Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 18 - A/W 2017 i Popshot Magazine

Light sits at the epicentre of our existence. Without it, life on this curious spinning globe would grind to a halt. It is what every living thing — whether plant, animal or human — relies upon. It’s what defines day and night, what differentiates one season from the next. But this is just one facet of the word. A scamper through the dictionary will produce a multitude of meanings covering illumination, enlightenment, weightlessness, discovery and delicateness. This is what makes it such a fascinating theme to explore. Light is rich in levels, loaded with positive connotations and ripe for exploring through the fecund minds of today’s literary new blood. What waits to unfurl before you in the thick pages of this issue are just a few of those explorations, expertly…

This baby breathes the same air, made pure, heart beating its engine on the glass, thumb glued, miming a mother. White submarine on a bleached shore, name in a bottle hurling its cenotaph. Let the bell-buoys ring a safe passage and the sisters keep running and the long tower beacon not toll. See the little packet, halfway to her birthday, naval clamp anchored, bigger than her toes. From the Solent to the Towy we scan her horizon, watching the waves, willing her pound to multiply in the ringing fountain, and swim from the dark to the rock and light of candles lit and her mother’s haven.…

It’s only a tilt a nudge on an axis the pendulum’s annual sway when this shire blends the floral spectrum from snowdrop white to daffodil yellow. It’s only a matter of degrees Mason marked in pagan precision awaiting the sunbeams to breach the carved calendars in slotted awakening. It’s only an increment of light to wake the north from hibernation into incubated growth. Redwing and fieldfare migrate aim for the changing Sun leaving space for swallow and house martin to keep the equilibrium and stop the planet toppling in this precarious exchange their eggs balancing new life.…

You see the halo when they come: Yellow, laced with dark magic, Their beauty a little crooked, A deer ready to leap, a lioness, her teeth bare. You see their hair: Long grass, creeping vines in an abandoned house, Or flames and smoke, a dance in the wind. They will smile, their laugh will fill your lungs, Their mind a galaxy, whirling ink and achingly bright, Captured and jigsawed: a modern fairy tale. Out of them pour notes, rich as butter, Splashes and strokes, a dream you’ve forgotten, Or a waking bell: words, like honey and thorn — And you’ll itch and your ribs will ache, your throat a screw. Some will find a spotlight their home, Some will come into your life, stay or go, Their halo, yellow and…

The sky was stormy that night as Shula walked towards the cliff path for the first time. The brambles surrounding the muddy track grew taller than her head and tore at her hands. The thistles caught on her dress and she trod in every puddle with her slippered feet. She was two when her parents died and she was sent to live with her withered aunt and brittle uncle. They had not been blessed with children and it grew inside them like weeds. Shula was too talkative, too curious and far too beautiful. But she belonged to them. She arrived in the moonlight, wrapped in blankets, with a warning; ‘Shula should not be in the sun. It does strange things to her.’ So she spent her days and years behind…

Through the glass sit the kids struck dumb by the fluorescent light of late night TV repeats. They’ve seen this one, they’re sure, recognise the nameless nothingness of every frame played at the speed of a slow motion car chase. ]No-one’s winning. No-one moves to change ]the channel. They mash their rusty gums and don’t notice the moths nibbling on wispy gossip, threaded through straws meant for sharing. They sit alone, together in their numbness, toes wiggling in holey socks, flesh stretching like fresh water salmon. On the floor, backs curve in mimics of plastic spoons, the kids struck dumber by the flashing light of their lives.…

Zach Meyer zachmeyerillustration.com Meneese Wall meneesewall.com Daria Skrybchenko dskrybchenko.com Vector That Fox vectorthatfox.co.uk Aurélie Garnier aurelie-garnierillustratrice. tumblr.com Daniel Garcia danielgarciaart.com Bren Luke brenluke.tumblr.com Thomas Pullin thomaspullin.co.uk Mirko Cresta mirkocresta.com Jai Kamat jaikamat.com Nick Taylor nicktaylorillustration.co.uk Burcin Pervin saatchiart.com/burcinpervin Joe Gough joe-gough.com Ashley Floréal ashleyfloreal.com Jude Labuca judelabuca.com Guillermo Ortego willortego.com Fabio Delvo delvox.com…

Five days have passed since I was a prisoner in those red brick walls, but every night I return there. In my night-time terrors I am back in the squalor of that cell, surrounded by anguished people, so cramped that you can barely sit comfortably, let alone lie down to sleep. Cells without heat in the harsh Seoul winters, or cool relief in the sweltering summers; breeding grounds for exhaustion, frostbite and death. During the night in these mountains, my spirit rises from my body hidden in the undergrowth, and floats back to Seodaemun prison to review its structure. Here is where the workshop is, where we produce clothes and paper. Here is the poplar, a mournful tree beside the execution hall, which prisoners cling to in their last haunted…

One hundred and thirty-seven of them needed to send a message. Tonight was their last chance. They clambered up the sand dunes, the slope slipping away beneath their tattered trainers and borrowed office shoes, to get closer to the night sky. They spread a pace or two apart, not ready to be pressed together again. Not yet. With unblinking eyes, they held one arm up and stretched as high as they could. They strained until their arms wavered and the small oblongs of light swayed. Seventy-eight were neon green, forty-three crystal white and sixteen desktop blue. Their arms and faces lit the same. A connection — reconnection — with humanity was all they wanted. That would ease the pain of the next few days. Someone just needed a signal. They…

Dr. Hammond had the feeling that light slowed in summer. It was heavier, almost viscous, its physical properties more evident. Summer light was tangible. He had arrived with the equipment just after midday and proceeded to pace out the distance between the ‘channellers’, as he called them, while the client’s husband watched from the threshold of the French windows. The channellers were concentric circles of glass held on metal stands. He placed them five metres apart, around a tall white tent surrounded by a pegged-out barrier of hazard tape. When he had finished with the channellers, he turned his attention to the ‘receptor’ — a shell-like glass structure perched on top of the tent. He spent a minute or two pushing it this way and that. He wanted the husband…

Though I know it’s just the two of us, some mornings I wake up and expect to find them there. I can’t help it. Before school, I’ll go into their room and breathe in the smells of them. My mother’s sweet, fruity perfume that still clings to her pillows and my father’s coat that hangs in the cupboard, reminding me of trips out in the car with him. In this way, I keep them alive though the scents feel like they’re fading along with the images. Threads of memories disappearing. Sometimes I’ll turn around and find my sister standing in the doorway watching me. Her eyes will be bright and I’ll know she understands. We’ll get ready then step outside, and I’ll look at the houses and the gardens and…

6 — How To Be A Chinese Lantern is the author’s acknowledgement of the need to take charge of their own life and happiness, and to try to bring light to others. 8 — The White Fox was inspired by East Asian folklore surrounding the mysterious fox spirit, and explores a period of history when Korea was under the rule of the Japanese Empire (1910-1945). 13 — A Small World recalls a moment from the author’s youth, drawing parallels between the circumstances in that memory and circumstances in later life. It is about the intimacy of the moment and the lasting images it creates. 14 — 24 Weeks was written about a little girl who was born prematurely and how her family hung on, willing her to swim through a…

My mother and I walk leaf-quiet, her hands as delicate as birds as we pick berries from a blue spot of grass rising with heat in its summer madness of bees. Her garden roses open innocently to the fractured light to not threaten a butterfly carefully lifting its wings to worship in this temple of imagined seashells sharing whispers in the remaining shade. How alike they are the butterfly, a buoy guarding the open sea, each rose, a dying breath sweetly awaiting the darkness like mother, younger than trees then and in the moonlight when I dream back, her fingernails move softly as petals.…

1912 The others are at the penguin rookery, and Levick is alone. He bends forwards, and the halffrozen skins he wears crack as he reaches down to a wooden box where the photographic plates are stored. The smallest of sounds are amplified in this silent continent of white space and light. The sharp-edged glass rectangles grate against each other as he slides one out, and he can hear himself breathe as he crunches across the snow and loads it into the camera. Ponting taught him how to do this and Levick can now take a decent enough photograph. He leans in and presses his eye against the viewfinder. The bright white expanse of the Antarctic is before him. He picks out the details — distant hills and peaks, ice shelves…

Of all the things, I crack a moon against the sharp edge of a pan, and the stars pour out. We dine, luminescent, attempt transcendence, smearing cinder freckles across our skin, like black constellations. These stories we will tell our children: your night was soft, tender with affection, and I was too soon or too late, sharp like dawn siphoned through glass. Nevermind. Nevermind. I crack the moon and give you half, pressing my mouth to yours until the fluorescence rises from your belly, your throat, until I can taste it, feel it thrum on my tongue, tighten my hands around the love and hold it. Our future in a wax-wane for one breath cycle, brittle eggshell to flashbang in the pan, then nothing but smoke.…