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Rosanna Mclaughlin
Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


The Pious and the Pommery

Essay

Issue No. 18

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

Issue No. 18

I.   Where is the champagne? On second thoughts this is not entirely the right question. The champagne is in the ice trough, on...

Essay

April 2019

Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Essay

April 2019

‘Avoid me not!’ ‘Avoid me not!’                                   Narcissus   Let me describe a GIF I’ve been watching. A lot....

The first contact I had with Mary Ruefle was through her website Against a black landing page, five headings in yellow serif font float, suspended in HTML darkness Clicking on the ‘contact’ link redirected me to a cruel joke: ‘Surprise! I do not actually own a computer The only way to contact me is by contacting my press, Wave Books, or by running into someone I know personally on the street’ This message hovered next to an image of an empty stone font resembling a bird bath, over whose basin had been taped the words ‘The Unknown’ Since Ruefle lives in Bennington, Vermont, a chance encounter seemed unlikely Instead, I got in touch with her ‘people’ Doing so marked the beginning of a generous correspondence unfolding over several months, all via ‘snail mail’ A reflection of her devotion to the materiality of writing, Ruefle writes almost exclusively by hand, a habit which does nothing to inhibit her productivity She has published eleven books of poetry, two volumes of prose and one comic, alongside a collection of lectures She has also made some ninety-nine erasure books, a ritual to which she dedicates herself daily I was reminded of this each time she returned the transcript of our interview, cross-hatched with red ink, and little white shadows of Tippex   ‘Wite-Out’ forms a kind of scar, evidence of one formulation of thought deleted at another’s expense; it is also a gesture of illumination, of ‘burying and bringing to light’ Ruefle’s writing pinpoints little snags in the fabric of the ordinary – a woman suddenly too fearful of the light inside her refrigerator to access a pitcher of water, or that ‘feeling of frightening abundance’ that descends when you realise there is altogether ‘too much shampoo and too much toothpaste, too much pollution, dirt, rocks and grass’ in this world Rote gestures, like sweeping crumbs from the kitchen counter, gain dimensions of tenderness wilfully repressed in everyday life As Ruefle confesses: ‘I like to turn ordinary actions into an encounter’ A preoccupation with dust, dishcloths and petroleum jelly is a political preoccupation, with the

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Contributor

July 2016

Rosanna Mclaughlin is an editor at The White Review.

Ten Years at Garage Moscow

Art Review

November 2018

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art Review

November 2018

When I arrive in Moscow, I am picked up from the airport by Roman, a patriotic taxi driver sent to collect me courtesy of...
Becoming Alice Neel

Art

August 2017

Rosanna Mclaughlin

Art

August 2017

From the first time I saw Alice Neel’s portraits, I wanted to see the world as she did. Neel was the Matisse of the...

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Interview

September 2014

Interview with Laure Prouvost

Alice Hattrick

Interview

September 2014

Laure Prouvost begins to tell us about something that happened this morning. She woke up with four vegetables on...

Art

October 2014

For the Motherboard

Vanessa Hodgkinson

James Bridle

Art

October 2014

Please click on the links below to download, print and assemble (instructions in slideshow above) Vanessa Hodgkinson’s For the Motherboard:...

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...

 

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