Culture, Prose

The Happiness Extortion

by Jacob Warn Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime. So too with happiness. Or so we’d like to believe. But our culture of happiness has long since faded into an Arcadian past, and we are really only left with […]

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Comment, Prose

Narnia Revisited: The Wheaton Question

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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Comment, Diary, Prose

Slow Travel: The Heat of Saudi Arabia

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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Prose

You Cannot Pass – A Sonnet

by Peter Gent ‘You cannot pass,’ said he, despite his foe. Then all the Orcs stood still among the stone; Retreated eight, dead silence fell, and woe. No fellowship-for Gandalf’s will alone Did face the Balrog’s dreams when he did leave His morbid home and search a higher life. ‘No pass,’ said Gandalf, ‘shall you […]

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Culture, Prose

Cinderella No More: A Brief History of the Viola

Andrew Boothroyd Strident, assured, passionate, virtuoso. These are not words normally associated with the viola, one of the more modest and inconspicuous members of the orchestral family. But anyone who hasn’t heard the distinctive sound of this unheralded stringed instrument should have been at the Oriel Champagne Concert in Michaelmas Term 2015, where we heard […]

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Interview, Prose

Oriel Interviews: ‘I like to be popular’

Dawid Adam Piekarz, 30, barman and scout at Oriel thinks this year’s students are an especially amazing bunch. | Interviewed by Giorgio Scherrer “I first came to Oxford on a Friday. I had flown over from Poland for a job interview, because a friend of mine was working in Hall and had told me that a position […]

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Prose

A Response to Mr Hull on the Merits of Metre

Following Mr Hull valiantly hoping to extort a change in his poetic style, Mr Turnbull (Poetry Editor) formally makes his response: The Poetry Editor’s Response To those who, with the lance of liberty And shield of confidence, are hoping I May overcome ‘Rhyme’s ancient tyranny,’ I must make my response and ask them, why? Why […]

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Comment, Prose

Misinformation in the Rhodes Campaign

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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