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ASPIER ISSUE 02 - AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW

Expanding its waistline but still just as pocketable.

If you enjoyed the first issue, the second is a slam dunk. Even better, it's bigger than before.

POETRY:
Chloe Eathorne
Jemma Price
Natasha Ryan
Jackie Taylor
Cathy Galvin
Rupert M Loydell
Ella Walsworth-Bell
Benjamin Freckelton
Ulrike Duran
Andrew Searle
Maggie Mealy

FRAGMENTS:
Kate Walters
David I Hughes
Ingrid Brown

MISC + AUDIO:
Ryan Hooper

SHORT STORIES:
Clare Owen
Luke Thompson
Helen Trevaskis
Clare Howdle
Kate Horsley

INTERVIEWS:
Hannah Andrews with sculptor Kleiner Shames
Ellen Valente with Cornwall-based musicians Meor Voices, Zoe McGowan, and Shoes Off

ARTWORK:
Kate Walters
Helen Trevaskis
Ryan Hooper
Ingrid Brown
Elizabeth Loveday (book cover)

This collection of contemporary voices features shines a light on both established and emerging talent in Cornwall.

Visit the link to the bookstore in bio to pre-order your copy ⬆️ by @aspier_mag

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7 months ago

ASPIER ISSUE 01

Light and pocketable with poetry, short stories, creative non-fiction, essays, an audio story, and an interview.

This collection of contemporary Cornish writing (with its beautiful comissioned cover artwork by @elizabeth.loveday.art) features both established and emerging talent. It has been a labour of love and a pleasure to put together. I can't wait for you to hold it and read it.

Visit the link to the bookstore in bio ⬆️ by @aspier_mag

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a year ago

@aspier_mag has temporarily taken up roost at @polyfalmouth's 'Fall With The Crows', curated by contributor @thetrevaskis who will be reading her story 'Three' during this Corvid-themed evening (7pm) at the exhibition, along with tales by @storyteller_garycordingley. The space has been filled with crow-inspired work - a bristling flutter of photography, painting, print, illustration, mixed media, and sculptural forms.

Helen's feather illustration, which you can currently see on the wall at The Poly, was originally drawn with a crow's feather and ink while sat on Predannack Head and featured in Issue 2.

Do pop your head in before the exhibition closes on the 10th - and catch the storytelling this evening. by @aspier_mag

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8 days ago

Are you ready to enter ‘THE DANGERY ZONE’?

Before opening night, @nicolamasterss caught up with co-director @felixmortimer to talk about the new play 'The Collector' landing at @theladder_rr this month.

Written by the acclaimed @carlll_grrrose, this immersive theatre experience leads audiences to a post-apocalyptic Cornwall where creativity holds the answer.

Read the interview - link in bio ⬆️

(Image: Bill's Attic) by @aspier_mag

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13 days ago

Understanding the Cornish literary canon and our cultural history can also bring with it acts of repair and recovery.

The nineteenth-century miner and preacher John Harris, who earned the moniker ‘The Cornish Poet’, was born into rural poverty in Bolenowe near Camborne as one of ten children watching the stars through the draughty gaps in the thatched roof at night. His resourcefulness meant scavenging for writing materials where he could get them, sometimes using blackberries for ink and writing in the crown of his hat.

Harris published 15 volumes of poetry by the time he had died in 1884, and against the odds became the first labouring-class poet to win the Shakespeare Tercentenary Prize and was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

So why have so many of us not heard of him? From his PhD thesis on Harris to now being the editor of a fantastic and full selection of the lost poet’s work, ‘The Trick of the Bard: Selected Poems of John Harris’, researcher and academic Duncan Yeates has been working to unearth Harris’ legacy, and ensuring that he is restored as being an essential figure on our bookshelf.   

Read Duncan’s article on Aspier - link in bio ⬆️ by @aspier_mag

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17 days ago

"For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowering grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.” - 'To The Lighthouse' (1927)

A new block of luxury flats vs. an emblematic view in modernist literature

@aspier_mag was at Talland House yesterday evening during @stivesseptemberfest. A part happy, part sombre evening with Woolf appreciation, words from resident gardener and campaigner @pollycartergardener and vice-chair of the @virginiawoolfsociety, academic and author @hummmaggie, an exhibit by @adrian_neil_taylor, an opera performance (Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs’ cycle) by soprano @nicolamontfort, and a full harvest moon hanging in a textured, paint-flecked sky.

All the while, collectively mourning a view of global literary significance that is on the cusp of being stripped away forever, despite a fight to retain it which began 150 years ago with Woolf’s father Leslie Stephen, who vacationed in the house with his family each summer - a tradition which stopped when Woolf turned 13 following the death of her mother. Fond memories of the house and its surroundings provided strong, evocative source material for three of Woolf’s novels: 'Jacob’s Room' (1922), 'To the Lighthouse' and 'The Waves' (1931).

Keep up with the news over on the @tallandhouse IG account.

Here’s the unmissable image by artist @stewystencils that cropped up on Albert Street near the building development fence recently... a quietly defiant presence. by @aspier_mag

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18 days ago

Some things are worth repeating. Some words aren’t necessarily. I didn’t realise that when I think out loud I pogo on one word while I search for the next. This was the first and only take - I thought it was a practice go and was prepared to re-record a smoother attempt after I’d warmed up but @thefrankpellow, unbothered by my buffering, said it sounded great and we didn’t need to go again!

Thanks to Frank and @the_source_fm for inviting me on a few weeks ago and putting it on William Essex's Short Story Hour.

Sometimes billing Aspier as a ‘new’ magazine doesn't reflect the full picture. It was about 10 years ago during my final year of university that I got into old literary and artist magazines. Physical artefacts that encapsulate a particular time and place, a record of a movement, a set of ideas and ideals, a collective brought together in print. A glimpse of the age. The Yellow Book. The striking typography on German Expressionist publications. It got under the skin and excited me. There was something about those late 19th century and early 20th century publications, the ones that bloomed into being then died back again, that seemed to be taking a risk, that felt very, very cool.

Growing up in Cornwall, I wasn’t immediately aware of our own cultural offering and how significant it was. Bursts of it entered my consciousness, The Mousehole Cat, The Minack, Barbara Hepworth and St Ives colonies, sea shanties, town festivals. But we always imported our cultural sources from the outside. Whether it was comedy, music, films, artists, writers, our adolescent focus and conversation was always about what was engrossing, sophisticated, and novel across the border. I’m not sure whether its being an adult and seeing things differently, or whether there's been a genuine explosion over the last 10 years… but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. I’d been working at an artists’ hub, watching the crowd of homegrown and newly settled 'creatives' pass through this place, and waited to see if anyone was going to create a publication. No one seemed to be. Out of character, I threw my hat into the empty ring in 2022 with a small grant application. And it’s still going. by @aspier_mag

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19 days ago

Aspier ISSUE #3 - Call for submissions

Let’s go again.

𝐋𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝.

Poems, essays, articles, interviews, illustrations, photography, audio, short stories.

Whatever your speciality, practice, genre, or interest - if you’re based in Cornwall, part of its diaspora, or are otherwise inspired to write about the region because of your research area, the submissions window for Aspier Issue 3 is open until 30th November 2026.

While Aspier is a platform to raise and celebrate Cornish voices, creative writing submissions are not restricted by theme or setting.

Non-fiction pieces on Cornish art, music, film, performance, language, and literature are welcome.

This time around, we’re especially interested in drawing readers inland, away from the water and well-trodden coast paths. We’d love any pieces on history and heritage sourced from archival material, and the opportunity to document new work that’s pushing the boundaries, trying out something a little bit different, and perhaps recontextualising modern Cornish identities in the process.

We have the blank pages waiting. You get to fill them.

Please pitch your ideas or submit work to editor@aspiermagazine.co.uk and attach a two-sentence description of your piece and a short author biography. by @aspier_mag

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25 days ago

Stockist alert: @shrewbooksfowey in Fowey

@clareowenwriter's novel 'Creatures of a Brief Season' launched at Bar Silo last night, published by @hermitagepresscornwall who are knocking it out of park recently with publications 'Salt and Stone', featuring a selection of Cornish stories, and Clare Howdle's 'Hirethow' newly under their belt. I'm preparing myself for an emotional grapple with this two-hander, an unflinching portrait of the relationship between caregiver Vanessa and the elderly Leonard... lending focus to subjects we often skip around and avoid in conversations that ought to be had - the role of carers in our communities, and the experience of old age and being at the end of a life fully lived.

Clare had kindly put in a good word for @aspier_mag at Shrew Books. Hence, we have a new stockist - thanks Kate for letting me load you up with some copies! by @aspier_mag

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a month ago

'The mass of eddying objects – broken apart, hammered flat, reconstituted – are the workings-out of someone who has hurtled into an overwhelming and relentlessly happening world, free-fallen through childhood, and emerged on the other side, battered and giddy, and picking over the remnants to try to make sense of it all.'

Cosmic, swirling, expanding, seemingly unending. Artist @anna.harris.art caught up with photographer @jemsoutham to discuss his ambitious ten-year project, using a weirding wide-angle lens to capture the seven otherworldly sheds in West Cornwall that belonged to his late friend, the sculptor Ray Exworth. These extraordinary photographs are captured in Jem’s book, ‘Ray’s Sheds’, which was published earlier this year.

Read Anna's feature on Aspier (link in bio) ⬆️

(Image credit: Jem Southam) by @aspier_mag

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a month ago

Stockist alert: @thebookshopinhelston, Helston

I didn't clock that the bookshop was closed on Sundays, but I happened to be in Helston ahead of accepting an invitation to a BBQ at @42thelivingroom today so I thought I'd take the requested stock along while I was there. I knelt and poked each of the tissue-covered issues through the letterbox flap instead. (Is that strictly speaking an orthodox stock delivery? It's basically the same as posting them...)

Anyway, copies of Aspier: Issue 2 should be available there if you'd wanted to pop in - thanks Ginny! by @aspier_mag

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a month ago

In 1925, at the age of 70, a fisherman in St Ives taught himself how to paint.

Why does the work and story of the iconic Alfred Wallis still hold such a fascination for us a century later?

As the artist’s biographer and the recent winner of the 2026 Holyer an Gof Leonard Truran cup, Matilda Webb (@alfredwallisbook) reflects on her compulsion to document the artist's extraordinary life and the rich rabbit hole of historical research she tumbled into.

Link in bio if you’d like to read... ⬆️ by @aspier_mag

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2 months ago