Porridge Magazine

22/02/2024

The UK’s most nutrient-dense literary magazine cordially invites you to celebrate the launch of our seventh print issue 🥣

GAINZ:
💪 Readings from Aysar Ghassan, Leah Atherton and more
💪 Copies of issue seven and our back issues available to buy (and take home the very same day!)
💪 Open mic slots for anyone who wants to read (let us know via [email protected] or on the night)!

Oh, and tickets are FREE! But very limited, so don’t hesitate 🎟 🏃‍♀️💨

https://www.crescent-theatre.co.uk/event-details/250531ARNKNBGRTCBNCRJQPGLMGQJTTTD/porridge-friends-issue-7-launch/

30/09/2023

"“I’m in the happiness business.” Big Mike added feathery eyebrows. “Nobody expects that, right? But that’s what we do. Kittens or skulls, it’s happiness. And I treat everyone in this chair like family.”"

Cats leave their mark on Angela Townsend

Photo by Gijs Coolen, via Unsplash No one saw the tattoo coming. In high school, I was not voted Most Likely To Get Inked. I was not voted Seventeenth Most Likely To Get Inked. No, I was the girl f…

30/09/2023

We're sorry to share that our submissions will remain closed for October 2023. This is to allow us time to give due consideration to existing submissions and projects which have been on hold due to reduced capacity in the team.

We look forward to reopening in the future.

14/07/2023

‘Last night, I dreamt about them again. All moon-face and lovely, and it stirred that familiar ache.’

This dreamy flash fiction piece by Samiha Meah grapples with questions of motherhood and migration.

Now up on Porridge!

Last night, I dreamt about them again. All moon-faced and lovely and it stirred that familiar ache.

01/07/2023

"So what happened to one and a half million people? And why are there today substantially more Circassians in diaspora populations than in their homeland?"

https://porridgemagazine.com/2023/07/01/where-have-all-the-people-gone-lessons-from-russias-longest-war-roman-cherevko/

Roman Cherevko sheds light on the dramas and traumas of the modern history of the Caucasus

Image from Center for Circassian Studies; sourced by author. Introduction February 2014. Just as Russia was invading and annexing Crimea, the world was watching another case of Putin showing off, …

07/06/2023

'There is something in her hands. Something in a large Pyrex dish. It is hot, very hot. She nearly drops it on the floor but instead the kitchen work top catches it. The dish itself doesn’t smash. It isn’t a big enough drop for that. She looks down at it, trying to work out what it is.'

- 'Wood For The Trees' by Joanna Garbutt, now up on Porridge!

A deftly handled short story about memory and family ties, written with tenderness 🍏

There is something in her hands. Something in a large Pyrex dish. It is hot, very hot. She nearly drops it on the floor but instead the kitchen work top catches it. The dish itself doesn’t smash. I…

13/05/2023

"The Author has considered this in particular detail in relation to True Crime and the ways in which truth is manipulated here (no, the ways in which the reader is manipulated here)"

Delving into facts, fictions and (un)True Crime, with Charley Barnes.

Image by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen, via Unsplash. A True Crime Story Which Never Happened I [hereafter known as The Author] have been considering truth and fact. Truth, as something malleable. Fact, a…

22/03/2023

'In the courtyard, at the entrance to the bookshop, an egg smashed on the cobbled ground – albumen, yolk and the bald outline and bulging eye of an almost-bird.'

Grief, hope and the changing of the seasons in this prose poem sequence by Harriet Sandilands 🍃🐣

In the courtyard, at the entrance to the bookshop, an egg smashed on the cobbled ground – albumen, yolk and the bald outline and bulging eye of an almost-bird.

12/03/2023

'I grab the deck rail,
expecting a disturbance
—a pitching and yawing—

but the ferry glides smoothly
over the sea’s fleecy crimp,
like a brush through kid fibre.' - Poetry by John Kefala Kerr ⚓️

I grab the deck rail, expecting a disturbance —a pitching and yawing— but the ferry glides smoothly over the sea’s fleecy crimp, like a brush through kid fibre.

01/03/2023

'They don’t make
houses pink and white
like coconut ice-cream.
They’re always plain, dull colors.
It’s all so easy
when it should be exhilarating.' - 'Where I’m living now' by Andrej Bilovsky

They don’t make houses pink and white like coconut ice-cream. They’re always plain, dull colors. It’s all so easy when it should be exhilarating.

25/01/2023

"When I bent down to give her a kiss,
she quacked

Then exploded with loud report
into hundreds of pieces." - One poem by Paul Brucker, now on the site.

When I bent down to give her a kiss, she quacked Then exploded with loud report into hundreds of pieces.

16/11/2022

'She went on one of those dates when she first moved here. The man, who tasted of Parma Violets, took her out for steak and ate his rare, which made her feel sick. Before that, she kept on imagining him kissing her, the blood running down her chin.'

An utterly chilling look at dating, s*x and modern melancholy in 'Kaleidoscope' by Jenna Clake.

The horoscope said: You are a fish. You will come to understand this. She found this funny because it seemed like something more suitable for a fortune cookie, and because she had once had a boyfri…

12/11/2022

"For a salad section where, of the sixteen offerings, eleven are for Jell-O molds and only one – the Quickie Caesar – sees fit to include any lettuce. But it wasn’t as comforting as it could have been. I happened to be looking through it in the weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade"

Cooking up memories and social change, with Ann Levin.

Author photograph I can still see her today. Tall, blond, and statuesque, a platinum-haired goddess with perfect teeth and a year-round tan. She was standing in the middle of the dance floor at my …

03/11/2022

'Its big head, glassy stare
and halting hobble
from random ewe to ewe
made me think of you –
your loneliness and
your occupational rutting'

- One poem by Siobhan Ward

Its big head, glassy stare and halting hobble from random ewe to ewe made me think of you –

06/10/2022

'They sit on the bridge
they sit on the bridge. they cluster
as close as the round bulbs
of road-swollen blackberries,
dusty with travel.' - New poetry by DS Maolalai now on the site

they sit on the bridge. they cluster as close as the round bulbs of road-swollen blackberries, dusty with travel.

10/09/2022

"In this language use we see, then, not only that is Dick the more confident of the two, but also that he is the feral animal – foaming at the mouth, even – that sits in a stark comparison to the ‘wounded’ animal that his colleague proves to be."

Charley Barnes on figurative language and the dance between fiction and non-fiction in Truman Capote.

Photo by Arisa Chattasa, via Unsplash ‘Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.’ (84) In definition of genre, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood…

13/08/2022

"I thought of my room more of a monk’s cell than a bedroom, precisely why I wanted the radio. It needed livening up."

Paul Sasges on memory, music and the magic of the transistor radio.

https://porridgemagazine.com/2022/08/13/radio-music-magic-paul-sasges/