LitRA, in collaboration with Culture Co, held a fiction contest a couple of weeks ago. The theme was ‘fairy tales’ and submissions focused on retelling fairy tales from the writers’ home country. The winner of the Fairy Tale contest, exclusively revealed here, was Boudica Gast. She won with her retelling “The Beatrijs”, a medieval Dutch…
Wildflower
by Boudica Gast Wildflower – there are wild things around you a tangle of thistles and a web of thorns now you can’t go outside, like the gloom-monger warns well, what do you know? now you can’t get your space to grow between the growing gloom of the claws and the fangs of the…
It Can’t do us Part
as nature’s defence delivers its onslaught – should we commit mass-self-slaughter for the natural world – or is it a mistake a star-crossed affair or the Doomsday dawning the plastic shelves devoid the streets forsaken the drawn-back curtains colourless, pseudoplants on the sills, but the hospitals are all but deserted. journalists thirsty for the death-toll…
Quartered
Boudica Gast One two three four. Off you peel some more – strips and stripped, and I’m stretched naked across your scorching Framework spears splinters into my flesh. Below A bellyless pit, boundlessly slender, and I can’t stand! – to see you To smell and summon and receive your charade. One two three four. Flaky,…
The Floods of 1953
By Boudica Gast On the 1st of February, Zeeland remembered the Watersnoodramp (‘flood disaster’) of 1953, which reduced many villages to nothing and killed more than 1800 people. Sadly, I noticed that not much attention was given to this tragedy at UCR. I think it’s important that we understand how devastating these floods were to…
The Life of a Tree, as Told in Pictures
By Boudica Gast Trees are like phoenixes. They die in autumn to reincarnate in spring. There is a tree outside my window that, as every other tree, sheds its leaves. I took the first picture because the lighting coming from the sunset was pretty. A few weeks later, I took the second picture- I think…
Cold Water
By Boudica Gast I wrote a poem the other day on the occasion of me and my friend sitting hungover like a pair of idiots on the pavement in the rain. Elliott was just in front of us, yet we didn’t get up and find shelter there. We stayed just where we were, cold…
On Autumn
by Boudica Gast Autumn has recently arrived, and it’s heralding its own advent with deteriorating weather, balding trees, and shorter days. Some people welcome the change, others would rather immigrate to an island in the Caribbean (I’m 100% Team Tropics). Inevitable as it is, the third season of the year has always been a vague…
On London’s Graffiti
By Boudica Gast This summer I travelled to London. I took my camera with me with the intent of attempting some urban photography. As I explored through the city looking for unusual ways to depict a place that has been photographed countless times before, I noticed the hundreds of beautiful graffiti paintings, and was intrigued….