Saffron Retter (2021, English)
John Weston Smith Bursary
As a final-year English student I have been reflecting on my time at St John’s and how grateful I am for the financial support that has helped me along this journey of learning opportunities and incredible moments from Formal Hall to the St John’s May Ball. Some of the most memorable experiences from my degree include a workshop in the University Library to view original fifteenth-century books and a visit to the St John’s Old Library to look at manuscripts. This January I also participated in an optional letterpress printing workshop in the Historical Printing Room of the University Library, where a small group of us produced our own handprinted keepsake. Throughout my degree I have endeavoured to be a dedicated and enthusiastic student, and I am a proud recipient of a Wright Prize, a Chivers Prize and a Gaskell Year Prize for the academic year 2021/22 and the Acklam Award in English for the academic year 2022/23. My time at St John’s has been transformative and has helped me to grow personally and academically.
Alongside my degree I have been involved in many extra-curricular activities related to creative writing. As a child, when asked what I wanted to become in the future, I would often say I wanted to become a writer, and this statement still holds today. Over the years I have filled many notebooks with scribbles, the starting points of stories or poems, and ideas or sketches relating to character profiles or plots. At Cambridge I have become particularly fascinated by how poetry works with both sound and visual effects. Writing poetry has encouraged me to be curious and attentive to the connections and disconnections between images, sounds and words, and it’s a useful form through which to express the entanglement of experiences, emotions and language. For me, writing poetry is fun, meditative, therapeutic and often surprising; the words and the images often prompt other ideas and memories I had not initially foreseen. I particularly enjoy the challenge and impact of conveying vast emotional and visual landscapes in the concentrated space of short poems. However, I would like to challenge myself to experiment further, including writing longer poems or poems with strict structural features, to discover the possibilities offered by other poetic forms.
I am extremely grateful to the University for the opportunities that have helped me learn more about this discipline and improve my creative writing skills. For example, during this academic year I discussed my poetry with Vona Groarke, the writer in residence at St John’s, which was an invaluable opportunity to receive advice from a professional poet on how to redraft and edit my work. She offered me insight into creative writing as a profession and helped me adopt a critical and editorial eye for my own poetry. I also worked alongside Vona Groarke and another student at St John’s to organise a poetry reading on 13 March 2024 with poet Padraig Regan.
I have become particularly fascinated by how poetry works with both sound and visual effects.
At a recent student open mic night hosted by the Cambridge University Prose and Poetry Society and the Blackbird’s Poetry Society I read aloud one of my poems. This was one of the few times I have read my poetry aloud, and I was initially hesitant to perform due to nerves, but I was convinced by my peers to give it a go. This experience helped build my confidence in public speaking and gave me a boost to continue working on my poetry. More practically, the act of reading the poem aloud helped me assess the success of my work; I could judge how the audience was reacting and could identify parts of the poem that needed to be refined or reworded.
Throughout my time in Cambridge I have also attended many poetry readings from professional poets, including Greta Bellamacina, Nick Laird and Tara Bergin, and have participated in creative writing workshops, such as one recently held at Churchill College with Andrew Wille and Bhanu Kapil. This workshop celebrated Leap Day and the coming of Spring with nature-inspired writing prompts. Without fail, these events have been encouraging, inspiring and informative.
I am keen to make the most of the creative writing opportunities available during my remaining time here and I am particularly looking forward to a poetry-inspired listening walk in the Cambridge Botanic Gardens organised by the English Faculty for Easter term. I hope to continue developing my writing skills to pursue a career within this field and I am so grateful for the support and opportunities provided by St John’s, which have helped me along this journey.
A Fox in the City
Original poem and illustrations by Saffron Retter
I saw a fox in the city
a streak orange against grey
like a streak saturated acrylic
on diluted watercolour.
But this orange was slipping
out of itself
slipping from paws
into puddles
and onto pavements.
Orange fur brushed
the orange brickwork
and orange brickwork
blurred into orange lamplights
and these lamplights
coloured the puddles,
puddles that sat like pools
of paintbrush-stirred water,
like a trail of orange pawprints.
