, which collects books from multiple publishing houses and makes them available to sellers in one place. Bookstore owners can place a single order through a distributor instead of placing dozens of orders through individual companies.

S.P.D., a nonprofit founded in 1969, kept its fees extremely low, though it took a significant percentage of sales, often about 50 percent of net. That low overhead allowed presses that run on a shoestring to have their books available in independent bookstores and Amazon.