Editor-in-Chief Jacob Burgess Rollo’s brief foreword to the Spring edition of the Cambridge Review of Books (CRoB) promises a zine chimerical in nature. Featuring the linguistic playfulness of Garbhán McEnoy’s poem ‘Chimera’, the political awareness of J. F.’s essay on A Clockwork Orange, the astute translations by Umma Habiba of Quamrul Hassan’s verse, and many more weird and wonderful pieces, CRoB 15 certainly doesn’t disappoint with its wide variety of styles and subjects. It is testament to the zine’s expansion since its early days. First launched in Lent term 2020 to feature extra-curricular articles by students, CRoB is now a melting pot of all that’s good about Cambridge student poetry, prose, translation, and design.

“CRoB is now a melting pot of all that’s good about Cambridge student poetry, prose, translation, and design”

I picked up an early release copy of the edition at a screening of Derek Jarman’s The Garden, held at Clare Hall in partnership with CRoB. The film, an unabashedly provocative and abject depiction of queer life in the 1990s during the AIDS crisis, is the subject of Megan O’Neill’s essay, ‘Apocalypse Beach’. Before the screening, O’Neill read an excerpt of her essay to the audience, describing her own visit to Derek Jarman’s garden in Dungeness. It is the garden of the film’s title, where the tragedy of Jarman’s life and the film’s strange dystopia were brought vividly to life for her. O’Neill’s prose blends lyrical descriptions with evocative analysis of Jarman’s work. “The impression was of a place stopped dead at the end of time, sky blown wide,” she writes with stylish flair.

Having picked up a copy of CRoB there and then, I read through the pages that same night, still reeling from the dizzying drama of Jarman’s The Garden. Looking for something to ground the emotions I was feeling, my eyes landed on Kaziah Cho’s homely poem ‘Bloodcurrants’. Cho manages to transform a mundane “cool kitchen counter” into a chilling site of drama, where “glacial and bloodless atop each other, / lie two tight-lipped, open-bellied sardines.” The poem unfolds in free verse, distilling feelings of fear and longing, all contained within the four walls of “this delicious body of a house”. Cho’s is a delicious body of a poem, complemented perfectly by Jessica Leer’s gentle but evocative illustration of a kitchen counter and floor.

“Cho’s is a delicious body of a poem”

CRoB 15 is punctuated by whimsical and enchanting illustrations throughout. I found myself drawn to the lyricism of Andy Rollo’s landscapes, particularly those paired with Saint Jae’s disturbing prose piece ‘the last crusade (1961 to 2021)’. These illustrations of the woods captivate with their depiction of fallen trees and leaves of indigo and violet. Such splashes of colour aptly capture the lurid sense of Saint Jae’s “soup[y]” prose. Elsewhere, I fell in love with Emily Lawson Todd’s rainbow fish on pages 8–9, not to mention the rest of the fishy imagery that wafts through CRoB 15.

The relatively small editorial team has produced an edition that readers can swim through at their leisure – quite the feat for a student zine. Wanting to leave some of the edition’s biggest surprises for would-be readers, I end my review with a polite invitation: discover the wonders of Rupa Nolan’s experimental poem ‘but still… however ¬’ and Anna Nygren’s epic ‘Untitled [the First Day]’, then soak in the rest of the poetry, prose, and illustrations that CRoB 15 has to offer. Anyone with an interest in what’s good about student writing and design should grab a copy when they can.

The CRoB 15 launch party is at 7pm on Friday the 20th of March at the Michaelhouse Café.