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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Music by Chloe Cheung
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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 […]
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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 – […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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Chloe Cheung shares some advice for saving money with The Poor Print’s readers
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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; […]
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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 […]
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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, […]
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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 […]
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Chloe Cheung espouses the virtues of layering, featuring a special guest appearance.
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by Matthew Hull Maenads – or Bacchants, as they are often known – have for years captivated the very artists who have captivated us; their raw, unadulterated frenzy presents a vision of sheer human nature which is at once seductive and horrific. So as I sat in Exeter Chapel on Thursday evening for a double-bill […]
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by Jacob Warn At Pusey House entrances and exits on a scene: entranced by sober vigilance, pagan minutiae the wings – a hollow, chamber space Mark me! Penitent face. Stand, a side-long and, wait, now in with lengthy stick or bowed head. Execute all impatient not we who sit and watch this play. A […]
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by Rafael Posada In my actions there is a secret meaning. In the surface of my thoughts I have played the feelings (such colours!), Danced the verbs and steered the light. In the bright exterior all is the same, as if cut down. My true wishes rest in the shadow, Holding the pain of theatre […]
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by Amy Lineham Yesterday marked the start of Somerville-Oriel Equalities festival, a week promoting freedom from discrimination of any kind through a series of events including talks, workshops and film screenings. There are a vast number of reasons such events should be run, however they could all be said to boil down to the same […]
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by Jacob Warn It was in the coffee-house that I fell asleep and had a dream – horrible thing – about bowing technique. It put me in the awkward position of teacher, teacher to my own family, and forced upon me the undeserved task of explaining the up and down bow. Try as I might, […]
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by Elizabeth Stell Elizabeth Stell shares a series of photographs that invite closer inspection of the microcosmic world by which we are constantly surrounded. With stunning brilliance, Stell captures the enormous intricacy and minimised grandeur of insect life.
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by Salma Barma Wandering around Oxford always seems to yield some new discovery or other – an independent coffee shop perhaps, or a second hand bookshop. Walking down Pembroke Street on my way to Modern Art Oxford (which is itself worth a visit) a few days ago, I stumbled across the Oxford Story Museum and, […]
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By Sam Wilkinson There are a couple of man-made objects in space that almost everyone will know about: the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity and maybe Voyager I and/or II. However, there is so much other man-made stuff in space it’s crazy (and it’s actually starting to become a […]
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Photographs by Chloe Cheung
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by Chloe Cheung Readers are advised that this review makes details of the plot and production explicit. Not even Stewart Lee makes me laugh as much as I did at Christopher Luscombe’s new production of Love’s Labour’s Lost for the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Hailed as ‘sparklingly funny’ (The Times) and brimming with ‘continual comic […]
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The Poor Print 