Bear Baiting: A Pamphlet by Nottingham City of Literature's Youth Advisory Board
AboutYou are holding Bear Baiting, a brand new anthology of work from Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature Youth Board. Join us, as we explore themes of memory, love and mythical realism. This collection is extremely close to our hearts. For some of us, it is the first time we have seen our work in print. It’s our way of telling the world, “Young people are here, they’re talented, and their interest in literature is not dying!”
The Youth Board was given the opportunity to create our own pamphlet with the guidance of Ben Macpherson, an established Nottingham writer and performer. Over four workshops, we found common interests as a collective. These inspired many different writing prompts, from the point of view of objects to facts about ourselves and our city. We discussed techniques for our editing and learned about the entire process of putting together a pamphlet, from ordering poems, to including images. We are so proud and excited for you to see the outcome: expect to meet accused women, plastic angels, mysterious night watchmen and even Lady Di.
Annie Cross Youth Board Chair
Dead Weight
Nostalgia rolls up her coat sleeve to the elbow, Counts back from three, And dips her arm into the rockpool,
It is a sunny, late-spring day, By the sea, somewhere west of home, We are all here, sat on picnic blankets, the grandparents In camping chairs, the dog curled up by the windbreak, And Nostalgia, down by the water's edge, just out of earshot,
She sings nursery rhymes to herself, As she combs through the wake of the waves, Sorting the shells from the stones, Pocketing the special ones. Now, when she skips, she rattles like a tambourine.
Not much has changed since that day.
I left Nostalgia on the beach, Thought I'd never see her again. Until one day, I found her, tangled in the horizon line, Faded like a Polaroid and bruising all the colours of dusk, I took her home, dragged her by the sun bleached ringlets, Washed the world from her cheeks, I unmasked her of her martyrdom.
Nostalgia doesn't sing much anymore, just sits, Perched like a pixie at the end of the bed, And there she is content to stay, So I never hear the rattle of her razor clams, Her coat has shrunk too. Or she has grown, The fabric now hardly reaches her elbows, Exposing the bones and sallow skin of her arms.
I should bury her. On a sunny late spring day, By the sea, somewhere west of home, But for now, It is easier to pretend that not much has changed since that day.
- Henry Lambert
Forget-me-not
stretch out, slow under that great wide sky
a pool of blue ink seeping through the white stretched thin as palm skin summer unspools:
seventh, three since the Father left his silence spilling, blood to water, a ghost caught in the stained glass of the door that crowds each rise/fall and by dark, you dream strange things rafters cast by the light of the seven-o-c wood gold, whorls bright like eyes brown in the twilight
by day you wait for night, truck tyres crossing the drive and putting the blue blossoms to death
Mary martyred on the dash saccharine haze/soured summer days those forget-me-nots that resurrect fro ascend in the absence of rubber tread
the ache is thislike falling off your bike into the grey watching the bruise bloom, thick and wild on skin unfledged one by one you crush those blue heads beneath the kitchen light bleeding out onto the drive
age stifles, summer after summer blossoms splayed on stone blue blood running cold Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?
- Ava Richmond Blum
Self-aware/Self-portrait
I am most myself when I crumble rust between my fingertips; The orangey kind that leaves a stain like the droning Of the news on the TV – inescapable like the instinctual Knowledge of a deer, illuminated during the witching hour. Like that first step out the door – I have a briny aftertaste, My words coating your lips with the sea till you ’ re stranded, Watching domesticity lap at the shoreline; it pulls you back.
What makes me unique is the ringing in my ears, Dusty imprints on your car door – immovable As you lend a thought to me at my best: wrapped In brown paper and dotted, I am the doe at dusk And fate is my archer; the cycle that defines me. All the while, your vehicular anxiety tips slowly off the edge, And a friend waits for me. I am the bear she is baiting With her soliloquies - she forgets the importance of privacy; Rage is a mask or a shield, depending on the angle you view it at.
You can define me as the cresting waves that run from your approach.
Translating another’s suffering into my own sombre tones, I descend to the depths of the trenches And come back wounded. That glimpse of movement Between the trees speaks to me in a way you never could, And I feel small in the face of memory. Your starring moments haunt me, And I cannot help but mirror the flash of antlers You see and wonder if you were dreaming.
- Mia Hagues
Next, Please
Bright flashing lights colour a warm August night. The moon dances above, rejoicing in the happiness of the people below.
Faces of fairgoers swell with eagerness, their laughter ringing through the air - they chatter amongst themselves, keen to jump on the joyride.
Those already onboard throw their arms up, wind blowing against their face, cheeks flushed by the cold.
On the ground, passersby move like specks, in the shadow of the Council House, which sits beside the fair with an air of restraint.
The usual star of the show, tonight it makes way for stalls and rides.
Glee spreads as giggles bounce their way downwards, aided by the crisp silence of the cold.
They reach folks walking, prompting hands to wave upwards, a fitting response to the delight that was shared.
Then there is John - John is the ticket master. A quiet but necessary cog in the machine.
A figure often overlooked, but central to the operation.
John appears unmoved by this fact, his head held up by his hand as he sulks in his chair, the words ‘next please’ forming on his lips as his head slumps furthe
- Aarya Handa
The Battle Mare
The banners fleck sand into her face. She holds her master high, like he is an antique vase and she is the pedestal. His heels dig into the softest parts of her. Looking side-on at the crowds that cheer not for her, but for her master. She works harder than him. She is stronger than him, but does not have the words to command an army. If she did, she would be her own master. She would say:
Hooves are defter than hands, but that does not deny me rest. Your tongue forms words mine cannot; that does not mean yours is best. Overworked and encumbered, your cruelty is a crime. But I exist for no one. You shall not kill me before my time.
To be desired by Man - creature most unheeding, creature most callous - what glory in that?
He who stops at nothing to fulfil His wretched desires? He who sees the padlock on the grave of a woman, and still advances forward?
For even in death, no peace; still, you carry the burden of His gaze. Even with all lost and final breaths drawn before we pass into the next realm, once again, it is our “Beauty” that invites our bodily violation, an act so inevitable, it may well be considered a funeral rite and carried out so mercilessly by Him.
For Man values woman ’ s surface, not woman ’ s soul.
Such is the plight of women..
Where no woman stirs at the news of such trespasses“Beauty” is no badge of honour to wear with pride, but a blemish borne upon birth that mars every season thereafter, sparing no avenue, it seeps like an infection, yielding nothing but pain for the burdened.
“Beauty” is no weapon for woman ’ s arsenal, but a plague that forbids familiarity with peace Such is the plight of women.. Peace, after all, is a pleasure only afforded to Man. He who has not felt the river of crimson that arrives on woman ’ s shores without welcome. He who has not had the fire of ambition doused with the ringing of church bells. He who has not witnessed the gates of flesh cast open their arms to deliver new beginnings. Upon these chopping blocks? Only the head of woman. What is it that Man knows of this life?
He who bends His knee to surrender His soul before His creator, yet looks to the sky instead of the ground? He knows not of His origins, of His Self, for they are intimately wrapped with care; woven not from the hands of the Divine, but by the palms of the veiled. This brand of ignorance belongs to Man alone. Such is the plight of women.. Oh, when will Man learn? His salvation stands beside Him. Not in the clouds, as promised.
- Aarya Handa
Elegy From A Plastic Angel
I am sick, I am sick, A starving sinner of a centrepiece, A starving sinner of a centrepiece,
To be gawked at like the gory headline of a shock accident, To be gawked at like the gory headline of a shock accident, And to be remembered like And to be remembered like The lingering last line of the obituary. The lingering last line of the obituary. Take me down. Take me down. Make me plummet like a second satan, Make me plummet like a second satan, As you caress the harsh cold of fleshlessness. As you caress the harsh cold of fleshlessness. Feel paint run like spilt wine, Feel paint run like spilt wine, And look into the dark of my nail-wound eyes. And look into the dark of my nail-wound eyes. Send me back, Send me back, Limping like a prodigal son, Limping like a prodigal son, Another visitor, Another visitor, unfamiliar face, unjaded obsession. unfamiliar face, unjaded obsession.
Lay your hands like a beatdown and return me
Lay your hands like a beatdown and return me
To my dust-drowned heaven, To my dust-drowned heaven, Hands of God - always grasping. Hands of God - always grasping. I'll be seen as nothing but the page-thin line I'll be seen as nothing but the page-thin line Between a sacrament and a sacrifice. Between a sacrament and a sacrifice.
- Henry Lambert - Henry Lambert
Guilt
Guilt has ten eyes on stalks that stretch from the vase of their neck like cosmic daffodils.
They don’t scare me like they used to.
They dress in wickedness but wear vulnerability in the hollow of their throat and when they reach out their pallid hand to take me,
I know it is because they just want someone to hold.
- Flynn Ledger
The Passenger’s Complaint
I’m thinking to myself, “What is this girl doing?”
We’re launched & hurtling along, reaching 240km per hour in 5 seconds
I’m not used to this pace
Usually I’m resting on the top of a steering wheel or being fiddled with before an appointment she’s nervous for
Worst-case scenario, I’m being squashed while she sleeps News flash, there’s a new worst-case scenario in town…and its pretty ugly
If you ask me, rollercoasters should be banned
There’s no need to be tinned like sardines, crammed into a carriage with strangers whilst being jerked violently forward at a rate surely injurious to her health
What compels a creature to behave in this manner? Someone with an addiction for adrenaline and a death wish.
- Aarya Handa
Vermin
There are rats in your parents’ brains. They gnaw the grey matter that makes them think, and when they lash out with their own incisors, you are the scraps they tear into.
Ignorance wields a double-edged sword, and the wounds don’t heal any faster. They fester, and the shame spreads like a plague of locusts, wings beating under your skin.
They’re a part of you now. Each sharp-tongued quip itches like another has hatched; the foam hardens on each egg; it solidifies your bones too. You are in a prison of yourself.
And why should you give sympathy to those who blind themselves? It is not your duty to pry open their eyelids; to rid them of the pests that burrow and breed in their bodies.
You have your own vermin to kill.
Return
“There are three of us in this marriage.” Flutters Lady Di I watch her clipped up interview on YouTube
With two of us in my body
Clutching my sides to keep myself accountable Whilst the world keeps turning
I forget no-one else can see you and set two places at the table.
I carry you in my collarbone
Feel you sidle in from my shoulders when you get too heavy. I tell everyone that you have moved away
Though they must see the hallway is littered with postcards. “Drive safe.” I whisper into the phone, “The guest room is already made up. ”
- Annie Cross
Asper
There are eight point two billion people on Earth Our first date was brunch.
There are six point nine million people in the UK
When you got up the next morning you accidentally put on my jeans.
There are three hundred and twenty-nine thousand and three hundred people in Nottingham We kissed on Pelham Street.
There are seven thousand three hundred and ninety eight people in Netherfield We met at a house party.
There were five people there.
I didn’t believe in love at first sight.
Then you opened the door.
- Annie Cross
Melancholia
boy of unbalanced humours/too much black bile/leaking like a shipwreck/tar in his lungs/his belly heavy with oil spills/choking on midnight waves/how could he not revere/the one who hangs the stars in the night sky/his lighthouse blinking/green light over black waters
- Flynn Ledger
I'll be seen as nothing but the page-thin line between a sacrament and a sacrifice.
Bear Baiting is an anthology of work from the Nottingham City of Literature Youth Board, created to showcase the work of a remarkable group of young artists. This work, created with practice and sophistication belies the early stage of their artistic journeys. This pamphlet captures a unique set of voices presenting them in chorus for your appreciation. For some of these artists, this is the first time they have shared their work in print. Enjoy the vibrancy of their work as they take you through dream and memory with words to provoke even the deepest sleeper from hibernation.
