Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace.
– Oscar Wilde
Pomegranates
by Annie Bennett
I learnt a lot at school today. I shut up and listened for two hours and forty-three minutes. My teacher told me that screaming, shouting and laughing as hard as you want is the best thing ever because that’s what you do when, ‘You’re playing with your friends and don’t have bullies to worry about anymore’. My teacher was 9 ¾ year-old Alexa (no, not the passive-aggressive robot); a witty, wise and wonder-filled schoolgirl. Alexa is Onjali Q. Rauf’s protagonist who befriends the titular The boy at the back of the class. This outstanding novel is targeted at readers age 8-11.
Most of us try not to judge a book by its cover but how many of us are guilty of target-audience ageism? Would you read a ‘children’s’ book in public, talk about it over dinner or dedicate bookshelf space (virtual or physical) to such childish things in your ‘grown-up’ world? Unless you’re a teacher or currently participating in the marathonic endurance sport known as parenting (I’m sure some of you have had a go at both recently…) I wonder how many of you have willingly cracked the spine of a story marketed as children’s fiction since you legally, if not mentally, reached adulthood.
Let’s face it, there’s nothing more uplifting than believing we can change the world. But it’s easy to lose that belief. And whilst I was pretending to be a ‘grown-up’, narrative happy endings became irrelevant. I sought fictional struggle, craved gritty realism and dystopian dramas. I wanted to gorge on Wilde’s pomegranates that,....
‘showed their bleeding red hearts’
and to accept Albanese’s ‘truth’ that their seeds ‘tasted like blood, like love’. And during heartache, I embraced Healey’s wisdom as I myself, ‘felt my heart crack slowly like a pomegranate, spilling its seeds.”
“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, A House of Pomegranates
But if we are what we eat and we feast on literary misery, what will we become? It’s time to fall in love with pomegranates (and life) again, to see through our inner child’s eyes. Alexa sees pomegranates as, ‘extra shiny… dipped into a bucket of sunset colours, like peach and pink and gold’. How wondrous!
So prepare to learn from young protagonists like Alexa. Because if you listen, she’ll share her experiences befriending a refugee and helping him to find what he thought was lost forever. She’ll teach you about parts of yourself you’d forgotten and how to view the plight of refugees with newfound clarity.
Alexa’s optimism makes me want to disrupt bookstores and libraries, anarchically planting children’s books on adult shelves so more of us can accidentally re-child again. Hope is empowering; that’s what’s needed. The children’s sections of bookstores (virtual or physical) now feel to me like the inside of a pomegranate with,
‘a million sparkling red rubies all squashed together in a suitcase and bursting to get out.’
So take yourself back to school, choose your teachers wisely and embrace a wondrous education. Are you sitting comfortably? Have you turned off your robots and cynicism? Then Alexa will begin!
The pocket mirror.
By Annie Bennett
Born from the belly of a Christmas cracker
stomach ripped apart and I fireworked into her world
my birth announced by a muted crash and a sombre joke.
I remained a closed up tinted truth
lodged sub-sofa for
five dark and lights.
She found me, her warm hand
scooped me up and pocketed me
into a denim womb.
I listened to her family rows. I imagined her smiles and frowns.
I am reborn every time she opens me.
My outside imitates a scallop, black edges fanned in plastic ridges,
metal jaws hinge
my edges. She opens me up.
Pries me apart.
Closes herself down,
as I force her to
focus on her own face.
She showed me her first black eye.
Bloodied veins radiating from a crushed cornflower.
I told her the truth she didn’t want to hear.
He’s not going to stop now. This will be the first of many.
She snapped me shut and left me
for a while. It was easier than leaving him.
Her swollen face reduced to the size of a locket.
She wore the thought around her neck.
Every glimpse she offered me,
I photographed and filed.
The archive’s filling up
I’m feeling nostalgic
for unblemished,
unbruised skin.
I’ve always done my duty,
told her truths she couldn’t see.
She fabricates reality. I show a simple circle
of who she really isn’t
but also a glimpse
of who
she really could be.
Meet this week's writer Annie Bennet
Bio: Annie Bennett is a published, prize-winning creative and non-fiction writer, poet, teacher and co-leader of River Exe Writers (a collective in Devon). She is passionate about creating and enjoying art that explores subcultures, whales and almost anything that activates curiosity. Currently, Annie is editing her novel about anarchic boat dwellers and co-writing a TV screenplay (exploring gender stereotypes and heteronorms) which achieved quarterfinalist status in both the Screencraft Fellowship (2020) and LA International Screenplay Awards (2020) and semi-finalist status in Filmmatic Screenplay Awards – Drama (2020).
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