Hazel Stuart, "Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90"

 

Hazel Stuart has lived in Leicestershire since 2004. She was born and brought up in Aberfoyle, Scotland, and attended university in London. She has previously published an academic paper on Poststructuralism, an award-winning children's fiction series and, most recently, a creative contribution in the University of Leicester's Other Lives in Samuel Pepys's Diary e-book. She has an ongoing interest in early modern history and the intersection of politics, religion and the occult. 

About Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90, transcribed and annotated by Hazel Stuart
Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90 is a transcription of the private journal belonging to a brilliant Scottish minister, scholar and translator abroad in London in the early days of the Glorious Revolution. Visiting the capital to oversee the printing of the first ever Gaelic Bible, a project financed by the Royal Society's Robert Boyle, he chronicles the late-seventeenth-century city in meticulous detail. Through Kirk's remarkably tolerant and curious narration, we explore a city of religious diversity, toy with early modern science's understanding of second sight, and get to tag along to some of seventeenth-century London's best visitor attractions. This book is every bit as critical to historians as the diaries of Pepys or Evelyn. Beyond her faithful transcription of the commonplace book, Hazel Stuart has provided an introduction and notes, including the most comprehensive biography to date of its author, Robert Kirk, a man whose interest in second sight and fairies was ultimately to lead him to infamy. 

You can read more about Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90, here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the book. 

From Robert Kirk's London Commonplace Book, 1689-90

March 21, 1689, I also saw Gresham College, where the Hall pertaining to the Royal Society is, bestowed for the use of inquirers into nature’s phenomenon and mysteries by –

It is in Bishop’s Street on left-hand as you go forth to Bishop’s Gate. There is a square court there and a pole for mathematical experiments. But the Hall containing the curious rarities is not large but full of all varieties, above 2000.

Among which the main that I remarked and remembered were three manucodiatas with plain bills, long wings and tail, travelling feet: I took a feather out of a wing of one of them, and out of the tail of the ostridge’s skin. The bird of Paradise is carnivorous. I saw the pelican black, its bill was broad and as big as my arm, with a collar beneath. A Hudson’s Bay partridge white and long, with a few black feathers in the tail. A serpent of East India 7 yards in length, a small head and body as big as my leg at the ankles. A cassowary, duskish black fowl as big as an ostrich for the bones, though not so long necked, the bones of his leg are as gross as those of a man’s arm. The neck about a yard and a half in length, the legs three quarters. The blackish brown pigritia in shape like a man, a big body, slender legs, it goes but a yard and a half a day, though tis bigger than a cat. It climbs a tree, eats itself fat with fruit, and becomes lean before it creeps to the root of the tree.

Kate Loveman, "The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary"

Congratulations to Prof Kate Loveman, whose book The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary has just been published!

Kate Loveman is Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Leicester. She researches the literature and history of the seventeenth century, notably things to do with Samuel Pepys (who rarely met a thing he did not want to have to do with). She is the author of Reading Fictions 1660-1740 (2008) and Samuel Pepys and his Books (2015), and has edited Pepys’s diary for Everyman (2018).

About The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary, by Kate Loveman
During the 1660s, Samuel Pepys kept a secret diary, full of intimate details and political scandal. First published two hundred years ago, it is now the most famous diary in the English language. The Strange History of Samuel Pepys’s Diary explores why Pepys’s diary was written, how this secret diary came to be published, and the many remarkable roles it has played in British culture since then. Pepys’s journal has prompted creative responses ranging from Victorian fanfiction to World War II propaganda and COVID parodies. For two centuries, it has also encouraged debates about what counts as ‘history’ and about whose stories are worth telling.

You can read more about The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the book. 

From The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary
Pepys’s journal vividly describes momentous events, such as the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London, alongside small moments – quarrels with his wife or jokes with servants. Since it was first published in 1825, it has variously been called an ‘incomparable masterpiece,’ ‘an historical and literary work of an outstanding character,’ ‘trifling,’ ‘tedious,’ ‘very amusing,’ ‘too gross to print,’ and ‘obscene.’ Those divided judgements come just from the people (the editors, the publishers, and the lawyers) who were tasked with getting this extremely bizarre, frequently filthy text into print. For most of the last two hundred years, significant sections of the diary were deemed unpublishable, thanks to Pepys’s habits of describing court scandals, his sex life, and his bowel movements. Since nothing could be more intriguing than a secret diary too shocking to print, this censorship only increased the public’s fascination. 

Alexandros Plasatis (ed.) et al, "the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature," vol.2

the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature is a UK-based literary magazine edited by refugees and immigrants. Established in 2021, we exist to serve and celebrate the refugee and immigrant communities worldwide. We publish one print issue and one online issue per year. 

You can read about the first print issue of the other side of hope on Creative Writing at Leicester here. The second print issue has now been published and is available to buy through the magazine's website here. Copies can be borrowed from Public Libraries across the UK and are also available in many independent bookshops. The second print issue is foreworded by patrons A. M. Dassu and Lord Alf Dubs, and features refugee and immigrant writers from around the world. 

"To refer to the other side of hope simply as 'a literary magazine' feels like an injustice. It is a beautiful, complex and painful collection of short stories, non-fiction and poems written and edited by refugees and immigrants ... It constitutes a tool for building empathy, for generating understanding, and an avenue through which to become immersed in the lives of refugees and immigrants for a brief, yet emotive period of time ... You have no choice but to remove your blinkers and disassemble your barriers, blinking in the glaring light of inhumanity, yet reassured that there is enough humanity within us and between us to sustain each other, if we were willing to reach across arbitrary divides ... This literature invites us to deconstruct the categories of 'alien,' 'immigrant,' 'refugee' and 'other,' in order to simply recognise the humanity, the beauty, and the struggle in all of us, regardless of country of origin or means of arrival" - The Norwich Radical.

The second issue includes:

artwork by Dmitry Borshch, a political refugee from the USSR to the US in 1989, and, since February of this year, a refugee again, fleeing the war from Dnipropetrovsk to New York. 

fiction by Victoria Buitron who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut; H. T. Brickner, originally from China, who lives in Minnesota; Kasia Kokowska, an immigrant from Poland living in Scotland; Farha Mukri, born in Mumbai, residing in Chicago; Barlow Crassmont, a former refugee from Bosnia who lives in the United States.

poetry by Lester Gómez Medina, born in Nicaragua, raised in Costa Rica, settled in London; Art and Writing Hearth at Islington Centre for Refugees and Migrants; Tatiana Dolgushina, a Soviet refugee, raised in South America before immigrating to the United States; Nuha Fariha, a first-generation Bangladeshi American; Mahima Kaur, a Londoner from India; Asiye Betül, a refugee from Turkey residing in Glasgow; Lina Fadel, a Syrian who has made Edinburgh home; Nashwa Nasreldin, an Egyptian who was born in Kuwait and lives in England; Elias Udo-Ochi, born in Nigeria, residing in Accra; Monica Clarke, a South African refugee who was granted asylum in the UK; Zad El Bacha, a migrant from Lebanon via Italy; Yaz Nin, born in Kibris, raised in Tottenham.

non-fiction by Zoë Blaylock, an Italian-born immigrant to the United States; Ali Motamedi from Iran who lives in New York City; Yin F Lim, a Malaysian-born who lives in the UK; Tamara Haque, Bangladeshi by birth, with roots in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Australia.

book review by Angus W. McGregor, citizen of the United States, making Japan his new home.

Our second issue was made possible with National Lottery funding through Arts Council England. 

About the editorial team of the other side of hope

Founder & Lead Editor Alexandros Plasatis is an immigrant who writes fiction in English, his second language. His first book, Made by Sea and Wood, in Darkness: A Novel in Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), was shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Stories from this book have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net. His work has been published in US, UK, Indian and Canadian magazines and anthologies. He has a PhD in ethnography-based Creative Writing, lives in Leicester, and works with displaced and homeless people. His website is here. 

Fiction Editor Rubina Bala was born in Albania just after the fall of the country’s Communist regime and grew up through a chaotic political scene that has shaped her passion for writing and ensuring the right stories are told. She then immigrated to the UK where she completed a first class degree in Creative Writing and Journalism. Since then she has worked as an interpreter for asylum seekers as well as participating in writing projects in marginalised communities.

Poetry Editor Malka Al-Haddad lives in the UK for ten years, having previously taught Arabic literary criticism at Kufa University in Iraq. Her poetry collection, Birds Without Sky: Poems from Exile (Harriman House), was longlisted for the Leicester Book of the Year award 2018. Malka has an MA in Politics of Conflict and Violence from the University of Leicester. A defender of human rights, member of the Iraqi and American reconciliation project and Leicester Civil Rights Movement, Malka has performed her poems at the UK Parliament and at The Southbank Centre, London. Her poetry captures the history and culture of her homeland and is a memoir of her journey into exile and the welcome she found in Britain.

Non-fiction Editor Maria Rovisco is Associate Professor in Sociology at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, UK. She has research interests in cosmopolitanism, new activisms, citizenship, migrant and refugee arts, and visual culture. Among her recent publications is Taking the Square: Mediated Dissent and Occupations of Public Space (2016). She is currently writing a book on cosmopolitanism, art and the political imagination, and co-editing a book on visual politics in the Global South.

Reviews & Interviews Editor Amir Darwish is a British Syrian poet & writer of Kurdish origin who lives in London. Born in Aleppo, he came to Britain as an asylum seeker in 2003. He has a BA in History from Teesside University, an MA in International Relations of the Middle East from Durham University, and an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University. As a poet he published his work in the UK, USA, Pakistan, India, Finland, Turkey, Canada, Singapore & Mexico. His work was translated into Arabic, Bengali, Estonian, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and Turkish, amongst other languages. Amir is currently a PhD student at the University of Northampton. Twitter: @darwish_amir

Design & Art Director Olivier Llouquet is a French visual ethnographer, designer and filmmaker, based in Nottingham. He studied in Freie Universität Berlin and conducted a year-long ethnographic research in Leicester, engaging with refugees and asylum seekers through creative projects and filmmaking. 

Video Editor Parang Khezri is a Kurdish Iranian filmmaker educated to postgraduate level in film. She has lived in the UK for the past ten years. Parang became interested in film as a young girl in Iran, where she viewed film as the only place where one could truly experience freedom and where anything could be possible. Parang loves the freedom of making film and allowing her imagination to fly untethered through cinema, and is interested in surrealism, psychology, and feminism.

Social Media Manager Judy Qeis is a Syrian of Palestinian origin, who moved to England with her family at the age of 13. Having lived in a country captivated by tyranny, she hopes to make a shift in people’s perspectives about such regimes and trigger some action towards freedom of speech through studying journalism.

Communications Manager Elahe Ziai came to the UK in 2014, and after completing her BA in Education and Social Services, she was employed by Scottish Refugee Council as a caseworker for four years where the majority of her clients were newly granted refugees. Currently she works at IMIX as their community outreach officer and tries to empower people with lived experience of seeking sanctuary, to share their positive stories in the media.

A. M. Dassu and Lord Alf Dubs are patrons of the project; Sepideh Moafi is our ambassador.

You can visit our website for more information on the project here. Below, you can read a sample poem from the second print issue.  

me and my family get lost in the ikea showrooms 
 

we visit the colourful rooms, the built-in kitchens
and the shiny wood garden loungers. we look at
the graphics of children sitting around the dining table.
blonde kids waiting to eat their lasagne. blonde kids
with their parents' arms around their bodies. happy 
blonde kids. my mother likes to look at furniture,
she says oh look how comfortable those beds look,
it would be a joy to sleep on them, look at that bookshelf! 
we can finally fit all our books in one place.  my mother never 
got to build a house of her own. it’s been with her 
since bridehood; the urge to make a home. walking through 
the showrooms, i do not know how to tell my mother that
she’s given birth to empty homes
begging to be occupied with love. 

ikea is western, big and blue. it is too big for a refugee
to grasp. when you’ve lived running from land.
it is the colour of large borders, that keep 
the people out, and the furniture in. 

me and my family are afraid of colourful rooms.
we’re afraid of shiny wood, of large dining tables 
that would fit us all. we’ll never buy a comfortable bed, 
nor a bookshelf to fit our books. not because 
we can’t afford it, but rather 
because of the fear of finding out whether
or not lasagne on the table can make a happy kid. 
me and my family are afraid of each other, 
we cannot bear to know that we could
make a home, and still be missing.

 - Asiye Betül