All posts by Ian

Poetry to light you up

Poetry,

On Friday April 12th the venerable Lane Bookshop will be hosting an evening of Neon Poetry Readings in association with Claremont’s Luminous Street Festival.

I’m pleased to be one of the invited readers, in the bright company of several other poets – including Lucy Dougan, Tracy Ryan, John Kinsella, Annamaria Weldon, Dennis Haskell and Josephine Clarke.

It would be good to see you there!

Venue: Lane Bookshop, Old Theatre Lane (off Bay View Tce), Claremont (Perth). Drinks and nibbles from 6.30, followed by an evening of readings.

 

The party isn’t over!

Libraries, Poetry, , , , ,

So … the Perth Festival Writers Weekend has come and gone, and you missed some or all of it. But take heart! The poetry party season isn’t over yet.

Next Thursday evening, 14 March 6pm-8pm, you can come along to “Poetry in the Courtyard”, a lively set of readings organised by the admirable Lorraine Horsley at the Bracks Library, Melville.

It will feature three prize-winning WA poets with recently published books: Caitlin Maling, Miriam Wei Wei Lo, and yours truly. There will also be drinks and nibbles, with musical interludes from harpist Ruthie. The event is free but bookings are essential.

I’d be glad to see you there. For venue details etc., here’s a link to the City of Melville publicity: https://www.melvillecity.com.au/things-to-do/events/whats-on/poetry-in-the-courtyard

Review of Breaking the Surface

Breaking the Surface, Poetry, Reviewing,

I’m delighted with Will Yeoman’s review of my book of poems Breaking the Surface, which he describes as “a beautiful, sad, funny and technically dazzling collection.” The full review appears on Writing WA’s Substack, and I gratefully reproduce most of it here:

Perth-based author and poet Ian Reid writes of his fine new collection Breaking the Surface (Ginninderra Press), “This volume celebrates my return to the genre of poetry after a decade-long deviation into fiction, which included five novels along with numerous short stories.”

Readers familiar with Reid’s fiction will know that a deviation does not mean a forsaking of the poetic faculty, with novels such as The End of Longing (UWA Publishing) exhibiting a keen sense of rhythm and a marked tendency towards lyrical outbursts amongst the desiccations and depredations of history.

In one sense, then, Breaking the Surface represents a resurfacing of sorts; and indeed, notions of liminality and of the sublimated and the subliminal, of psychic thresholds, are given concrete expression in bodies of water, bodies of land, and, of course, the bodies of living creatures.

All such potentially weighty subjects are borne aloft by witty wordplay (puns aplenty!), amusing aphoristic utterances and a discreet musicality.

The poems are grouped into six generous sections. Take the first, Ruffled Edges: itself an ocean teeming with memories, reveries, losses personal and environmental, intimations of mortality and embodiment as a way of doing philosophy. Listen to this final stanza of Long after landfall:

You paddle over pebbles, bones of contentment

sucked at by sea lip: gleaming, outlandish

till waves withdraw, leave them to sun and sand.

Lustre drains away. They are dingy stones.

Belonging is an elementary matter.

Longing is what’s left. It’s on the ebb.

Shades of Shakespeare via Prufrock, alliteration and half-rhymes (“paddle over pebbles” has both for the price of one!), insistent caesurae… there’s a lot going on here. And the last line is a killer.

Compare this with the opening lines of the hilarious (but not) All thumbs from a later section, Filial Shadows:

The cleverest human features

come in pairs

like eyes and ears

like testicles and breasts

and so too with opposable digits

supposed to be the most

definitive trick of our species

a smart device that assists

fine motor skills and brings

precision to our fidgets

A lovely use of two- and three-beat lines and the full-and-half-rhyme line endings of digits/assists/fidgets underscores the comedy and the tragedy. The poem ends with Reid watching his grandchildren, “the first generation ever/to write with both of their thumbs.”

The collection’s first poem Wherever the body is and one of the last, The cat’s whiskers, are very different poems and yet equally heartbreaking. As, indeed, is the very last, De profundis, which for those who know WA Museum Boola Bardip’s Blue Whale will take on even greater resonance. Here’s the first stanza:

Some beings can’t long survive

above the surface.

Some singing belongs in the depths,

spreading and sinking fathoms down.

But it could also serve as Reid’s Ars Poetica. Either way, it’s a fitting close to a beautiful, sad, funny and technically dazzling collection.

A stroll down Podstreet

Interviewing, Podcasts, Poetry, ,

Usually we think of literature as something we read on a page or a screen. Yet the best literary compositions are intended for the ear as well as for the eye. In its ancient beginnings the creative shaping of language was often recited by a bard, and oral/aural ways of communicating remain fundamental for certain genres, especially poetry. Audiobooks have become a hugely popular vehicle for activating the sound of printed words.

There’s a sense in which writing should speak for itself — but we also like to talk about writing, and hear others do so. Book clubs and reading groups of various sorts are latter-day equivalents of the traditional literary salon, thriving on discussion of written works. And people throng to literary festivals so that they can hear writers speak — despite the fact that many fine writers disappoint us when they open their mouths.

So although reading and writing are essentially solo activities, readers and writers can’t stop gabbing with other people about their literary experiences. I’ve previously referred to this as the book-chat paradox.

One of the most common forms of book-chat is an interview with a writer, whether in front of a live audience or recorded for later transmission. In the hands of a skilled interviewer this kind of semi-formal conversation can be illuminating, as I’ve remarked in a previous blog post. WritingWA has been producing “Podstreet,” a series of podcasts that feature Western Australian writers and book industry leaders. To most of these podcasts the WritingWA CEO Will Yeoman brings his extensive experience as an interviewer. I’m glad to have been included. Here’s the link to our recent conversation about my latest book, Breaking the Surface.

 

Just released!

Book launches, Poetry, , ,

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book of poems, Breaking the Surface, is now out in the world. The publisher, Ginninderra Press, has produced it handsomely.

This volume celebrates my return to the genre of poetry after a decade-long deviation into fiction, which included five novels along with numerous short stories.

Earlier versions of a few of the poems appeared in previous books but most are recent, published during the last couple of years in a wide range of Australian and international journals and anthologies. Several have been finalists in prize competitions, winning awards or receiving commendations or short-listings. It’s gratifying to see them all gathered together in Breaking the Surface.

The book will be launched by Prof Dennis Haskell AM at the Grove Library (cnr Leake Street and Stirling Highway, Cottesloe) on the evening of Wednesday 1st November, 6.30pm. All comers are welcome!

Copies can be purchased within Australia through the publisher’s website. For international sales the book can be ordered through booksellers from a US-based distributor with world-wide channels. It’s also listed on the Amazon website (paperback and Kindle formats).

The best kind of encouragement

Poetry, Supporting writers, , ,

Many years ago a famous Australian writer penned a generous appraisal of new work by a much younger compatriot.

In comments sent to his publisher, she expressed appreciation of his first little book in a way that not only heartened him but also, more importantly, conveyed wise reflections on the most valuable qualities of the particular genre in which she was an eminent practitioner and he was taking early steps.

Shortly I’ll identify those two writers — and quote some of what she said, because its tone is exemplary. There’s nothing patronising about it. There’s no flattering overpraise of the sort that fulsome blurbs and social media posts of mutual-back-scratching coteries too often lavish on novice practitioners.

Whether in literary practice or any other field, a neophyte won’t learn much from excessively laudatory compliments. More helpful is an estimation that’s framed by a general perspective on what constitutes best practice in that line of work.

Surely this is the best kind of encouragement.

It was the highly respected poet, literary critic, and environmentalist Judith Wright who made the following comments about a chapbook whose author she’d never met, though she had read some of his poems previously:

“I like best his tough humorous approach and nearly epigrammatic style, his intelligence in using words and his width of focus — taking in not just the immediate situation but its context too. That’s rare, now that so much verse is self-preoccupied, concentrating on the personal at the expense of thinking and feeling outwards, and without bringing up enough to justify the inwardness.

Reid has always been able to relate in the opposite direction. To be humble and humorous about oneself is a lost art, but he has it.  To look at the not-me with love and real interest and say something valid — Reid knows what poetry’s for.”

 

Yes, as you’d probably guessed, it was my own first little book that she was referring to.

The principle that she invoked, that poetry should go beyond self-absorption, deserves to be upheld and reaffirmed.

Her comments have come back to me now, as a new selection of my poetry is about to be published. Breaking the Surface is forthcoming next month from Ginninderra Press, and I wish Judith Wright were still alive so that I could send her a copy and thank her for giving me, long ago, the best kind of encouragement.

 

Celebrating a lively year of fiction writing

Fiction, Prizes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The dust is subsiding after last night’s big ceremonial event for Western Australian writers: the Premier’s Book Awards, chosen from a large array of titles published in 2022 and (in the case of the Writer’s Fellowship) from major project applications.

Having been the head judge for this year’s prize selections, I’ve spent many weeks immersed in a fascinating variety of publications. But here I want to make a few informal remarks about just one segment of the entries — in a purely personal capacity. Official statements about shortlists for all five categories are posted on the website of the State Library, and you can see the streamed announcement of winners on its youtube channel. The following brief comments are merely my own, and don’t necessarily convey the opinion of my fellow judges.

My hearty congratulations go not only to every winner in every category but also to shortlisted authors, and to all their publishers. It would be a mammoth and presumptuous undertaking to comment, even briefly, on each of the books and Fellowship applications assessed by our judging panel. But as someone who has written a fair amount of fiction, I’d like — from an individual practitioner’s point of view — to highlight the particular strength of work in that genre as reflected in the whole field of entries.

In the Emerging category, for writers whose first book came out last year, two shortlisted titles took drug addiction as their subject. Both show exceptional storytelling power. Josh Kemp’s Banjawarn, winner in this category, grabs attention from the outset and holds it hypnotically. Using dual narrative perspectives (those of a transgressive crime writer and of an abandoned but spirited young girl), it ranges from lyrical passages of altered consciousness to sordid details and gruesomely gothic scenes. In Alan Fyfe’s T the narrative pace, pulled along by a succession of darkly comic episodes and a wryly ironic tone, enlivens the drug-soaked inertia of wholly credible characters, giving the reader acute insights into a world that can switch suddenly from the painful to the gruffly tender and even the hilarious.

Another title shortlisted in that category, Vivien Stuart’s Acacia House, stands out as a stylistically resourceful exploration of a challenging topic through credibly realised characters and a convincing mix of narrative voices. The main story is set in a Perth hospice, with a trio of nurses in the foreground — one from Adelaide, one from Ireland and one from South Africa. Authentically distinctive idioms differentiate these three focal figures, whose interactions contribute strongly to the development of the novel’s important themes, while their back-stories enrich the predominantly Western Australian setting.

I’ll mention quickly just a couple of other noteworthy 2022 novels by debut WA writers. Like those discussed above and below, they are broadly in the realist mode. Sharron Booth’s The Silence of Water, a novel underpinned by diligent research, makes imaginative use of historical material from the convict era to create a story about a family’s legacy of dark secrets. And Joanna Morrison’s intriguing crime mystery The Ghost of Gracie Flynn has an absorbing storyline shaped by an innovative variation on the traditional omniscient narrative method.

Among the shortlisted titles in the Book of the Year category was Robert Drewe’s historical novel Nimblefoot, evoking in a highly entertaining way the rough raw world of Australian colonial life. It’s filled with colourful anecdotes that provide the story with picaresque impetus and an air of authenticity. Like all of Drewe’s fiction, this novel shows great skill in constructing a narrative that holds the reader’s interest from start to finish.

Other WA novels of comparable merit that came out last year include Che’s Last Embrace, by Nicholas Hasluck, a cleverly told story about the unreliability of storytelling. Different narrative strands (newspaper articles, letters, poems, conversations) are woven together with admirable subtlety, each in turn apparently promising to disclose elusive facts surrounding Che Guevara’s final campaign — only to prove doubtful in one way or another. Though set mainly in South America, the plot and characters also include links to Australia, incorporating a satirical perspective on the contemporary Australian art industry.

In The Sawdust House David Whish-Wilson uses a boldly dialogic narrative technique for creating a memorable kind of fact-based fiction. The complex main character, Irish-Australian-American bareknuckle pugilist James Sullivan, is portrayed largely through the invention of a plausibly authentic idiom that reflects his variegated background, and through his conversations with a journalist interlocutor.

Portland Jones’s Only Birds Above is a sensitively imagined and skilfully unfolded tale about the impact of foreign wars on an Australian family. The characters are thoroughly convincing, and there is particular subtlety in the way an inarticulate blacksmith, Arthur, is portrayed through his care for horses. Jones’s prose is distinguished by memorable phrasing.

Set further back in the past is a lively YA story about pirates, with a focus on shifty gender identities: Meg Caddy’s Slipping the Noose generates momentum well and sustains narrative tension, while incorporating plenty of accurate historical details (e.g. the vivid depiction of 17th-century London streets).

Closer to home is Holden Sheppard’s The Brink, a well paced YA novel set in the present day and in coastal areas north of Perth. It subverts the formulaic road-trip structure to produce a potent story about the importance of discovering your real identity and embracing it. The characters and dialogue are entirely credible.

Lingering in my mind is Kevin Price’s Poetic Licence, a slow-burn political thriller that takes place mainly in Fremantle. It features idiosyncratic characters and sharply observed settings in developing its ingeniously enigmatic plot.

I also enjoyed Kate McCaffrey’s Double Lives, which has an inventive, engaging narrative premise — constructing a crime podcast that not only takes us through a process of detection but also serves as a way of exploring some of the complexities of transgender experience and reactions to it.

Other fiction that impressed me includes Alice Nelson’s Faithless, a complex love story in which the prose is finely shaped and tension is well sustained; Dervla McTiernan’s The Murder Rule, an accomplished page-turning thriller; Brooke Dunnell’s The Glass House, which conveys moving insights into family relationships; Susan Midalia’s Miniatures, an amusing collection of micro-fictions, mainly in a satirical vein; and Sasha Wasley’s A Caravan like a Canary, an easy read with believable characters and an engrossing storyline.

That’s by no means an exhaustive list, and it excludes fiction that moves outside the general scope of realism, such as Madeline Te Whiu’s bold fantasy novel The Assassin Thief, which made the Emerging Writer shortlist, as well as some very fine fictional work for younger readers, e.g. The Raven’s Song, a dystopian tale by Zana Fraillon and Bren MacDibble, which made the Children’s Book shortlist, and Craig Silvey’s cheerful and charming story Runt.

With so many impressive works of fiction being published here last year (to say nothing of other genres), I’m confident that the Western Australian writing community is in very good health.

Psychopomps, birds and language

Mythology, Poetry

What is a psychopomp? (Not to be confused with a pompous psych.) And what’s the connection between psychopomps, birds and language?

You can find the answer to that question and many others in the online creative arts journal Unlikely, an experimental transdisciplinary publication which “aims to open unexpected spaces for artistic exchange and scholarly conversations across mediums, disciplines and continents.”

The latest issue of Unlikely (#8), edited by Madeleine Kelly and Jen Valender, is on the theme of “Birds and Language.” It contains a fascinating range of international contributions including multimedia texts, creative non-fiction, scholarly articles, and more.

My own piece, “Words of Birds as Psychopomps,” is an essay that begins with aspects of mythology and goes on to link them with a couple of my poems. You can read it here.

Memorable speech

Poetry, Reading aloud, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The following comments are not about any formal public address. Most speechmaking of that kind is totally forgettable.

No, I’m thinking of W.H. Auden’s succinct definition of poetry as “memorable speech.” I like the simplicity of this phrase because it touches on two basic truths. First, the stylistic quality of worthwhile poems lifts them above the ephemeral nature of ordinary language usage. Second, poetry is essentially vocal, having its origins in the spoken word and in song. In our culture we usually see it on the printed page or screen, but a written poem is fundamentally a score for oral performance. When it’s not read aloud, it’s at least something we should listen to inwardly.

To remark that poetry is speech is to recognise how it draws on elements already present in everyday conversation. To remark that it’s memorable is to recognise how (unlike most of our talking) it deploys those everyday elements in ways that intensify and sustain their impact. All language has rhythmic qualities, for instance; but poetry lifts them into auditory patterns that can linger in the mind.

Sometimes the auditory patterns are emphatically regular — often so in traditional high literary forms such as the Petrarchan sonnet, where metre and rhyme follow a strict scheme. But sometimes, especially in poetry of our own time, auditory patterns are less obvious; they keep closer to casual conversational phrasing. Here, for instance, is the opening of Caitlin Maling’s “The Drowned Man” from her masterly book Fish Song:

Perhaps he had a wife, three slovenly
lovely children, dreams of a down payment
on a red-brick two-by-two where the girls could share
and everyone would love the dog best.

The tone is colloquial and wry — no elevated diction, no overtly imposed structure, just the unassuming idiom you might hear in a pub or over the back fence. It evokes economically the micro-world of a family home. Yet the lines are shaped in an unobtrusively artful way. There’s that nicely timed line-break creating a crafty little pause between “slovenly” and “lovely”, adjectives whose unexpectedly apt pairing is reinforced by their assonance. And although it eschews rhyme and regular metre, this poem goes on to embody the general shape and heft of a sonnet: an octet (eight-line stanza) followed by a sestet (six-liner), marking a change of mood as the man whose snug home life we have glimpsed is then seen “splayed on Swansea beach / weed weaving through his hair.”

The coast of Western Australia and the timbre of local speech are memorably captured throughout Maling’s Fish Song. I expect that both will also be prominent at an upcoming event in Perth organised by WA Poets Inc: Love Poetry Under the Stars. I’m to be one of the featured poets, along with Miranda Aitken, Gillian Clark, Kevin Gillam, Rhian Healy, Soul Reserve and Rita Tognini. Details here.

Love Poetry Under the Stars is open to all comers; but in case you can’t attend, here’s one of the pieces I’ll be reading. (It will also appear at a later stage in my book Breaking the Surface: New and Selected Poems, to be published by Ginninderra Press.) In the voice of this poem I try to capture rhythmically the uncertain interplay of hesitation and hope that can sometimes infuse an incipiently erotic encounter between two people.

A beginning
(Okains Bay, Banks Peninsula)

Would it seem later like opening a dance, a book?

She turned with a lift of her shoulder. He shifted his feet
towards and away, until the old cave swung up
into line behind her, and then the toppling hill
and the tipsy posts of the jetty.
He sidled closer, glancing across at those eyes
past which the wind, insistent as fantasy,
kept shuffling strands of her hair. She shook her head
at what — an obliqueness of sunlight?
Was she losing her balance? Was he finding his tongue?

His foot was tapping the sand. Her smile tapped his desire.
The beach had become a floor to spin upon.
Cave, hill and jetty began to take their measure,
slow, slow, quickquick slow, her fingers keeping time
at a cool arm’s length. His gesture circled a cliché.
The sea riffled pages of pleasure.
For the moment much seemed possible, if unlikely.
Would she read him from step to step?
Would he dance her from cover to cover?

Poetry: why bother?

Poetry, , ,

Most people today never read a poem. Though I do read plenty of contemporary poetry myself, I’m seldom persuaded to linger over it. What I look for but don’t often find is something worth more than passing attention. I want to be stopped in my tracks by a phrase or a line or (if I’m really lucky) by a whole poem that deserves to be read again, remembered and revisited. Too many of them lack this arresting quality.

But why bother to read poetry at all, let alone write it (as I also do)? Here’s my answer: it’s worth doing because poetry, at its best, deploys words with a startling impact that peels away from our perceptions what Coleridge called a “film of familiarity”. This eye-opening quality lets us see some aspect of experience more clearly. I’ll mention examples below.

Everyday language is too tired to make much of an impression on us. We’re surrounded by worn-out words, facile clichés, jaded expressions. While it’s not surprising that daily conversation hardly ever includes anything strikingly fresh and memorable, the written word should be chosen with more care — but most of what journalists write is instantly forgettable, and any statements emanating from politicians or business leaders (not to mention ‘celebrity influencers’) are almost always stuffed with stale platitudes.

Instead of inflicting on us the weary comparisons and dreary metaphors that riddle ordinary communication, a successful poem can jolt us alert with ingeniously crafted turns of phrase. Being (normally) segmented into lines, it has the potential to disrupt our usual habit of hasty reading, so we’re encouraged to pause and reflect. Poetry can devise inventive images and haunting rhythms that cause us to sit up and take notice.

Examples?

Plucking phrases out of their context won’t give a full picture but may indicate the kind of thing I have in mind.

Here, then, are a few quotations from an excellent little book just published under the imprint of Recent Work Press. It’s by prize-winning Sydney-based poet Denise O’Hagan and its title is Anamnesis. As a footnote tells us, this ancient Greek word signifies “a calling to mind of past events, or recollection.”

In one of her most memorable pieces in this book, O’Hagan sustains a single perfectly controlled sentence through half a dozen three-line stanzas, each of which begins “If I could …” — like this, for instance:

If I could impart to you a tiny fraction
Of the shimmering strength of a single strand of spiderweb
Bobbled with dew, swaying in the early morning light

There’s descriptive precision in those lines, transmitting beautifully to a reader’s imagination what the speaker wishes she “could impart” — yet the poem’s point goes well beyond its portrayal of delicate details in the external world, and beyond a general sentiment of wanting to find words that would do justice to certain objects or scenes. What it gradually reveals is that every stanza’s heartfelt “If I could” is addressed to a particular individual who faces specific physical challenges, tenderly evoked, which the speaker would dearly love to alleviate — if she could.

Although any poem that deserves a reader’s close attention will normally contain vivid imagery, those visual or figurative elements are only part of what makes it memorable. It will also contain a patterning of sounds. This may include traditional auditory features such as rhyme and metre but in contemporary writing it’s likely to be a less obviously melodious kind of musicality, less insistently regular and more subtle. Here is how another poem by O’Hagan begins — it’s not dramatic in itself, just quietly conversational (like the voice in many of her poems), but has a steady rhythm that lays a foundation for what turns into a reminiscence about glimpses of love among the ruins of a former Roman city:

I tread the wide slabbed stone street, lined
With pines …

Through its sequence of monosyllabic words, this simple opening conveys a sense of measured footsteps pacing over the solid paving of an ancient yet durable pathway. So it’s genuinely pedestrian — not in the plodding sense, but in taking us with the speaker on an unhurried walk that will lead us back in time.

As a reader, I don’t like to be shouted at. The poetry of whispers is generally more to my taste, and that’s what I find in Denise O’Hagan’s writing. It often has the quality of murmurous meditations on seemingly small incidents, gently drawing out their significance. From the same book, I’ll give one further example: a fine understated poem called “Love was almond-shaped.” It recalls a cherished moment when a mother once showed a child how to split open almond shells —

… Holding both my hands in one of hers,
Steadying my palm, spanning my fingers
Across the stern metal jowls of the nutcracker …

The poem shapes other images succinctly around that central one of the small hands supported by a larger maternal clasp to help the child with mastering a skill and obtaining nourishment. Something so slight that it might ordinarily pass without notice has been lifted up, brought into the light and infused with warmth by the poet’s skilful choice of language.

I quoted earlier the phrase “film of familiarity.” It was coined two centuries ago by Samuel T. Coleridge, who remarked that the poetry of his friend Wordsworth achieved its singular power …

… by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which (in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude) we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.

In the poetry I value most, the shaping of words can reveal those little unspectacular “wonders” that heedless hearts would otherwise ignore.

“Short” is shorter than it used to be

Fiction, Prizes, Short stories, , , , , , , , , ,

How long should a “short story” be? Old question, but one I’ve been pondering again in regard to some of my own published fiction.

One of my pieces (“A Sinking Heart”) has just won a prize in the international Letter Review short story competition; another {“Listing”) was a finalist for the recent Armadale Writers Award; and another (“I dispettosi amanti”) has now appeared in the anthology Snatches of an Aria. These vary in length from just over 400 words to just under 2500.

“A Sinking Heart,” approx. 1320 words, was much longer when first drafted, and only came into sharp focus after I’d gradually whittled it down until every remaining word was essential to the narrative purpose. I’m delighted that the judges of the Letter Review Prize make the following comment on this story and the other two place-getters (one by an Irish writer, one by an American):

The winning stories moved us deeply, made us smile, gave us so much to think about, and inspired us with their astonishing mastery of craft.

You can read “A Sinking Heart” here.

And “Listing,” which the Armadale award judge found “poignant and compelling,” is here.

19th-century writer Edgar Poe, a pioneer of the modern short story, said it should be capable of perusal at one sitting in order to sustain “unity of impression.” But William Saroyan, a later practitioner, remarked that some readers can sit for longer than others. These days, when most of us have a touch of ADHD, very few people seem able to immerse themselves in a fictitious prose narrative without keeping a distracted eye on the time. So, catering for a fidgety society, stories have generally become shorter. Not a bad thing if it leads to more concise writing. The revision process for one of mine, “Promises,” brought it down from about 3500 words to 2000 — the form in which it was published in Backstory a few months ago — and that cropping strengthened its impact, I think. You can read it here.

Most contemporary novels now look skinny compared with those written a century ago — or would, if their actual slimness wasn’t disguised by large fonts and wide-spaced lines. Short stories, too, are shrinking. Many literary magazines and prize competitions now tend to favour “flash fiction,” a term that has been around for about 30 years to designate extremely short stories and has proved especially popular in online publications. But how short is “extremely short”? Editors usually stipulate a maximum word count for these micro-narratives: sometimes 500 words, sometimes 200, sometimes even less.

The shorter it is, the more likely to be read as closely as a poem — or so its author hopes! One of mine, “Cured,” published in Flash Frontier, is under 150 words and aims at a quasi-poetic compression: here it is.

 

 

Shortlisted

Literary festivals, Poetry, Prizes,

It’s nice to find yourself on a shortlist. But lists, short or long, signify quite different things in different contexts.

If you apply for a job and get shortlisted, you can expect an interview — with a good chance of being selected for the position. Recruitment agents will have previously included you on a longer list of possible contenders, though you probably won’t know about that earlier deliberative stage.

It’s a purer process if you submit something you’ve written for a literary award. ‘Purer’ in the sense of being less affected by bias, because usually what’s being evaluated in such cases isn’t the author but the particular composition — story, poem, or whatever — and a ‘blind’ judging is normal. That is, the person or panel making the decisions doesn’t know who the author of any entry is until afterwards.

Having in the past been longlisted, shortlisted and occasionally emerged as a winner for literary prizes, and having at other times been a member of judging panels, I appreciate this conscientious process of focusing on the quality of the piece of writing. Of course subjectivity is still involved in any judging.

 I’ve just learnt that one of my poems is on the shortlist for the 2022 Poetry d’Amour award. There are six other poets (from several parts of Australia) on the shortlist, so it’s of similar size to the longlist that included my novel The Madwoman’s Coat for last year’s ARA Historical fiction Prize.

The Poetry d’Amour prize will be announced, and an anthology containing all the longlisted entries will be launched, at an event on 2nd October during the Perth Poetry Festival.

Copies of the anthology can be pre-ordered here.