by Christy Callaway-Gale In two separate incidents during the same week, my dad was mistaken for my boyfriend and my mum was mistaken for my grandma, which told me everything I didn’t want to know, yet already knew, about society. This is how a life-changing article on gender norms on the front page of the […]
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by Emma Gilpin The squares line up evenly and perfectly, forming a beautifully neat grid which I can scroll through, a photographic record of all the best moments of my life from the ages of 15 to 19. Four years of my little life, cherry picked to create a filtered reel of selected highlights. This […]
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by Tobias Thornes ‘Global warming? There ain’t no such thing! Didn’t y’ hear? That’s just a conspiracy cooked up by the Chinese. An’ the leftists. You’re a leftist, ain’t ye? Now you listen to me, mister. You leave all that clap-trap out o’ here. We’re done with commies, we’re done with Obama, now we’re goanna […]
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by Tobias Thornes Forgive me if I begin at the end. For the end is near, now: I can feel it in my bones. These my eyes, which looked upon so many of the world’s ancient wonders, have grown dim – like those wonders themselves, which one by one went out, melting like stars before […]
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by Tobias Thornes In the midst of the unimaginably vast, empty expanse that is the surface of the Pacific Ocean – the thin, glittering film across which we have slid for nearly a month – the first, precious sighting of land feels like the fulfilment of one’s every hope and dream. For days I have […]
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by Lucy Mellor Unimaginable complexity; the norm in a society consumed by technology most of us don’t understand. Taken most for granted though, is the human form; familiar as anything, and yet no-one has quite figured us out. Criticism of the self comes far too easily, but we are all a microcosm of the universe […]
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by Jacob Warn On St. George’s Day at Oriel College, Oxford, it is customary to feast on Roast Goose – fat Isaic Bird! Indignant, I beat off the carnally-laden arms of our servers. Give me something blander, my appetite and I demand. My appetite, four years after forsaking the excess of Animal Meats is blanched, […]
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by Tobias Thornes I’m going in search of an island. It’s no ordinary island. You won’t find it on any map; it can’t be seen from space. Yet it’s the size of Texas. The only way to reach it is by sea, but you won’t see it coming. You’ll only know you’ve reached it when […]
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by John Webb I have to say that this is an abridged article as I have sold the full story to the Oxford Mail (World Edition) which will appear shortly under the banner headline ‘I Beat Hernia’. It is based loosely on a two thousand year-old tale about medical matters by that renowned Roman scholar […]
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by Zixin Jiang ‘Jesus never invited anyone to a “lunchtime talk”,’ said a comedian on an Oriel comedy night last year. She was referring to the weekly talks organized by the Christian Union (CU), of which I am a part, on various questions about Christianity. You get a free sandwich lunch, a cookie, a piece […]
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by Jenny Potter On entering a hospital, one can be asked to describe pain on a scale from one to ten, a comparative measure based on all pain you can remember feeling. In this system a ten is a ten, an unfamiliar yet equally valid ten when compared to any other. Through our limited awareness, […]
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by Tobias Thornes Somewhere beneath the steel spires of China’s biggest city lie buried the remnants of a tiny village of ages past. Somewhere – overridden by congested roads and railways, over-trodden by millions of traipsing feet – lie the bones of countless generations now forgotten. It seems ironic that even in a city where […]
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by Emma Gilpin It was a secret that we all had and we kept it, ashamed, embarrassed, scared about what it all meant. I suppose that’s because it meant adulthood, but it also meant something much more intimidating than that: womanhood. I got my period when I was twelve. I didn’t, couldn’t, tell anyone about […]
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by Tobias Thornes A wide and enticing country brews, always, just beyond our western comprehension, like a cauldron of constant change the taste of whose broth we never can be sure. Such is the allure of tantalising China: a rich civilisation veiled behind a mist of mystery. And I, like so many awe-stricken adventurers, am […]
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by Madeline Briggs My high school had this motto – it was on a plaque in every classroom, repeated at chapel and assembly, hanging on banners around campus: ‘Wisdom more than Knowledge, Service beyond Self, Honour Above Everything’. I doubt many of my classmates spend a lot of time thinking about it today. Most stuff […]
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by Tobias Thornes ‘Surely, this is Hell indeed. Except that these pour souls suffer not for their own but for someone else’s sins.’ The Monsoon breaks like a sudden breath of sweet, fresh air after a long asphyxiation. Across the dry, sun-seared northern states of India reverberates a wave of joyful exhilaration: the long-awaited water […]
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by William McDonald ‘To remain in the EU is a more dangerous option for British security in its deepest sense economic, political, military and social.’ As the dust has settled on the recent EU negotiations and the date for the referendum has been set, one thing is clear: these negotiations have not fixed the great […]
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by Sam Wilkinson ‘We’re off; We’re starting’ This SMS message signalled the start of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks against the people of Paris. That night in November, seven terrorists claimed 130 innocent lives in an act of abject barbarism that shocked the world. This brutality was swiftly followed by a heated media discussion […]
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by Max Clements Recently the European Union has been maligned both from the right, by the conventional Eurosceptic, and by the left – in the wake of the imposition of austerity measures on Greece – who increasingly view the European Union as an advocate of greater deregulation and privatisation. Leaving the EU would be economically […]
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Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh is a DPhil student in International Relations and an organising member of Rhodes Must Fall Oxford Since its inception, Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) has bent over backwards to accommodate Oxford’s ignorance. But the time has come to speak plainly. Oxford’s response to our campaign has been nothing short of shameful. Oriel College’s backtrack […]
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by Jonathan Yeung Hong Kong has two official languages: English and Chinese. Legally, both languages are meant to have equal status. This is clearest on the streets, where all road signs are bilingual; English on top, Chinese on the bottom. Before 1997, when Hong Kong was a Crown colony, English was the language of government, […]
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by ZX Taiwan’s president-elect, Tsai Ing-wen, is a skilled politician who brought her party from its worst scandal to its greatest electoral victory, and she is the first woman to officially lead a Chinese-speaking nation since the eighth century. Ms Tsai, who was introduced in one British newspaper as a ‘democracy campaigner, gay rights champion, […]
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by Tobias Thornes The Hunza Valley stretches out before me, reposing upon my vision like a verdant dream. Except that no dream could conjure such sparkling, vivid colours, nor invoke such unimagined beauty as that possessed by this high Green Heaven. Around it, a crisp crown of snow-capped mountains dazzles in the shimmering summer sunlight, […]
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The Editors For an aeroplane’s aluminium and composite canister to fly serenely through the sky, two great, guzzling turbines spin ferociously on each wing. These explosive extremities provide the force to carry those in the comfortable, quiet middle toward their destination. The Poor Print recently published a cartoon on the Rhodes Must Fall movement, in […]
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by Tobias Thornes It was with some trepidation that I prepared to board a boat to Iran. It’s ironic that in the interlinked world of today borders are more sharply defined and suspiciously watched than ever, so that it’s no longer possible to travel freely, like our ancient ancestors on their long, slow trek out […]
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by Tacita McCoy-Parkhill
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by Zixin Jiang Wheaton College’s decision to fire a professor for claiming that Christians and Muslims worship the same God made me think again about an article titled Praying to Aslan, by Bill Wood, which addresses this question and was published in The Poor Print last November. What does it mean for two persons to […]
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by Tobias Thornes Down the dusty road from Jordan into Saudi Arabia I make my slow but steady way. The bus takes me southwards through this dry desert peninsula, on another route frequented by pilgrims from far and wide down the ages. They travel in their millions to Mecca and Medina – those great, ancient […]
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by Madeline Briggs CW: some racial slurs which are key to the argument in this piece have been partially **-ed out, but have not been completely removed as the article discusses the use of those words directly Martin Luther King once said ‘Hate cannot drive out hate-only love can do that’. On 9th April 2015, […]
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by Peter Gent One of the great benefits of playing massively multiplayer online role playing games, commonly known as MMOs or MMORPGs, is learning about teamwork. My first MMO was World of Warcraft, which I played on my roommate’s account while he was at work. My Night Elf, named Mat, was a tall, muscular rogue […]
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by Tobias Thornes Travelling slowly into the Holy Land, I tread a path taken by countless millions of pilgrims before me, congregating here from every direction. A peculiar power dwells in this small corner of the world, on the Fertile Crescent where human civilisation first found its genesis. A force draws people here – some […]
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by Giorgio Scherrer The battle of Hoth in Star Wars Episode V was just being lost when I casually checked my Twitter account and discovered that this was not an ordinary evening. It was movie night in the JCR, the second film of the evening, and it was 13th November. From about 10pm – when […]
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by Jacob Warn The translation of art from one medium to another is no new phenomenon. It begins at least as far back as Homer, who depicts tapestries in verse. It continues through the Latin Poets who versified statues, through Giotto who painted biblical frescoes, through the great opera writers who synthesised multiple mediums of […]
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by Carmen Thong It has to be noted that a lot of people would barely think to think about the translation of a text, or indeed the translator (those poor guys mostly get their names written in super small print). But translation is hard work. The process of morphing text from one language into another, […]
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by Salma Barma, Matthew Hull & Zixin Jiang An international education today means long flights, private schools and the International Baccalaureate (IB). It is seen as a standard of elite education and a key to prestigious universities. Pessimists among us would argue that it has become characteristic of a social class preoccupied with self-advancement and […]
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by Bill Wood ‘Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God even if some have some false beliefs about God?’ I think the answer is yes. The line I would take is that Jews, Christians, and Muslims intend to worship the same God, and their intention is enough to fix the reference of their […]
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by Sam Wilkinson Software, in its many forms, has utterly devoured modern life. The ubiquity of digital automation in today’s world cannot be overstated, and there are few hints that the relentless progress of technology will abate any time soon. Many students will be acutely aware that this has led to generic ‘computer literacy’ becoming […]
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by Tobias Thornes With the Mediterranean Sea shimmering silkily around me in the soft spring sunlight, it is difficult to believe that there could ever be anything but peace and tranquillity between those quiet coasts, blessed with a beauty beloved since ancient times and hardly diminished in our own. As if in some delicious dream […]
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by Sam Wilkinson The first video ever uploaded to YouTube didn’t offer much of a hint as to the future popularity of the platform, although it did predict the style of its many successors. ‘Me at the zoo’ stars YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, who offers his thoughts on the elephants at the San Diego Zoo, […]
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The Poor Print 