Complaints from the Chinese Boudoir
“At daybreak, I pace idly in the courtyard with a silk fan. Cold autumn is at hand, and I know the fan will soon be discarded. A crow flits by and secures its position on the palace roof. The croaking bird is no match for my complexion, smooth as jade. Yet why is it able […]
Rosalía – Motomami – Camaleona
“¿Oye, ya has escuchado el nuevo disco de la Rosalía?” my mother asks, shifting gears. We’re driving home from the Bilbao airport, where I have just arrived for the Easter holidays. After months away, everything looks unfamiliar – the trees, the mountains, even the blue sky seems oddly off
Dandy
Mr Guillaume brought Paris to London His fingers anchored him to earth with their varicoloured jewels – He told me he once found a pearl shucking oysters And had it mounted on his littlest finger. When asked “how do you like your eggs?” he replied Fabergé. And his fizzing champagne chuckle ho
Everyone is scared of the guillotine these days
But if I had that kind of money, let me tell you – I’d burn it. A new Dior gown every morning. A different pool boy every afternoon. You bourgeois folk and your mid-century shite – you’ll never get it, sucking marrow from warm bones all light and delicate. Me, I’d gorge. Retch and [
Oscar Wilde and Sally Rooney: Parodying the Political
“Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value,” argued Oscar Wilde in his 1891 essay, The Soul of the Man Under Socialism, which advocated a trailblazing vision of social and artistic equality. His libertarian, socialist philosoph
Superficial societies in transgressive fiction
Transgressive fiction isn’t well known for its depictions of decadence. The genre is defined by its focus on behaviour outside accepted moral norms, ranging from sexual impropriety and violence to extreme drug use and addiction. Transgressive fiction arranges elements of different genres, such as
Getting creative: the feminine twist in a masculinist movement
Many thanks to Monika Kozub for providing the images to illustrate this article. It means so much to be supported by a creative I admire and whose work has inspired me in many ways. Please check out her PERIOD series, which is part of a campaign to tackle period poverty! On a red-velvet chair, I [&h
Seeing Double
Squirrelled away in Room 65 of the Ashmolean Museum are two remarkable landscapes. The paintings hang side by side in the Pissarro Gallery, surrounded by a collection of nineteenth-century pictures, and have done so for over a decade. They are, to wit, Camille Pissarro’s View from my Window and Vi
A Concert in the Ante-Inferno
[Inspired by Inferno, Canto III, where Dante and Virgil travel through the Ante-Inferno and cross the river Acheron with the help of the ferryman, Charon. The performer, called ‘Nick’, is loosely named after the singer Nick Cave, the frontman of the Australian Rock Band ‘Nick Cave and the Bad