by Hannah E. Joyner.   Julianne looked at the pineapple plantation’s kiosk menu and considered the tater-tot nachos. Maybe the pineapple chilly dog. Nothing on the menu came without a shiny lump of pineapple. She decided to get the whip (a pineapple soft serve) and while walking around the plantation’s botanical ‘garden’ (courtyard) she ate the whip and stopped to take a closer look at a red bromeliad with green spots. The spots were almost neon. Julianne figured this was an association she had made with the kiosk menu. In another place that wasn’t a tourist spot in Hawaii, the bromeliad ..read more

By Alvin Lu. Nicholas Rombes, The Rachel Condition (CLASH Books, 2024) If Nicholas Rombes’s first novel, The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing, relies on descriptions of unseeable movies, supposedly by Deren, Lynch, Jodorowsky, etc., for its vertiginous coloring, The Rachel Condition bravely pushes into the things themselves: letters, reports, memoir, a strange genre novel, and annotations. Lacking the connective tissue of narrative cogency, and in their method more like video art than feature films, the texts force the reader into a reflexive state rather than a transportive one. What am I ..read more

By Martin Wakefield ABOUT THE AUTHOR Martin Wakefield is a poet from London. His most recent book, a collection of visual poetry called Propositions. Autobiography., was published by Moormaid Press in November 2023. Previous books include Zugunruhe (2019), Jungle Gym (2021) and Poems You Can’t Colour in (2023) from Hesterglock Press, Emptpy Poems from Sampson Low (2022), and handsfree, a collaboration with Bob Modem (Paul Hawkins), from Steel Incisors (2023). His work has been published in 3:AM Magazine, Osmosis Press, Poem Atlas and Idler Magazine amongst others, and anthologised by ..read more

by Homa Mojtabai.   After your début novel bombs you wonder what went wrong. At least you have a job even if it’s teaching composition to college kids on academic probation, which means a lot of frat boys who drive trucks worth more than you make in a year and their girlfriends who treat you with mannered pity. Famous writers come to your college because they are paid to. What they earn talking about writing is more than what they earn from writing. It’s a game. You’re losing. One writer gives a talk and you’re there because you’re interested but also you have to make sure your students ..read more

By Marcel Krueger. If one has a great pain, it is beneficial to change location -Joseph Roth In Minute 9 of Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1959 movie Pociag (Night Train), just a few miles outside Łódź Kaliska station, their point of departure, the two main protagonists are forced together in their 1st class night train compartment for the first time. Surgeon Jerzy, eyes hidden behind sunglasses and with the demeanour of being hounded by something or someone, has just purchased tickets for both berths in the compartment from the conductress for some privacy — only to find a woman’s handbag on the low ..read more

By Chris Kelso. By Bobby Lafayette aka Edging on Death     ‘…be turned into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance’ Gregor Samsa Anorexia Nervosa. Bulimia. Obesity. We don’t get to choose our dysmorphias. Society decides. Society decides which body we get too. This has always been the case. The society-body won’t be happy until we wince away from every mirror we own. Even after the Enlightenment, we haven’t developed too far beyond Lacquer’s ‘one sex model/one flesh model’. Society (1) tells us the body is not incomm ..read more

Alvina Chamberland interviewed by Rob Doyle.   When I first moved to Berlin a few years ago, my first address was a flat-share on Kottbusser Damm looking onto the canal and a kiosk called Prisma Pavilion that sold decent pizza, pasta and coffee. It was winter and it was lovely. One of my flatmates was Alvina Chamberland — or Alex-Alvina as she was then calling herself. Discovering that we were both writers, we stayed up late in the kitchen discussing literature, as well as life, love and loneliness in the German capital (where Alvina, a Californian who’d moved to Sweden as a teenager, ha ..read more

By James Rushing Daniel.   Dominique Routhier, With and Against: The Situationist International and the Age of Automation (Verso, 2023) In the contemporary art world dominated by glitzy international fairs and heavily licensed celebrity artists, it’s sometimes hard to fathom that art once held more serious political ambitions. Throughout the history of the avant-garde, from Dada to Fluxus, artists, in vastly different national contexts and through a variety of media, sought to critique — and, sometimes, transform — political culture. As philosopher and art critic Boris Groys contends, “T ..read more

By Claire Carroll.   Creativity Enlightenment: Day Three Someone has stolen our muse. We heard a strange noise and woke up, all of us at once. Then we came downstairs and found that the back door was open and banging in the breeze. Then we went upstairs and found that he wasn’t in his bed. We checked all over the house. He wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining hall or in anyone’s room. He wasn’t in the print room, or any of the studios, or the music room, or the library. He wasn’t in the store cupboard. He wasn’t at his charging point. He wasn’t at any of the other charging points. We sent ..read more

By Danica Ignacio. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Danica Ignacio is a Filipino writer currently studying at Kingston University. In January 2024, her work was commissioned by the National Gallery and can also be found on @eventualantiques on Instagram & danicaignacio.substack.com. Her writing often explores themes of anthropomorphism as well as other sorts of fantastical concepts that enhance less fantastical realities through poetry & prose ..read more