Finally issue #7 of The Quarry is complete, and we can share the product of our amassed effort and imagination with you. 43 students explored the theme of pockets and uncovered the creative potential of that square of fabric to produce stories and poems, fiction and non-fiction. This cohort saw beyond the obvious and teased out the truly interesting aspects of the humble pocket.
Many writers took the fabric square in its literal form and sewed it onto the sidekicks of mercenaries, filled it with jewels and posies, and raised generations of tiny men inside its folds. These writers saw pockets as the useful, secret, ever-present pouch that we pour so much of our lives into.
Still more writers decided that this theme would serve them in other, more metaphorical ways. These pockets overflow with planets and the space-time continuum, spiders and the psycho-killer, the heartbreaking and the hilarious.
Each piece reflects an idea’s journey from the writer’s mind to the page. Redrafts and revisions, blood, sweat and tears, and more than a few students ending up with something vastly different to what they began with—all to bring you an issue of The Quarry so gratifyingly diverse that regardless of whether you’re looking for outrageous comedy, gritty realism, or a talking dragon, you will be satisfied.
The poets of our cohort have outdone themselves in their attempts to reflect the exquisite pain and terrible beauty of the worlds around and inside us. Whether the pockets they describe are as big as a world or as small as a little finger, these poems paint a sharp and occasionally confronting image, and serve as “a reminder ever brutal, that homes are temporary.”
Informative and entertaining, our non-fiction pieces should be read after you’ve pocketed yourself away in a cosy corner, where you can daydream about Morocco, safe from Freddie Kruger and never spending more than your ailing bank account can bear.
It is our hope that within edition #7 of The Quarry you find something that you weren’t sure you were looking for, or can’t remember losing. Something that, when unearthed by our writers from under the detritus of life, makes you feel something. Nobody can predict what this will be, and indeed it’s likely to differ from one reader to the next. So whether it’s a timely reminder or an uncomfortable truth, consider it our gift to you.
Thank you so much for reading, and from all of us, we hope you enjoy issue #7.
Alice Maher
