Greta is also a model and is represented by VIVA Model Management, and she recently graduated from King’s College London with a degree in English.

Read on to find out more…

Tell us a bit about yourself…

While I was at university, I published my first collection of poetry, entitled Kaleidoscope. I was also chosen to model for several high-profile fashion names and was picked to be the face of the AW12 All Saints campaign.

Rather uniquely, I have managed to combine my passion for language and the written word by using film, music and art to give poetry a contemporary audience. I am currently in the process of editing my second poetry book, To December- A Devotion To She.

I am also involved in other creative projects, one of which is working with various filmmakers bringing my words to life in visual motion. I am also hard at work too, at creating a poetry-music album, which will be released next year.

What inspires your work?

People, distance, love, the lone in lonesome. Anti-traditional thoughts empowered by traditional form. The idealism of beauty toned with the complexity of life.

What is your favourite piece of work you have produced and/or been involved with?

I’m currently writing my new collection, To December – A Devotion To She, which has been a long and rolling process, filled with perseverance and constant discovery.

Also, making a poetry-fashion film in San Francisco for UK Harper’s Bazaar with film-maker Jacob Perlmutter was a great experience. Steep roads and trams driving our journey was just something wonderful!

Who is your favourite creative in your chosen field?

Amiri Baraka, e.e.cumming, Anno Birkin, Sharon Olds, Yates, Leonard Cohen… There are so many. Writing for film has made me develop a deep appreciation for film makers, such as Francois Ozon, Sofia Coppola and ‘the’ Woody Allen.

Visit www.gretabellamacina.com to find out more and tweet Greta: @grbellamacina.

Glitz, glamour and lots of sparkle – but Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby left me feeling as if I had over-indulged on E-numbers

I was SO excited for the release of The Great Gatsby. Seriously. I’ve been patiently counting down the days until its release for what feels like a lifetime – first it was due to be released in December and then (nooo!) it was pushed back until May. Cynical friends mused that this was probably due to it being ‘terrible’ but I, ever the optimist, decided that it had been shelved as it was simply so amazing that Warner Bros had decided that the world wasn’t quite ready for this level of greatness. Yeah.

However, I’ve just returned from the cinema having watched it and, well – I feel a little flat. Kind of cheated. As if I’ve eaten a cheap-o ready meal filled with E-numbers and lacking any nutritious substance that turned me hyper for a couple of hours and then left me drained and weary.

Don’t get me wrong – some aspects of the film are great. Director Baz Luhrmann has done a truly wonderful job of bringing the glamour and glitz of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel to life – but equally, the doomed romance and understated beauty of the novel have been lost. Everything sparkles and glitters and twinkles – eyes are distracted, but minds are not. The production almost feels empty – despite a great performance from Leonardo DiCaprio as the enigmatic Jay Gatsby.

The thing about a novel such as The Great Gatsby is that it means so many different things to its readers, that it would be almost impossible to pin-point everything that ought to be covered on film. But the film has made me doubt the novel that I thought I loved (which is ridiculous, I know, and I’m currently half-way through re-reading it).

Whilst Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and Gatsby’s love affair seemed like a doomed romance in print, on screen, it just doesn’t convince. And whilst in the novel narrator Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) tells the story in a memoir-esque style, in Luhrmann’s adaptation he is reliving the events at the request of the psychiatrist he is seeing, which in itself seems like an odd twist on the standard ‘coming of age’ narrative.

Luhrmann matches the almost-gaudy excess of Gatsby and Daisy with the filthy poverty of the ‘normal’ people who live on the other side of town, who are covered in grime and work endlessly. Shots of Daisy, Gatsby and Nick enjoying an impeccable floral afternoon tea are matched with those of Myrtle’s husband, George, who is a oil-slicked ‘every’ man, who runs a garage. The irony of which lies, of course, in the fact that Myrtle (Isla Fisher) is the mistress of no other than Daisy’s husband Tom (Joel Edgerton).

I don’t know. I’m hoping to see it again sometime soon-ish as I really want to like it. I’ll end with a line from Daisy, who is suddenly moved to tears when Gatsby throws armfuls of beautiful shirts at her, and she reflects on how their lives could have been together: “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such – such beautiful shirts before.” I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts on screen, either.

The Great Gatsby is in cinemas now

Who?

William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Award-winning author of The Sound And The Fury, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom! (To name but a few…)

Born and raised in the American South, Faulkner spent his whole life in Mississippi, which formed the backdrop for his writing; many of his short stories and novels were set in  Yoknapatawpha County, which critics consider to be a mirror-perfect reflection of Faulkner’s Mississippi hometown of Oxford.

Faulkner was heavily influenced by the women in his life: his mother and grandmother were both great readers and art lovers. He was also influenced by the stories of Oxford’s past: tales of the Civil War, slavery and Ku Klux Klan, as well as stories of his family’s past (including that of William Clark Falkner, Faulkner’s Civil-War-hero great-grandfather, who was “enshrined long since as a household diety”).

When Faulkner attempted to enlist for the First World War, he was rejected owing to his height (he stood at 5’5.5″); this bitter disappointment dogged him and he claimed to have enlisted in the British Flying Corps. However, this was later found to be untrue.

His first novel, Soldiers’ Pay, was printed in 1925; his second, Flags In The Dust, was initially rejected after he completed it in 1927. It was heavily edited and re-titled, and released in 1928 as Sartoris; this year also marked the beginning of Faulkner’s work on The Sound And The Fury. Ignoring his publishers – who had insisted on the changes to Flags In The Dust – he wrote the novel in an experimental style, and it was printed in 1929.

In 1929, Faulkner married the previously-married Estelle Oldham, who he had known since childhood. She brought with her two children, and for a while, Faulkner’s writing sustained the family financially. However, by 1932 it had become a struggle, and so Faulkner accepted an offer from MGM Studios to become a screenwriter; he was not a film-lover but put this aside so as to be able to provide for his family. In the late ’50s, he became the writer-in-residence at the University Of Virginia.

Faulkner was a heavy drinker but never touched the bottle whilst writing; rather, he preferred to indulge heavily once he’d completed

Faulkner drawn from words taken from The Sound And The Fury, by John Sokol

a project.

What inspired his work?

Arguably, Faulkner’s greatest influence was the South. His sense of identity stemmed from his location and its past – Mississippi was heavily embroiled in the Civil War, slavery and so on, and as such had a wealth of material that Faulkner could draw on. As someone who was seemingly so captivated by the entwined ideas of history and identity, Faulkner’s writing reflects his love-hate relationship with his home county.

What should I start with?

Try As I Lay Dying. It follows the Bundren family as they deal with the fall-out from the eventual death of matriarch Addie. Happy-go-lucky father Anse stands as a polar opposite to his jaded, dying wife, while their various children are all suffering with their own problems. Darkly humorous and throat-gulpingly tragic by turn, it’s a classic.

Why should I care about him?

The piercing clarity of his prose makes his novels as heart-breakingly beautiful as they are mind-twistingly warped. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949; he also received Pulitzer Awards for his books in 1955 and posthumously in 1963. His Nobel Prize was received for his “powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel”; he donated a portion of his prize money to helping up-and-coming fiction writers.

He said… 

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

Flora loves photography, drawing and making art films. ‘And playing the flute,’ she adds. ‘Funnily enough, I just picked up my flute after 13 years. I don’t know why I ever stopped…’

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I am currently in my third year at Brighton University doing Illustration. I am a self-confessed camera addict, I love vintage camera’s my favorite one in my 1972′s Polaroid camera my grandfather left me.

What inspires your work?

My work is gritty and political I concentrate on current affairs that affect us in British society. My main source of inspiration for my work is radio 4 in the morning, I do get frustrated about politics but I express it through my illustration. People inspire me with the the stories they tell and the hardships they have to face in life.

What is your favourite piece of work you have created?

My favorite piece I have created is of a sweet little weathered old man that told me about his life (it was a real Forest Gump moment). There was a quote he said that really took me back “In the Governments eyes I’m just scum”. So I created this piece because the story was so powerful and moving.

Who is your favourite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

Grayson Perry inspires me with the way he approaches taboos with an open mind and creates the most amazing pieces that do shock at first but when you understand where he is coming from you realize that he is just pointing out what is happening around us.

See more of Flora’s work here, visit her blog It All Seems A Bit Tragic and tweet her: @FloraJayne.

All images © Flora Jayne Camacho. To view the images in clearer detail, click on them.

“I’m slowly becoming a cat lady,” says Jessica. “I rescued the most handsome cat a few months ago – his name is Professor Hotchkiss.” Miaow…

Outside of her crafting, Jessica loves songwriting. “It’s where I feel the most like myself,” says Jessica. “I believe every day should be looked at with a sense of beauty and awe, because life is truly beautiful.”

A few random details about yourself: I am slowly becoming a cat lady. I rescued the most handsome cat a few months ago, his name is Professor Hotchkiss. Besides crafting and sewing, my biggest passion is songwriting. It’s where I feel the most like myself. I believe every day should be looked at with a sense of beauty and awe, because life is truly beautiful.

Tell us a bit about yourself…

I’m currently a Junior at Lee University in Cleveland, TN, and I’m studying Youth Ministry and Church Music. I wish I could spend all day in front of my sewing machine making beautiful scarves, but my 17 credit hours are keeping me quite busy.

I started Transformed Scarves & Accessories about a year ago, with small expectations. I make scarves completely from used t-shirts, so after making my first few I thought to myself “No one will actually want to pay money for these”. Over 100 scarves sold later and I’ve certainly proved myself wrong. It helps that 70% of the proceeds go toward a fabulous non-profit called Afrocka (www.afrocka.org). Really, I started Transformed in the first place so I could help Afrocka out, because I really believe in what they’re doing. I’m absolutely passionate about “transforming” something normal into something beautiful. The look on people’s faces when they exclaim “this used to be a T-SHIRT?!” can’t compare to anything else.

What inspires your work?

My mom, all the way. She taught herself how to sew at a young age and has been a self-taught boss at sewing and crafting in general ever since. She made everything for me, from homecoming dresses to musical costumes. I took a sewing class in high school to “carry on the tradition” and to my horror found that it wasn’t as easy as my mom made it look. But when I started Transformed I was determined to acquire the skill of sewing, and my mom has been a huge inspiration to me through that. Whenever I think I have reached the peak of what I can do, she challenges me to take it a step further, and as a result my scarves become that much more excellent. Seriously, if it weren’t for my mom, I’d be selling some pretty jank scarves.

What is your favorite piece of work you have created?

I think my favorite scarf would have to be my crocheted infinity scarves. At first glance it looks like a normal, chunky scarf. But when I tell people that the scarf was once a t-shirt, it blows their mind. They also make for an extremely warm, THICK scarf since t-shirt yarn is much heavier than regular yarn, which is fantastic for the winter.

Who is your favorite ‘creative’ in your chosen field?

There aren’t a whole lot of people to chose from in the t-shirt scarf field, but I consider myself part of the larger “handmade small business” community. And one of my favorite people in that community is Ashley Connelly. She has an Etsy shop where she sells journals and scrapbooking supplies, and I am totally a fan of how she runs her business. From her blog to her photography to her products, she is an inspiration to me and how I’d like to run my shop.

Visit Jessica’s shop and blog, and tweet her: @_transformed.

After all, creativity cannot be taught (or so I believed), so we may as well just give up and accept that we might not be able to be the creative person we dreamt of being… Right?

Wrong.  In Change Your Mind, Rod Judkins tells us all you need to make the changes necessary to become a creative success – someone to whom inspiration flows freely and creativity comes naturally. All you need to do is ‘free’ the potential within you and embrace it.

With the seemingly endless fad for self-improvement ever-present on bookshelves, it is very easy to just think this is another generic self-help title. Why Change Your Mind is so valuable is because it does more than just show what creative people did; instead, it reveals the fundamental mind-sets these people had. Still, how does this help? Well, as it becomes a more accepted view that everyone can be more than they are through mind-set alone, Judkins goes one step further and shows how the fifty-seven key attributes and thought processes of some of the most creative people ever known (including the likes of Mozart and Roosevelt) can be applied to everyday life.

What is more, with the addition of a series of lovely illustrations (all done by the author, I believe) and an actually pretty cool presentation, the book is far easier to engage with than similar tomes, which simply present a block of dull-as-you-like black-and-white text.

Once we believe it and get over our inhibitions that we are better than we believe, we are ‘90% of the way there’, according to Judkins, and before you know it, you will be thinking more freely. Who knows – the next great creative thinker could be you!

By Peter Byrne

Change Your Mind by Rod Judkins, £8.99 (Hardie Grant)

If you find yourself in London over the next few days, make sure you head over to the Curious Duke Gallery. Nineteen illustrators (including our very own Emma Block) have combined forces to celebrate one of literature’s best-loved creations: Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland. Straight-up magic – and the perfect way to reimagine a childhood favourite.

Running until 30 January; for more information visit the website: curiouserandcuriousershow.wordpress.com.

Want to see your exhibition on TYC? Send details and an image to theyoungcreatives@hotmail.co.uk!

It’s been over a week since I saw it and I still have every single one of the songs running through my head, on some kind of revolution-anthem merry-go-round. I’m not normally one for musicals: they leave me feeling a bit ‘meh’ and curmudgeonly as I don’t care much for group ensembles or jazz hands. But on settling back into my surprisingly comfortable seat (who knew the front row would be so spacious?) I quickly realised that Les Mis was no regular show. Hugh Jackman was the broken hero, Russell Crowe brooded as the goodie-baddie law enforcer, Anne Hathaway broke hearts as the destitute prostitute Fantine and Eddie Redmayne… Well, was Eddie Redmayne (be still my beating heart).

Set in the aftermath of the French Revolution, the action is split across several years and chronicles the lives of the French civilians in the fall-out of the political/social battles of the previous decades. Nothing has changed, despite the promised action: the poor are still hungry, the rich are still living in wanton luxury and waifs and strays roam the streets, desperately trying to stay alive.

I won’t go too heavily into the plot for the benefit of the Les Mis newbies but suffice to say it’s heart-rending stuff. Like, really. Even I – unable to shed a single tear during neither The Notebook nor Gladiator – felt oddly moved. When the film ended, everyone in the cinema started clapping. And that NEVER happens in my local Odeon.

If you see one film month, make it Les Mis – Tom Hooper has created such a vivid, flamboyant depiction of this fascinating period that it’s already become a multi-award-winner (hello, Golden Globes). Want a tantalising teaser? The closing scene of the film is the most beautiful two minutes of cinema I’ve ever seen. Now go and watch it, seriously – and let me know what you thought of it.

Life Of Pi

Philosophical journey, eh? thought I. AVOID.

However, having seen countless trailers for Ang Lee’s adaptation – showing tempting blue waters, luscious jungles and (most enticingly of all) a tiger – I decided to give it a go.

In a nutshell, the story is about Pi (named after his uncle’s favourite piscine in Paris, duh), a 16-year-old boy whose family are forced to move their zoo from Pondicherry, India, to Canada. However, the freight liner that they are travelling on is caught in a hideous storm. Pi is the only human survivor; of the animals, a zebra, hyena, organutan and tiger survive. By the end of the first half hour, the zebra, hyena and orangutan have all died, leaving just Pi and Richard Parker, the tiger (yes, the tiger’s called Richard Parker – all owing to some unfortunate admin mix-up when he was delivered to the zoo. Obv.).

Pi (played by Suraj Sharma) and Richard Parker are forced to cling to a lifeboat so as to survive, and have to get used to being each other’s everything. Pi’s life has effectively been swept away by the storm, and the audience is treated to two hours of will-they-or-won’t-they-survive tension, interspersed with majestic shots (the 3d effects are breath-taking) of the ocean.

The problem with this kind of insular film, where it centres on one character and their thoughts/feelings, is that it can become dull. Fortunately, Life Of Pi manages to dodge being too tedious – killer whales and, er, an island of meerkats keep things interesting – but there were moments where I did kind of wish that Richard Parker would just get it over with and eat Pi, putting us all out of our misery. Controversial, I know.

The film was all well and good up until the very ending. I won’t say too much but the film’s conclusion can be summed up as ‘…but was it all just a dream?’ It’s frustrating: we’ve sat through two and a half hours of ocean shots and comedy tiger moments, and the whole thing has potential to have been a fantasy. Disappointing: I rather liked the idea of the meerkat island.

In cinemas now