Some Girls are Bigger Than Others: On Writing Fatness

‘Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls’ mothers are bigger than
Other girls’ mothers’

The Photography of Diane Arbus

In a world of Facebook, Twitter and online dating; we are all familiar with the ‘profile page.’ Through posting, pictures, and ‘liking’ — we are forever creating an image of ourselves which we want people to see. We adopt a social mask that says to the world ‘Look at me…

The Infra-Avant-Garde

Keston Sutherland’s long poem Hot White Andy (2007) begins:

Lavrov and the Stock Wizard levitate over to

the blackened dogmatic catwalk and you eat them. Now swap

buy for eat, then fuck for buy, then ruminate for…

From Meowth to Meow Meow: The Evolution of the Playground Craze

At school, the playground existed as a place of controlled freedom, lodged between lessons as a gap in both time and space. The playground was an antidote to the dullness of school life, an escape into the open air, and…

Just Like Honey

‘Listen to the girl/ as she takes on half the world / moving up and so alive / in her honey-dripping beehive’

— The Jesus and Mary Chain

Uncloaking Desire: Experiencing the Gay Sauna

My time at Cambridge is teaching me to analyse everything around me: the unquestioned peculiarity of language, the invisible codes of social behavior, the gross ethics of sexual intercourse, the unwritten laws of friendship… you name it. And as a…

Hammered, Sloshed, or just Unbottling Poetry? How to Talk about Inebriation

I vividly remember, early on in my university life, some witty, exciting new friend explaining to me that if you selected any noun — ‘laptop,’ ‘trainer,’ ‘daffodil,’ etc. — and added an -ed ending —…

Chris Huhne and the Mumblings of A Jew

‘Nebech! Forgive Lebedov!’ So muttered my father as he read the 8 month sentence just given to Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce, who only a few days ago were jailed over the point swapping scandal. Such references are common for my old man steeped, as he is, in…