Students’ creative juices flowing
This week’s KEVI column will look at the more creative side of King Edward’s.
THE King Edward VI School’s third, and perhaps best, anthology, KEVI Creatives is due for release shortly.
With new members swelling the ranks of the writing club and a visit from Sheree Mack, The Lit&Phil Society Writer-in-Residence, to inspire them, more new writers have eagerly presented their creativity for their peers’ consideration and enjoyment.
This edition has the customary mix of poetry and prose and, of course, the weird and wonderful.
Once more, the creative abilities of KEVI’s students and their bravery in bringing it to the public light should be commended and enjoyed.
It is also exciting to know that, just as our last two anthologies have been on display in The Lit&Phil, so will this one be in 2013.
It is equally exciting that this will be the first edition of the anthology, published twice a year, to be professionally bound as a 60-page paperback book.
All of the work in creating this anthology has been completed by the talented students of KEVI from editing to cover design and even proof-reading it ready for print.
To give readers a taste of the writing on offer we enclose an extract from Bethany Milburn’s re-imagining of the life of the Bard. Enjoy.
Private Bill Shakespeare
I hear the thunder as the once whistling metal shells shatter the earth. I witness the upsurge of rubble, the never-ending fall of debris. My heart is hammering against my ribs, like a canary desperate to be released from the iron bars of its cage.
In spite of this terror, I begin to realise that this is it. This is the norm, war and merciless killing. But no matter how much horror is imprinted upon my brain, I will never forget what I was born to do: Write.
Every night I sit in my bunk and compose my words upon grimy paper. Sometimes the other boys sit around me and my lamp, peering over my shoulder and into my imagination. Every so often my ears will pick up a question: “Say Bill, who’s this Malvolio that you’re writing about?” or “Hamlet? I could have sworn you were writing something different last week!”
They can never keep up with me.
That is Bill the writer. Bill the fighter is somewhat different. Private William Shakespeare grabs a gun and never looks back. Every morning I leave the trenches with the fear that I won’t return, that my work will remain unfinished. But by night, I lie in my bunk and wonder if I will die tomorrow, as it doesn’t seem to get any better than this.
At times I think of how foolish I was to be involved in this tragedy of war – but then I am reminded of one of my characters who once said: “Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.” I hear these words, almost as if Feste himself were standing right beside me, and I know to never give up, to never stop writing.
BETHANY MILBURN
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Weather for Morpeth
Wednesday 19 June 2013
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 8 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Light rain
Temperature: 10 C to 18 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South east
