Essays, verb conjugations, cramming grammar, speed reading Balzac – as an undergraduate, I yearned for there to be more to learning a language than inhaling books and memorising exciting phrases and proverbs that I would never actually have chance to use. Whilst I do love literature, I always felt that all my adoration of Baudelaire’s French and Lorca’s Spanish never really taught me what French or Spanish meant to me. This is why I decided to found Glossia, the University of Bristol’s brand new creative writing journal for all modern languages students.

The idea is to provide a space where students have the chance to explore their language, to be creative in it, and to start letting their personality as well as their sterling knowledge of the subjunctive shine through their language use. The journal is a multi-lingual project, embracing submissions in all the languages offered by Bristol’s School of Modern languages (French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish), and I’m really pleased with the breadth of submissions from some great contributors in our first issue. They range from a Fantastischen Vier gig review in German, to some beautiful literary translations from French and Russian, to pieces of travel journalism exploring the eccentric vagaries of Years Abroad in Russia, Italy and Madagascar, and some truly stunning travel photography. However language can be inspirational, we’re keen to publish it and to marvel in it. Even the little things that make us language learners smile but that never find a place in dissertations.

In our next issue, for example, we are running a competition to collect together students’ favourite words and phrases in their languages, with a chance to sing the praises of pleasing linguistic gems such as ‘il pipistrello’, ‘saperlipopette’ or ‘das Schicksal’. We may be living in sad times of funding cuts to university languages and the removal of compulsory language learning from secondary school syllabuses, but what better reason for those of us who love other languages and other cultures to glory in the benefits of multilingualism! We’re really pleased with the great response it has had from students so far and the support it has had from staff in the School, and hope that Glossia will get keep on getting bigger and better in the future.

Here is the first issue!