Go Figure
“During those days, women were mistreated to spare the guilty from chastisement. They even went as far as shaving women’s heads.” Go figure. I, whose remorse was The wretched woman Left on the pavement. The conceivable victim, Her dress in ta
Finding my way back to the nightingale
The exalted song of the nightingale has long haunted the poetic imagination. Though I have never heard a nightingale sing, I have read its lamenting melodies in the lines of Ovid, Keats, and Coleridge. The real song remains elusive, yet somehow still a familiar refrain, and I wonder whether it is po
white horse
[inspired by White Horse Hill in Folkestone, Kent] on the hill with the wind in my face: the hill where the white horse shines where they stood long ago, saw the rock, and began to carve where today the hiss of steam trains washes through the valley and lambs lie in the [&hellip
Keratin
At night I dreamed we lived at the bottom of a lakebed and I braided your hair. My child fingers, thin as chopsticks, weaving in and out of your mass of tangled curls. Underwater, your seaweed hair floated around your head, your pale face haloed in its soft cloud. Your closed eyes like a dead [&hell
Oxford’s Identity Politics and JCR BAME Officers: Effective in raising awareness, or an exploitation of ‘emotional labour’?
PART I: The Difficulties of Anti-Racism within the Framework of Oxford Bureaucracy The Junior Common Room (JCR) Committee, akin to an undergraduate student council within each college, essentially upholds the role of overseeing student welfare, representing their views, and voicing their concerns. T
There isn’t a difference between a body and a daughter
It started with a white morning like a blind eyeball, the blankest of sleeps. And it started with sickness: Hanna wasn’t there. She was old, she was going deaf, and she wasn’t well enough to face the freezing mornings in the clothes bank, with the women who became desperate as they waited, who t
help for when the tide is out
Sometimes I forget that I can walk for hours – So unlike the long stupid steps, my crawl Under a desk or up the stairs or through the Door when drunk, a spilled coin of vodka Inflating itself on the bedroom carpet, piles Of laundry, crowded surfaces, weight of loose change – And if [&hell
Ghosts of Tradition: Past, Present, and Future
I’d never given much thought to tradition before. When I had, I saw it as somewhat redundant – rubbing shoulders with inflexibility, with conservatism – and I assumed that the people around me shared similar views. Tradition didn’t seem like something of particular importance to our
The True Cost of Porn: The Monopolisation of the Porn Industry
Open a private browsing tab. Turn on your VPN. Type ‘ethical porn’ into the search bar. Press enter. Try hardcore porn, softcore porn, or just porn. No, it’s not just your browsing habits. Every time it’s the same: Pornhub wins the race to the top of the page. The second, third, fourth (an