EASTER EGGS AND THE CAMPUS CONVENIENCE CONSUMERISM CONUNDRUM

Posted on April 5, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged beauty, berlin, bins, chocolate, climate change, coffee, coffee cups, consumerism, convenience, Easter, Easter eggs, environment, environmentalism, excess, food industry, food waste, future generations, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, individualism, life, luxury, Milena Glimbovski, nature, NUA, on-the-go, Original Unverpackt, packaging, plastics, recycling, Sara Wolf, spring, student life, students, UEA, universities, Wake Up and Smell the Waste, waste, young people.

By Laura Potts

As spring approaches, so do the grasping hands of Easter and the shelves full of egg-shaped chocolate treats, in a hundred sizes and colours. But the main thing I notice as I walk through the supermarket is the quantity of packaging that comes with them. Each egg is sealed in plastic and stored in a cardboard box, and most come with other individually wrapped chocolates. The brightly coloured decorations upon the eggs and boxes are reminiscent of nature and the beautiful colours of spring.

The great irony, of course, is that the packaging boasting this decoration directly contributes to the destruction of that natural beauty. Through this attitude to resources, companies are investing in a ‘throw away society’, and future generations will have to carry the burden.

REVIEW: MOONRISE BY ELLA CHAPPELL

Posted on February 18, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged art review, arts, As Yet Untitled, bad nights, beauty, book review, Crescent, Donald Trump, Ella Chappell, emotion, external, feminism, flowers, fun, good nights, happiness, independent press, learn, Lewis Buxton, love, moon, moonrise, moons, NASA, night clubs, poems, poetry, poetry review, publisher, review, scientific theory, sex, sexual fantasies, stones, zinnia.

by Lewis Buxton

Moonrise’s publisher, As Yet Untitled, is an ‘independent press that specialises in limited edition, handmade works that embrace the breadth of possibility in the book’s form’. The book is beautifully made, a fragile thing one worries about reading with a cup of tea too close. Interesting then to consider the fragility of the book’s form with the robustness of the poems. Moonrise, by Ella Chappell, is a book about sex and love and flowers and moons and stones and good nights and bad nights and scientific theories and the gravity that pulls at us all. These aren’t new themes. But that’s what I like about this book; there is at once a familiarity to it but still a newness in the words, a fresh light on the scene.Continue Reading

REVIEW: KIMI NO NA WA, OR, WHAT’S IN A NAME

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged Arrival, art, beauty, body swap, Bologna protests, emotion, film review, gender, heterocentric, hope, Italy, Japanese, kataware-doki, Kimi No N Wa, language, Makoto Shinkai, Mark Kermode, media, Mitshua Miyamizu, Mone Kamishiraishi, PD, RADWIMPS, romance, Rome, Ryunosuke Kamiki, script, sexuality, Taki Tachibana, voice actor, What's in a name, women's general strike, Your Name, 君の名は.

by Alex Valente

A quick preface to the following, which also serves as a way to convince myself that I am … allowed to write about this, rather than the Bologna protests, or the political mess in Rome, or the current turmoil on the Italian left-of-centre party PD, or the upcoming women’s general strike. Those are things at the front of my mind – but I will take this week to find a little glimmer of beauty in a sea of constantly rising anger, instead.

Enter then, one of the two films I saw this year that made me think about language, and how we use it, and how it is used in the media. The other is Arrival, and so much has been written about it already, I decided to focus on Makoto Shinkai’s gorgeous animated film 君の名は (‘Kimi no na wa’), released in English as Your Name.Continue Reading

CRITERION

Posted on July 7, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged #readwomen, accent, beauty, creative writing, Criterio, Criterion, equation, ethos, in translation, italian, italian women in translation, man, poem, poet, poetry, read women, Selenia Bellavia, space, star, translation, void, woman, women writers.

by Alex Valente

Original Italian by Selenia Bellavia, ‘Criterio’

From the closed recesses of a star
you ask me the real portion
of the clothed hypothesis
you cannot imagine
you do not know the rustle
of the river undivided by an ethosContinue Reading

MALE BEAUTY IS A BEAST

Posted on May 8, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Student and tagged addiction, aesthetics, appearance, attractive men, beauty, body dysmorphia, Body dysmorphic disorder, gender, gym lad, health, lad, love your body, masculinity, men's health industry, muscle, protein powder, uni lad, university.

by Sam Naylor

Disclaimer: mentions body dysmorphia, body shaming

Type into Google images “attractive men” or “attractive male body” and see what pops up. I’ll just give you a moment to scan over some of those photos. Done? Good. In both searches a grossly disproportionate number of these men are celebrities but more importantly they’re white. Switch tabs to “attractive male body” and you are met with a sea of torsos and chests sculpted by the media gods. Chiselled jaw lines, blue or green eyes and ‘designer’ stubble appear to be just three of the ingredients to get you on your way to being an attractive male.

At first glance (and second and third) you might wonder why this representation of the male form is a problem for anyone. I’ve spoken to male friends before that don’t see anything wrong with wanting to keep their bodies healthy and in shape. I agree, I’m not saying that exercise and a good diet are things to be raged against, quite the opposite. It is an issue though when this idealised version of a muscular physique, which is predominately portrayed as white, is paraded as our default-sexy setting.Continue Reading

BEAUTY

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged #readwomen, beauty, belta, creative writing, italian women in translation, love, poem, poet, poetry, read women, translation, women writers.

by Alex Valente

Original Italian by Rosita Copioli (1948-), ‘Beltà’

Look, everything returns, even the markings on the wall
and behind the bushes the eyes of our heavens
without a reason to be tend towards a return,
they return not to forget, how much each
and every one finds their own pleasure – adspice:Continue Reading

DEBRIS STEVENSON — PIGEON PARTY

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged apple and snakes, beauty, body, collection, creative writing, culture, Deborah Stevenson, Debris Stevenson, female poet, flipped eye publishing, gender, heritage, Jamaica, love, misogyny, Nottingham, performance, pigeon party, poem, poetry collection, poetry review, poets, race, review, The Mouthy Poets, women, women writers, words.

by Carmina Masoliver

Deborah ‘Debris’ Stevenson is founder of The Mouthy Poets, based in Nottingham, who are a collective of 50 young poets. A poet herself, with a blurb of incredible achievements, I can’t help but envy her success as someone so near my age (she’s actually younger). Watching from the outside, I can see how much she has grafted to get where she is today, and her enthusiasm for what she does shines through at workshops, performance events, and is inside every well-chosen word on the pages of the Pigeon Party (2014) collection with flipped eye publishing.

Poems are enclosed in two-part poem After The Blackstone Rangers, which sets the scene for the collection. They describe a childhood growing up in cities, where “everyone was learning”, whether rolling cigarettes, or dancing. The words are both familiar and unexpected; a place where love and friendships are based on fun that is “still disposable and warm” — referring to the “can of Scrumpy Jacks”— but also holding a wider resonance, like most of Stevenson’s work.Continue Reading

BEAUTY IS IN THE HANDS OF THE AFFLUENT

Posted on December 12, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Perspectives and tagged beauty, class, ethnicity, Europe, Perspectives, physicality, privilege, race, self, society, travel, wealth.

By Sunetra Senior

This article is inspired by the bizarre reaction I have encountered as a reasonably dressed British-Asian travelling through the less diverse, major cities in Western Europe. At first I thought I was being paranoid – after all it is hard not to be aware of your starkly contrasting skin-colour in a sea of predominantly white faces. But this particular behaviour became undeniable in places of public transit – such as the queues at passport control and the underground – where you would need to cut the tension with a laser from a high-quality diamond factory. People weren’t just looking, they were gawking.

And the most interesting part was that it wasn’t malicious. There was no sneering or narrowing of eyes, but rather lingering looks of astonishment and intrigue. Eventually I began to wonder, and do excuse my ‘French’ when I say this, could it be that these dear people were not used to seeing a person of ethnic minority actually looking good?Continue Reading

BEARDS

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged aesthetics, art, beard, beards, beauty, design, men, non binary artists, original art, sketch, style, women, women artists.

by Asia PatelContinue Reading

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH FEMINISTS AND NIPPLES?

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Norwich Radical in Arts and tagged American Apparel, art, artist, artwork, beauty, bodies, breast feeding, breasts, consent, design, fashion, feminism, feminist, free the nipple, media, no more page 3, nudity, page 3, sex workers.

Content warning: nudity.

by Asia PatelContinue Reading

beauty

EASTER EGGS AND THE CAMPUS CONVENIENCE CONSUMERISM CONUNDRUM

REVIEW: MOONRISE BY ELLA CHAPPELL

REVIEW: KIMI NO NA WA, OR, WHAT’S IN A NAME

CRITERION

MALE BEAUTY IS A BEAST

BEAUTY

DEBRIS STEVENSON — PIGEON PARTY

BEAUTY IS IN THE HANDS OF THE AFFLUENT

BEARDS

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