El shares a searing, powerful personal essay with us.
Louise shares their story of surviving.
Rutuja Pote shares with us this powerful poem
Nance shares with us an example of active imagination in her piece The Way of the Stones
“What I'm really interested in is the idiosyncratic shape of trauma. How memory creates hoops to jump through or the way conversations with friends become choral during the act of sharing. One story is never just that – an isolated incident – but a stone thrown in a pond that ripples outwards. Different shaped stones splash into the same pond, which isn’t a pond, but a pool, then a lake, then a delta that meets the sea.”
The piece explores the parallels between silencing and disbelieving victims of sexual violence and sick women through Charlie’s own experiences. By jumping back through time to some of her most vivid trauma’s, she reflects on how she was discredited and seen as an unreliable witness to her own illness and assault, contemplating the effect this had and still has on how she interacts with others, particularly within a medical setting.
Hannah writes of all the things she wants to say - to us, to the men in her life, to her friends, to her partner…
In their second poem for LCA, Elizabeth George walks us through the intricacies of having to painstakingly explain to someone how they can try make us feel ‘safe’ in a world doused in violence. Ultimately, they bring us to a place where we realise this someone was never ‘safe’ to begin with.
Elizabeth George kicks off our Autumn/Winter series with a searing poem taking down abusive men in their poem “Men That Make Me Feel Fucking Sick”.
Catriona Morton, founder and editor-in-chief of Life Continues after, shares an extract about coping and resilience from their recent book The Way We Survive: Notes on Rape Culture - available online or from your local bookshop.
As we approach the half-way mark for our Autumn/Winter submissions period, we’re looking to hire a temporary freelance editorial and social media assistant.
Submissions for A/W 2021 are open!