February 2010
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Test piece for Student Punch online magazine;...
So – shit was getting real in last Saturday’s Merlin, with Morgana moving ever-closer to the dark side and Merlin standing around like a doorpost with a telepathic dragon in his head practically screaming she’s on the turn, boy!, but still refusing to actually lend the poor woman a sympathetic hand. The BBC’s magical Saturday night drama is ramping up the stakes as it speeds ever closer to the...
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Short Story Extract; 'The Tenth Muse'; 06/04/09
They used to call Sappho the tenth muse (there are only nine in actuality, of course).
Sappho did not appreciate the title – she was a poet, after all, and a damn fine one. Nothing divine about it. She disliked having the entirety of her being reduced to that of a mythical, nymphic sprite – it made her sound fleeting and silly.
Sappho did not want to be fleeting.
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Short Story Extract; 'Gutter Gods'; 01/04/2009
The Tenth Muse
In the beginning of God’s creating there was a wasteland of desolate howling waters, which Yahweh separated into that which is above and that which is below.
That’s what those strange tribes of warriors from Canaan said, as they rumbled through the country telling stories about escaped slaves and divine covenants and promised lands. They spread their word through blood and...
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Article; Published 22/01/2009 in Edinburgh...
There’s a Reason We Don’t Celebrate ‘Real’ Scottish Culture
I cannot be the only Scot who is eyeing up the ‘Homecoming Scotland’ initiative with a certain amount of wry cynicism. It is not that I am unhappy about the prospect of even more tourists coming over to spend their money. It is more that I am grimly wondering what I am going to have sell to the next lot of proudly ‘Scottish’ American...
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Hunger
Thorny hunger prickles in my stomach Like a gorse bush, Stubborn, sharp – Clinging to my body like the baren Hillside that I am I am ignoring her, Ignoring myself, Ignoring my hunger.
When I have learned to be filled with something else – With lust or Perhaps passion or Artistic focus or Fear, Then eating will have an end in me, This gnawing emptiness is not The desire for food. I am always...
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“That perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat,...”
– Aphra Behn 