When grief finds us
I have a friend who lost her father when she was young who has always told me that her favourite book is Grief is a Thing With Feathers. I have never felt the need to read it—I have, luckily, never lost anyone close to me, anyone who has brought grief, with its feathers, to […]
Princess Vira’s Palace
It is often said that there is a مصر (Masr) and there is an Egypt, the same place but not. Of the Mediterranean, the same is true. There is a Mediterranean of pale Greek islands, of chateaus on Roman rivieras and LSD by Spanish vineyards, one of parties on the corniche, and olive groves by [&hell
In the country that doesn’t exist
The Foreign Office advises against all travel to Transnistria “The city does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags,
YOUR FUTURE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF WHAT THE OTHERS MAKE OF IT
YOUR FUTURE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF WHAT THE OTHERS MAKE OF IT An artwork by the others (and Kirill Sechkar) During The Isis Launch Party (11 June 2024), there is a table in the corner of the venue. The artist is present at the table. He invites visitors to make a collage representing their […]
The Flip Side – Editing the Archives
The flip side when Everything is a film and the Kodak squares overlap Sunlight on railing legs and you cross the road without pressing the button *pause breath birds wind cars* light headed head y d a z e w h e […]
Slow down, you crazy child
The first time I arrived in Vienna, I was eight, ginger, and unimpressed. It was March, and I’d just been uprooted for the first (but certainly not the last) time. My father’s previous employment had meant that I’d spent the first eight years of my life in one house in Brussels. It never reall
Futile Reflections
“If I write what I feel, it’s to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant.” Ideas are futile unless articulated. Ideas are like water, with a transparent nothingness that only solidifies after finding form in the contours of words. But if id
Collage, your pieces do not quite Fit
You, rehearsed cynic at 18, lamented about modern poetry. ‘Not everything is like something else.’ No, but too naive to omit The unbearable likeness of your being. A facsimile of a facsimile, A patchwork hand-sewn man with hidden seams, An ego built on historicity and a hai
Inventing the Aesthetics of Trans-Femininity
At some point during my first semester of college, I found myself naked in another girl’s room. I was a newly out trans fem trying on her old clothes, desperate for anything feminine to wear. The third or fourth time this happened (call me a heartbreaker), I picked up a slip of fabric with a [&hel