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Victoria Adukwei Bulley
VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY is a poet, writer and filmmaker. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, and has held artistic residencies internationally in the US, Brazil and at the V&A Museum in London. A Complete Works and Instituto Sacatar fellow, her pamphlet Girl B (Akashic) forms part of the 2017 New-Generation African Poets series. She is a doctoral student at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she is the recipient of a Technē studentship for doctoral research in Creative Writing.

Articles Available Online


On Water

Essay

Issue No. 29

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Essay

Issue No. 29

& we say to her what have you done with our kin that you swallowed? & she says that was ages ago, you’ve drunk...

Interview

Issue No. 26

Interview with Saidiya Hartman

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Interview

Issue No. 26

The first time I encountered Saidiya Hartman, she was a voice in salt., an award-winning play by artist and...

I have told the story of my grandparents’ arrival in England countless times Their bags, their passports, even the car that picked them up It was a blue Rolls Royce, sent from the family in whose huge country house they would work, an auspicious sign for my grandfather: England was going to be good to them They had left Portugal in 1971, during the last years of the regime of António de Oliveira Salazar – a name familiar to me both from the story of my grandparents’ departure, and from the Harry Potter series Reading the books as a young child, I came to imagine that the historical figure I heard about from my family was also the figure in the books I was reading: Rowling had had a Portuguese partner, and so knew that Salazar’s name stood for something bad The fantasy series seemed, to me, to be grounded in a reality I felt I somehow, obliquely, had a stake in   This resonance between history and fiction seems fitting, because throughout my life I have come to relate my family’s journey as a story, even though I know it to be true The narrative of my grandparents’ move to England is so familiar to me: I know what my mother saw, standing on a balcony in Cartaxo, watching soldiers march on a protest my grandparents took part in; I know about secret police and disappearances, and my grandfather being on a blacklist and not being able to get work I feel sure in the details, and perhaps take liberties with some of them, as I recount these tales to friends in pubs, describe my grandparents’ experiences as cleaners or hospital porters in a Marxism and creative writing seminar, or in casual conversation Or in this writing here   But I don’t repeat the facts without some trepidation I have learnt parts of the story, but not the way to tell it I always feel guilty, as if I’m using it to present myself, rather than describing real things that happened to people I love It’s hard to know the right tone

Contributor

October 2018

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Contributor

October 2018

VICTORIA ADUKWEI BULLEY is a poet, writer and filmmaker. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award, and...

Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s ‘Heads of the Colored People’

Book Review

October 2018

Victoria Adukwei Bulley

Book Review

October 2018

Somewhere on the internet is a two-hour video of a lecture by the late writer and filmmaker Kathleen Collins, author of the short story...

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Prize Entry

April 2017

Hangnails, and Other Diseases

Giada Scodellaro

Prize Entry

April 2017

Benson’s Syndrome   Grapefruit. I have lost the word for it. Popillo? Popello? No, no. It escapes her, the...

Art

November 2015

None of this is Real

Anna Coatman

Art

November 2015

Rachel Maclean’s films are startlingly new and disturbingly familiar. Splicing fairy tales with reality television shows, tabloid stories, Disney...

poetry

Issue No. 13

Morning, Noon & Night

Claire-Louise Bennett

poetry

Issue No. 13

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should...

 

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