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BlankPages: Issue 42

Blank Pages Issue 42 Download blankpages: Issue 42

Featured Track

Our featured track this month is Eyes Like the Sun by jazzbo

Forget ‘Happy New Year’… Happy new blankpages! Issue 42 is OUT NOW.

Don’t miss out on our first offering of 2012: a spectacular post-party pick-me-up of fiction, poetry, music and art.

Manchester DJ jazzbo tells us how he became an ‘un-DJ’ with the help of ‘accidental’ dance phenomena CantMixWontMixShdntMixDontMix. We’re not sure he’s quite lost the hang of it though; check out this month’s mp3 for his carefully crafted Eyes Like the Sun.

Ben Walker provides a hauntingly beautiful collection of paintings and takes the well-deserved place as cover artist for this edition; meanwhile artist Anne Brodie takes up the Spotlight with an exploration of science and art in the form of bioluminescent bacteria portraits.. And if that’s not enough art for you, our Features Editor explores one of Manchester’s most exciting exhibition spaces, the Chinese Arts Centre.

For this month’s poetry, we’ve got not one but two featured writers: Evan Cowen and Nigel Wood usher in the New Year with a fresh hit of talent. David Hartley provides your fiction feature: do not miss his brilliant account of a life in retail. You’ll never look at a shop assistant the same way again.

 And if you’re looking for a new blog obsession this year, go no further than our blankpicks blog, Bad Penny.

 Start your new years resolution here with a brand new culture habit.

Issue 42 Featured Artists

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    Ben Walker

    Based in London, Ben Walker gained an MA from Wimbledon School of Art in 2001.  His paintings use imagery from World War II and the Holocaust.  Recent exhibitions include Artworks Open 2011, London Group Open 2011 and the Marmite Prize for Painting.  He will be in a four person show in Transition, London in February 2012.

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    David Hartley

    David Hartley is famed for his ability to telepathically communicate with rabbits. If you want to see the results of this peculiar phenomenon, or you want to read more of his writing, visit abarrelroll.blogspot.com and follow him on Twitter @lonlonranch

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    Anne Brodie

    After a first degree in Biology, Anne completed an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2003. Working experimentally with hot glass, film and photography, she jointly won the international Bombay Sapphire prize for design and innovation  with a short film, 'Roker Breakfast' in 2005. In 2009 Anne was awarded a Wellcome trust arts award for a collaborative project exploring bacterial bioluminescence and its external relationship with the human body. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, at venues which include the V&A museum, The Royal Institution of Great Britain, The Old Operating Theatre museum, and the Maison de European photographie, Paris.

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    Evan Cowan

    Evan Cowan is not a writer. Nearly seven years ago he travelled to Manchester as a writer, and returned to the Lakes at Christmas four years later pretty sure that he wasn't. Yet he does write - songs, diaries, poems, longer stuff sometimes. He lives by Coniston Water in the Southern Lake District. teaching kids how to rock climb, canoe etc. And with these distractions, writing has never come more naturally to him.

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    Nigel Wood

    Nigel Wood is a poet and editor based in Manchester, where he publishes Sunfish, a magazine of exploratory poetics (http://sunfishpoetry.wordpress.com/), practices qi gong and plays the bass guitar. Recent poetry has appeared in The Red Ceilings and Gammag and his collection N.Y.C. Poems was published summer 2011 by Knives Forks and Spoons Press.

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    jazzbo

    As well as being part of the CantMixWontMixShdntMixDontMix DJ collective jazzbo also performs as a solo artist; spinning a bamboozling array of carefully selected music at his shows. His music taste spans party funk, hip hop, NY disco, house, soul, down-tempo soundscapes and bass wobbles. jazzbo’s gigs have spanned the UK with bookings taking him to Ibiza, Malawi and Prague. CantMixWontMixShdntMixDontMix currently hold residencies at The Shipping Forecast and Chibuku in Liverpool.

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    Chinese Arts Centre

    Formed in 1986 by a group of British Chinese artists living and working in Manchester, the Chinese Arts Centre is ‘the international agency for contemporary Chinese artists’. It is committed to dialogue and exchange, innovation and dynamism, and an evolving definition of Chinese art itself.

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    Bad Penny

    Bad Penny's Nija Dalal is a writer and a student and a second-generation Indian-American. She's radio obsessive, cooks and crafts and sews, and keeps a blog about it when she remembers: atlsyd.blogspot.com. She grew up in the South, in a bizarre immigrant household, though no more bizarre than most immigrant households. She says "y'all." Currently in Manchester, she's lived in Sydney and Atlanta, looking for a job in radio (do you have one going, by the way?). Published a few times in a few places, but you haven't heard of them, because they are humble. And so is Nija.

Send Us Your Work!

We are always looking for new voices to feature in blankpages, our monthly online magazine.

To submit work to blankpages simply join Blank Media and select the "Publish in blankpages" option when you add work to your Portfolio or drop as an email using the form below. Please read the Submission Guidelines before submitting your work.

Having problems with the form or want to submit more than one piece of work? Email us directly at editor@blankmediacollective.org.

blankpages Team

  • Editor: John Leyland
  • Assistant Editor: Abigail Ledger-Lomas
  • Fiction Editor:
  • Poetry Editor:
  • Music Editor: Baz Wilkinson
  • Features Editor: Sarah Handyside
  • Features Editor: Rebecca Owens
  • Visual Editor / Designer: Michael Thorp

We would love to hear what you think about blankpages - drop us an email and let us know at editor@blankmediacollective.org.