nothing in the rulebook
A collective of creatives bound by a single motto: There's nothing in the rulebook that says a giraffe can't play football!
Category: Essays & Opinion
Our members provide insights into the world of writing; comedy; art; culture.
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“I cannot help wondering if the real nature of mind is that it is unencompassable by mind, and whether that Godelian element of wonder – at something we know we have, but cannot enclose – may be the chief criterion of consciousness.” So opines the narrator early on in the latest terrific book from Will…
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Anna Saunders is haunted by many things: myth, legend, her political concerns, environmental problems and, most engagingly, the ghosts of people she knows, living and dead. This diverse range of ghouls work their way into her fifth and latest poetry collection Ghosting for Beginners. Haunting can be a tricky theme to pull off, as it’s…
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There are countless examples of famous creative artists struggling with mental health issues or turning to addiction. Yet for every troubled genius who made it, there are countless others who didn’t. In this article, musician Christopher Tait shares his personal experiences of living with addiction – and what can be done to help provide support for struggling…
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One morning I was given a lift into work by my parents. I climbed into the middle seat of the back and then spent a while leafing through emails on my phone, followed by aimlessly watching the road blur above the dashboard until we arrived. A perfectly average lift, by any means; nothing remarkable about…
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What would have happened if Karl Marx had become a poet? In this article, Peter Raynard takes The Communist Manifesto to new, poetic levels.
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Sometimes, the only thing you can do is laugh. Around the world, brutes have risen – and continue to rise – to power. Far from challenging these despotic tyrants, our supposedly liberal western democracies have cow-towed to them, flattering them, and inflating their egos. In the UK, the weak and decrepit conservative party hangs on…
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Receipts are very obviously very wrong. Anyone – man or woman – after a day’s Christmas shopping can see this. The hardware shop you go into to buy your dad that new pair of gardening gloves has a stupid bit of token paper about one inch square, whereas when you go to the stereo shop…
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Warwick University’s Writing Programme (WWP) has been consistently ranked as the best creative writing course in the UK for the past five years. In this article, Ellen Lavelle, one of the 2018 cohort of WWP’s MA students, takes us through the trials and tribulations of publishing a unique anthology of student writing. I am not…
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“If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom,” opined Neil Gaiman as he reminded us of our obligation to support libraries. With Local Elections now taking place across England in thousands of towns and villages, English citizens (and readers of Nothing in the Rulebook) now have a chance…
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When it comes to reviewing new works of fiction, the Nothing in the Rulebook team are always keen to jump at the opportunity. So, when we were offered the opportunity to review Politics of the Asylum, the debut novel by poet, publisher, short story writer and concept artist Adam Steiner, we leapt (both figuratively and…
nothing in the rulebook 