that's me, classy as ever with my patrick wolf mug containing instant coffee, no milk, just caffeine and sad times ahead.
i don't know what to say about oxford really. i started in october and it's june now, so that's, what? like... nine months. huh. i've pretty much been here a gestation period. i wasn't pregnant though (and i'm still not) so not sure in what way that's relevant, but it's all that nine months conjurs for me. sorry. i'm quite tired. i'm 19 now and i turn 20 soooon (four months left of being a teenager, christ) and i DON'T LIKE IT, i'm definitely still just a child who pretends to read adult books and have an exciting life and really i just like sweets and crap tv and reading the same two books by jaclyn moriarty over and over. i did an essay at the start of this term about pride and prejudice and zombies. definitely too much of a child for this place.
i am actually enjoying university though, sort of. i love living somewhere other than ipswich, i love having a decent amount of independence (yes, even in oxford. it's not a fucking boarding school) and i love the people i've met here. i spent a lot of my time in highschool feeling largely isolated & alienated & lonely, hence the fucking mental amount of time i spent online i guess... and it's nice to have friends now that i get on with, properly, and who i get to spend a lot of time with. awesome. even if they are all smarter/harder working than me...
oh jesus i have exams this week. this update is largely an avoidance of the fact.
i've been to so many gigs also! well okay not that many, hardly any on the large scale, but fuckloads for me. since october i've seen los campesinos!, no age (same gig), patrick wolf, yacht (same gig again), esiotrot, darren hayman, misty's big adventure, fanfarlo, jeremy warmsley, other bands whose name i forget... anyway it's been good times. i do some amateur music journalism for a student paper as well, when they let me, and this week just gone i slated sonic youth. OH NO THE COOL PEOPLE HERE MUST HATE ME NOW. or whatever.
not sure entirely what the function of this post is, i guess a life update? in case anyone remembers/cares. life is generally good, i have an awesome boyfriend and friends and access to one of the best libraries ever and stuff is/would be kind of excellent if, you know, i didn't have exams. i thought this sort fo avoidance and shit would end with a levels. THIS IS NOT SO.
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so, how've you been, the internet? want to tell me fun websites i can waste my life on instead of working? or yell at me for my absence (lol, i doubt anyone minded).
anyway i'm basically trying to motivate myself with the thought of the pitt rivers museum, which is AMAZING and contains a bottle with a witch inside it (apparently) and a toad on a thorn that cures warts and yeah, i'm totally dragging said boyfriend there next sunday assuming he's not bored of me making him go there and assuming i survive this week. i might update again, who knows.
# Don't change your clothes. Don't fix your hair.
# Post that picture with no editing.
# Post these instructions with your picture.
that's me on the sofa. i took it with photobooth, so sorry. hi, anyway.
wow, only a few days since my last update. wonders just don't cease around here. bleak house is okay - it's weird though, i've kind of forgotten a lot of stuff from the first 70 pages and i keep forgetting who people are. oh dear. i i have to write an essay on it i guess i'll reread the relevant parts though.
most of my friends are vanishing off to university now, it's weird - rosie has started art foundation at suffolk college, too, so she seems generally busy and we haven't done anything recently. then all my friends from northgate are going away and it's just off - seeing everyone talking about it on facebook, etc., and we had a last big sleepover a week ago yesterday. everyone's scattering - a friend of mine is in dundee, another is going to portsmouth, quite a few in kent, sheffield, cardiff, etc. and i'm still here for two and a half weeks. the 6th of october. the 6th of october. the 6th of october. i guess it's not that far away now.
http://pomegranate.me.uk - the fifth issue went up yesterday. if you're interested in poetry then have a look!
and i ordered a dress of asos.com yesterday - i really hope it's as nice as it looks on the website! it's got a really pretty print, i'm quite excited. and also i turn 19 a week after i start at university, on the 13th of october, and i kind of don't want to. I WANT TO STAY 18. 19 feels old. i mean, it's not, but it's only a year off 20 - i feel way too young to be a year off 20.
i can't even get work at a factory so i'm just sitting around at home, vaguely moping about not having anything to do and grudgingly reading victorian fiction. i do love hopkins, though, i wish more victorian lit was by repressed jesuit priests who were in love with jesus.
This summer's actually been a lot more boring than I thought it'd be, although I did a poetry summer school at Christ Church, Oxford, and that was excellent. It was really fun, and I wish it had been longer. Only problem is I now have to have 6 poems ready to send in for an anthology being published from it for the end of the month and I currently have practically nothing. Need to get a move on there I think.
Latitude festival, it has to be said, was awesome. It was back in July so I can't really remember much detail, it's just a bit of a blur now, but it was so lovely. I was there for four night with two of my friends (although one of them left early) and we sat around in the literary tent loads, I saw Johnny Foreigner (accidentally bumped into someone from last.fm there actually, which was funny), The Wave Pictures, Slow Club, lots of Robin Ince, Stewart Lee... it was just generally amazing. I want to go again next year. I also want to go to End of the Road - a couple of my friends went and it was this weekend and they've texted me about it a lot and I am very jealous. Richard was camping next to Josie Long. They both met The Wave Pictures and Robin Ince and aaaah. General jealousy. Did any of you go to any festivals this summer?
I'm stuck in a boring sort of limbo at the moment, I'm meant to be tackling my reading list and I sort of am but it's a bit dull. I don't think this bodes massively well... I start at Oxford in exactly 3 weeks today, the 6th of October, and I'm a bit aaah but mainly just excited. I AM GETTING AWAY FROM IPSWICH. Pity I turn 19 the week after I start (exactly a week, actually, my birthday's on the 13th, soo... 4 weeks today!) but oh well. Josie Long's doing a comedy show in Oxford on my birthday, hopefully I can go and see her.
I have a macbook now. It is quite excellent. I don't even care when people moan at me about it - I'm the one using it, so, nurr. Very mature of me, but whatever.
I need to go and read some Victoriana, but we all know I'm going to read something else instead. Maybe Infinite Jest, which I'm not that far into yet (I was reading it anyway, but decided to pick it up again yesterday on hearing the terrible news about DFW).
I will try to update this more, I swear.
- Music:Final Fantasy - peach plum pear
My exams are all over now which is pretty awesome, some went okay and some not so okay. I hope I get the grades because I've started considering the Oxford reading list and am soon making a start on Bleak House, so don't want to tackle all that Dickens for nothing. I should point out that I am joking a bit here, I should probably read Bleak House anyway, but...
I went to a party in an actual manor last Thursday. It was insane, lots of drunkenness (not me, I don't drink) and no sleep and I discovered coffee (thanks Antho) and espresso and... actually I dunno, parts of it were good and parts of it weren't so great. Don't really want to go into the gritty details here but I am hoping not to get that sleep deprived again, I went a bit crazy at times. I also went a bit crazy on the espresso - I tend not to drink coffee or tea or anything either, omg I'm so boring - so after a shot of espresso by itself I just went mad, I started giggling at nothing and fell off a chair and spoke really fast. I talk really fast anyway though, a lot of the time.
The new issue of Pomegranate went up at the beginning of June - I should have announced it here really, but I guess I am now, if a bit later on. I was submissions editor for this issue (I will be for the enxt one too, and so on, but along with Richard) as well as web editor so I feel particularly proud of this issue. You should take a look if you're interested in poetry, and maybe even if you're not. There's even an article up there by me! Yes! Exciting, although I am not the most interesting of writers, so sorry about that.
I've been reading a lot recently, since my exams are over. Antho let me borrow The End of Mr Y, which is awesome, and after that I might read a reading list book and some poetry and stuff. I really want to read Twelfth Night, too. And about a million other things. I've left school now though and I'm not going to really be able to get a job this summer - I'm going to try to do some temping though, I think - so I'll have a lot of time to read and stuff I guess.
OMG about Doctor Who yesterday, by the way. I don't know if I'll manage to wait until Saturday for the next episode, for serious. I mean obviously I will, but WOW and ARGH. Hmm I hope that is cryptic enough in case any of you have not yet seen the episode. If you haven't and you care about Doctor Who then watch it soon, because it's awesome. Just well awesome.
Oh and! In case any of you are interested, then four of my poems went up here recently. Quite exciting.
i finish school for EVER in like, two weeks and a day. how insane is that?! and today in english i got to completely rip apart a well shit poem in our war poetry anthologies, and that was a lot of fun. the poem was just dreadful.
i love may so far. it's so... warm. and i had a sun lolly earlier. best thing about the summer, maybe. well, NO, but it's a nice thing all the same.
what the fuck. THE MAN IS A JOKE. and now he's running london.
also i found out that a few of my friends voted tory and now i'm all like ARGH. anyway here labour won a few of their seats on the council which is good but not enough to have a majority so i think they'll still be in opposition to a tory & lib dem council. which SUCKS, the lib dems have completely fucked up the buses. and i don't think i need to explain why the tories are so shit.
boris isn't even that funny on have i got news for you. THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT. i wouldn't trust him with more than one episode of that a year, but people are willing to trust him with london? ugh.
Er my life is pretty much the same as it was when I last updated really. Probably less exciting really, I'm waiting until I cam finally leave school - the coundown on my google homepage (yes, I am that much of a geek) says that I have 34 days until we break up for May half-term, and I don't go back after that except for my exams, of which there are only 5. I'm also not bothering with prom/the leavers' dinner, because... why would I? Well, I'm not definitely skipping it, but probably. Just all seems a bit pointless since I'd only count a small few of people from school among my close friends and I'll be keeping in touch with them anyway, so.
Poetry-wise, I was one of the high commended people in thie year's Christopher Tower competition again - click here if you want to read my poem - and I've had a different poem taken by an anthology but I'm not sure when that's happening, but this summer hopefully. Exciting! Oh and issue 3 of Pomegranate went up a while ago but I might well have already gone on about it here. If you haven't already taken a look and you're at least vaguely interested in new poetry, take a look! Lots of exciting poems up by lots of emerging young poets. Issue 4 looks like it's going to be amazing too!
I recently (re-)discovered Polyvore.com, and if I'm not careful I think it might actually eat my life. It's like shopping but without spending money! And yeah I don't actually have the clothes but look at how nice they look together! Magic. I do really want to buy some new clothes now, haven't bought much rceently, but most of what's in the shops at the moment is really shit, which is way disappointing. Maybe it's just Ipswich. I almost bought a shirt from Forever21 the other day before I realised how ridiculous their shipping charges were to overseas customers, and then I didn't. If only they were in the UK! Although I suppose it really is quite similar to Topshop.
This month I've been doing the poem-a-day thing, or napowrimo. So far I'm up to date, which I'm quite proud of, even if yesterday's poem was a re-write of Bikini Kill. Hush, Bikini Kill = awesome. This is a fact.
- Music:the wave pictures
I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions but last night Rosie and I made some, so here are mine anyway:
1) Stop worrying about stupid shit.
2) Make sure that I get AAA in my A Levels.
3) Make sure that I pick a good insurance uni (lol, sorry about this being focused on school. Sigh).
4) Write more/get better at writing/editing.
5) Start submitting more poems to various places.
and Rosie was like 'don't you have any personal ones?' but I dunno, I don't really want to have the normal ones like 'lose a stone' or whatever (especially as I don't really want to lose a stone, I'd have to buy new clothes). I'm just looking forward to the summer and to starting my degree, with all the poetry stuff too. Oh, and I want to go to the cinema more :).
I saw Enchanted yesterday! It was really fantastic, I want to see it again. The songs are good and it's just so cute. I then went to Rosie's and watched Amelie, oh my god. I loved it. Those two films are just brilliant. Amelie is such a beautiful film and it's so funny and sweet and aaw.
Oh, and I also want to go to more gigs! Shouldn't be hard, as I think everywhere has more going on than Ipswich...
Can't really write a long post now as I'm heading into London and I need to find tissues / throat sweets etc., but this is an amazing day.
This whole process is starting to drag now, and I still have months and months to go... Well, I guess I'm almost a third of the way through the year. Work's getting really busy now, lots of people frantically buying things. I like it, though, I like helping people to find things and I like looking things up on the system and I like the people that I work with. So that's nice.
Christmas is drawing closer now. It's weird, though, I don't really feel Christmassy? Even though it's really cold and I've been to the panto and we've been playing some Christmas music at work and I've even been for a Christmas meal... I don't know? Maybe I'll feel more seasonal when we get the tree.
I don't really have much to say so I'm not entirely sure why I'm updating. Just to let you know that the interviews didn't kill me, really.
1 I saw Los Campesinos! last week. They're pretty much my favourite band (as some of you might know, and also, look at my icon) and it was SO AMAZING. I went to Colchester Arts Centre which is a church but it's amazing and there was a bit merch stall that the bands were attending when they weren't on, so I managed to mee Gareth of LC!. He's really nice and we talked about Calvin from Beat Happening / my Dad's car breaking (?! Why did I talk about that?!) / Mika Miko / Canada, etc. If you like them at all (and if you don't then why not?!) and you have the chance, go and see them live. The support acts were good, too (especially attack + defend) but there is really no doubt about which was the best band of the night.
2 I saw Rufus Wainwright last night. I honestly have no idea why he finished off his UK tour with a show in Ipswich (lol, neither did he) but I'm glad he did, even if we ended up seated in front of two crazy fans who kept making really irritating noises. He was witty and suitably dramatic, and while his voice was a bit hoarse at times he was still an amazing singer. He played the best encore ever, possibly - Poses, Hallelujah, some other songs, a Judy Garland cover and Gay Messiah. Oh, and he did the last two while in drag. AMAZING. I don't know that much of Rufus's stuff really, just the odd few songs, but the whole night was pretty fab, he's a great performer. I've now seen him live twice, which is a bit strange.
3 I saw the ELAT on Wednesday. Oh. This was not fun. The ELAT, for the uninitiated, is a new admissions test for Oxford that they make all candidates for English sit at their school / a test centre. I was a bit ill and I wrote a really stupid answer, but I don't think it was unquantifiably awful. I'm just going to have to wait and see if I still get invited to interview. if not, oh well, much worse things have happened, but it'd be nice if I did.
4 For those that are interested, I'll just do a quick run down on my status with UCAS atm - I'm still waiting to hear at all from 3 universities (Warwick, UCL, Goldsmiths), Oxford have sent me a letter and I've sat the ELAT and am going to send an essay off soon, and Sheffield have given me an offer. Which is very nice, I would like to go to Sheffield. I'm hoping to get into Warwick, but I think they always interview and ask for a portfolio before making offers so I won't hear from them particularly soon, I expect.
5 http://www.pomegranate.me.uk seems to have taken off - we've got some amazing submissions lined up for issue 2 (i'll post about it here when it goes up, it's due for December) and we've had many favourable comments by various people in the 'poetry world'. If you're into poetry and haven't yet visited then please do - it's an ezine for writers under 30, run by some friends and me, and, well, we think it's pretty ace ;). If you like the look of it, please submit something to us!
6 School is trying to kill me, but I am not going to let it.
- Music:rufus wainwright
I'm eighteen on Saturday! Omg it's so weird, I'm almost an adult. I remember moaning in here a year and a half ago about how much I wanted to be eighteen so that I could get into gigs... but I hardly ever go to gigs anymore (the Ipswich music scene seems to have sort of died, if it ever existed in the first place) and I don't really want to be an adult. It's quite terrifying really.
Waterstone's is okay, although apparently ALL of the sections have been moved so I'm going to have to quickly find out where everything is when I go in on Sunday.
I've started going to Russian Club at school, so I'm learning Russian. It's exciting, I've almost learnt how to pronounce all the letters now (although I'm probably quite awful). I love how they say 'love' in Russian, it sounds like bubbles:
Люблю (I think that's it?)
I'm hopefully going down to Warwick on the Friday / Saturday of half term, which should be nice! I'll be crashing on Izzy's floor for a night, I'll have fun pretending to be a student ;).
http://pomegranate.me.uk/
issue one is fruit-themed, although obviously not everything is about fruit, and it features awesome poetry, art, and articles about poetry. i do, er, have a poem in it myself, but then so do various other better-known and better people, like lj's very own Ciara (hiya Ciara! I'm glad you submitted!) and some of my fyp friends and an actress who is going to be anne frank in a new tv series...
anyway i basically think you should all look it up and read it and everything. because, er, i spent a lot of yesterday coding the damn thing and it's awesome. so.
(i have submitted my ucas form to my school, btw, and today i got a remark on one of my english lit modules. i went up by FIFTEEN MARKS! yay!)
Oh and I also I'm off to some poetry event at Buckingham Palace next month, which sounds terrifying but awesome. I can't really write about it much here though, I have to keep it 'reasonably discreet' until a couple of weeks before. I'll let you know how it goes, anyway.
Getting ready to submit my UCAS form (I know it's hideously early to be thinking of doing so, but I want to get it out of the way and also my school has really early deadlines and if we don't meet them then they might not get my reference done in time, eek!) at the moment, almost finished my personal statement... which is a good feeling, I hated not having started it. Although personal statements are really hellish things to write, argh.
i'm a winner in this year's foyle young poets, so i'm going to be at this do in london on the 4th of october and in february i'll be going on a course with jo shapcott and daljit nagra. SO EXCITING. i don't think i posted the poem here when i wrote it, but i may have edited it before i sent it off (i'm not sure). i'll post a link when it goes on the website, i expect.
also! teddy hall, oxford, is on university challenge tonight, playing durham! i think it is only right that i watch and cheer on teddy all the way - they can beat durham! they'd better! oh yeah!
not really much else to say, i'm currently listening to a lot of american music (hi, okkervil river!) and reading some book on 'how to read a poem' (hi, terry eagleton!) which is interesting and also might help me in university spplications / sitting the fucking ELAT which is a scary scary test that i have to take as i am applying to oxford. sigh.
i start my job on sunday, god help me...
some of my poetry friends and i are setting up a free poetry ezine for under-30s. the website will be at http://www.pomegranate.me.uk (although currently there's just a holding page there) and the myspace profile is http://myspace.com/pomegranatepoetr
what's it for? people interested in poetry, mainly those who are under the age of 30 (we don't accept submissions from anyone older than this, although obviously we love you and you can potter around the website when it's up). if you write it, or write articles about it, or even just enjoy reading it then this website's going to be for you.
we're currently putting together the launch issue (there's a sample poem on the myspace and in the facebook group, and, er, it's by me), and we're welcoming any submissions. the (optional) theme is fruit, although poetry submissions do not have to stick to this. the email address to send it to is on the myspace, along with instructions for how to submit up to four poems for the editorial team's consideration :).
i'd love it if any of my writer friends on lj submitted, as you're all ace ;). let me know what you think, anyway, and i'll post again when the first issue goes live!
I've had a pretty good holiday, all things considered. I haven't actually done all that much since getting back from Scotland, but that's okay, I like relaxing, and I've cooked a lot of pasta.
I'm currently trying to get my head around this whole UCAS lark (my school got us to sign up for it before the holidays) as for some reason I have to finish my application by something like the 24th of September. That's my school's deadline, not UCAS's, but still. I am apparently incapable of writing a personal statement that isn't utterly, utterly wanky
I'm not all that sure where I want to apply. We only get five choices this year, and so far I've entered in:
Warwick - English Lit & Creative Writing
Oxford (St Edmund Hall) - English Lit & Language
Goldsmiths College, London - English Lit with Creative Writing
I'm considering about a million places for the final two, including UCL and Sheffield. Leeds looks nice, too, as does Cardiff. My main issue with Cardiff is that it's so far away - it has a really nice English course and a good music scene, but it's really far west and Ipswich is almost as far east as you can go. It's probably a really arduous journey there by train and everything, as well.
Everywhere other than London and Norwich (which I'm not considering, although it's a nice place and has a great poetry scene) is pretty far away from here, though - by train, at least. I have to go via either London or Birmingham to get to most places. For a while I was all about Glasgow and whatever, but it's just too far, I think. I don't want to stay close to home particularly but if I went to Glasgow I probably wouldn't even be able to afford to come home in most of the holidays, and that'd be seriously rubbish. Some sort of balance would be nice, hence Warwick, etc.
University applications aren't really terribly exciting, though, I apologise for just rambling on. I'm seeing Billy Bragg perform at the Burston Strike School rally on Sunday, which should be amazing. Don't have much else to report I'm afraid! Back to school soon, eh. Oh dear.
English Lit - A - 269/300
Art - B - 236/300
Government & Politics - A - 267 / 300
History - A - 277/300
General Studies - A - 288/300
I always do better in History than English Lit. It's stupid. But I still want to do English Lit at uni, and I'm not going to let Arthur fucking Miller (it was an essay on All My Sons that brought my grade in that module down) stop me! I still got an A, and I'm happy.
Lemonade and cake, anyone?
I'm currently sitting here, wrapped in a duvet, waiting for Rosie to come and tell me how she's done. At some point today I should probably get dressed, I suppose. Sigh.
I saw a production of Hamlet in a forest last night. It was amazing.
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