Issue Twelve: Mapping the City Out Now!
All pieces in Issue 12 are based on the theme of ‘Mapping the City’. These stories and poems map the City of London and beyond. They map journeys within cities and between them. We have maps of mysteries, love affairs, lost items. And there are, of course, attempts at mapping that go horribly wrong. The most exceptional thing about this issue is that, although every contributing author started from the same place, they have all ended up at destinations entirely their own.
Featuring
Oxford Street Dreams by Claudette Benjamin
This is London. This is where I am meant to be. Instead of swearing impatiently to myself as I would have done back home, I simply raise my phone higher, bringing a large H&M logo into the picture, along with a couple of iconic, red double-decker buses.
London is a Cake by Valeria Ryrak
In the end, it’s all rather uplifting
The writing’s on the wall—you read it, think it’s a joke,
Don’t you know that London is a cake?
Tell me, now, which layer will you bake?
Robinson’s Wake by Dale Hall
Because of his purpose, Calderón likes to see parallels. Rather than seeing the text scraped from the parchment and replaced by other events, as Keiller does, he likes to see the text gone over with a ballpoint pen again and again until the page is rife with thick, black figures and occasional tears.
Deptford’s Broad Way(s) by John Rice-Murphy
The tattered nymphs of Tidemill,
The garrison of The Birds Nest
And their mud-smeared intellectualism,
Pretend to know positively nothing.
