Writing letters is something a therapist suggested to me as a way to cope with my emotions. It was a very difficult time for me; in one year I had endured a sexual assault and also had made attempts to take my own life. I was angry at everything and had grown reliant upon unhelpful practices like substance abuse, disordered eating and self harm. I told her about a typewriter I had and we thought together it would be cathartic to punch out my thoughts onto paper and keep them somewhere safe. That way they wouldn’t be in my head anymore.
Clitbait’s Recreate Art Series- ‘The Two Fridas’ by Frida Kahlo
Go read more about this incredible painting in an article by our wonderful Arts and Culture Editor (and organiser of the recreate art series!), Manvir Dobb: The Two Fridas and finding the balance between normalcy and reality. Manvir explores how Kahlo grappled within her disconnected and counter selves as well as reflecting on our relationships with ourselves in Lockdown.
The Two Fridas and finding the balance between normalcy and reality
A few days ago a large number of houses in central Edinburgh experienced a power cut. My phone was on 5% so I went to charge it and then realised that I couldn’t do that. I also had to go to the loo and as I made the trepid journey out of the safety of my covers into the dark abyss of all two metres I tried to turn the bathroom light on but also couldn’t do that.
CB Recommends: Black Scottish Artists
Black artists have traditionally been marginalised from the mainstream conversation, despite their respective brilliance. Since the majority of our team is based in Scotland, we thought we would shift focus and shine some light on some of our favourite Black Scottish artists…
Clitbait’s Recreate Art Series – The Statue of Liberty
Here is the gallery for our second recreation in our recreate art series! For those of you that don’t know, we have decided to invite the Clitbait community to join us in recreating a piece of art for each of our monthly themes! Since this month’s theme is independence, we have decided that the recreation will be the Statue of Liberty!
Clitbait Recommends
A while ago, we reached out to a few of our favourite feminists for their feminist recommendations for books, films or albums. As predicted, we received brilliant and inspiring submissions. Have a scroll down to check them all out!
Clitbait’s Recreate Art Series – Fanny Eaton by Joanna Boyce
For those of you who don’t know, every month we have decided to recreate a piece of art that goes along the lines of the theme of the month. Since this month’s theme is beauty, we decided to honour the Pre-Raphaelite model, Fanny Eaton. Eaton was a black Pre-Raphaelite muse, and as a result beat many beauty standards of her time. She was a symbol of diversity in beauty which is something we strongly stand for here at Clitbait…
‘Lick it and Stick it’ Clitbait x Sexpression’s Sexy Feminist PUB QUIZ – Sept 2021
We had the best time hosting this creative pub quiz with Sexpression Edinburgh! Alongside some sexy trivia, we had round of still life drawing, black out poetry and more!! About…
PRIDE 2020: A BRIEF HISTORY AND HOW TO CELEBRATE FROM HOME
Lauren Hurrell explores LGBTQ+ History, celebrating pride from home and the connections between the Black Lives Matter movement and the LGBTQ+ movement, especially given the role that black transgender women have played in its history…
Dear Past Me, Life isn’t for the squeamish
Dear Past Me, How could you have known? You came naked to a world that didn’t want you. Born on a kitchen table because your mother didn’t have the money…
Unpacking Racism – Clitbait’s List of Educational Resources
We are sharing a small handful of the many incredible works by black people speaking on such topics as black history, white supremacy, police brutality, black feminism and intersectionality. We wanted these to be easily accessible when people visit our site…
Longing
Longing
I long for the life I built for myself
With bricks that came from a place within that I didn’t know was there
With confidence that had lain low for years
I plucked the plumbing from my chest and built friendships
And from there the foundations were steady and firm
We tiled the bathroom with our insecurities and painted over them
And hung lightbulbs in the dark parts of each other.
We aired our laundry in the open, and learned to love the creak of the crooked floorboards
We cemented the walls with shared experience and covered them with pictures of us
There’s no fight in the world a string of fairy lights won’t fix.
I long to return to the life we all built
Through women building up women
Through endless wine nights and conversations.
I went looking for an education
And with it found a lifetime’s worth of company
Robyn Barclay
Interpreting the Self in Quarantine Compilation
Earlier this month, we reached out to several talented artists on Instagram asking them to explore the shift in their relationship to themselves through their artwork. As predicted, the artists have interpreted the lockdown differently, each pointing to something hopeful and affirming…
Interpreting the Self in Quarantine #2
Currently, I do not know what my sense of self is. I don’t know where she went. I don’t know if I want beans or peas with my dinner, I don’t know what time I should go to sleep, I don’t know what to wear for another day of the panny-D (an expression I have recently used to add a bit of light chic to the situation). What I do know is…
Some Quarantine Culture
For those of us who are locked-down in our homes, working remotely or just trying to fend off the anxiety of unending news updates, it can often feel like we are trapped and unable to enjoy what we once did…
The Best Kind of Self-Care
I know what the best form of self-care is. Unionising. The pandemic is widening the cracks in our society every day, and the divide between rich and poor has never been starker. But lo, light out of the darkness: Amazon workers in Chicago have won paid time off by forming the organisation Amazonians United and presenting a petition to upper management…
An Open Letter: COVID-19, Responsibility and Privilege
Our co-founders Lilah and Laila write an open letter to the Clitbait community addressing the coronavirus outbreak.
Meet the CB team: Zoe Robertson
Meet the Clitbait Team: an interview with Zoe Robertson, our Arts and Culture Editor…
Dear Past Me, You got this!
Dear Past Me,
work hard and you’ll get there. its not about an end journey, more enjoying every step along the way! stay true to yourself and your goals, focus on what you’re best at and remember that perseverance and believing in yourself will be your best tools for building your future. you got this!’
Foreign Film Recommendations
Our Arts and Culture Editor Zoe Robertson gives her recommendations of foreign films…
A Decade in Tomes
The last ten years has offered up an eclectic range of new fiction that has challenged and changed how and what we read. Below, I’ve collected a handful of iconic or influential books of the last 10 years that show how new stories are being welcomed onto our shelves…
Slow
Slow
There’s lines all over my life
Some stand between myself and others
Building boundaries where I am finally comfortable
Others are queues I stand in watching everyone get goals before me
Grades, graduation, validation, varying
Levels of success that others say are normal
Years of learning to read a certain way
This works for everyone so why cant it work for you?
A high school’s worth of adaptation and confrontation that
This isn’t working for me but I found what does.
The lines in my life move, scrambled like scrabble
3 points for a B but only if it doesn’t look like a D.
Years of minding my Ps and Q’s because apparently they differ
Pardon my politeness for I am slow
Reading aloud always sounds like a eulogy
Mourning the loss of the words I meant to say
Instead the brain substitutes and institutes an easier alternative
For me to manage and say
Or stutter and stammer and try to force out
Only to be told
you got it wrong again
Numbers make sense to me in a different way
I can read it once then say another
Yet warped, reversed and wrong
Calculations feel like abrasions, after a while it got better
Chipping away at the wall between the eyes and the brain
Eventually gluing things together
Excuse my intelligence for I am slow
Diagnosis is a word I can hardly spell
And something I hardly gained
Hours of ‘tell me what is wrong in this line’
when I’m looking at a circle
Expressing myself and grasping for explanations I can’t find
I know the words but I don’t know the words
An adult treated like a child because it took too long to notice
Reconciliation works slowly and silently
Getting to the right people was half the battle
The other half is writing my name on the moving line
Extra time for reading and dreaming of when
My ability matches my capability.
Frustration of how little I can push myself but,
Forgive my fortitude for I am not slow
K Robertson
Spotlight(s) on the Booker Prize 2019
It has been well documented, at this point, that the Booker Prize 2019 result took us all by surprise. Between them, Bernardine Evaristo (‘Girl, Woman, Other’) and Margaret Atwood (‘The Testaments’) took home equal halves of the money, but not necessarily equal halves of the spotlight…
i’ve built a house
i’ve built a house
i’ve built a house upon my shoulders
there i will reside
until there comes a time
when it is safe to go outside
i live alone, but every night
a stranger comes to stay
She never introduced herself,
but i’m too shy to say
it’s dark inside our nest
my lamp, the guardian of the tide
the chimney’s always smoking
but it’s still so cold inside
i a baby bird, and She
the swallower of my screams
the monster who knows all
but is unknowable to me
we built a house together
but She’s thrown away the key.
i hope She lets me out tonight
for i can barely breathe.
Lament of the Alphabet
Lament of the Alphabet
And across an atrium
Beating blue, black blood
Come crashing conclusions. Could
Deliver desperate daydream delusions:
Every ending ever ensured
Farewells from far frames.
Go give God goodbyes,
Hellos. How has hell
Ignited in insatiable instinct,
Jealous jerking, just judging,
Kissing, killing, keeping keen
Lamentations lingering like living
Memories. Many might merit
No notice, no nuance.
Others, oddly open onto
Personal pictures, pondering past
Questions, qualifications. Quiet queues
Register rocky relationships. Recognise
Stressful situations she seems
Tied to. Tried to
Undo until unknown, unspeakable
Voodoo visibly violated vows.
“Women won’t want words”
Xenomorphic, xerotic, xanthic xenocracy.
Your young years yearning;
Zealously, zestfully, zodiacly zeroing.
A.M. Asali