Exploring the Theme: Externalising the Internal

What does it mean to externalise the internal?
In this issue, we delve into the transformative process of turning inward experiences into outward expressions. From psychological defense mechanisms to narrative therapy, and from personal catharsis to creative exploration, externalising the internal can take many forms. Our contributors have navigated this terrain, offering pieces that reflect vulnerability, resilience, and the power of artistic expression.

The works featured in this edition represent both individual and collective journeys. Through creative writing the creators have unearthed and shaped their inner worlds into tangible forms. Some pieces stand as testaments to personal growth, while others amplify the voices of communities, raising awareness and fostering dialogue around shared experiences.

As you engage with these works, consider how externalising the internal manifests in your life. How do you give voice to emotions or thoughts that may otherwise remain hidden? In what ways does creativity offer a path toward healing, understanding, or connection?

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Andrew Nicholas -

I never know how to describe myself. For the last six years I’ve been self releasing zines. By myself, periodically with the German artist Carolin Hagelberg, and also with the wider artistic community. My own work focuses on the fluidity of self. Both as physical form but also in terms of movement, dysfunction in the family and lost memories. My output includes photography, art and free writing which I publish under the ‘Androcles Press’ banner.

My early work was concerned with societal attitudes towards nudity, and that is still a preoccupation. Although on hiatus at the moment I have been creating the ‘Torso’ perzine since 2017. More recently I have taken the opportunity to publish ‘Gatherings’ as a way to offer space to emerging artists as well as members of the community

https://cavedweller71.wordpress.com/

https://www.instagram.com/cavedweller71/

'Time Is Everything' is a selection of released pieces focusing on my parents lives and also the disintegration of their marriage. A lot of these pieces were written during lockdown. There seemed to be a lot of parallels. How being lovelessly tied to one place can bring both pain and ennui.

Kitsch

Many would call my dad a hoarder. He could think of nothing better than entering Word Search competitions for a chance to win something he would never use. I think it was his psyche's flipside. He started as a policeman and then worked for Social Services. He dealt with order and straight edges. Away from this life, he desired flamboyance and exotica. I'll never forget that wall when you walked in his flat. There was a pair of novelty pink plastic 'love handcuffs' (I never asked why). There was a photograph of him and his wife at a holiday camp posed with some poor soul dressed in a badly fitting bear costume. There was fine if rather cutesy Limoges and a Pendle landscape. There was some dubious playmate calendar onto which he added all his hospital appointments. In the corner, there was a strand of tinsel that nobody could reach. I guess at least he had a bit of Christmas all year round. A lot of it came from trips to the seaside. From those neon fronted arcades
on the front where most things cost a pound. From arcades brimming with candy floss and saucy postcards. I don't think the objects on the wall mattered for what they were. It was the story behind them. He picked that up on the first time they stayed together. That one in the same year he had her name crudely tattooed on his arm. They were his life told through kitsch-kissed ephemera. Perhaps life is nothing more than constantly rearranging things. Placing things close to each other and then moving them apart. Seeing how we feel. Nearly all of my dad's
belongings have now gone. I didn't have the attachment or desire to keep hold. I took them to a local charity shop hoping the cycle would start again. Someone picking up a little piece of him to brighten their world. Something of nothing that made them smile. Something they'd love until the time came for them to let go.

Saint Jude

There’s a shop next to the Sacred Heart Church, Blackpool which always reminds me of my mum. It sells what I can only be described as religious knick-knacks. Plastic dishes for storing your rosary beads. Crucifixes for the passing goth. Row upon row of statues of saints you can pray to. The saints are always imagined in the likeness of some decrepit monk. I say sells but it looks like it’s been closed for years. Its front faded and corroded by the coastal air. I don’t think my mum could cope with me as a teenager. At every opportunity, she’d sit there in front of some figurine. What did she even say? I’m not sure how long it was before she just bypassed all the rest and went for the patron saint of lost causes. Jude will you stop him drinking? Jude, will you stop him fantasizing about men’s bodies? We never had the "Are you queer?" talk but better to be on the safe side. Jude, will you stop him from doing anything else that'll destroy his body? To be fair I was a hopeless mess back then. It’s something I often write about and if anything it's just a generational thing. My mum lived in a world where you had no choice. Church and state were sacrosanct. You worked in the mill. You were forced to take your holidays in the same weeks each year. You worked until you died. You often died at work. It didn't matter which god you worshipped no amount of devotion could get you to utopia. I think that's what took me away from the church. This idea that to be someone you had to suffer. That you had to confess for things that as a human you couldn't deny. Should someone leave you for no fault of your own you become a pariah. And don't get me going on purgatory. Perhaps my mum's prayers were answered in that I am still here and didn't completely derail? I am not a lost cause more a soul trying not to end up lost.

The Blood Red Rose

He marvelled at its resistance in many ways. Where many had concreted over it stood there defiant. His mum loved that rose. It acted as a psychic weathervane. Where everything else was falling apart around her it seemed to be oblivious. It willed her to keep on. Whatever else happens I will still be here. I will bloom and all this will pass. He came to understand more about her through that flower. How that six-foot oblong front garden was really all she had to leave her mark. It wasn't her's, it was 'her' and that made her happy. He found out later that they were the only ones to go see her in the chapel of rest. Their south asian next door neighbours bought the house. They went when he couldn't face it. Not after that time at the hospital when he saw her ashen and withered face. He wasn't sure what they would have said. Just enough to say goodbye and to pay their respects? Perhaps more than that? To say they will miss her and never forget her kindness. Maybe
they couldn't bear to uproot and remove the thought of her? Like him, they remembered what she'd been through. How she had suffered but
met them with a warm smile. How she had stayed behind when he had left How she had tried to paper over the cracks. There were a few other things that reminded him of her. Her humming 'Poverty Knocks' and VU's 'I'm Sticking With You'. Menthol cigarettes and the aromatic smell of Benedictine. The scar on her throat from her thyroid operation. These bits of her had become petal and thorn. Maybe one day they'll move and the new owner won't feel that connection. To see it cut with scissors or shears would feel like the end. For as long as it stood though it offered a portal to the past. A bittersweet reminder of the way things were.

Like Father, Like ('Chaotic Edit')

I never know how to feel when I write about my dad. Do I focus on a primal urge to feel love? Do I focus on a well-respected man with a dark heart? Can I be sympathetic or do I feel that he was stupid? You see, I imagine a woman there around midnight wondering how much he had gambled and lost this time. How he'd come in incoherent, smelling of beer and others. There is never a desire to sugarcoat this. I have a rather incoherent letter upstairs. It's a strange feeling reading what my dad wrote to her for the first time - the woman he was having an affair with. I see this as son. I'm seeing this as a past narrative. I'm seeing this as things that changed our lives. I see this as one person craving another's body and apologising for his cruelty. Above all else, I'm seeing this and trying to see where I fit in. The letter refers to me as
'the child'. Almost throwaway. As though giving me a name will cause guilt.

This isn't really the dad I knew. My dad is of five or so years later; distant sure but also gregarious and generous. Not this desperate soul who didn't know where to turn. I can see so much of me in him. I was never that fussed about horses or women but the booze. I lost count of the number of times I'd walk through the dark of the Hard Platts, fall and then just think sod it. I will be safe here. The same woman who waited for him waited for me. Waited for the key in lock so she could exhale. There were so many rows about him. My mum knew too much, I knew so little. Why did he reappear? Again, with neither of them around, maybe it's not wise to offer theory. Was it her request?
Was it authority intervention when my brother started with his blackouts? I doubt it was Dad's volition. But I remember those summers. At least I feel I do. Seeing Airplane and Gregory's Girl at The Unit Four. Some sense of normality. Sure a broken home but functioning. Not ideal but the best it was going to get. The older me can hear her: I don't care for anything but please don't become him.

He left circa spring 1981. I sort of gathered that because I have a photo of them together taken that summer. My dad with his usual wavy wiry hair. Unironed shirt with a few buttons open revealing sunburnt chest. It's like a weight has been removed. It's as though domesticity has been removed. It had been going on for years. He retired in 1977 so that would figure. How do you fill the time? It's one thing to imagine Dad as Lothario - hard, but I can just about get my head around it. But someone who'd spend time tending the garden. Just pottering around. That just wasn't him. Or it wasn't him at that time in his life. I see my dad's life as being one of enforced control with a knowledge of what he could get away with. It's a tired analogy but maybe he was filled with punk rebellion. He could rip it up and become a non-conformist.

Don't get me wrong. My dad was intelligent enough. He knew there'd be consequences. He knew he'd lose a lot but could he go on? I often talk about the letters she wrote to him when he was in hospital after his stroke. I enjoy the sheer banality of them. The nothingness. It isn't about love and in many ways they document all the things that he ran away from. It's easy to see him in terms of two lifetimes. This is when he was settled, then there was the rift and then he reset. I could write uncaring things or about the need for change. I could write a broader piece on pleasure and pain. On the highs and lows. On the troubling zig-zag of life and the brick walls that appear. I'm perhaps more drawn to writing about him because I wouldn't know where to start when it comes to wife and lover. As the years go by they are all becoming strangers but him more so. I don't think I'll ever get a true feel for who he really was. There's a certain sadness in that but what's the alternative? I sense that knowing more may turn him completely into a monster. An empty soul with a dark heart. Maybe that's the fear for me? Not losing a sense of
him but knowing this is where I am from. And maybe in my more devil-may-care moments I am looking both on him and into the mirror.  

Save The Last Dance

Why does life have to be so sickening?
Up and down and left and right
Death and what came before...life?
Some dizzying period of off and on; off and on again
Fast and Slow decline
He often looked back on the Polaroid poses
His dad's life of booze, gambling without a care and screwing around seemed alien to him
He cut a bloated figure
A face scarred by late nights and crappy razors
Dancing to The Drifters or some other tune
But happy - why was he so happy?
Maybe that's why no-one told him to stop?
Told him to look in the mirror and reflect
Maybe they knew it was too late for that?
Or figured he'd change eventually?
It's what his mum feared the most
Not spiders or monsters
But that he would become him
Through gene, culture or idolisation
Through smoky back rooms and fluorescent arcades
Through Kelly's eye and the chug clunk click release of coins
Through the things that would make him come
And then want more

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Artist name -Robert Fleming

Biography

Robert Fleming (b. 1963) is a visual poet from Lewes, DE. Robert follows his mother as a visual artist and his grandfather as a poet.

He is a founding/contributing editor of Old Scratch Press and a contributing editor to the digital magazine Instant Noodles.

His books are White Noir, an Amazon best seller, and Con-Way in 4 in 1, #4.

He is an award-winning writer and artist, wins: 2022 San Gabriel Valley California-broadside, 2021 Best of Mad Swirl poetry;

nominations: 2023 Blood Rag Poet, Delaware Press: poem: 3rd place and 2 honorable mentions and 1 honorable mention for graphic design, and 2 Pushcart and 2 Best of the Net.

Links to social media

https://www.facebook.com/robert.fleming.5030

Website

https://artleagueofoceancity.org/artists/robert-fleming/

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Artist name Kauser Parveen

Biography

I am a volunteer for a local charity. I work for the NHS . I am only starting my artistic journey.

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Artist name Crisia Constantine

Biography

A graduate of QCAD (Queensland College of Visual Arts and Design), I use two-dimensional artefacts (embroidery, photography) and sculpture to explore displacement, migration and nomadism, childhood and women’s trauma, and community memory.

For the past couple of years, I began introducing written words in my practice. At the beginning, I employed words pictorially, exploiting the shape and detail they added. As I expanded my practice, I began using words linguistically to build up narratives. Eventually, this led to writing poetry. Most recently, one of my poem was featured in an exhibition at Space, Redbridge, UK.

My visual work was featured by the Head On Festival, Art and About Festival, Nomadic arts Festival, 1st Worldwide Studio and Apartment Biennale, Brighton Photo Biennial, Central East-European House for Photography in Bratislava, and Process Space Art Festival in Ruse, Bulgaria.

Links to social media https://www.instagram.com/chocolate_con_pimenta

untitled (something about myself)

As a teenager, I experienced a sense of non-ownership over my body. It shaped the way in which I related to my body as a young woman, but also my understanding of the self. For the most part, I did not know how to have a body or how to have it seen. I did not know what to do with it or how to use it. I did not know how to be seen using it.

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On Being a Stray – by Karlina Veras

Living away from the Dominican Republic, what was once home, from what I thought was once home, is an ambiguous feeling. As these two opposite cultures blend into my soul, my Dominican and British, they play a tug of war within my soul. There’s a longing to somehow belong. And in that search, I have become an antibody, looking for defects in my backbone. For broken pieces every time some questions my actions, my thoughts, my sense of self. I render through, searching outside of me for an antidote that will cure this feeling of not belonging, of being a stray.

Sometimes I wake up and don’t find myself. I look in the mirror and don’t like what I see. I look away, not accepting this is who I am, who I still am, after all these years. In the blink of an eye, all the fears I’ve hidden away come to the surface. I pretend they don’t exist, that I’ve moved on. I know better because I’ve lived more, I’m older, etc. But no, I’m still that same fallen angel that endlessly cried herself to sleep under a drumkit in a grungy rehearsal room in Peckham.

No matter what I do, they keep crawling up my skin. The rash of insecurities is something I can’t find a healing cream for. I reach for the mirror once again. I slap myself in the face once or twice. Maybe more. Sometimes, if alone, I scream as loud as I can, to see if I finally let it all out. Whatever it is that makes me a stray. But no. I scream to no avail.

         I surrender to my fallen angel status.

Karlina the stray Dominican jevita.

Broken.

Always lonely. Always scared. Always angry. A snowball of emotions wondering the streets of London. Once again, I pretend. I get myself busy. Between work, my martial arts training (my excuse to get beaten and beat others to the core), writing, some kind of family life, some friends, and date night, when none of us are too hungover. And for when there’s nothing else to do, there’s always the numbness of scrolling through the social media feeds and the never-ending evenings of Netflix and chill. I get on with whatever it is, and it usually works.

But then comes Christmas and it is like a spade going through my black heart. That is when I feel the loneliest. The smallest ant in the universe. As soon as the first Christmas lights are on, I miss it all. I miss the crazy family reunions with Puerco asao, laughter and ginger teas. The Angelitos, the aguinaldos, the fireworks, the pasteles en hoja, the hanging out with friends after Christmas day and New Year’s Eve. The going to the beach every first of January with my friend Olivo to welcome the New Year and reflect about the one passed. One time, there was a guy throwing himself backwards in the sea. He accidently drank some water and said, Fuck man! I swallowed seawater. Here comes another shitty year.

I laughed so much when I heard that but was also careful not to drink water myself. I miss all of it and a bit more.

I have a good life here. I can’t complain. I’ve got great friends. Friends that have become family. Have found my own rhythm, my purpose. Yet, it’s not the same. Ello no hay Felicidad complete, said my grandpa. Happiness doesn’t come in full.

Survival mode: ON.

Sometimes I go through periods of no communication with anyone from the island. As if the pain is greater if I know their whereabouts. As if by me not telling them about how my life really is, how I’ve been, the life I live ceases to exist. Other times I look at the possibility of moving back to the Dominican Republic and quickly retract. I don’t think I ever will. I’ve always been an outcast, but now, I’m too much of an alien. And I’d rather be an alien as a foreigner than being an alien in my own country.

Maybe the key lies in realising that when you make the decision to leave you will never be fully happy, because a part of you will always be missing. Is accepting what is, grinding, always hustling. Thing is, I am here at my own will. No one forced me to move here, let alone to stay here for as long as I have.

But I’ve managed to blend whatever it is that I have in me with the existing one. I create my own strayness.

London is now home, the closest to me having a home. The Dominican Republic has shifted what used to be home, to where I’m from.

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