HEAT Series 3 Number 5

The appeal of the random, the accidental, the chance, the unpredictable, except in the case of breakfast, is surely essential and needed for a life to be alive. Patterns can be found later.

So writes Stephanie Radok in HEAT Series 3 Number 5, in an essay about gardening, art-making and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Chance encounters occur often in these pages: between Nöelle Janaczewska’s dramatic appreciation of cheese and art, Jenny Erpenbeck’s things that disappear, a deceptively simple set of stories about friendship by Oliver Driscoll, Mary Jean Chan’s lucid verses of self-expression, an uncanny story by Katharina Volckmer, and Kate Middleton’s biting poems about watching television.

Across poetry and prose, the seven writers featured in HEAT Series 3 Number 5 share singular, often dreamlike, perspectives on appetites, art and nature.

Contents

Jenny Erpenbeck (trans. Kurt Beals) Things That Disappear non-fiction
Oliver Driscoll Two Simple Stories About Friendship  fiction
Mary Jean Chan from Ars Poetica  poetry
Katharina Volckmer Fritz fiction
Kate Middleton Television Poems poetry
Stephanie Radok Under the Bed non-fiction
Noëlle Janascweska Still Life With Cheese  non-fiction

Artwork by Jacqueline Rose

From the issue

When I was young, I realised my body / was something to be held back or kept / in its place, so I have mastered the art / of observation, how to watch faces for / a frown or grimace: signs of weather.

The farewells are what I remember. How thin and white R. looked beneath his shock of hair when I said goodbye to him for the last time and he nodded to me without lifting his head from the pillow, just briefly closing his eyes. How I didn’t go back to his bed, but simply closed the door behind me. The next day I had to pick up his things from the hospital, including the razor I’d charged for him the day before. The razor was charged, but R. was dead.

Today I watered the front garden by hand. Maybe not the most efficient method but efficiency has its limits. I decided to pick three long stalks of feverfew daisies growing near the nectarine tree as they had started to lie down. They have an intense and complex scent half-mint half-chrysanthemum. It is an insect-repelling herb.

I don’t know much about cheese, but I know what I like. Crumbly wensleydale. Comté. Provolone. Taleggio. Stilton. Cumin-studded leyden. Sage derby…

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HEAT Series 3 Number 5

Contents

From the issue

from Ars Poetica

Things That Disappear

Under the Bed

Still Life With Cheese

Editor

Designer

HEAT Series 3 Number 5

Contents

From the issue

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