Thursday, April 3, 2025

The Source

The Ghosts She Felt Acutely

This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots as a literary magazine in the 1920s, when our undergraduate contributors (including Evelyn Waugh, Graham...

Letter from the Orient

This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots...

A Short Sharp Shock to the Skull

This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots...

Rhonda May

This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots...

Rice-cakes

'a few more days of worrying about weddings, wondering why we seem to copy the lives of those we wish would love us'

Two Poems

"The memory is hazy, the photographic still of the memory I keep in my head, more so."

Love from,

'You're in all the details, taking up the small spaces/You're filling in the gaps between words in this poem.'

Tesco

'something in the bagging area/I looked down, and it was me, crouched there'

hands/face/space

"how we feel now must be the way that stars feel all their lives"

Requiem for a marriage

'I wanted you, all the more because I knew / Someone else was getting you. / What does that mean now?'

Addressing the Unknown

'Let's watch the sun making its paperboy/rounds tapping on the window and shedding/off its flecks of glow'

Growin’ up with Emily

'three girls sat dangling out the doors of a car, sea salt and suncream'

O Cypris

'O Cypris! I must rank among those who seek your nectar.'

It is the light

"It is the light/That engulfs me/Its fingers of dust waltzing ever so softly"

Time Alone

"The echo in the chapel chimes as I take my unlikely seat."

The Potter

"Did you ever meet the man, Who lived once in this place?"

Atonement

'I rue the lost hours and days: a finite life, this one'

A Love Letter to Living With Scientists/An Apology to My Housemates

'I am not sure what broke me. I think it's a close tie between the discussion around NaCl when I asked for the salt to be passed down the table or when someone genuinely asked the group what their favourite way to measure the centre of mass was.'

Drawing Attention

'I'm making mistakes I'm crossing them out I'm making it ugly I'm making it shout'

Little Giveaways

"Jazz was being played over the stereo like theme music, as if they were acting in a television drama where each character had some essential trait, some crucial role."

Mother

"I waltzed in her arms down the high street"

Specks

"From a space we might call "above", an Entity watches - gargantuan, unfathomable, other."

A Quick Trip Far Away

"One summer, a summer which now seems to have passed by long ago, I slept and dreamt for the first time on the mainland."

Rules to Live By in Your New Home

"No 1. Label your collar to avoid feeling ornamental."

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