Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya
NEW COLLEGE ARTS ANTHOLOGY 2022
New college arts week anthology 2022
Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya
THE COMMITTEE Charlotte Mitchell Oliver Cavadino Lewis Fisher Meghana Geetha Jennifer Hayes Oliver Roberts Dorothy Scarborough Immanuel Smith Pearl Young
FRONT COVER BY GWENDOLEN OTTE
Photo by Eugenia Porechenskaya
EDITOR’S NOTE What Luminescence actually means is something I struggled with as I drafted the email that was to sent out as a call for From the editors submissions. How do you describe Luminescence without just using synonyms of the word light over and over again. My struggle is evidenced in my use of the phrase “things that glow”. I could’ve described the term better. However, it is not my job to define Luminescence too well – the theme, as always, was very open to your interpretation. I left interpretation of the theme to all of you, and you did not disappoint. These submissions beautifully demonstrate the essence of Luminescence where I could not, and with each submission my perception of the word was changed and expanded. This theme which I failed to describe is illustrated here so well in the pages to come.
The joy that your submissions fill me with as I work on this anthology into the early hours of the morning – looking at them keeps me going: to me, this is Luminescence. However what the word means to others, as you will find, is very different. I hope that, as you read this anthology, you can find out what exactly Luminescence means to you.
YOURS TRULY PEARL YOUNG (ANTHOLOGY OFFICER)
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. WARDEN’S WELCOME Miles Young [History, m. 1973]
13. SPHERE AND EDGE, 2021 Margarita Gluzberg
2. KARRABA STEPS Howard Arthur Tweedie
14. Kai Lam [Engineering, m. 1980]
3. SHADOWS THAT GROW BETWEEN Alex Bridges [English & Russian, m. 2021] 4. FUTURE; GREEN FIRE; LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTRE Ania Tomaszewksa-Nelson [Fine Art, m. 1993] 5. ILLUMINATION Georgia Holmer [International Human Rights Law, m. 2017]
7. THE TURN Ariane Peveto [2013] RED TREES IN MIDDLETON WOODS Laura Dawes [Physics, m. 2001] 9. SOLITUDE. CRISES. FEAR Emma Danes English Language & Literature, m. 1987] 10. Immanuel Smith [PPE, m. 2021] 11. Sophie Hyndman [Human Sciences, m. 1985]
15. Gwendolen Otte [History, m. 2021] 17. FIREBIRD Kate Thirlwall [Learning and Teaching, French & German, m. 2007) 19. CATHEDRALS; THE FIVE SISTERS WINDOW Tony Maude [French & German, m. 1963] YOSEMITE, DECEMBER AFTERNOON Gaines Post [m. 1961] 20. TWO RIDDLES TO CONJURE UP LIGHT Tony Maude [French & German, m. 1963] FAMILY IN SUMBA, SUNSET Nick Holder [m. 1989] 21. POLITICAL PURPOSE Duncan Gillies McLaurin [Classics, m. 1981] 22. VARIATIONS ON NEWTON’S WORMHOLE, #1-3 Sarah Miller [m. 2008]
23. AKTIS AELIOU – HEY! YOU LIGHT OF THE SUN Leo Aylen 27. SHADOWBOXING Sophie Bostock [Fine Art, m. 2020] 29. DARK SKY RESERVE Shun-Li Nicole Lee [English Language & Literature, m. 1983] 30. THE AUDITION ROOM Edward Kemp [English Language & Literature, m. 1983] 31. EMIGRANTS Alan Stone [m. 1957] 32. PLAYTHING Jemima Sinclair [Classics, m. 2018]
33. PLEIN AIR; SUNLIT PEAKS IN LAUTERBRUNNEN Mia Broderson [m. 2005] 34. Heather Carter [Fine Art, m. 2020] 35. LIGHTNESS Emma Danes [English Language & Literature, m. 1987] WOOLWICH FERRY Christopher Moody [Modern History, m. 1972]
36. Charles Karelis [Philosophy, m. 1972] 37. MASQUERADE; AN EXTRACT Katherine Heathward [Russian & East European Studies, m. 2013] 39. BRUISES; COLLAGE 2 Charlotte Mitchell [French & Beginner’s Italian, m. 2020] 41. THE TURNING Lucy Balmer Hooft [French & Philosophy, m. 1999] William Pittams [History, m. 2020] 45. Stefania Kapsetaki [Zoology, m. 2013] Trevor Cox 47. THE GREEN LADDER; UNTITLED (STILL LIFE OF ART SUPPLIES); PORTRAIT AS AN ARTIST Jackson Owen 49. COLD LIGHT: AUBADE FOR JB Hugh Martin [English Language & Literature, m. 1989]
51. Dominic Pearce [m. 1975] 52. Yves Leather [Fine Art, m. 2015] 53. THE ART OF WORKING IN THE DARK Helen Cowan [Pharmacology, m. 1999]
60. WINTER WONDERLAND Pearl Young [Experimental Psychology, m. 2020] 61. RESILIENCE Anna Buswell [2021] 62. HOMO EGO; THREE SKULLS Jackson Owen 63. Nick Perry [Physics, m. 1981] 64. Oliver Roberts [Classics, m. 2020] 65. TAPESTRY; SPACE-TIME; SHINING BIRD Alan Stone. [m. 1957] 67. Pearl Young [Experimental Psychology, m. 2020] 68. Meera JP [Music] 69. TWO PARKS FOR NEW YORK CITY Martha Read [Architecture, m. 1990] 71. Pearl Young [m. 2020, Experimental Psychology]
WARDEN’S WELCOME Miles Young I always feel that the word “extracurricular” has a somewhat deadening feel to it, and yet it is how we describe the non-academic side of life in College. But it certainly does not capture the vivacity and the charm of our undergraduates’ artistic lives. This anthology presents that spirit perfectly. It radiates positive energy and it is a joy to consume. I congratulate those who have contributed and those who have produced it.
KARRABA STEPS Howard Arthur Tweedie
SHADOWS THAT GROW BETWEEN ALEX BRIDGES Spires dream in blue and gold A garden lush with broken hearts Where twisted vines climb up and up, Past an emptied hornet’s nest And gather – hush! – in gleaming spires.
Did you ever see the ground? Shadows form so light may spring. Broken hearts and broken skulls Oozing blackness turned to gold Feed the greed of heaven’s host. Darkness, so that light may spring. Dreams dissolve without relief. Cuckoo on a crescent moon, Self-containing, all to dust. Yet fires flash that come between.
FUTURE; GREEN FIRE; LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTRE ANIA TOMASZEWSKA-NESLON
ILLUMINATION GEORGIA HOLMER In my current work I am exploring issues of bodily and emotional autonomy and the nature of vulnerability in relationship to others. How do we heal from grief and trauma? How do we remain intact while still being open to, and deeply connected with, others? How many protective layers do we need to feel inviolable in the world? Especially those whose selves have been violated. My work, in all forms, has been strongly influenced by Kant’s notion of human dignity, which is a foundational principle of human rights I have created a series of mixed media collages and sculptures using various types of paper, charcoal, chalk pastel, wire, string and gold leaf. Playing with light and photography, I display these works in ways that aim to heighten the sensation of fragility, grace, and transience. These artefacts reflect my reverence for the natural world, its organic beauty and power. I aim to create forms and surfaces that evoke human skin, bone and hair, the sinew of leaves and petals, the texture and shape of bark and branches, and shells and stones glistening with water and light. It is there that I find dignity, healing, and wholeness.
These multimedia collages are printed on backlit paper and displayed with light sources shining through. They reflect my own healing and transformation from trauma, and experience of nature as a source of solace, grace, and spirituality. Cross-sections of my torso evoke tree trunks, and golden sap runs through, seaming and soothing rips, breaks and scars. The collages were made from paper and cardboard, chalk, charcoal, sand and coffee grounds, fine powder and gold and silver leaf. I shine light sources through the collages to create a pulsating glow, vibrating with health, intact and whole.
THE TURN ARIANE PEVETO In autumn, poems pour out of my heart. All that I love and all that I mourn paint my cheeks and drop onto paper as words. The trees let their leaves fall and I leave letters behind, my path.
RED TREES IN MIDDLETON WOODS LAURA DAWES
In winter, poems smolder inside my heart. All that keeps me warm and all that frosts becomes smoke and touches the air as breath. The cold wind burns and I blow upon windowpanes, my stories. In spring, poems are buried in my heart. All that is beginning and all that has died grows together and reaches down as roots. The flowers push through the soil, and I dig deeper and stretch higher, my days. In summer, poems flicker in my heart. All that sheds light and all that hides it sparks fire and makes war as sunrise, sunset. Fireflies fill the night meadows and I glow with borrowed day, my hope.
SOLITUDE. CRISES. FEAR EMMA DANES .
IMMANUEL SMITH
SOPHIE HYNDMAN
ABACUS SMALL
MANGROVE
SOUS LES
PAVÉS
CHESS
A STUDY IN DIMENSIONS SMALL
HOLOCENE SMALL
SPHERE AND EDGE, 2021 MARGARITA GLUZBERG
KAI LAM
GWENDOLEN OTTE
FIREBIRD KATE THIRLWALL In her embers a new beginning. Their glow a reminder of a heart scorched to the ground and set free. Death is transformation. This ending is in bloom.
CATHEDRALS
THE FIVE SISTERS WINDOW
TONY MAUDE
TONY MAUDE
Look up and see the glass, Are they jewels? Is it fire? Is this what Heaven is like? Is it emerald? Is it sapphire?
Five lofty columns of glass, A gentle darkness at their core. A host of medieval mandalas , Flecked with flashing colour. A vast and delicate web of lead In reds, yellows and blues like Gun-metal images of the moon With flames darting through.
YOSEMITE, DECEMBER AFTERNOON GAINES POST
FAMILY IN SUMBA, SUNSET NICK HOLDER
TWO RIDDLES TO CONJURE UP LIGHT TONY MAUDE 1. I do not burn (like a bulb or the sun) Shiver (like a candle) or Shine (like the moon). Nothing like that! But I bring you light. What a dull and dismal thing A dwelling would be, without me.
.
2. I'm dagger-shaped without a handle. Across the page I help you travel. When no wind blows, I'm almost still And shadows are my children As I reach and r e a c h for Heaven
POLITICAL PURPOSE DUNCAS GILLIES MCLAURIN All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost. – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring All this and more, yes, everything that should enrich both you and me is a waste of time. Why give you three gold bracelets? Why this diamond ring? Does it convey I hope to sing, not bind you? When we watch the sea glitter with gems, we yearn to be, not have. He does not strive to bring all creatures great and small to heel. Those jewels have not been made for slaves who soon will die. The ocean’s waves wander forever. When our graves are plundered, let it be to steal lost memories. These are more real. (First published in Snakeskin)
VARIATIONS ON NEWTON’S WORMHOLE, #1-3 SARAH MILLER
AKTIS AELIOU – HEY! YOU LIGHT OF THE SUN LEO AYLEN Remembering David Raeburn with a sunrise song from the Antigone of Sophocles (lines 100 – 162).
The opening number, sung and danced by the chorus of Theban councillors, staged at the Greenwich Theatre and directed by Leo Aylen with the chorus numbers sung and danced by West End professionals . The song presents the battle for Thebes, ruled by Eteocles, son of Oedipus. His brother, Polyneices, rebelled, and led seven champions against the seven gates of Thebes. Polyneices attacked his brother, Eteocles, and both died in the fight. Dance 1 Hey! you light of the sun, you bright Rising over our seven gates, Greatest sunrise that ever shone. At last golden light, day at last, Peeping out with a wink, climbing Up the sparkle and streams of Dirce. Look, white shields — those men we faced — Argive soldiers armed to the teeth, Galloping, scurrying panic and flight, Whipped back home by you, sunrise, March 1 Down on our farmland swoops Polyneices. Family quarrels let loose an eagle To scream and hover over our homesteads. Piercing the shrieks. The talons will strike. White as a glacier the eagle’s armour, Thousands of spearpoints, Thousands of waving horsehair plumes.
Dance 1 Loomed above our homes with death Gaping murderous monster mouth Stabbing spears at our seven gates He's gone, all his gnashing of jaws Couldn't champ on our blood, our flesh, Couldn't throw on our crown of towers Blazing pinetorch fire of God. No, behind his back with a crash Clattering battle that battered him back. Great Thebes fought as a dragon. March 1 God abominates big-mouthed boasting. God looked down on that flooding river Of soldiers marching against our city Gigantic and clanging and proud as gold. As they grabbed at our battlements God shot 1ightning Down on their triumph. Fire struck their victory war-dance. Dance 2 Crack to the hard-hitting earth he was hurled, sent flying, Fire in his hand, and his mind set on fire with anger, God-berserk in his rage, Whirls nine winds of hate at his foes. Not for him — victory. All in a mess, spirits of war, Confused and crashed shaking, as God's Spear-arm gives a flourish. Here on time, as you summoned us.
March 2 Seven champions for seven gateways, Each of their champions killed by a Theban. God the Disposer claims their amour. Only the brothers, both demented, One father, one mother, one fight to the last, Two spears on guard to stab for power, One death shared between them. Dance 2 Now she has run to us, Victory, glory-giver, Shouting for joy like a chariot race round Thebe. No more fighting and death. Put all that time out of your mind. Dance the gods, through their shrines — All of the night, all of the gods — Running through Thebes, spinning with joy, Lead us, Dionysus. March 2 Here is the country's latest ruler. Welcome Creon, son of Menoikeus. In the present troubles that God has sent us Creon comes with a plan of action. Here we are, your council gathered. Waiting for orders. I provocatively refer to this scintillating lyric poem as a “Dance number.” In North America, this song would need no note. In Oxford, classicists are still taught we know almost nothing about the dances of Greek tragedy. This is simply not true. But we must approach them as people of the theatre rather than scholars. Sophocles was the greatest dancer of his generation; it is possible to recreate his choreography as it were algebraically (if movement x, then movement y, then movement z.) This is because the dances are divided into systems of matching stanzas (referred to as strophe and antistrophe.)
The choreography of the strophe is reproduced exactly in the antistrophe. Once you accept this principle, of movements exactly repeated, you are given insights into the meaning of these dance-poems of which Sophocles is the supreme master as Johann Sebastian Bach is of fugue. This does, however, require isometric translation of the Greek lyrics, so that key syllables in the English version come at the same point as they do in the original Greek, and the mime can be repeated precisely. As he told me at the end of his life, David Raeburn was starting to realise this. But much as we may admire David’s work, he was not a poet, and isometric translation of Sophocles lyrics requires considerable skill. I was contracted to direct my own specially written translation of the
Antigone for the Greenwich Theatre. The normal constraints of professional theatre meant I had only three weeks’ rehearsal. I had a cast of ten; one actor played the protagonist role of Antigone, Teiresias, and the messenger, another the second actor’s part of Creon. My chorus was eight singer-dancers; four came out to act — Ismene, the Guard, Haemon, and Eurydice. I had a Rambert ex prima ballerina changing to an acting career; Haemon was played by a West End lead in musicals (I gave him the Eros chorus as a solo to hand him a show-stopper.) The others were experienced West End musical theatre performers. One of them did martial arts and could do a crashing dive for “Crack to the hard-hitting earth” and “Now, she has run to us, Victory.” This matching of movement demonstrates that the song is not of unqualified triumph but of awe, a meaning impossible to grasp from the poem on a page. We had good reviews and sold out every night of the run. On the strength of it, I have conducted hundreds of workshops all over North America and was even awarded a Distinguished Visiting Professorship. But we still see productions of Greek plays where the chorus wanders round speaking free verse, and the Oxford doctrine is still that we do not know about the dances of Greek tragedy. These photos of the Greenwich production are contact prints of the publicity photos, not specially taken to illustrate the choreography. The coloured photos are of an Ampleforth College performance of my translation; (I had nothing to do with the production); the chorus were members of the first Rugby fifteen.
SHADOWBOXING SOPHIE BOSTOCK
DARK SKY RESERVE SHUN-LI NICOLE LEE On a piercing night in a designated dark sky reserve the clouds breathe away suddenly and suddenly the stars appear In one of those epochs when it seems the world is on fire they show us a real fire a fire that doesn't care for us a cold fire persisting When for millennia we had nothing to do at night but stare up at the sky from tents in the desert from the decks of feluccas through tropical canopies they were there mysterious beautiful
and now when hunched over our handheld lights no one casts a glance upward they are still there and when the flames engulf us and the billion billion star-filled eyes blink out unlamented for there will be no one left to lament us for we will not have deserved lamentation still they will be there wheeling serenely as they have always done as they will always do and that is a small consolation
THE AUDITION ROOM
FOR NONA EDWARD KEMP The wife of the famous saxophonist says she schemes upscale interiors downtown; born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, these days they live a single block from the old Long Island Pepsi sign. She tells me their daughter longs to act and I think of all the winter pms past, how in the pause before we welcomed one more hopeful (through the hidden door into the blondewood room designed by the famous Finn) we’d watch the sky blush in baby tones while the sign began to burn first tongue-pink and then brand red until at last the length of Long Island disappeared in lights. And maybe I can really hear his sax skirling over the East River like in the movie we all long to release.
EMIGRANTS ALAN STONE
PLAYTHING JEMIMA SINCLAIR
PLEIN AIR
SUNLIT PEAKS IN LAUTERBRUNNEN
MIA BRODERSON
HEATHER CARTER
LIGHTNESS EMMA DANES occurs where most is cut away. An engraver at her wood block tools out areas for white. Her rollered ink won’t cling here; paper laid over and burnished will lift off clean every time. Darkness is detailed – stippled, crosshatched – lies close to the surface with its formless hoard of shadows. From deep in the grain she unearths the rain’s sheen, sky, a heron’s back, brings them floating up to the light.
WOOLWICH FERRY CHRISTOPHER MOODY
CHARLES KARELIS
MASQUERADE; AN EXTRACT KATHERINE HEATHWARD When Violet first sees him, he’s wearing a wreath of oak branches, holly berries woven into the dark, waxed leaves and vivid against the curls of his brown hair.
He’s across a room awash in powdered wigs, striking in a heavy coat of green brocade and holding court with a couple costumed as a pair of mated swans. There are heavy, bladed feathers stitched into the shoulders of the man’s cloak, the woman’s muff threaded with feather down. She’ll have shed them by the end of the night, and Violet wonders how many layers the feathers have worked their way beneath, and how terribly they itch. There’s something about him that catches her eye, in that moment. The red of the berries in his dark hair, perhaps. The expression of his glittering gaze, caught in the candlelight. The woven oak saplings, fresh and still sticky with sap, an impression of green amidst the thick heat from the fireplace and the perspiring press of the guests. There’s a flicker of memory there, at the edge of her thoughts: of similar winters, long ago and not that far from here, holly on stone mantelpieces, the prick of the leaves in her hands.
He attends his companions with polite interest, and even with the overlapping conversations filling the room she can guess that everything they spout is asinine. The woman giggles, tipsily, swaying on her feet and using the excuse to flutter her hand out against the wreathed man’s arm. Her fingers smooth purposefully to his elbow, and he smiles and redirects the touch, expression unchanging. A final word, then he extricates himself, stepping gracefully away, a breath of green slipping into the crowd once more. And Violet feels the heat from the fireplaces again, interrupted by the guests staggering by, half-drunk, as the night and year finds their age. There’s a stir to the room, a swell of expectation for the growing century, and she feels the weight of it on nights such as this. The sullen night pressing against the doors and windows, shut out but leaning in. Twelfth night and there’s that taste of holly on her tongue, a prickling in her hands.
BRUISES CHARLOTTE MITCHELL
COLLAGE 2 CHARLOTTE MITCHELL
THE TURNING LUCY BALMER HOOFT When the wick first takes, there is nothing but the light. The flame, magnified to the strength of a thousand candelas, folds you in its brightness and the world outside retreats. Only slowly does the darkness become clear. For thirty years my days were bound to the lighting of the flare. Each day following the same inevitable rhythm, built up to the moment when the sun’s light starts to falter and the beacon takes over. There is a turning, a point at which it happens, that is imperceptible for some. For most people it simply goes dark. The trick is in catching the moment before, knowing with certainty when the light will change, before the shadows lengthen and then fade. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but every keeper did. There was no easy way to measure and check, it was not something we could teach. But after all those years of watching, ten thousand days, it became as clear to me as waking. After the turning, the lighthouse is no longer a landmark, a feature among many of the daytime world. It becomes the guide and watchman for the sea. It is at this moment that all the day’s work becomes real. The tasks that by themselves seem small - the dismantling of the mechanism, the careful cleaning with solvents to banish the soot, refilling the kerosene, trimming the wick, the polishing of the glass and endless battle against the rust - all assume their greater purpose. Across 17 nautical miles, our light shines its message of constancy in the drift. I often wondered who they were, those who are looking for the light. Where are they going, carrying what cargo? Coming back or casting out? A story reached me once of a ship that narrowly missed the reef of the headland, a young family aboard. Disaster averted by our luminescence. I used to wonder how many other lives had been saved, how many ships put back on course because of the light. Would their stories ever reach me? I wondered also about those for whom we were too late.
If truth be told, I never knew why I had to go. What was it that automation and light gauges had, that I had not? How could the sum of my knowledge, my careful watching and meticulous care, be replaced by a mechanism, something discreet that could be taught? But the day came when they said I was no longer needed. My years of service cut short by a handshake; the flick of a switch. And I was cut adrift. Work was what I knew. My routine had filled the spaces others may people with duties to family, to a wife or to children. My company was the light, its needs shaped and informed my days, its rhythm was my rhythm, its groove so deep it became something I could not shake. I filled my hours well enough. I approached my cottage as I had once done the lighthouse. I polished until kitchen windows sung and bath taps winked. I checked and tested wiring, dismantling lamps, replacing cords, sealing gaps where the dust might come in. My house became my workshop and when nothing remained to be done, I would walk. I covered long distances to tire my muscles until they craved rest. But when the evening hour came, when I felt the turning approach, I found I could not settle. Without the lighting of the wick, each day fell without shape, like a wave without a break.
And so I climb. Not with time to spare as I once did, but later now when I feel the turning is near. I leave my steady list of domestic duties, and begin the climb to the tower. The path from my cottage crosses the dunes before winding through the clumps of heather to the cliff’s edge. For most of the walk, the sea is at my back, and only as I push round the final ascent does it appear, unceasing, embracing the promontory on three sides. At first, of course, the climb helped to calm my disbelief. Automatic acetylene operation sounded grand but what was it next to a lifetime of service? A quiet part of me was waiting for it to fail. Each night when the great light stirred and buzzed into life, I was always surprised. And disappointed. I had to be on hand, just in case. To be ready to keep the flare alight if its new mechanism should falter. But as the nights passed and my disbelief grew into glum acceptance, still I made the climb.
I cannot count how many times I have walked this path. Even when the world was still lucid, my muscles knew their way. My legs could carry me without aid, leaving my eyes free to look. The landscape never ceases to astonish. Where the dark core of the earth meets the brushed white of its fringe, the sand both rosy and pale under foot. Small trees and flowering creepers provide shade and with each week a new set of colours and scents. Down below great pillars of black rock stand stacked, improbable piles against the pounding waves. I used to listen to the ocean behind me as I walked, its relentless push and break, trying to guess its mood from the music. I would try to picture which colour from emerald to flint would meet me at the top. As the water came into view, I would count the flashes of white crest, the number and size. I would scan the horizon for boats, trying to place who might be waiting for the beacon’s call. I remember clearly the day it began. Black spots bloomed into my vision like corrosion consuming the core of a mirror. Left without check, the tarnished spots creep across the surface of the glass, sucking in the light but throwing back no reflection. When a mirror is spoiled, the light from the lamp within stays the same, but that which is cast out loses its brilliance. And so it was with me.
Even as the spots grew larger, I climbed as easily as I had before. I saw less, but the noises of the water, the warnings and celebration of the birds gave me all the details my eyes could not see. Tonight the climb feels steeper. The note rung by the sea is pewter and deep. The wind seems to blow as if from two directions at once, masking the crash of the surf. My legs buckle on the final ascent and for a moment I have to stop. The birds are still tonight.
I don’t remember when the dark became the dominant. When the corrosion became so pervasive that the whole surface of the mirror was patterned with black. I became trapped in what I know. At home, surrounded by an environment that is familiar, I carry on as before. I limit my tasks to those that still make sense, relying on memory, rhythm and routine. But I no longer venture beyond this space of which I am master. The climb to the lighthouse remains pristine. Thirty years of looking do not fade and memories of each time I have walked this path before fill the gaps in my dying reckoning. I look out towards the swelling water, listening to its movement. The ground hums with the glow of the beacon at my back. I watch the sea, its rise and fall. So long have I watched this view, so deeply is its image imprinted on my mind, that I miss the turning when it comes. Thirty years of knowing and yet my intuition fails me at the last. And then the light is out, and there is nothing but darkness.
WILL PITTAMS
STEFANIA KAPSETAKI
TREVOR COX
STEFANIA KAPSETAKI
THE GREEN LADDER
JACKSON OWEN
SELF POTRAIT AS AN ARTIST
UNTITLED (STILL LIFE OF SUPPLIES
COLD LIGHT: AUBADE FOR JB HUGH MARTIN
luminescence: the spontaneous emission of light by a substance not resulting from heat, or ‘cold light’ of day of daybreak of dawn of daylight of dayspring of doubt of disappointment of departure This has been a long dawn coming. The cold light has crept across the countries in between us Like a lizard on the hot sand, one foot at a time, so that the last night I left you and you left me Was a decade and a half ago. Like the lizard raising his feet two at a time against the heat, like automata, Like how you answer me now. Or how you don’t; an unspontaneity of carefully measured coolness. Like the way you smoke your cigarette, kindling a little fire in me, heatless. Then, when the dawn came and we came to slouch towards the day; the night’s warmth Warmth of your pressed pillow warmth of your shut eyes warmth of your wrapped wet sheets Shivered with the hoar, flitted into the haar.
Now, the song of dawn my song of dawn is like the green flash that no one sees Except the one who couldn’t quite catch it on their smartphone but posts about it anyway. You cannot quite catch its tune in the sunlight or the sunset That I understand that I realise is this, my swansong, as your phoenix poems burst out Of our embers of our smouldering of our simmering of our charcoal grey. Luminescent You radiant you photons and deathstars and red giants and quasars of furious you Calmed to the quick to the callow cold of a past love and a first love; a break a spring. Stopped by not nighttime not daytime but distant time and the way distance thins us, Strips us to the selves we find at dawn, disconnected now in the cold light of day of daybreak of dawn of daylight of dayspring of doubt of disappointment of departure
DOMINIC PEARCE
YVES LEATHER
THE ART OF WORKING IN THE DARK: SHINING A LIGHT ON CARDIAC NURSING IN THE CARE HOME SETTING HELEN COWAN
To some, the very title of this article will be a contradiction of terms. There remains an unacceptable stigma about nurses in social care, with the role seen as unskilled and the care home as ‘a place of last refuge for nurses, the career cul-de-sac and land of no hope’ (Sturdy, 2016). Undervalued and under-resourced, care home nursing remains a ‘Cinderella’ specialty, with hospital-based cardiac nursing taking centre stage in terms of career progression and status.
England's first ever chief nurse for adult social care, Professor Deborah Sturdy, has challenged this stereotype, describing care homes as ‘true nurse-led services, containing the essence of nursing within their walls—if anyone stayed long enough to look’ (Sturdy, 2016). She has described a disregarded and isolated workforce, having limited access to continuing professional development and peer networks. ‘How many of their NHS colleagues would take care of 56 beds at night as a single registered nurse?’ Sturdy (2016) asked, before replying: ‘I expect none.’ Professor Sturdy has also highlighted the ‘incredible tenacity, management skills and advanced clinical decision-making skills’ of care home nurses, who are often responsible for making complex decisions as the only registered practitioner present (Mitchell, 2019).
As a nurse with a PhD in cardiac pharmacology, who has worked as a cardiac nurse in hospital and as a care home nurse, I hope to explore the cardiac nursing undertaken by care home nurses. This first column focuses on nurse-led diagnosis of cardiac conditions and their management in a population with aged hearts, whose care is complicated by comorbidities, polypharmacy, frailty, falls and forgetfulness—and where textbook treatments may be rejected or futile, sometimes adding unwelcome ‘years to life’, rather than longed-for ‘life to years’. Caring for a person at the end of their life, as their heart stops beating, is one of the most profound ways in which care home nurses are cardiac nurses. Practical and ethical decisions regarding cardiac care are made, and these will also be discussed. Diagnosis of cardiac conditions A variety of monitoring devices and methods exist for assessing the clinical status of patients with cardiac conditions. Examples include blood pressure cuffs, pulse oximeters, fluid balance charts, electrocardiograms, venous and arterial blood sampling, venous and pulmonary artery catheters, transoesophageal dopplers, tilt testing, exercise tolerance testing and cardiac catheterisation. However, how many of these are appropriate for, or accepted by, the frail older patient with dementia? While this equipment may appear impressive from a clinical perspective, it can be frightening for patients (Hatchett and Thompson, 2002). Something as simple as blood pressure measurement can be strongly resisted in a confused care home resident who perceives only pain in the recording, while automated devices give an inaccurate recording if the pulse is irregular (British and Irish Hypertension Society, 2021). Few studies have addressed the tolerability of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in people with severe dementia (Conroy et al, 2016).
Written and spoken diagnostic cues may be missing because of communication difficulties or a lack of access to medical notes. Care home nurses may have to ‘work in the dark’, without words and numbers: non-verbal cues (including facial expressions, falls history, appetite and breathing patterns), an intimate knowledge of residents and their ‘normal’ status, and an eye for the ‘ominous in the ordinary’ are key to diagnosis. I have diagnosed atrial fibrillation through holding a hand (and palpating the wrist), and heart failure through clothing becoming tight and development of dyspnoea. A non-healing sacral sore can signal undiagnosed diabetes, one-third of patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial disease have reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (Tendera, 2018), and blue toes can be an early sign of disseminated intravascular coagulation (Choi et al, 2016). Consideration of the whole condition of the care home patient by a nurse who knows them well can help in assessing cardiac function and diagnosing dysfunction. Management of cardiac conditions
‘Nurses must master a plethora of information about the human body. It is the manner in which they apply this expertise that can be considered the “art of nursing”. Without the art of the application, the knowledge and expertise of a nurse is all but useless… Taking all of the scientific concepts and hard nursing skills one learns in school and applying those to real-life scenarios is what the nursing profession is really about.’ (The College of St Scholastica, 2022).
Take, for example, the prescription of direct oral anticoagulants for atrial fibrillation in patients with dementia. Research supports the use of this type of drug in older people with atrial fibrillation to reduce incidence of stroke and embolism, and perhaps to protect against various dementia subtypes (Cadogan et al, 2021). In reality, care home residents with atrial fibrillation are not always prescribed direct oral anticoagulants. In one study, 63.6% of patients with dementia did not take a daily oral anticoagulant in the year following their diagnosis with atrial fibrillation (Besford et al, 2020). This may be because of falls risk or because of a refusal to swallow tablets. In one care home, I heard of a case in which administering twice-daily apixaban was a challenge because the resident was mostly asleep. To get around this, the decision was made to instead prescribe once-daily rivaroxaban for the resident to take during her brief period of wakefulness. Other residents at this centre have had to stop their direct oral anticoagulant for a period following a fall. There is a divergence between taught best practice and expressed best interests when managing conditions such as diabetes or leg ulcers in the care home. I have known residents with dementia and diabetes who continually crave, and are comforted by, sugary snacks, as well as residents with leg ulcers who cannot tolerate dressings, leg elevation, or even lying in a bed. Medication can put residents off their meals, worsening the malnutrition and dehydration that is so prevalent among the care home population (Bunn et al, 2018). Polypharmacy itself is associated with falls, adverse drug events and cognitive impairment; in one case study, a resident was co-prescribed (but not given) clarithromycin with quetiapine, risking a markedly increased plasma concentration of quetiapine, impaired consciousness and respiratory depression (Ishii et al, 2019). Care home nurses can play an important role in facilitating medicines optimisation and deprescribing.
End of life Prolonging life can come at a cost when quality of life is sacrificed in the pursuit of cure rather than comfort. Advance care planning, focusing on individual wishes for resuscitation and hospital admission, is essential and should be started early by the care home nurse. Far from being a tickbox exercise, advance care planning should involve collaborative, compassionate conversations. This gives families the chance to share what matters most to their loved one with dementia. Taking this time to listen and co-create a shared narrative helps to form a truly person-centred advance care plan. Relationships within the family and with the clinical team can be strengthened—the process of care planning can sometimes prove more important than the outcome (Hopkins et al, 2020). In 2016, I reflected on the use of do-not-attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation documentation in care homes, writing as follows:
‘Most residents in the nursing home where I work have a do not resuscitate (DNR) order on their notes, with the decision always made between the doctor, the family and the resident where possible. ‘Futility’ and ‘fragility’ are the most often cited reasons for these orders. These people lie in the “shadowy and vague boundaries which divide life and death” as described by Edgar Allan Poe in The Premature Burial. Speaking of these boundaries, he said “who shall say where one ends, and the other begins?” The DNR order acknowledges this mystery, and removes human intervention or interference from it.’ (Cowan, 2016). However, I also emphasised that this removal of intervention does not mean that care home residents should be left alone once the decision has been made to cease life-prolonging treatment (Cowan, 2016). If a patient is deemed to be approaching their final hours, family should be called. If they cannot or do not want to attend, it is the role of care home staff, including nurses, to sit with the patient. I always aim to ensure that nobody dies alone. This can involve talking to patients in their last moments, tending to their needs and ensuring that any wishes they have expressed are fulfilled, such as arranging a visit from a religious leader or playing a favourite piece of music:
‘Even for those whom we do not resuscitate, I like to think that we do pull them back from the brink in a different way. Every time we mention their name or share a memory, they are brought back into our consciousness. The American novelist Carson McCullers captured this perfectly when she wrote, “How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?” Terry Pratchett evoked a similar idea when he said, “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”’ (Cowan, 2016). Five years on from this piece, the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted more widespread and earlier decision-making regarding resuscitation status in care homes. In 2021, I was assigned a role as a care home coordinator to concentrate on exactly this for seven local care homes. Frailty and futility, with a concern for comfort, were the focus of most discussions: it was important to make clear that people with dementia are three times less likely to survive in hospital after cardiopulmonary resuscitation and that this success rate is almost as low as for metastatic cancer (Arora, 2014). Taking age as a factor, the survival rate is 3.9% for those aged 80–89 years old and 1% in those aged 90 years and older (Arora, 2014).
this shared responsibility can improve morale, foster better working relationships and improve patient care. Writing on the legality of withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment, Richard Griffith, lecturer in health care and law, wrote: ‘There is no requirement to continue treatment or to intervene when to do so would be futile, for as important as the sanctity of life is, it may have to take second place to human dignity’ (Griffith, 2015). For care home nurses, it is a duty and a privilege to discuss futile treatments, promote dignity and enable a ‘good’ death as far as possible.
For patients with heart failure who have implantable cardioverter defibrillators, discussions about deactivation of the device at the end of life should ideally take place around the time of implantation. Templeton (2015) suggested that it could be considered unethical not to prepare patients for the impact of a defibrillator on the quality of their death. While these discussions are best carried out by the heart failure specialist team, the care home nurse may be confronted with anxieties, fears and questions relating to device deactivation during the nursing care of the dying patient, and may liaise with the specialist team to manage the deactivation and address concerns. Improved interdisciplinary insight is indeed called for in this complex and sensitive area (Templeton, 2015). Conclusions Approximately 50 000 nurses work in social care in England, with 85% being care home nurses. Professor Jane Cummings, former Chief Nursing Officer for England, recognised the importance of care home nurses as ‘nurse leaders’, and called for greater integration and stronger relationships between nurses in the NHS and social care, as we ‘work together to deliver the best for some of the most vulnerable in society’ (NHS England, 2016). Both NHS and care home nurses are involved in the diagnosis and management of cardiac conditions, caring together for fragile hearts. Removing the stigma around social care nursing by acknowledging
WINTER WONDERLAND PEARL YOUNG
REMOTE STUDY LIGHT: AM I IN OXFORD? ASTRID FAVELLA
PETER WHITE
RESILIENCE ANNA BUSWELL And then one day disaster struck The weed was growing through the wood The weed pervaded all Winding left and right And out burst thorns of every size It did its very best to make To wound and mar and maul The nature feel its blight And not just that, but also then And this was odd because it looked To reign after the fall The essence of delight The wood was shattered, weed had won Its vines had blossoms white and pale It smirked, lay back to bask Its leaves were glossy green The flora had succumbed as one Its length looked healthy, strong, and sure What more could evil ask? And had a vivid sheen It only had to crown itself But down below the earth could feel To finish up its task Its roots were sharp and mean But wait, we know that death and gloom The trees looked down in awe and said Do not a kingdom make “What lovely novel friend! For now that empty land had not “There is no doubt that this root here A single soul to break “Shall sweetly weave and bend!” And what’s a tyrant ere to do These sturdy oaks would never guess With none to burn at stake? How nearby was the end The weed turned hopelessly about The flowers shook their haughty heads Its failure burgeoned raw As envy’s rampant snare It longed to witness once again Wormed through their petals, leaves, and stems Life drain between its maw They trembled in despair But now abounded emptiness That its allure transcended theirs It sensed it stem to claw They found it hard to bare And so the weed began to wilt The grass, too, shifted in the shade The poisoned dirt struck back And eyed the vine with doubt The loneliness and filthy sin Their dainty roots below the dirt Had made it thick and black Could feel it prowl about And mute as grass, the broken dirt But they could not prevent the vine Had finally launched attack From slowly branching out Without support and sustenance For years this went on undenied The weed sank into murk The oaks complacent stood Deeper, deeper, deeper, still The blooms cared more about their looks Beyond where mercies lurk Than shielding their own wood And then above life hoarsely breathed And last alas, the mouthless grass And lichen went to work Too silent to do good
HOMO EGO
THREE SKULLS
JACKSON OWEN
NICK PERRY
OLIVER ROBERTS
ALAN STONE
TAPESTRY
SPACE-TIME
SHINING BIRD
PEARL YOUNG
MEERA JP
MARTHA READ
PEARL YOUNG