Welcome to Creative Cornwall an online publica-tion showcasing new written work from students on the FDA in English Studies at Truro and Pen-with College.

http://www.truro-penwith.ac.uk/ft/fda-eng-lish-studies/

cover and image above by Helen Draper

This edition features work by;

Annabel Vigar - Sea of Discovery, Ruins

Jade Blackett - The Mount, Changes

Vicky Allum - The Mine, Why I love Cornwall

Helen Draper - Her Garden, Exposed

Adam Kheroua - Fiction/Depiction

Terminus

A life-time of Cornish dirt I can handle, but twenty minutes of New York dirt? The thick, tar-black dirt – the earthen dirt – that used to cling to his face when he came home: I could live with that. But rats scuttling up every street corner, chasing down leftovers as they rot in the sweat and heat of the city? It is another world to me. My world, of clay-cased men, hidden heat and moaning mines: I can deal with that. But twenty minutes in New York? What Jackson ever saw in the place, I’ll never know! What Jackson saw, I am now looking for. What Jackson wrote is now my guide. The train from New York to ‘Cali, as the boys’ call it!’ I have since identified as California. He never wrote of any skyscrapers in California, or rats, or anything other than the boys, the ale and the pits. How the pits of the ‘new world’ were any different to the pits of old Carn Brea I’ll never know – but California is where I’ll find the pits. The boys. Jackson. The wives of the village were happy with letters’. Their men were alive: that was all they needed. Their children had fathers, a world away and below the earth – but they were alive. The mothers’ had their children, and the children had their tales: “your dad’s gone to America” they’d say, as if the place weren’t fastened to this earth. “Your daddy’s a man of the world now!” They’d exclaim, and the faces of those kids – they’d light up, as if they’d just received holy revelation – and marvel at the myths of their fathers’. The myth kept them warm, comforted, and happy. It kept the wives from being widows. I never had time for myths. My hands worked – they had no time to idle in the house. They couldn’t bear the non-weight of letters. Each sheet I received would crumple and crack between my palm and my chest, the very ink being smothered by my breast until I released my grip, and found no trace of Jackson upon me. His words remained on the pages. His being and mine were as separate then as they are now. “ The noise is summin’ else! Train jus’ belts on along the track! Right jumpy too – me teeth are knockin’ together like Wilson’s used to. Hear em knockin’ from right down bottom of shaft, remember? Told the boys was a ghost!” There are no ghosts in California, becaue miners’ don’t die in the shafts here. As long as there are letters, there is life – and when the letters stop? Just means

Terminusthere is more work. That’s the popular consolation. That is the preferred lie. The train thunders on, wheezing and spitting into the afternoon sky, the fa-

miliar musk of coal and heat filling up each compartment. The Cornish men sit, proving their providence, as they swallow the fumes whole and belt out hearty laughter, dressed in jet black plumes of smoke, towards each other, while the Americans wrestle with the choking gas, as it pulls tears from their eyes and wran-gles their mouths open as if it were stealing the air from their lungs. Last call: Grass Valley. I hurry the school of letters’ into my arms, and cradle them through the aisle until we leave the confines of the train. My improbable journey has almost reached its impossible end, and surounded by Cornish men, I scan the ashen faces in search of my Cornish man. Scurrying along the platform, I spill out onto the main street - struggling to separate the coal from the coal miner. Blackened figres, sodden with the stench of ore and wax, emrge from every hole, every opening, every door along the street. Suffocated by the cabal of man-shaped silhouettes, I take to the nearest inn, abuzz with delusions and hopes and a mis-sion. Last call: a tavern . The heat from the train stalks me, clinging to every inch of me, stifling my movements as if it were some agent sent to bring me back to Carn Brea. I’m back in the pit of old: wrapped in heat, and gasping for breath. Sur-rounded by living shadows, men caked in dirt, as if they ere born of it. Amongst all the coal and the shapes, there chimes a familiar sound from the back of the tavern. Clothed in a shirt made by my hands, possessed of a face familiar to my eyes, and a laugh that rests in my heart,I see him. And the boys he wrote about. Their mother cradles them, as if they were precious letters from a lost part-ner. I see them together, the unit laughing harmoniously, as Jackson tells them another one of his ghost stories: A wicked woman, who stalks the pit, ensnaring young miners with her charms, and calling them back to her den on Carn Brea where she promises them love and family and gives them nothing but despair. Such myths... keep husbands from writing letters home to their wives...

Such wives... eventually come for their husbands...

As I said, I can handle Cornish dirt.

Terminus

A life-time of Cornish dirt I can handle, but twenty minutes of New York dirt? The thick, tar-black dirt – the earthen dirt – that used to cling to his face when he came home: I could live with that. But rats scuttling up every street corner, chasing down leftovers as they rot in the sweat and heat of the city? It is another world to me. My world, of clay-cased men, hidden heat and moaning mines: I can deal with that. But twenty minutes in New York? What Jackson ever saw in the place, I’ll never know! What Jackson saw, I am now looking for. What Jackson wrote is now my guide. The train from New York to ‘Cali, as the boys’ call it!’ I have since identified as California. He never wrote of any skyscrapers in California, or rats, or anything other than the boys, the ale and the pits. How the pits of the ‘new world’ were any different to the pits of old Carn Brea I’ll never know – but California is where I’ll find the pits. The boys. Jackson. The wives of the village were happy with letters’. Their men were alive: that was all they needed. Their children had fathers, a world away and below the earth – but they were alive. The mothers’ had their children, and the children had their tales: “your dad’s gone to America” they’d say, as if the place weren’t fastened to this earth. “Your daddy’s a man of the world now!” They’d exclaim, and the faces of those kids – they’d light up, as if they’d just received holy revelation – and marvel at the myths of their fathers’. The myth kept them warm, comforted, and happy. It kept the wives from being widows. I never had time for myths. My hands worked – they had no time to idle in the house. They couldn’t bear the non-weight of letters. Each sheet I received would crumple and crack between my palm and my chest, the very ink being smothered by my breast until I released my grip, and found no trace of Jackson upon me. His words remained on the pages. His being and mine were as separate then as they are now. “ The noise is summin’ else! Train jus’ belts on along the track! Right jumpy too – me teeth are knockin’ together like Wilson’s used to. Hear em knockin’ from right down bottom of shaft, remember? Told the boys was a ghost!” There are no ghosts in California, becaue miners’ don’t die in the shafts here. As long as there are letters, there is life – and when the letters stop? Just means

Terminusthere is more work. That’s the popular consolation. That is the preferred lie. The train thunders on, wheezing and spitting into the afternoon sky, the fa-

miliar musk of coal and heat filling up each compartment. The Cornish men sit, proving their providence, as they swallow the fumes whole and belt out hearty laughter, dressed in jet black plumes of smoke, towards each other, while the Americans wrestle with the choking gas, as it pulls tears from their eyes and wran-gles their mouths open as if it were stealing the air from their lungs. Last call: Grass Valley. I hurry the school of letters’ into my arms, and cradle them through the aisle until we leave the confines of the train. My improbable journey has almost reached its impossible end, and surounded by Cornish men, I scan the ashen faces in search of my Cornish man. Scurrying along the platform, I spill out onto the main street - struggling to separate the coal from the coal miner. Blackened figres, sodden with the stench of ore and wax, emrge from every hole, every opening, every door along the street. Suffocated by the cabal of man-shaped silhouettes, I take to the nearest inn, abuzz with delusions and hopes and a mis-sion. Last call: a tavern . The heat from the train stalks me, clinging to every inch of me, stifling my movements as if it were some agent sent to bring me back to Carn Brea. I’m back in the pit of old: wrapped in heat, and gasping for breath. Sur-rounded by living shadows, men caked in dirt, as if they ere born of it. Amongst all the coal and the shapes, there chimes a familiar sound from the back of the tavern. Clothed in a shirt made by my hands, possessed of a face familiar to my eyes, and a laugh that rests in my heart,I see him. And the boys he wrote about. Their mother cradles them, as if they were precious letters from a lost part-ner. I see them together, the unit laughing harmoniously, as Jackson tells them another one of his ghost stories: A wicked woman, who stalks the pit, ensnaring young miners with her charms, and calling them back to her den on Carn Brea where she promises them love and family and gives them nothing but despair. Such myths... keep husbands from writing letters home to their wives...

Such wives... eventually come for their husbands...

As I said, I can handle Cornish dirt.

Fiction/Dipiction

Insert: picture - perfect - paradiseAdd layer/after layer of paraded lies

Copy/paste into: permanent placeExt. day - beach, waves, sun - fraudulent face

That the tourists demand!

Edit imperfection // photoshop factsA history [land/people etc.]as true as those religious tracts

Synthesised seaside = automagical attractionCut/crop/blur/fill/ forge without subtraction

Outsider + expectation X net profit = truth!

Error// decay of mine pit

delete

Error// friday night vomit

delete

Error// seagull shit

delete

We = creative cornwall.We = creating Cornwall.