Dry the River are at an interesting point in their musical trajectory. The five piece from London have quietly been honing their brand of ardent and emotionally wrought folk music and, while they have thus far evaded the glare of large-scale publicity, with a string of sold-out venues and a forthcoming UK headline tour in April this present state of humble obscurity is on the cusp of reversal. Nonetheless, this was evidently lost on the security guard who midway through my interview with Matthew Taylor (electric guitar) and Jon Warren (drums) curtly demanded they produce their tickets for the gig at Garage, Islington. ‘Erm, we’re actually playing…’ Jon replies, unabashed by their lack of celebrity.

Part of what has made Dry the River so distinctive in today’s increasingly popular neo-folk market is the intense poeticism in Peter Liddle’s songwriting and his hauntingly angelic falsetto. The majority of tracks on the group’s debut album, Shallow Bed, are also laden with religious symbolism, embodied by herds of oxen in ‘No Rest’ and a portentous angel of doubt in ‘New Ceremony’. These references are conscious as, Matthew explains, ‘religion and spirituality are really important to Pete… he’s always been surrounded by the Church and singing in the church choir from a young age.’

No doubt this spirituality has contributed to the fact that Dry the River are prone to wrestling with dark and introspective themes. The music is mired in human misery, whether that be the alcoholism in ‘Bible Belt’ (the track that has garnered almost half a million YouTube views) or the sickness and imminent death in ‘Shaker Hymns’.

I ask what provides the inspiration for this, and Matthew replies, ‘They’re pooled from experience, from everything we have experienced in life, our travels and touring and seeing other cultures.’ Jon and Matthew both add that they’re strongly influenced by Americana, particularly the South with its tradition for laid back melodies holding mournfully elegiac undertones. This American influence is not lost on the band’s critics, but for the Guardian (a tad unfairly, perhaps) it was ultimately ‘hollow when you know they come not from some remote Appalachian cabin but a shared house in Stratford, east London.’

Being such a folk driven band, I ask whether they feel that with the huge popularity of Mumford and Sons et al, the neo-folk climate is over saturated at the moment. Jon is adamant, ‘If you speak to anyone from Mumford or whatever, they’ll tell you that there isn’t a new folk climate because folk has always been around. But I do think it’s a reaction against mainstream musical culture, against the X Factor’. Matthew adds, ‘We’re actually trying to move away from folk… we want a diverse musical sound.’

This grass roots approach to making music also explains the band’s love of touring. Fresh from playing SXSW in Texas, Jon enthuses that touring is ‘the perfect life. There’s no pressure and we have such communicative fans, we can just relax and have a beer with them after… Pete isn’t the kind of front man who likes to hide himself away, he’ll have a beer and chat after.’ In a music industry rife with feuds, its clear that goodwill and mutual affection solidify this band. Dry the River may be on the ascent, but as of yet their feet remain firmly on the ground.

Oxford Universtity has a vibrant creative writing scene and here are just a few places to look to feed and showcase your creative talent… 

The Failed Novelists. 

If you’re interested enough in writing to have got this far, then you’ll want to know about the Failed Novelists. The biggest creative writing group of our university, they are a non-scary ‘writer’s support group’ which (aptly) meets in the Welfare Room of Teddy Hall and addresses its newsletters ‘Dear Failures’. Although the prospect of spending your Sunday afternoons amongst the literati of Oxford might sound daunting, current president Alex Wooley assures me that they endeavour to be kind, at least to first timers, and that ‘the point of the society is feedback, for free, about people’s work.’

The society was formed, back in 2005, after a night out when it was discovered that all the conquered revellers had written novels in their adolescence. Once the drafts had been dug out and shared over restorative cups of coffee in a cafe, there was no pride left to these founders. From then onwards, the society was established and they shared their newer work.

But whilst the tea has gone – ‘too difficult to bring all the mugs and the kettles and things’ – the spirit has remained and the Failed Novelists have been meeting ever since. New additions to the programme have been the production of an annual anthology of the Failures’ work which goes on sale and sells a decent number of copies. There is also an annual creation of a collaborative novel to which all Failure’s are invited to contribute.

Alex himself has appreciated the positive effect of the society on his work, admitting that ‘quite often I’ll write something and I’ll think that it is perfectly obvious, but everyone else wonders – ‘Why does your mind work like that?’ He points out that ‘the communal aspect is extremely useful’ for writers who otherwise engage in a fairly lonely communication between soul and screen. 

If you are interested in contacting this group, then email [email protected]

Oxford University Poetry Society.

OUPS both brings professional poets to Oxford and supports the work of student poets. Hence we have invited speaker events but also open mic nights as a platform for Oxford’s student performers. We take submissions for the society magazine Ash in the forms of poetry, photography and essays. Weekly workshops at 7 pm on Wednesday in the Mitre pub provide brilliant opportunities for poets to develop their writing. We do a lot for ourselves but also try to co-operate with other groups; this term we’re hosting a 3^rd week reading by Tom Chivers and Patrick McGuinness with St Anne’s Arts Week and a Shakespeare recitation competition with OUDS. We’ve had a range of things going on and anyone interested can join our facebook group or email [email protected].

Hanzla MacDonald

The Writers’ Block

The Writers’ Block is a show on Oxide radio that sprung from an idea we had to showcase Oxford playwrights. Over time, however, our remit has changed, though our commitment to sourcing and showcasing the best of Oxford student writing remains. Basically, we read out submissions from a variety of genres, reacting to them in our own unique way and having a bit of a laugh in the process (with a few guests and songs thrown in for good measure). We try to respond to everything we’re sent positively, no matter what the content, so there’s no fear of savage dissection of your carefully crafted work. If you’re interested in submitting, e-mail your work to [email protected].
Credit to Huw Fullerton, Helen Joslin and Benedict Hardy

Huw Fullerton

Andrew Irwin

The Triumph of Perfect Love 

The state of the world was evil: convulsed by war and injustice, it constantly collapsed further into bloody misery. The eternal cry of the suffering peoples of Earth pierced Heaven with ever greater insistence. Deliver us, was their plea, from hatred and cruelty, and make men love their neighbours as themselves! Now in Heaven there was an angel whose name was Forethought, who was a friend to humanity. He threw himself at the feet of God and implored him to answer the screams of the afflicted, and God smiled on his prayer and sent him forth with perfect love on his wings, to distill it into the hearts of men. As he flew over every island and continent, all negative and destructive emotions were banished. Soldiers on the front line fell joyously into the arms of the enemy; would-be criminals cast away the tools of their wickedness.

In the time that followed, injustice became a meaningless concept. Now that every man and woman loved their neighbour as their self, murder, war and every form of prejudice were things of the past. There was no place for theft, when all property was held in common. Prosperous nations rushed to share their wealth with the less fortunate. To take sexual pleasure by force would have been as unthinkable as to refuse to give it freely. There was no marriage, no lasting partnership, for no-one loved any one human being more than another. Even strangers were beloved, and so great was humanity’s love for the unborn that contraception and abortion were forgotten. To the children born of these liaisons every adult was a parent, but there were no families and no friendships.

People found they had no need for art, since they were everything to one another. The great works of the past, all drenched in the high colour and tragedy of negative passion, meant nothing to them, so they burned poetry and paintings to warm the weak and old in winter. 

Because the angel Forethought had sped only the vocal pleas of suffering humans, articulate even in their pain, now the love of man for man drove out any pity for the other beings with whom they shared their world. Countless species were extinguished as the human population, swollen by love, tried to squeeze enough food from the earth, yet her resources were found to be finite at last. As famine swept the continents and islands, life became torture. To die of hunger was bad, but to see those around you die at the same time and feel the pain of each as your own, that was worse than unbearable! They did bear it; they had to; but every day the cry went up to Heaven more and more: Deliver us, Lord, from this curse of perfect love!

Forethought had a younger brother, the angel Afterthought. He came to pity humanity in this hour, and he abased himself before God for their sake. But his prayer found no fulfilment. When will these wretched creatures be satisfied? God asked him, unsmiling. They wanted love. Let them starve on love!

The End

Concerning Lions

The wounded lioness strains upwards, blood streaming where the arrows pierce her. Shameful the victory over that splendid suffering! Cybele’s lions, unconquered, answered only to she whose yoke they bore, Mother Rhea who has the mastery of the wild at Cnossus. Their roar was madness.

Benaiah the son of Jehoiada killed a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen – snow in the Holy Land, long melted where there are no lions now, though the brilliant white and the tawny danger of it still dazzle on the page.

There are also lions in Homer. They fight, they roar, they cut bloody swathes through the sheepfolds, regardless of the spears in their chests, and it is their very courage that kills them.

Black Flame

And when he heard and when he heard and I said yes. Mistakes steaming ahead and writhing in the sticky mud, I pushed it down and held you back up but did you hear it? The friction was the distance. It cradled the answers and advanced my hatred like a black flame that feeds on whatever it touches, it fattens and vomits and malfunctions and grows and spits and argues till no no no. It rolls away and magnifies and in the end I don’t know what I have.

The space was the killer. At least for you. Down with back to the side from the up past and it goes like GO behind you to I. You to I. From one end to the other and it keeps back again, water lily on the summer surface and I don’t know where I’m streaming will you help? Twisting round but the eyes are appearing and always, read, hurting me because I feel like I can see to the other end. Why can’t you throw yourself in? Is my gaze so repugnant to you, do you hurt because I remind you of the shame you buried when you sacrificed your mind?

Bubbling thrusting up violently the tip shards the skin and the rest will follow. Out far out so inconceivably out don’t pretend you don’t want it there. Don’t pretend here, the consequences are too dire and the pained answers you give will be held against you in the scorching craters of hell that is your smile.

I know what you’re thinking. 

234

Do you know what I felt on those jerky train rides? I stepped on the platform, my boots echoing on the dirty floor and my coat buttoned tightly. The fluorescent pink bag packed with artful inexperience, my clothes almost pushed out because I wanted strangers to see what I was carrying. The strangers mattered most of all, they mattered more than you or I ever realised. They counted the minutes, whispered when I wasn’t looking and ransacked my luggage. They provided the music. They told me when to stop, when to stride ahead though my desire was to go backwards; my words were fed through a funnel that I was desperate to imbibe because the illusions were sweet and acted like glue.

I picked up the closest crayon and coloured you in. Every brief glimpse of tangled hair, the hesitant smile and the ribbon around the wrist, all infused with a pulsating nostalgia that left you in its shadow as it assaulted every vacant opportunity. You drowned and it was my hand that held you under.

And I wanted to tell you which one was worse, but the truth is I wasn’t sure. She sat in the corner of the room with her back lining up against the wall, the sunlight coming through in a little patch that couldn’t reach her eyelids. I felt like there was a dagger somewhere thrust up, and my entrails were spilling out in a muddled heap on the floor staining the mahogany a sombre red. Amongst the blood and hope I tried to pick out all the things that were truly mine. I wanted to show it to you.

I wanted to give it all to you, shaped as it had been in my hand that sculpted it. I compressed it all, squeezed it down and forced it, I pushed my fingers in till the rubber released out through the gaps and I bit down, knowing my teeth could never pierce through without destroying what I had created. I made it all and I blamed you. I decorated it with trinkets and pendants, I threw in sand for good measure and I daubed it with my heart. I spread it all out and I perforated it, I let you handle something that loosened all over your hands. There it was, in a film that wouldn’t keep its hold as it ran faster and faster away from itself. It said yes then turned around and pushed you hard in the neck, it told you it was ok before crouching beneath you, sliding between your legs and slamming its elbow in the back of your knees. It told you go and keep going, but every second it was hurling itself against its jelly-like walls screaming at you, tearing its lungs apart screaming at you because nobody knew what was happening. The insides were straining and the outsides were pushing back in, it was all morphing and crashing and I didn’t know how to put it all. So I just said yes. Or nothing at all, they amounted to the same thing, didn’t they?

Of course neither of us was to blame. There’s a two faced with a three, but somehow we managed to make it equal four. And what’s so bad about that? When I stick my hands into the water I don’t know what I’m going to get. I’m no liar, but I’ll hold you to account. I will make you crawl through every detail, I’ll force you to relive and I’ll watch you tense. Rip you open, splinter by little splinter, and we’ll see who’s left on the lawn when the sun comes out. I’ll get you a gun and with my own face you. Twenty paces from each other I’ll align my eyes with yours, measure your shadow against mine and fire before the weight drags me down. The smile will handle the trigger.

And you and I know that is the only way. With fire I will combat more, and if you told me no I’d just pour more petrol till the flame hits the skyline and bursts back in on itself. Like a black flame that feeds on whatever it touches, it fattens and vomits and malfunctions and grows and spits and argues till no no no. It rolls away and magnifies and in the end I don’t know what I have.

None of it was mine. It was all stolen, forced and borrowed. The red, the black, the shirt, they’re all landmarks I use to remind me of a time that never existed. You told me yes they did. You soothed my cut and you enveloped my cheeks with your hands, you handed me water and warmed me. But through everything, through the knuckles and sandy backs, the sustenance, the music, the morning sun, you told me the wrong time. Printed in black as it stared out at me from the palm of my hand, I understood what had been stamped long before I came on the scene. Like waking up in the soft, constructed haven, I heard the relentless traffic noises stream through a cavity in the well-positioned window. A fishing rod was poked through the hole, nudging me in the hip and reminding me of the wet concrete and the sharp breeze that awaited my return. But you see what the trouble is, don’t you? I saw it so much faster than you did. I saw it so quickly I didn’t even register what had happened, it flitted past my consciousness but left its imprint to be revisited at leisure on the dankness of my wooden floor some time later. It passed me the answers and left back the way it came, but that was enough. That was the reason for my desperate plastering, for my entreaties and countless silences: I knew it had finished before it began.

Remember the things I’ve said when things get difficult. But best of all when they’re easy. Know that the great machine was set in motion in a way totally unconnected. I had no part in this; no part in me and no part in you. Like a rain daisy looking up and forever rooted to its position, dependent on the clemency of the heavens and praying that another doesn’t grow bigger and crumple its light. But  you never stretched far enough to see that when this flower dies, it spreads. 

I want you to sit in a corner

I want you to sit in a corner and think for a little bit. Tie your hands up and block the holes, admit no-one and act dead if you have to. Just because the mouth is silent doesn’t mean the thoughts are, but I never believed you to be stupid enough to think otherwise. Unless of course, you are, in which case stop reading because I’m not sure how much you’ll get out of it. Or if you’re a little bit sadistic then please carry on, it’s nice to be reminded where we fit every now and again. Actually what am I saying, do what you feel like. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know what I’m writing, but maybe you like that, yes? Capriciousness only hurts those who like their angles fixed.

He sat me down on the bed and asked me which I preferred out of lofty suffering and easy happiness.  I said I didn’t know what the difference was. He told me yes I did, or I wouldn’t have put the question to him. Stop playing with me, I said. You think you’re clever but you’re just capitalising on a smoky film, I know your game, I’ve had it tried on me enough times and that filth doesn’t wash. The dirt would be sufficiently thick to bury me in. And he slapped me round the face and poured shot glasses of water into my mouth, and told me that stains come out.

Did you know that? Head bent over the toilet, vomiting all the foulness that’s been poisoning my bloodstream since I took the first bite. All the bilious yellow gunk, all the insults, all the dog hairs and all the lies, all the pretty little kisses and the awkward barriers, all avalanching out whilst you hold back my hair and do all the things you should have done whilst the rice was still warm and the water was draining.

But, of course, there’s a time and place for it all. The hands don’t work out like they used to and the cycle is malfunctioning. But that’s a good thing, if we’re going to get all sentimental about it. It means there’s a little tadpole swimming around under the surface, tickled by the spring sun as it fights its way across something it doesn’t even know it’s in.

There’s a glow softening the wings, but it can only go so far before needing to refuel to reach further the next time. Each step is a better escape from the chain of no’s and suppressed anxieties, from the guessworks and the eardrums that were open to bursting.  Each one is an underformed yes in a jelly that releases its hold when the legs kick and the mouth bites, when the eyes are open wide enough and the thread is cut. When I stamp the envelope and send it with the pieces enclosed.

And you were right after all when you said I knew what the answer was. It turns out that one hurts and the other one doesn’t.

The dude with the awesome beard, right?

The very same.  Facial hair based achievements aside, the Irish playwright and literary critic wrote for 65 years, and became a titan of literary, public and political life along the way.

So what’s he most famous for?

He was a dedicated Socialist, and founding member of the both the Fabian Society and the Labour Party. Of more general interest, he never once slept with his wife in their entire 45 year marriage, but was still very keen on other men’s wives.

And the plays?

Were mostly just extensions of his political ideas.  They were about class divisions, villainous landlords and the failure of government, all presented in a darkly comic way that made them a hit with London audiences.Sounds like a real radical.Exactly    He  opposed  the  First  World War, and helped to found the New Statesmen and the London School of Economics.  On the other hand, he believed eugenics should be used to create a race of superhumans that would one day rule the world.  But his plays were very funny, so we normally just turn a blind eye to that.

Wow.  Were his plays that good?

He was (until Al Gore) the only person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar.  He became extremely wealthy, and subsequently left a portion of his estate to the invention of a new phonetic alphabet, known today as Shavian.

Catch  your interest?  Be ‘Shaw’ to see these:  Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Man and Superman, Major Barbara

The rise, reign and fall of the Nazi party is, and always will be, fertile ground for theatre that aims to leave a lasting impression on its audience, and Killing Hitler is a worthy addition to this genre.  It tells the story of the July plot to assassinate Hitler (a plot familiar to film goers from Valkyrie), but from the perspective of Adam von Trott (Chris Williams), an Oxford alumnus with and equal love for the German nation and Oxford’s dreaming spires.

Williams’ first scene left me somewhat doubting his performance as the central character; I expected von Trott to be a charismatic force of nature, driving the whole production forward.  I came to realise however that that is not the case; Williams’ von Trott is the mild mannered, principled, gentlemanly Oxford scholar.  He is an honourable aristocrat, hopelessly outgunned by the modern world – the scene where, awaiting arrest, he tries to dictate a letter to The Times as a parting shot captures perfectly the noble futility of his character,

It is in such scenes that the wealth of thought and research put into the script shines through. Watching Clarita von Trott (Hannah Gliksten) read her husband’s final letter (gifted to the production by the von Trott family) is genuinely heartbreaking.  Not every scene reaches these heights, however.  Not content with the fascinating story they are  dramatising, the cast have pumped some scenes full of entirely unnecessary melodrama: Bishop Bell ‘s(Miles Lawrence) argument with Anthony Eden (Frederick Bowerman, a striking resemblance to the man himself) is nothing more than a display of blustering gestures, table banging, and exasperated gasps. 

Similarly, the interaction between an Oxford tutor and von Trott contains no quiet understatement, no unsaid feelings; just frustrated shouting. These scenes all share the characteristic of being ones of exposition, simply explaining the politics and rationale of appeasement: as such, the speeches made tend to read like GCSE history essays, perhaps explaining why such an exaggerated attempt has been made to enliven them.

They should, however, be helped greatly by the innovative staging planned by Lucie Dawkins – set in the Keble O’Reilly, the staging will consist of a series of rooms, each representing a different timeand place in the life of Adam von Trott, enveloped by the audience for what promises to be a hugely intimate performance.  Such a staging will hopefully lift the poorer scenes that I saw from being dire to, at very least, mediocre.

Nevertheless, a few poor performances should not spoil what otherwise looks to be a spectacular production.  When it is good, Killing Hitler is  unbelievably  good.    At its best, this play will elicit genuine emotion, as every scene builds on the last to create a sublime, moving, emotional portrait of an extraordinary man’s life.   And a little unwanted melodrama won’t spoil that.   

FOUR STARS