SMOKE BOOK PROJECTS

Jul 122012
 
Outer Space

by Jude Rogers
Out of Hackney Downs station, the day is spinning into life. The old lollipop man stands on the kerb outside Brook Community School. A flash of yellow neon, bright eyes, white teeth. His head turning left, turning right, both feet forward, across. He holds his lollipop in front of him, high like a mitre. Children hurry past, their shouts circling above him. In the middle of the tornados of decibels, he stands still, as calm as a prophet. [read more…]

Jul 082012
 
On The Way To And From The Post Box

by Jess Sully
Burrell’s Wharf was once a dye factory. The smoke billowing out of the boiler chimney showed what colours were being made inside – that, and the workers’ skins at the end of the day, as they trudged out in shades of red or blue or aquamarine. I want to believe, as the heritage sign says, that pigeons with pink-tinted feathers once strutted on the rooftops round here, but I’m not sure I do. [read more…]

Jul 052012
 
and I will only drink drinks that are red like blood

by Alice Slater
In the bathroom, I jab more kohl around my eyes, panda my sockets with black glittery powder. The sinks are filled with crumpled plastic cups, sodden tissues, vomit, cigarette stubs, ash. A girl with pink nostrils and armfuls of rubber shag bands asks if she can borrow my eyeliner. I hand it to her and watch her transform her small bloodshot eyes into artwork, thickly lined like Cleopatra. [read more…]

Jun 152012
 
Is This What People Do?

by Matt Haynes
The lorries are starting to move now, rumbling across the deck of the James Newman and onto the ramps that shake and ring beneath their tyres. He is supposed to leave too, supposed to climb the yellow metal steps from the passenger deck to the red metal gates that always remind him of Meccano. There is an announcement over the tannoy, every time a ferry docks, forbidding passengers to remain on board. [read more…]

Jun 082012
 
A102(M)

by Matt Haynes
As the doors shut and the train accelerates away from the station, the boy’s father holds the palm of his hand six inches behind his son’s back. The same conversation, almost word-for-word, has occurred at Devons Road, Langdon Park and All Saints (for Chrisp Street Market). Soon, almost certainly, it will occur at Pudding Mill Lane. [read more…]

Mar 042012
 
Ales of the Riverbank

by Matt Haynes
There is, Doctor Johnson once observed, no more agreeable a place for an Englishman to unexpectedly find himself stuck than within the four sturdy walls of a well-kept public house: “Sir, give a man a pint of strong dark ale, an audience of keen-witted peers, and the promise of a plump and willing wench at the end of the evening, and a simple and profound contentment will be his.” [read more…]