What do you write? Poetry.

Why do you write it? Because I don’t think I’m brave enough to do anything else that might change people’s points of view. And it’s fun.

Inspirations and influences? Selima Hill, Clare Pollard, John Donne, Dylan Thomas, The Smashing Pumpkins, the Terminator Films, Jonathan Lyon, tabloid news stories, woodcuts, accounts of captivity by savages, grimoires.

Where can we see your work? Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, which is in Blackwells. Most of that is old and crusty and I wrote it at school. You can Google me, if you promise not to laugh. I have a debut collection which is out soon on Luke Wright’s Nasty Little Press.

Has your work been featured anywhere? The Guardian, and a bunch of ‘zines: Pomegranate, Rising, Magma, FuseLit, Cake, Cadaverine.Most of them have silly names. I performed at Latitude. I was really stoned, but pulled it off. I think.

Working on anything great? I’d sound like a bit of a dick if I said yes. I’m writing.

How has your writing developed and what about it’s future? Yeah, there’s a lot less ex-boyfriend bile now. In exam rubric terms, I’m engaging with the question more fully. I could see my poems getting longer in the future.

How supportive and fertile is Oxford as a space for creative writing? You can’t write unless you’re reading, so in that sense it’s perfect. There are lots of opportunities to be published, also. The only problem, I think, is that I’m a page poet, not a performance poet, and a lot of open mic things aren’t my cup of tea. I can’t do the rapping, commentary- on-the-status-quo hing. I’m pale and awkward and would rather stay inside.

What do you write? Poetry, prose, experimental theatre, and journalistic pieces.

Why do you write it? I write because to be a writer you should write. Most people who say they want to be writers don’t actually write. I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to write through the bad writing and get to the goods.

Inspirations and influences? Bernardine Evaristo, Kate Mosse, Paul Muldoon, Issac Asimov, Will Self, Steve Reich, Soul, Funk and Hip-Hop.

Where can we see your work? Waterstones in 7 years time (if they’re still going). Some illegal TV/Movie website if I’m lucky. Definitely on the Internet.

Has your work been featured anywhere? Here and there. The Penguin Publisher site, Dissocia, ASH, LIVE magazine,Deadline, The Guardian.

How has your writing developed and what about it’s future? Yes, it has. I started writing in 2008 after winning a poetry competition at The Roundhouse Theatre. Working as a young editor at Penguin Publisher, I used to write alternative chapters for novels and so had to ventriloquise different author’s styles. So I’ve moved between different styles of writing. I’m still moving. I write experimental theatre pieces which I’m hoping can be adapted for TV and film shorts. There is, however, poetry in everything I write.

How supportive and fertile is Oxford as a space for creative writing? I was the president of the Oxford University Poetry Society 2010-11 so I was able to interact with some of my favorite poets as well as some of Oxford’s student poets. That really enthuses one as a writer. Moreover, in my first year I worked on a TV development course with the Broadcasting Professor. I think the people and the opportunities are here and you’ve just got grab them with your ‘write’ hand.

It is a far too often used phrase to convey the urgency with which I wish to suggest the reader attend this exhibition, but truly, the National Portrait Gallery’s Lucian Freud: Portraits is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Of course, the art itself more than merits this accolade; however, the reason I am so adamant that all who truly love art must visit this exhibition is that it will never conceivably be reassembled. Comprising works from all stages in the artist’s long and multifarious career, approximately half of the pieces have been sourced from private owners. Indeed, the outpouring of affection towards Freud after his death in July 2011, has allowed the NPG to source works from a plethora of private collections. However, having impressed on you an urgency to attend this exhibition, which ends on 27^th May, for social and historical reasons, I will seek to justify myself through artistic ones.

More than any recent exhibition in London, perhaps besides the Tate Modern’s recent retrospective on Miro, the NPG placed its focus on the historical progression of the artist. Whilst it is no doubt typical to group pieces by date rather than theme for such events, in this case, the foregrounding of Freud’s development is key. If a watershed is useful in pinpointing the moment of transformation in the aesthetic of the artist, then we must place Woman Smiling in this position. From his earliest paintings in 1941, though to 1958, the image of the human form presented to us by Freud is both smooth and pale. Indeed, there is no sense of the progressive layering of oil upon oil that is so symptomatic of his later style; instead, we are presented with the flattened features of man devoid of movement or vitality. This is nowhere better exemplified than in his series depicting his first wife, Kathleen Epstein, where her skin is pale to the point of anemia with a wide-eyed expression of both sorrow and loneliness. Indeed, as we move through the exhibition, we realise that the view is continually denied the eye-contact that allows for an emotional connection to be created. Freud’s models are seemingly ashamed of their participation, and we are not observers but voyeurs at their vulnerability.

It is in one of such paintings of Epstein, Girl in a Dark Jacket, that we can first see Freud’s association with Cubism. It is only slight, he does not descend into abstraction of the features as Picasso did, but the face is certainly formed of angular shapes rather than flowing contours and we can see how his eye has broken the features down into shapes, viewing the parts that form the whole. This connection of Cubism is something that I would like to emphasis throughout his work, though it is a maturation of Picasso’s earlier application, I use the term then to describe Freud’s vision rather than his creations. Even as Freud developed his style post-Woman Smiling, there is still a sense that the face is a composite of shapes, not an integral and unified structure. When he talks about mapping the ‘landscapes of the face’ we understand how the British artist would have viewed such a project; the patchwork quilt of British farmland, with its rich earthy colouring, is the very landscape that Freud captures in the features of his models. Indeed, it is hard to believe that words such as Sleeping Nude, painted in 1950, could have been from the same artists who re-imagined the human form in all its ugliness in Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, painted forty-five years later. The smooth textures of the early work have been completely transformed into an earthy, contoured body that revels in its unconventional choice of subject. There is no idealized beauty after 1958, but there is something true that we cannot ignore.

One could dwell for hours with any of these paintings, and the only disappointment with so large a collection is that we cannot; however, if one had to choose only a handful of pieces to exemplify Freud’s later style then perhaps these would feature. One of Freud’s favourite models, and the one that provides the most interesting poses, was Leigh Bowery. Bald and overweight, the depictions of Bowery are a confrontational assault on the viewer sensibilities, with Leigh Bowery (Seated) being amongst the most provocative. A similar effect occurs with ‘Big Sue’, Freud’s ‘Benefit Supervisor’ whose presence forces us to re-examine our own perceptions of the human form. However, where Bowery exudes confidence, dominating the centre of the canvas, the painting Freddy Standing highlights the vulnerability of man. Ushered into the corner of the room, the figure appears thin and gaunt, a victim not an entertainer. It is when Freud captures this fragility in his work that we feel the most moved; both man and woman are stripped back to an essential being and both are found desensualised and alone. Indeed, man’s inability to connect with his fellow man is ever present, in the solo depictions of individuals and even more so when the models fail to interact within group compositions. If Freud speaks to us through these works, then it is to remind us of our inalienable solitude. 

He had carefully chosen his chair because it was hard and wooden and high, and it looked to him like the kind of chair you would sit on to write. But as he sat, staring carefully at the grained surface of his wooden desk, Nick was aware only of the hardness of his seat and its proximity to the writing surface. The young man tapped his pen with neat, careful precision against the wood, feeling the springs compress inside the little plastic rubberised cylinder as the nib shot out, and then the moment of release as the metal tip was drawn back inside. There was the stiffness of the chair, and the careful metronomic clicking of the pen and the noise of people down in the shop. The syrupy late afternoon light came in obliquely through the window and poured warm into his eye, leaving little kaleidoscopic, geometric after-images in his vision when he blinked, which he could avoid only by lifting his head to a specific angle, focusing out onto the damp-stained off-white back wall of the bedroom, which hurt his neck, leaving the dull sensation of pain in his sternomastoid muscles, and the light and the clicking and the hard wooden chair. Nick was a writer. And, as of the last three months, he had been resident at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop in Paris.

 The shop was small and famous, and was patronised mainly by tourists who had seen Midnight in Paris and who had once heard of Hemingway. Its dusty shelves were weighed down under bulky loads of books, and the dreary plodding noise of an out-of-tune piano seemed constantly to float from some upstairs room, muffled by the ceiling. When it rained, the drops beat down on a little exposed skylight, filling the whole shop with the soft, warm murmur of falling water. And at Shakespeare and Co., one could gain residence for free on the basis that one was a writer; Nick was living there without paying a penny, so ipso facto… that proved it. But what exactly did he write? He had been carrying a notebook for months, carefully labelled “Writing Journal”, and its pages were filled with a thick, curlicue-saturated scrawl, outlining in bright blue ink his most ephemeral and ingenious thoughts before they escaped his mental grasp, collapsing into little heaps of psychic dust. The latest page was entitled “thoughts on dough”. The first line read “the stuff of life – bread, its progenitor. Also – money. Money = basis for life? Elaborate…” The rest of the page was a To-Do list, half ticked off and a brief shopping list.

 The week before, a famous writer, who had become famous by writing salacious, thinly disguised autobiography, had been in-store doing a promotional reading of her latest salacious, thinly disguised work. At the end of the salacious reading, Nick meekly approached her, proffering his recently purchased copy of her book to be signed, and announced in a proud, barely-cracking baritone

-“I’m a writer”.
-“Great”, she replied.
-“I’m Nick”.
-“Hi, Nick”.

 On another occasion, Nick had been helping a customer with a purchase, searching the top over-stock shelves for a last copy of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. From the height of his ladder, he could see another store volunteer talking, with overflowing, animated gesticulations, to a woman, wearing a green turtleneck sweater and entirely round tortoiseshell glasses.  Nick abandoned the book and the waiting customer, and approached the woman, hearing hints of conversation – hints that suggested that she was a publisher, a publisher “always on the look-out for new writing”. And here he was, a writer, in Shakespeare in Co, standing amongst these heaps of literature; to his left lay the Beat generation, cosily tucked to the side of the entrance, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, ready for easy discovery and subsequent purchase – to his right was a display of David Foster Wallace, framed by Jonathan Franzen and Dave Eggers. And there, in the middle of it all, was Nick – all parcelled up and ready to be found. And so he approached her – he was a writer he announced, looking for a publisher. Send her some of his stuff she suggested. Well, I will then. Well, I look forward to it. Likewise.

 And Nick sat, too high up against his desk, so his thighs were pinched slightly by the interior of the desk surface, carefully constructing a narrative, with a detailed and complex character development, each imbued with an individual, rich interiority, drawing from his many pages of notes. As each idea came to him, he vividly imagined it read and discussed in excited A-level classrooms or in Booker prize judging rooms, followed by grave and dignified nods. The book sat out on the desk in front of him, held open, pinned down by an empty plant pot and a half-full pack of Camel Blues, torn slightly at the edge. And Nick stared blankly at the page, aware only of the light hitting his eye, and the pain spreading across his neck and down his back and of his carefully chosen chair and the fact that he was writing.

Yes, it’s that time of year again; get ya picnic baskets, grab your retro bicycles and start a-frolicking because summer is officially here. And if ever an album was born to shoulder that oft-quoted title of ‘quintessential summer soundtrack’, it’s King Charles’ debut LoveBlood. A glorious mélange of reggae rock and folky whimsy, LoveBlood can be most aptly summed up as the lyrical love child of Caribbean Tropicana and rosy English folk.

The effortlessly beguiling opening lines of ‘Mississippi Isobel’ – ‘she grows wild strawberries/She’s made of ivory and pearl’ – exemplifies King Charles’s seductive powers of song writing. The buoyant piano chords breezily evoke visions of carefree summer afternoons, while ‘Lady Percy’, replete with gospel and reggae influences and armed with a joyously infectious refrain ‘Oh-uh-oh-oh Lady Percy will never come to my show’ is enough to send most reaching for the coconut bikinis and rum (in the best possible way of course).

The glam-folk extravaganza ‘Bam Bam’, as unsubtle as a door in the face, nevertheless highlights the King’s unbridled theatricality in a sublime riot of calypso rhythms, effervescent riffs and bombastic reggae-electro beats.

Meanwhile, the angelically mellow ‘Love Lust’ offers a reminder of King Charles’s close links to the Mumford and Sons brand of neo-folk revival. The dark vampishness of ‘Polar Bear’ and its refrain – ‘she’s got the hot blood of a polar bear/ The cool head of a crocodile’ – provides a climactic antithesis to the chirpy, tropical overtones of the album as whole.

LoveBlood marks a considerable victory for the hitherto much-maligned genre of reggae-folk. King Charles has brought the genre to near perfection by combining rythmic mastery with songwriting par excellence. So raise a salute to the King, procure a cocktail and form a conga line to a beach near you.

Four Stars