Waiata-tangi o te moana: The Seafarer
This is my own creative translation of the first 18 lines of the anonymous Old English (Anglo-Saxon) Poem The Seafarer. I have incorporated te reo Māori words (and the occasional OE) in my translation, as I’ve wanted to give the reader a glimpse of the beauty of bilingual expression. The poem is
Shibari Teddy
Trigger warning: themes of sexual assault Last summer, I had an unhealthy amount of sex. I would wake up, meet someone, sleep, and repeat for weeks. This wasn’t new, but the intensity was. It felt like an obsession – more than that, it was a full-time job. The sex itself was new: in experimentin
Searching for Seashells
When we were much younger, my little sister spent one restless summer searching the shore for starfish. She dug her tiny fingers into the sand, gathering them excitedly in a bucket until they dried up, and then cried over their sorry cracked bodies. The holidays that followed, she took to walking th
The Big Queer Monster
For weeks after the release of ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)’, Lil Nas X’s Twitter mentions were filled with homophobic slurs and Bible verses. At this point, it’s almost impossible not to have seen the music video for ‘Montero’, or at least the memes of Lil Nas X pole dancing his way
Notes to Shelves
In a cold library – its silence occasionally disturbed by a lone cough or a floorboard creak – you turn over the last page of your book, only to be faced with an argument in the margins. According to one reader, the book is “shitty Marxist bollocks”, to which another has retorted “fuck you
A Love Letter to the Glaswegian Dialect
“DJ Fucking Badboy here Steamin as Shite Am ’boot ti tell you a story ’Boot ma Friday nite…” This is how DJ Badboy’s ‘Friday Nite’ opens – a track well-familiar to anyone who spent their teens at sweaty Glaswegian house parties. I once made the error of writing about ‘Frid
The Isis Podcasts: In conversation with Steven Sater
Join us in conversation with Steven Sater, a Tony, Grammy and Laurence Olivier award winning poet, playwright and lyricist. Steven Sater has dedicated his life to musical theatre, drama and music. In this podcast we discuss Steven’s recent novel Alice by Heart, the historical and linguistic in
The Isis Podcasts: In Conversation with Marshall Curry
In conversation with Oscar award winning documentary director, producer, cinematographer and editor: Marshall Curry. Curry’s work includes the Academy Award nominated film Street Fight, as well as Racing Dreams, Point and Shoot, and A Night at the Garden. In 2019 Curry’s short film The N
The Isis Podcasts: In Conversation with Olivia Sudjic
Join us for a conversation with London-based author Olivia Sudjic. After graduating from Cambridge, Sudjic’s debut novel, Sympathy, was published in 2017 to wide critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Salerno European Book Award. She has since published a long-form essay titled Exposure, tack