Book Club: A new anthology shines a light on writing from South Yorkshire's own incubator for new young writers

This brilliantly inventive, powerful and vibrant anthology of poetry and short fiction showcases writing by the next generation of young writers aged 14 to 30. Many are members of Hive's young writers’ groups or have attended Hive programmes and projects across the region. Some have been placed in their competitions. They include Beth Davies, Safia Khan, Lauren Hollingsworth-Smith, Naomi Thomas, Georgie Woodhead, Lacey Williamson, Nefeli Frida and Warda Yassin. Hive South Yorkshire was founded by writer Vicky Morris in 2016 after many years working as a freelancer in community arts supporting the development of young creatives.

To buy it, please visit: www.hivesouthyorkshire.com/dearlife

In a Singaporean Mall by Luke Worthy

the world’s first Salmon ATM is filled to the rim

with fillets, their grapefruit-orange flesh skinned

of platinum, sealed in vacuum-pack deliverance.

It hums and glows 24/7, rubber flaps the gills

that sing of all the silt and rivers a life can pass through.

I press my plastic currency to its tuneless jukebox,

and the conveyered current churns. They leap out,

still ribboned with light, still smelling of fjords,

a grizzly’s prayer answered in the palm of my hand.

The New Poor by Maia Brown

You can find them dancing sockless to the sound

of a tin can rolling down an alley, it’s their oldest traditional anthem.

Most of them couldn’t eat a whole pig at once. And for supper,

they eat measles. Or is it weasels? They know about the world

the way a donkey knows the weight of certain books from carrying them

on its back like brass scales. When one of them gets a rash,

they all read their fortunes off it. There’s a mildew-flavoured noodle

they eat at Christmas, called timeless wok. Or is it tireless work?

I saw one in the rain once trying to catch dew on a medicine spoon.

They’re not really real though, their bodies are costumes.

Only their horses and homes are alive.

Excerpt from the story Little Danny by Liesel Bradbury

In the third year, when he used to sit behind me, Danny once caught my ear in the back of a noisy chemistry lesson. Whilst the buzzing chatter of students hummed on, the quiet, blonde- haired boy had whispered my name three times before I properly heard and turned around to see him leaning forwards, bright-eyed. I was surprised at first by his look of excitement, an eagerness unusual for even the most enthusiastic of students in a chemistry lesson – but when my clueless expression was met with a nod to the row in front of me, I soon closed my mouth.

This was the Danny who never talked much to anyone, and always got top marks, perfect grades. The Danny who was a pleasure in class, adored by all his teachers. The Danny who was a bit of a loner but always made an effort to be polite to girls our age, and the Danny who never said an unkind word about anyone.

At least not to their faces.

In the back of chemistry, he went on to tell me how I should listen more: “That’s the best way to be in school.” His eyes flickered around the room as he spoke, “all these popular kids are loud mouths just so they can stand out. There are better ways of standing out.” He smiled like I was supposed to understand what he meant by better.

Danny continued, clearly satisfied with his trail of thought, “Those ignorant idiots are so concerned with their own blaring narcissism that they’d never even notice me writing.” He tapped a finger on his little brown notebook. “It’s just fair pickings.”

It’s hard to believe how long it took me to connect the dots after that interaction, years in fact, to realise what had been going on. How he’d thread a classmate’s boasts together – his own private snapshots of evidence like photographs strung up in a dark, red room. Because the only thing Danny actually liked about those kinds of people was that they had nothing to hide. They wanted you to know exactly what they had been doing and when, and just how great they were. And because they couldn’t keep their mouths shut for anybody, Danny’s rumours were always so believable. “You’ve got to mix lies with the truth,” he said that day with a final triumphant grin, before turning back to his Bunsen burner.

But the truth was, nobody was ever really off-limits with Danny. Not even the quiet ones or the good teachers. When it started to click, the things he had managed to think up and orchestrate, I realised they could be both ridiculous, and sometimes actually brilliant. Other times they were terrifying.

Like the time somebody saw Matthew Pierce run out of the boys’ toilets with a bloody nose. The rumour was that Henry Davis, in the year above, had smashed his face in for kissing his girlfriend. And when it was announced, in that same chemistry classroom, that they’d both been excluded, I had no idea that Danny was sitting behind me, smiling to himself in the corner.