• • Home
  • Undergraduate Study
• • Postgrad English
  • Postgrad Creative Writing
• • Research
  • Staff
• • News & Events
  • Contact Us

News & Events Menu

Search using keywords/tags or full text search.

Cake: Lancaster's New Literary Magazine

Cake is the brand new literary magazine based at Lancaster University. We’ve just put out our first issue which contains poetry and flash fiction from Lancaster University students, other new talent from around the globe and established authors as well. We’re on the lookout for the best poetry, flash fiction, reviews and articles to throw into the Cake mixing bowl; if you think you’re ingredients are up to the task then send them to us and we will consider them for our next issue.

Submissions

We are eager to read submissions of poetry and flash fiction, as well as ideas for reviews and articles. All submissions will be read by editors (and Lancaster students) Andrew McMillan and Martha Sprackland. Simply send up to 6 poems or 500 words of flash fiction, in the body of an email, to: themixingbowl@hotmail.co.uk. Alternatively, snail mail your submissions, with a stamped addressed envelope or email address for reply, to:

Cake Magazine
4 Ford Street
Lancaster
LA1 5RB

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Issue 1

The debut issue of Cake is now hot out of the oven and is being gorged upon throughout the land. It contains new work from writers just embarking upon their careers as well as major prize winners. Below are two poems that can be found in our first issue: one by a Lancaster University student in their third year, and one by a revered and admired prize-winning poet. This is just a free sample of what you can find in the magazine!  The magazine costs £5 per copy, £5 per back issue and £12 for a three issue subscription which includes postage and packaging.

George Szirtes

Woolworths

It was dark, a Wednesday morning, and the store
was half sealed-off in the infinite melancholy
of small pickings. Wrapping paper, a score
of remnant CDs, barely enough to load a trolley.
Garden fitments, stationery… all the grand spaces
of the humble, vacated. There stood the childhoods:
the sweet counter, the scribbling pad, the lost faces
of the faintly bored dispensing their gentle goods.

Worlds swell, explode, shed light, draw darkness in.
A match blows out in the draught. Nothing will keep.
A plastic pencil case abandoned in the bin
lifts a helpless lid but makes no unnecessary fuss.
Fire, firelighters, matchboxes, ashtrays... Cheap
vanishings. Vultures. We’ll be the death of us.

James Trevelyan

Mirror Image

I caught a brief glimpse of my dad
in the mirror leaning on my desk

as I levered it to its new position.
Before it fell, I saw in its grotesque

magnified side not his lines
of working logic, not less grace

but the exact same heavy lifting face.

Getting your slice of Cake

You can get your hands on the first issue of Cake, full to the brim with literary wonder and iced with poetic nuance, for just £5. We’ve are setting up an online shop so that you can get your hands on one and we will despatch it straight out to you.