Glittery Literary Vol 2

Congratulations to writing group regular Yvonne Lloyd, who has a story in a new anthology entitled Glittery Literary, which can downloaded here. 

'Home': An audio anthology by Dalston Writing Group

To mark National Writing Day, a quick re-up for our podcast 'Home', which you can stream now on Soundcloud.

The project was a response to life under lockdown, during which time the group carried on meeting online. Each of the 11 pieces is inspired, in some way, by the notion of 'home'.

The project was open to anyone who attends the group. The only stipulation was that pieces must be fictional and under 2,000 words.

Each of the contributors read and recorded their own work, and it's edited and presented by group facilitator Jon.

Have a listen, share, and let us know what you think.

New Poetry: Twelve Rough Globes From Seville by A. Wray

Our recent session on sense-based writing continues to bear, ah, fruit, with this magnificent ode to marmalade - yes, marmalade! - by Amanda Wray.

Twelve Rough Globes From Seville

Twelve rough globes from Seville

Pressable, peelable, triumphantly inedible

They are stubborn and glorious

Dented, pocked and potent

Battered aluminium will contain them

Blades will subdue them

Thumbs will insert and rip them apart

Flesh is squeezed, skin is sliced

And pips ejected from their pithy nests

Fire and water will destroy their golden dignity

Turning them ugly with molten froth and scum

Time reduces them

Chemistry rechristens them

They become one

They seethe and boil

But their constitution has a heart so resolute and sweet

That its essence prevails

I was their mistress

And then their slave.

May 2021

“Hey, Dalston Writing Group,” you may well be thinking.  “What the heck have you guys been up to lately?

Well, we've been blazing our way through the latest lockdown in a frenzy of creative activity. Even when the page in front of us was as cold and empty as untrodden snow in a Scandi Noir, our writers have produced some amazing work.

At recent sessions we've explored fear, food, imaginary friends, created our own rooms (with and without views) and spun stories out of our favourite old music.

At our most recent session we focussed on the senses, and below are brilliant new pieces by Sarah Lerner, Julie Balloo and Victoria Louise Butler.

The first, by Victoria, is a hymn to that almost-forgotten-but-hopefully-soon-to-be-rediscovered concept: the big night out. Cheers!

New Poetry: Sambuca Soldiers by Victoria Louise Butler

 Shots are fired.

Acrid fumes the first aggressors,

nasal membranes the first victims of

a methylated madness of intensified attack.

Hands to mouth in a two-for one march of military precision.

No mercy.

Purple-proof uniforms psychedelic in a neon gloaming

of the Friday night mission.

Aniseed bombardment

No prisoners, no survivors. 

Seek and destroy

Sobriety

firing into flame on the last orders of Sergeant Zippo.

Coffee bean berets

burnished,

burnt on the bar; the pyre of Monday’s forgotten good intentions.

Collapse close,

Expected,

Certain.

Left, right, left right… 

Sambuca Soldiers on Parade.

New Fiction by Sarah Lerner

She takes the cup of wine and gulps, swallowing more than her share before passing it on to her children. It’s sour, with an edge of sweetness.

Avi tears at the bread, breaking it into pieces and dipping them in sugar. He throws the portions down the table. She waits while he says the blessing, then eats. The sugar is rough like shards of glass, but so sweet. She could eat more, but the portions are passed on. Her children pass them down to the end, the very end where the workers sit. She watches them eat. Their faces are pale and drawn from all those hours in the stinking workshop but tonight they smile. Their faces unfurl.

Now it’s time for the apple. She has found rosy cheeked ones, green skinned, and cut them into segments. Avi passes them along with a bowl of honey and she dips. The honey is thick and glutinous, wrapping around her tongue. She takes more apple and dips again before the plate disappears to the end of the table.

She gets up with her daughters to bring the meal. Thick meat and potatoes, a soft rich smell and more wine. Her stomach is heavy but she takes extra potatoes. She has taken more than her fair share, but what does it matter ? Nobody’s counting and she prepared the meal anyway.

Someone is telling a joke, laughter spirals in the air. Even the poor workers at the end of the table are laughing.

She gets up again with her daughters, though she’s so full moving is getting harder, and brings desert. Grapes and two round honey cakes, enough to feed this table of twenty people.

Two perfect circles decorated with almonds. She cuts one, her oldest girl Sophie another. Sophie’s chestnut hair is brown like the honey cake.

She takes for herself a larger slice than usual . The heaviness of the food fills her emptiness. She is too full to eat, but she bites into the cake, rich with honey and very moist. It’s soggy in her mouth, crumbs tickle her lips.

Around her table everyone is eating honey cake and laughing. If she hadn’t come from Russia life wouldn’t have been like this. She remembers the raw dread of winter, her lips and fingers stiff with cold as she broke the ice in the frozen well.

New Fiction: Too Much by Julie Balloo

The smooth voice as luscious as Belgian chocolate stopped abruptly mid word. Heck! I think that’s what it was, which could have gone on to be Hector or hectoring, or hack or even hic, possibly leading her to say hiccup. But I’ll never know, because when it stopped the silence was louder. It covered the room like a wave on the sand, a picnic rug on the grass, a hermit crab hiding in its shell, the darkened sky that heralds a sudden afternoon storm.  The silence was glorious and soothing and meant to help what should have come next, hours and  hours of serenity but it didn’t last very long.

At first it was soft, a snaky hiss, this was bearable but then it progressed to a gasp, the ebbing away of a dying balloon, a creaking door on its hinge, this too was bearable.

Then the bubbles caught on the way out and percolated before reaching a crescendo that travelled from a low key to a high key and erupted into a loud clap. A whip of thunder, increasing and building, a clanging metal gate in the wind, the unstoppable drip of a neglected tap, the incessant buzzsaw of an overactive mosquito and now, yes unbearable.

On and on it went like this, a symphony of undignified sounds, Philip Glass on crack, Thelonious Monk using only kitchen utensils or garden tools, a lesser known electric synthpop group that should never leave the unfortunate band’s dad’s garage. An assault of percussion, unexpected and at once predicted.

Louder all the time, Christ any louder and the neighbours would add to the cacophony as they pounded the front door, the police would be called, the roof would collapse and fall in and crush them all to death.

But no, on it went. Dispersed with whispers and unintelligible words, almost grunts. A farmyard orchestra. At last, a kookaburra emerges, laughing and laughing and echoing until my ears are physically attempting to close, to lock out this almighty din but never ever succeeding.

People have died making these noises, loved ones have set by their beds and witnessed this ungodly death rattle that is the soundtrack of the soon to be departed.

Some have likened it to a rumbling ladder leading from life to the after- life. But there is nothing glorious about this clatter. It is hellish and cuts through the air with a thousand shards of piercing glass.

It stops, I am free, I can breathe again, I can go, I can drift.

Racket! Blare! Holy mother of hullaballoo, it is back with a vengeance.

Impossible to bear, impossible to live with, impossible to continue.

I grab my pillow and press it over his face, vibrations pulse through the fabric, punching through the plumes but I have the strength of the will of silence.

Then, it stops. It has gone, the commotion have eased, the tumult has subsided, the snoring has finally stopped, and my husband is dead.