by Tobias Thornes ‘Could I have your number, please?’ said the young woman behind the desk. Her hands hovered over her keyboard in anticipation. ‘My number? What number?’ I asked, feeling somewhat perplexed. After all, it was getting late in the evening and the weariness of a long day’s travelling lay upon me. ‘Your telephone […]
Read more
In keeping with this fortnight’s theme of ‘digitality’, Vicarious Living brings you an insight into the weird and wonderful WordPress world of that most inevitable of linguist clichés, the ‘year abroad blog’. You can keep up with Christy’s adventures at https://gringachilena.wordpress.com *** A True #Blogging Testament from a Real Live #YearAbroadBlogger Christy Callaway-Gale (aka #GringaChilena), […]
Read moreBy Francesca Donnellan This is, I hope, the first of many interviews with scientists from Oriel’s JCR, MCR and SCR. The aim is to both showcase the range of research conducted by fellows, graduates and undergraduates and to have a poke around what it is like to be a scientist within the university and our […]
Read more
by Anna Wawrzonkowska Over the course of the week before Freshers’, I learnt exactly what it meant to be a Foreigner: the odd one out. I felt alien. I felt not myself. And I couldn’t understand why. Surely I wasn’t turning into some kind of a social disaster? As I felt my confidence wane, I […]
Read more
by Tobias Thornes Forgive me if I start at the beginning. You might prefer to know the ending first, and judge from the conclusion whether setting out was worth my while at all. Or perhaps you’d rather have a taste first of the adventure that lies between the outset and the end, that you might […]
Read more
Ianthe Greenwood, Culture Editor Abroad is a foreign country: they do things differently there. As another year starts, a dozen fourth-year linguists readjust to Oriel life after the mythical Year Abroad™, swapping lidos for libraries, finding half the clubs we know have gone and getting mistaken for freshers (ok, just me then). But for the […]
Read more
by Peter Gent I’ve sometimes wondered, if I were hit by lightning, would I too get superhuman powers? Every time it rains or thunders, I find safe cover—most would say wisely—not hiding under a tree or standing in the middle of an open field, so I am not likely to know. I did once get […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn Here is a little philosophy of memory, or, a treatise on how to die well. When I was two months old, every November day I woke, cried, swallowed, and occasionally perceived this or that. Then I slept. Those verbs just about encompass the entire scope of my quotidian existence. Ah yes: on […]
Read more
by Rory Turnbull How to begin? How do we make a start? With all those expectations driving me To take my turn and try to play my part In writing something, somehow, easily, I do not know; I know not what to write, Since I’m ungifted, and in rhyme untaught. ‘Fain would I, but I […]
Read more
by Sam Wilkinson Ada Lovelace, the brilliant mathematician widely regarded as the first computer programmer, has proved to be one of the most powerful symbols for women in technology. Earlier this month, global celebrations marked the seventh Ada Lovelace Day, dedicated to inspirational female figureheads in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn Welcome to a world of music, of love, and of language. This is a world of drunken revelry and cross-gartered madness, overwriting a history inscribed with the vestiges of war, loss and social change. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is just a comedy. Some say. But it is this kind of thinking that results in the generic […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn The final few weeks of Trinity term provide the perfect opportunity to capitalise on some of the fine weather we finally get, to take work outside, or to share a beer once exams are over, al fresco. But Oxford, despite its many quads, eateries, pubs and beer cellars, often seems to lack the […]
Read more
by Maks Adach Is Oriel College where all the celebs hang out? Or is it just graced with the identical twin of many a famous face? Maks Adach draws attention to a number of these bizarre coincidences… Or are they…? *** Dear Mr Warn, Was that Stanley Tucci (of Devil Wears Prada Fame) preaching at […]
Read more
by Serena Yagoub The busker’s voice is one of the most prominent and defining sounds of Oxford’s centre; their melodies have wafted between Cornmarket’s side roads and become engrained within their stone-walls. But this music is not simply a characteristic of the city, it is an intrinsic part of the musicians that produce it. This […]
Read more
2014 by Ianthe Greenwood Our Eurovision correspondent checks out the talent in Vienna. Love it or loathe it, the Eurovision Song Contest has become a cultural institution over the decades since its first tentative broadcast back in 1956. Over the decades since, it has become synonymous with an annual outpouring of patriotism, extremes of tactical voting […]
Read more
This entry was the winner of the Oriel Writing Awards: Poetry Category for 2015. Congratulations! *** Eating Disorder – Jade Tinslay Wear me on your lips, your delectable hips, my opulent weight a fine coat draped over your craving bones. Let me nestle about your thighs, glaze your eyes. Let me taste you, […]
Read more
This entry came 2nd place in the Oriel Writing Awards: Poetry Category for the year 2015. *** Sonnet – by Kat Wood Earth lies as barren as dry winter air, Corsets of concrete and brick pin her down, Jealous of radiance, features so fair, Workmen are covering her with a gown. Not one of autumn leaves, dew drops […]
Read more
by Chloe Cheung ‘A heap of broken images, where the sun beats | And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief’. Thus wrote T.S. Eliot in The Wasteland – but would Britain become a similar cultural wasteland in the wake of a break with Brussels? Brexit doomsayers have long been stressing the financial and […]
Read more
This entry was the winner of the Oriel Writing Awards: Prose Category for the year 2015. *** Gandalf, Apparition and Wellies – by Sophie Barnes I sat in a world. Only two things I knew. It was good, and Gandalf was there. Next thing, we all apparated back to this world. Except it wasn’t apparition. Everyone kept […]
Read more
by Zixin Jiang Background Ngok Fei (1103-1142) was a Chinese general in the Song dynasty. In 1126, the northern Jurchen civilisation invaded the Song dynasty and captured the Song capital Kaifeng and the Song emperor. Ngok Fei led the Song army in wars against the Jurchens and was about to recapture Kaifeng when the reigning […]
Read more
by Rebecca Leigh For its duration, the intimate chapel at Nuffield College will become your TARDIS, transporting you through time and space to the events on British and German soil that lead to the staging of one of the most daring plot of the German resistance in the Second World War. Sensitive direction and sound production, […]
Read more
by Lizzie Searle All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. 14th century song does have the potential to sound pretty dry […]
Read more
by Edward Wren All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Intelligent and soulful, ‘Neon’ and Mayer’s debut album Room For Squares […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn A Review of Oxford Unlocked: Object-Handling & Tour at The Ashmolean, an Oriel Arts Week 2015 event. During Oriel Arts Week 2015, two groups of Oriel students spent several hours in the Ashmolean Museum with Dr Mallica Kumbera Landrus. As part of an Oxford Unlocked series – designed to reveal the secrets of a […]
Read more
by Emily Essex All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Schicksalslied means ‘Song of Destiny’ and this piece thoroughly deserves an […]
Read more
by Maks Adach All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. A family of four from Barnes are enjoying a short trip […]
Read more
by Alasdair Cameron All through Oriel Arts Week 2015, we’re providing a daily shot of musical inspiration to set you off to a good start! Make sure you come back daily for your music recommendation & explanation provided by Oriel College Music Society members. Think folk music and phrases like ‘preservation of tradition’ might readily […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn – Arts Rep. “In the undergraduate body alone, there is a phenomenal wealth of talent and an overflowing energetic drive in artistic fields.” The Oriel Arts Week is quite simply a week-long celebration of the arts. It is an opportunity to showcase and celebrate the wide-ranging artistic talents of Oriel students and […]
Read more
by Maks Adach Ch. 1 – Maks and the Adventure of the Misogynistic Crisps I wandered into the MCR last Saturday for a drink with some friends. Whilst at the bar, I noticed a few members of W1 eating a sharing-sized packet of McCoys. I was perturbed by the writing on the reverse side of […]
Read more
Music by Chloe Cheung
Read more
by Sophie Barnes Live Below the Line is a new charity initiative that challenges you to live on less than £1 a day for five days to help raise money and awareness for the 1.2 billion people who live like this everyday. Having started in Australia in 2009, the project now runs in six countries […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn WARNING: Contains plot details “The rendering is sublime: we watch in mounting and surmounting terror, during which the sole comfort is the divide between stage and pit, fiction and reality.” This is a play of love between friends. Of love getting between friends. But as a play – as a tragedy – […]
Read more
by Rebecca Leigh Cinderella (2015, Kenneth Branagh) is just the kind of delicious live-action nostalgia-fest you could wish it to be. “The production value of Cinderella is sky-high” The plot follows closely the line of the 1950’s animation, which is to say the programmatic version of the fairytale that I for one grew up with, […]
Read more
by Maksymilian Adach Mr Warn’s amusingly written article, dated 6th March 2015, has made a significant splash on the College social media networks. It is a shame that such a flawed, self-defeating argument has won such substantial support amongst an audience that contains the intellectual crème-de-la-crème of our generation. The first issue with Warn’s article is […]
Read more
Chloe Cheung shares some advice for saving money with The Poor Print’s readers
Read more
by Jacob Warn It was over breakfast one morning when one of those debates that zooms around the topics of religion, happiness and capitalism took place. In the course of this discussion, I suggested (and let us ignore the context for the sake of brevity) how similar malls and shopping centres are to churches and temples; […]
Read more
by Jacob Warn As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is a story about stories. It is a work that enthrals, entrances, and most thoroughly entertains. Having the opportunity to witness a preview of this upcoming production, uncertain and unknowing as I was, has set me in a state of delighted anticipation. “Lady Sarashina is story and story-teller, and […]
Read more
by George Prew “I felt the thrill of a scientist and the shame of a desecrator” These were the words of Manolis Andronikos upon coming across the tomb of Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, in the royal capital of Aigai. The tomb, unlike most of its ilk, was found completely undisturbed, […]
Read more
by Sam Wilkinson You may have heard of the hyper-startup Planetary Resources, a company which aims to “expand Earth’s natural resource base” by developing (and eventually using) the technology to mine asteroids in the Solar System. They also have a lot of money, with investors such as Larry Page (Co-founder of Google) and James Cameron (Writer […]
Read more
Chloe Cheung espouses the virtues of layering, featuring a special guest appearance.
Read more
The Poor Print 