The Scrawl HT24

DREAMSCAPES SEPACSMAERD The Scrawl

Edited By: Imogen Forrest and Rosie Field

Welcome!

We are delighted to introduce the Hilary 2024 edition of the Scrawl...

This term we set the prompt ‘Dreamscapes,’ with the hope of reaching into the surreal, nightmarish, and delightful depths of Balliol’s creative minds. In this lovingly crafted issue, you will find the very best of college poetry, prose, photography, and art. We have also incorporated the array of visual art that emerged from our ‘Cut, Stick and Scrawl’ Collage and Art evening (thank you to all who attended!)

Thank you to all those who have submitted work to the Scrawl this term. From time-transcending poetry to wonderfully captivating calligraphy, we are over the moon with these submissions, and we hope you revel in their splendour as much as we did!

The former Comrade Shakespeares, Lucy and Angéle did a fabulous job revitalising the Scrawl and we look forward to continuing that legacy and putting on more exciting events that we hope will incite creativity and selfexpression in college.

Your Comrade Shakespeares, Rosie and Immy

CONTENTS

‘Calligraphy of Ode to the Red Cliff by Su Shi’ by Wendy Dang Poem 1 by Samuel Williams

Trauma by Charlotte Archer, Collage by K Klein

The view from a black hole by Amy Bloch

Anaesthesia by Emily Empson-Davies

im standing on something soft and am very slowly sinking by Hugh Linklater

Animal Shapes by Rosie Field

R.E.M by francisco

I’ll sleep on it by Imogen Forrest

Calligraphy of Ode to the Red Cliff by Su Shi

Translation:

Only the refreshing breeze on the river and the bright moon over the hills are an exception. If you can hear it, it is a sound to you; if you can see it, it is a view to you. It never ends and is never exhausted. It is the infinite treasure granted to us by our Creator for both of us to enjoy.

Charlotte Archer

T

he view from a black hole

Light catches softly

In the balm of your gaze, The quiet of your eyes, The blur of your words as they trip Through the skies Into my hard heart

And the depths of my soul, Where the light doesn’t wander

So casually anymore.

But this is a gentle, A permeable light That fills up the space, Fills up the nights

Of my laughs and my woes:

Nobody, nobody, Nobody knows how to Pulse with my dreams, My wishes, my needs, Except your hand gliding lightly Through the shimmer of the night

To bring me Down from this Dizzying height.

it starts with a torsion and a burst. fifty stabbings by needle, cannula, scalpel. pain relief and anaesthetic turn permeable the membrane between sleep and life. reality sets the stage for the worst and the weirdest of my usual nightmares. i’m naked in class with my muscles untoned, stomach not flat, and organs exposed. i’m too deep in drugged sleep to notice or care. though later, i’ll wonder what snide thoughts the med students shared. i’m watched. on all sides by nurses in day, at night by two fellow patients. both had fallen gravely. before i go under, they watch feet that still have youth carry me where i like. after, i lose my legs too. ten metres’ walking are my lot before my hearing retreats into a vacuum, sound becomes echo, sweat drips, knees buckle. i collapse onto a commode. wheeled back, i glance around long enough to see eyes searching back. i won’t watch if you won’t. i close mine again. the hospital food is quite decent. almost the least believable waking dream. another of my usual nightmares: the dead shall rise and the witnesses shall die. one midnight, a new patient, whose coughs hack through tense quiet already broken by moans. she says she tested negative for a certain flu. as the rest of us start to wretch in the next halfday, our lives are in the hands of her lie or truth. coughs are the third sound added to an older patient’s

armoury, after sobs and questions. she cannot sleep either, and she knows about as much of herself as i know of her. she refuses a carer. no one comes to visit. i am terrified: dreaming or not, unlike her, i must remember where i am. i see apocalypse in other small ways. while red-and-green leaf prints on tinted windows hide outside views of concrete, they cannot smudge the strobe lights. i cannot float in sleep from the brightness, just as migrant birds cannot seek guidance and so are flightless. the stars in the sky have been switched off, obsolete to the richer half of the human population, mourned by everyone and everything else. without dreams, i cannot revisit my childhood in the Makgadikgadi Pans, where horizon met Milky Way and kissed crystal-clear. my wooziness hinders command of my keyboard. where am- oh, right. sleeping here, i do not dream. but absurdism bends what i see: i must be awake.

Emily Empson-Davies

FLOAT FLOAT

though haughty prospects spring to me when faced with creativity to pen them down solidifies a thought into a compromise now wild bounds of consciousness appear to me as so much less the ego rends itself apart the artist cannot love his art

Animal Shapes

RosieField

R.E.M R.E.M

You leave like spring and return like autumn, but I fall everytime

And to be locked up with you, I would commit any crime

It may be winter outside but you change the season

And I wish I could stop the sun from rising so I can stay dreaming

Must be heartfelt, the way you make my heart melt

But you're only mine for a matter of time

Now my mind's racing and I can't catch it

They say third time's the charm but I think you're the hattrick

Got my heart beating out of my chest to the symphony of you

And I didn't think these dreams could get sweeter but now

I know the truth

So I'll keep playing make believe and living rent-free in this fantasy

Where i'll journey through space and time just to linger in your mind

I wonder if you think of me when you fall asleep

And if you're the one who sneaks into my dreams

I hope you know i’d snap my neck just to turn and look at you one last time

Yes all things must come and go, but in my dreams you'll always be mine

And maybe by 2034 we'll become something more

But until that day, you're just a dream away

You might break if I touched your porcelain skin

But when it comes to wishful thinking I might just be the king

I can taste your name on the tip of my tongue

And I know it’s in those arms that I belong

So I'll see you tonight when I close my eyes

Till my dream turns to dust and we say goodbye

I might drown in the deep blue of your eyes but I know how to swim

And I want you to play a sweet song on these heartstrings

The birds flying around my head told me to stop and smell the roses on your skin

But when my name escapes your lips it feels like a sin

I'll walk down memory lane and meet you after dark

And the butterflies from my stomach will flutter to my hea

I can hardly breathe with my head so far up in the clouds

And I might be a dreamer but i'll never say it out loud

There's a place in my heart that's just your shape

So be my astronaut and i'll be outer space

Must be made of stardust, the way you make me starry eyed

Gone in the morning but at least you stayed the night

francisco

I’ll sleep on it...

As dusk strikes with tacit melancholy, a grandmother tickles her grandchild’s cheek. The act, a bleak aide-mémoire of antique nights of her long-ago teenage folly.

A whippet whimpers, across the dim street as it shivers outside a quaint bookshop. And slowly, a cobalt-coloured backdrop renders the presence of night-time concrete.

Choking in ash of reveries alight; my overzealous mind is set on you. I feed this savage flame with words I write. From morn till dusk these tender thoughts accrue so that, at the crowning of each bleak night, My mind prescribes such vivid

dreams of you.

lnukco the subco n suoics

Don’twakeup