WritingThreeSixty

Call for papers

Martina van Heerden

Birdwatching

Mia Uys

It is raining when William wakes up, and he spends the first moment of his day thinking about his mother, while watching Cape robin-chats hop around the wet grass trying to pull worms out from the soil. He has always liked birds. They seem so detached from the world, witnessing life from high above, tied to nothing. Deep down, he knows this is just an illusion, a romantic idea that creatures with wings are somehow free. He knows birds are constrained by the same physical limitations that affect all living things on earth. Like him, they are hopelessly attached to many things.

Letter from the editor

Martina van Heerden

Welcome to the second issue of WritingThreeSixty for 2020. This special issue is centred around the theme of the Covid-19 Lockdown which has affected all of us. After our call for papers in the previous issue, we received a record number of submissions. Interestingly, poetry was overwhelmingly the preferred medium for expressing thoughts on the effects of lockdown. In this issue, you will find a selection of poems, as well as a short story and a research article.
This will be my last issue as editor-in-chief; I hand the reins over to Stephanie Williams, our social media manager. I have been with WritingThreeSixty since 2015 and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I leave knowing that the journal is in very capable hands!
Best Wishes,
Editor-in-chief
Martina van Heerden

About the journal

Martina van Heerden

WritingThreeSixty is a bi-annual, interdisciplinary journal for research essays and creative works. First launched in 2014 as an initiative of the English department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), WritingThreeSixty now forms part of the broader community within the Arts Faculty and Humanities at UWC. This journal maintains the standard of peer review and wishes to provide a platform to develop a culture of publishing among postgraduate and emerging students, as well as established creative artists within UWC and South Africa at large.
WritingThreeSixty also forms part of co-curricular graduate culture at UWC that affords students the opportunity to develop professional skills through the voluntary leadership and service positions created through the journal. These positions include the management of the journal and its team, editorial outputs, as well as our digital marketing efforts that are presented through social media and our online website.

Contributors

Martina van Heerden

Anna Nguyen (Research article)

Mia Uys (Short story)

Jerome Coetzee (Poetry)

Jamie Conway (Poetry)

Kirsten Deane (Poetry)

Summayyah Koli (Poetry)

Aisha Rowbotttom (Poetry)

Celine Solomons (Poetry)

Tayyibah Tahier (Poetry)

I learn to smile with my eyes

Jerome Coetzee

It feels like home

Jerome Coetzee

Upper Body Strength

Jamie Conway

Kaleidoscope

Jamie Conway

Upside Down

Jamie Conway

Falling

Jamie Conway

Pandora’s Box

jamie Conway

Wet marks

Kirsten Deane

Alone

Kirsten Deane

Grey landscapes

Sumayyah Koli

Behind closed windows and open curtains

Sumayyah Koli

Behind closed windows and open curtains

Sumayyah Koli

The battle on my tongue

Sumayyah Koli

Death, the one certainty in life

Aisha Rowbottom

No Space Left Between

Aisha Rowbottom

Alone

Celine Solomons

Fear

Celine Solomons

The New Normal

Tayyibah Tahier

Martina van Heerden

Shelves of Books, Piles of Books, References and Lists of Books as Performances of Metrics and Expertise

Anna Nguyen

Since the pandemic, I have participated in or attended many virtual lectures and conferences. Inevitably, I have seen numerous personal libraries, libraries in offices, or walls of books strategically peeking from behind the speaker. Academics, in particular, have spectacular bookshelves. The shelves are overflowing with books, enough to make the bookcases abundant and full, but organized enough so their spines reveal evidence of the title and the author’s name. And the collection of each speaker is a reflection of their research area. An author and professor in a literature department has rows of fiction. Someone who studies food has cookbooks in addition to their stacks of scholars’ monographs published by university presses. A scholar in a field like science and technology studies (STS) will have books with words such as “data”, “the Internet”, “political economy”, and “digital” in their titles.

Vol 6 No 2 (2020): WritingThreeSixty - Lockdown Special Issue

Martina van Heerden

Editorial Board

Martina van Heerden

Martina van Heerden - Editor in Chief

Stephanie Williams - Content Manager and Social Media Wiz

WritingThreeSixty

Call for papers

Birdwatching

Letter from the editor

About the journal

Contributors

I learn to smile with my eyes

It feels like home

Upper Body Strength

Kaleidoscope

Upside Down

Falling

Pandora’s Box

Wet marks

Alone

Grey landscapes

Behind closed windows and open curtains

Behind closed windows and open curtains

The battle on my tongue

Death, the one certainty in life

No Space Left Between

Alone

Fear

The New Normal

Contents

Shelves of Books, Piles of Books, References and Lists of Books as Performances of Metrics and Expertise

Vol 6 No 2 (2020): WritingThreeSixty - Lockdown Special Issue

Editorial Board