In the seventh week of last term, Etcetera Magazine, literary supplement to Cherwell, held their first Freestyle Writing Competition in honour of World Book Day. The competition came to a head on World Book Day, Thursday, March 3^rd at Oxfam’s flagship bookshop on St. Giles where eleven finalists were called upon to read their work to the assembled crowd.

The readings took place over the course of an hour and were extremely well attended to the point that the windows of Oxfam were all steamed up leaving passers-by wondering what was happening inside. 

Three winners have recently been announced and have received World Classics donated by the Oxford University Press. Jonnie McAloon took first place for his short story, Arthur and The Tobacchus. Antonio Di Fiore was awarded second place for his poem, God’s Work. Finally, Archie Cornish came in third with his poem, The Power Kite. 

The Etcetera team, who judged the competition, received over seventy submissions in varying forms of prose, poetry, and even song, making for some very difficult decision making. In the face of such stiff competition, Francesca Goodwin, Etcetera Content Editor and Events Organiser, said of McAloon’s winning story, ‘it embodies what we believe good contemporary fiction should be; original, concise, and entertaining’.

Similarly, Content Editor Becky Gardner noted that judging the competition was truly an inspiring experience in that ‘it just goes to show how much talent there really is in Oxford’.

All three winning submissions will be featured in Issue 22 of Etcetera which will be published in the second week of Trinity Term and can be found in copies of Cherwell. 

I’ve always had a secret desire to take a course in creative writing, so when I saw a copy of Initiate – the first anthology of work by graduates of Oxford’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing – behind the counter at Blackwell’s, I couldn’t resist picking it up. I vaguely recalled the media hype when the course was launched in 2005: the debates over how it would stand up to traditional ‘academic’ subjects, whether creative writing courses tended to produce a particular, homogenous style of writing, and if writing was something that could actually be taught. The showcase anthology seemed to have received few reviews, so I decided to judge it for myself to see how good these ‘initiates’ really were, and what I was missing out on.n

The quality varies as you might expect from a book that comprises work from a wide range of contributors, testing out a multitude of different forms and voices. I found some of the poems uninspiring: Alice Willington’s Dusk verges far too close to cliché, while David Shook’s images of ‘silverfish [mating] beneath the seminary pillows like sequins fucking’ seems a bit too self-consciously intended to shock. Some of the prose didn’t quite work for me either, such as A Malady of the Heart by Savyn Javeri-Jillani which contains lovely moments but has too much going on for it to flow together as a story.

Still, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Stephanie Chong’s The Essence of Sandalwood, a moving portrayal of the perspective breast cancer puts on the normality of ballet lessons and a career in law. Chong writes like she knows this world well – sure enough, her biography reveals that she gave up being a solicitor to take the Master of Studies. Sarah Darby similarly writes about what she knows, using her experience working in the NHS to create a tender tale of two boys joking about their crushes while waiting for heart surgery. And it’s not just the variety of contributors’ CVs that stands out, the cultural diversity of the cohort is also reflected in their writing. Manish Chauhan’s The Bloomers is a sensitive, unconventional take on arranged marriage, with some wonderful details: ‘They say that if your rotli are round, it means you’ll find a good husband’.

As for the poems, Roy Wooley’s 3am Garden is deliciously surreal, describing an ex-girlfriend who keeps a dragon ‘in an apple-crate with a brick on top’. There are some great titles, such as Questions to Identify a Pale Tongue, and arresting imagery: ‘I like music that wants to press / my cheek against its shoulder’. But the anthology isn’t limited to poetry and prose: I enjoyed Paula Bardowell Stanic’s drama, and a bizarre screenplay by Colm O’Shea. There’s work by more established writers in there as well, including One of those Days, a satirical screenplay by Mark Burton that I immediately had to look up on YouTube. Guessing who is and isn’t a creative writing graduate is part of the fun, and not always an easy task.

One thing is clear: graduates of Oxford’s Master of Studies don’t write like hackneyed clones, as criticisms of creative writing courses might imply. Whether I liked their work or not, they all demonstrated unmistakably individual voices and a willingness to experiment. Judging from the success of recent graduates, this seems to be paying off, although it is, of course, too early to tell whether Oxford will acquire a reputation for creative writing to rival that of East Anglia. 

So maybe I should start compiling a portfolio for my own application – I’m definitely tempted. But then again, a brief glance at the biographies at the back of Initiate or a consideration of the diverse career paths of famous authors such as Dick King Smith, makes me wonder whether a bit of life experience first would be more useful.

Think of all the writing you do at university: thousands upon thousands of words a term. How much of it would you call ‘creative’? Perhaps a metaphor that got a little out of hand or a particularly speculative bit of exposition and, if you do spend time writing stories, poems, plays and the like, chances are it’s in the time snatched from ‘real work’.

Creative writing doesn’t feel like something that fits easily into an academic environment. But for some committed writers, it’s a discipline as demanding as any degree. Dr Clare Morgan was instrumental in establishing Oxford’s Master of Studies in Creative Writing, and now with a new anthology on sale in Blackwell’s and success stories across the board, she’s seen it take its place in the University’s academic landscape.

Dr Morgan’s own career has straddled the worlds of creative and academic writing. She graduated the prestigious East Anglia writing programme before getting a doctorate in English Literature at Oxford, going on to work as a tutor at Christ Church and Brasenose. While she felt like she was part of a ‘historic community’ of writers in Oxford when she was here as a student, a creative writing scene has really emerged in the last few years especially since the instalment of the MSt programme.

Importantly, the course reaches well outside the traditional Oxford bubble, drawing applications and students from around the world and from a wide variety of backgrounds. The age-range is also a mark of diversity; when it comes to the need for life experience, Dr Morgan tells us it’s more a matter of ‘maturity as a writer.’ Some MSt students are fresh from their undergraduate degrees, others in their forties or beyond.

When I ask if the aim of the course is to produce people who can live by writing, Dr Morgan’s answer is carefully balanced. On one hand, it does provide training geared to help graduates publish and market their work, and find satisfying writing careers. But, she says, ‘we’re also realists’. It’s terribly rare to make a living on writing alone, and most who complete the course (or any other creative writing course) face the reality that they probably won’t be among the lucky few. 

A key to achieving this goal, Dr Morgan suggests, is diversity – both form and voice. The MSt teaches not just the short story, novel, and poetry forms we might expect, but also dramatic writing of all kinds. It’s not about producing ‘just another unmemorable novel’. While some creative writing programmes may lead to a homogenisation of writing, a prose style that is recognisably taught, Dr Morgan believes that the Oxford MSt encourages experimentation and individuality. Variety matters, and that’s reflected not just in the course intake but its output as well (see our review of the anthology, Initiate).

Of course, the question arises as to whether you can really teach creative writing – perhaps it’s more a matter of nurturing. Writers on the programme already have talent: the idea is to groom it. A main feature of the Oxford MSt, Dr Morgan told us, is attention to the theory and practice of critical analysis. The idea is to develop ‘the artist as critic’, which not only helps writers understand their own work better, but enables them to consider where their work may fit in with the wider traditions and movements of literature. There’s a rigour here: real work after all. It’s not literary studies, but there is a level of analysis that goes beyond being an ordinary reader, and might just produce some extraordinary writers.

The Oxford 02 Academy on a Sunday night in the Easter Vacation: local school kids, middle-aged rockers, entertainment-starved grad students and finalists. This was the disparate crowd that greeted The Pigeon Detectives on the eve of the release of their third album Up, Guards And At ‘Em!

Faced with the difficult task of debuting new tracks to an audience casting wary glances at each other, the only answer for The Pigeon Detectives was, of course, full-throttle Northern bombast. Not exactly complex, the band’s themes are pretty simple boy-meets-girl stuff; girl is going out with somebody else, boy doesn’t actually like girl that much, boy and girl have an embarrassing age difference. But it is this simplicity that really underlies the band’s strengths, particularly as a live act. Unlike contemporaneous Yorkshire bands, The Pigeon Detectives aren’t very Brooklyn-trendy (The Arctic Monkeys) and haven’t recruited any childhood heroes (The Cribs). Seven years since forming, The Pigeon Detectives are still purveyors of high-energy, bolshie attitude songs about boy-girl angst, but they do this to perfection. They, therefore, took to the stage in Oxford armed with infectious riffs, chant-along choruses and confrontational lyrics. And when the bouncing drums of Romantic Type kicked in, it was impossible to resist.

The set wisely began with some old favourites from 2007’s Wait For Me and its speedy successor Emergency (2008), before introducing any new material. Then third album opener She Wants Me got off to a false start with frontman Matt Bowman holding up his hands, taking full responsibility: “If I mess up the lyrics again you can come up here and beat me up!” I’m not sure anyone would manage though: scissor-kicking off the base drum, lassoing the mic cowboy-style and sprinting across the stage, all the while powerfully spitting out biting insults, this is a man in possession of superhuman energy and force.

When the song managed to get underway – though there was a glimmer of some exciting developments in the band’s sound where there’s clearly been some polishing going on – the choruses are still built for singing along and the guitars are still loud and the protagonist is still pissed off with his girlfriend. However, they’ve added a couple of layers to their sound and they’re now confident enough to exercise control – let it out here, reel it in there, break it down next. No longer limited to just two settings (stop and go), their new material broods, builds and then soars. The new songs are not just catchy, they’re also triumphant.

An hour of foot stomping, arm waving and beer throwing – and that’s just the band – later, you’re overjoyed The Pigeon Detectives are back on the live circuit. There’s no pretention and no posing, no deep pondering of the nature of humanity, just full-hearted and highly danceable agreement that this whole romance malarkey can be a bit complicated. Keyboards and more virtuoso guitar solos are welcome additions and with their slight maturing, The Pigeon Detectives have a new trump card: ballads. New songs What Can I Say and Turn Out The Lights are loud and accusatory, but they’re also gloriously wistful. “You can stay if that’s what you’d like”, ponders Bowman, “just turn out the lights when you’re leaving”, before a soaring guitar solo sweeps in and raises the risk of mass audience air-guitaring to highly dangerous levels.

All this bodes well for the Reading and Leeds Festivals this summer where the Pigeon Detectives will finally be breaking away from the NME tent and onto the Main Stage. They’ve come a long way from being The Kaiser Chief’s identikit support band. You would have to be a fool to continue to confuse them with one-trick ponies brandishing novelty percussion, and you’ll miss out on some pure energy, confidently charismatic indie rock if you do.