An Alternative Writing Retreat
Slushy. Books with poems. Parapets. There is a shadow cast from the trees. Wind. Summer. Talk in the distance both prosaic and profound. Denim. Denim for certain. Cars. It rained before. It’s all cleared up now, someone said. The barber shop sign is winding. White red blue, right? Someone is always chartering a boat, a vessel…
Even on a recent March weekend, where the days hit a perfect 75F degrees at the height of California’s spectacular superbloom, the locations that make up Desert X – an ambitious art biennial that stretched for dozens of miles throughout Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley…
Turn off Seafield Road onto Marine Esplanade, past the sewage plant’s entrance, and you quickly come to the edge of the Firth of Forth. A wide expanse of water with the glittering lights of Kirkcaldy on the other side. There’s a grass walkway here, sandwiched between the treatment works’ chain fence and the sea wall, that leads down to the edge of what then becomes Portobello beach…
Set out on your government-approved once-daily walk. Go in the evening; fewer people present, less necessity for the awkward dance whereby you slip past one another on a narrow sidewalk, one of you spilling out into the road to keep that space, maintain that gap…
SJ Bradley participated in the Alton Towers Residency in April 2019. We spoke to her about the theme park, the Northern Short Story Festival, and writing both short things and long.
I used photos in these two series as prompts three days in a row. The first two days were pure joy. Facing the third day, though, I couldn’t imagine finding the task easy. What else was there to see? I realized that I just didn’t want to face the photos in the same order…
It’s a relatively little-known fact that London isn’t the only city in the UK to have its own underground railway system. Glasgow does too. We took a Londoner for a ride around the network and noted their perceptions…
More than 2,000,000 people visit Alton Towers each year, travelling from all over the UK to experience the biggest theme park in the country. Of that vast company, only a small number ever venture into the Gardens, and then usually only to cross from the Dark Forest to the Forbidden Valley in search of more …
This single, run-on, car crash sentence is posted prominently at least a dozen times. It appears on trees, on lamposts, bolted to walls. One copy of it, a little faded and rusty, is even tucked away amongst the bushes. It is clear that a great deal of time and energy has been expended in the crafting and installation of this sign. But what does it mean…
It might be the first thing you see as you arrive, or the last thing before you depart. You might not notice it at all. It lurks, semi-submerged, at the far end of the platforms, only its top half ever exposed, marking its own corner at Navigation and Brunel Streets: NEWSTREETSTATIONSIGNALBOX…