Stoned Crow: Dael Allison
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
I did a Masters of Creative Arts at UTS in 2010/11 and my focus was the great traveler and modernist artist Ian Fairweather (1891-1974). I planned to base a volume of poems on aspects of his life, particularly his shambolic raft journey from Darwin to Timor in 1952, and needed to find out more about this particularly enigmatic loner. (Fairweather’s Raft was published by Walleah Press in 2102).
Margaret Olley was a friend of Fairweather’s in his later years when, after surviving the raft journey and other misadventures , he returned to Australia and squatted in a thatched hut on Bribie Island, off Queensland. Olley was living in Brisbane, admired his work, and despite his reticence befriended him. She’d send him a letter: ‘Dear Mr Fairweather, may I come to visit?’, wait for a reply: ‘Yes Miss Olley’, then she’d pack a picnic. Once she arrived at Fairweather’s camp he would direct her to do things like drive him to a distant beach to bring back a stash of driftwood to add to his ramshackle hut, or hire a boat and row him to look at White Patch, where he’d first camped when he drifted to Bribie in a boat in 1945.
Margaret Olley granted me a half hour interview. It was International Women’s Day, 2010, a nice synchronicity as she was a great feminist. She was imperious and immediately engaging: Put away your questions, I’m not going to answer them. I’ll just tell you what I remember’.
The next two hours were gold, and I left with many insights into both artists. Olley’s voice—funny, irascible—was distinctive. Her words, the way she said them, stayed in my mind. The prose poem ‘Margaret Olley sits for Ben Quilty’, fuses how she was on that day and my response to Quilty’s fabulous portrait of Olley, which won the Archibald Prize in 2011, the year she died. I can worry at a poem for months, even years, but this was written quickly because her voice was so strong.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
There is no single process. The idea often comes with a single word, phrase or observation which I’ll free-write on, building more phrases and ideas. Sometimes, reading other writers, a word or expression will chime and I’ll start to riff my own thoughts from it. I like being challenged by writing exercises – the more random the better like using Michael Farrell’s method of rolling a die to change word choices. Because I live in locations remote from a writing network, I’m extraordinarily lucky have been part of a supportive online writing group for many years. That group, which meets online monthly, and face to face a few times a year, is characterized by throwing-down-the-gauntlet workshopping and no-holds-barred, but supportive, feedback.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Serendipity rules.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Other writing, art and images, place, different cultures and the way people live in them, chance sightings and remarks.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
If I need to get back to writing I read other writers, particularly poets. Reading someone else takes you out of your own mindset, or mindlessness.
A good exercise, if you need something to kick you off, is to find two disparate pieces of writing—online, a magazine, a trade journal or catalogue. Something beyond your interest or comfort zone is good. As you read through underline any word or phrase that you respond to. Write out the results, mash them together, have a damn good play, then start adding and crossing out.
Dael Allison is a writer and editor. Winner of the inaugural Varuna LitLink/NRWC Award for an Unpublished Novel (2009) she also won the Northern Territory Literary Award for Essay (2008) and the 2005 Wildcare International Essay Prize, a competition which she has since co-judged three times with poet Adrienne Eberhard.
Dael has been awarded several poetry prizes, including the 2012 Henry Kendall Poetry Award. As recipient of the Varuna/Picaro Press Chapbook Award in 2010, her first chapbook, Shock Aftershock, was published by Picaro Press. Picaro published her second chapbook this year: Wabi Sabi is number 128 in their Wagtail series.
Dael’s master of Creative Arts (UTS, 2012) focused on the artist Ian Fairweather. In 2010, in association with the Northern Territory Writers’ Centre and its members, she edited and published the Fairweather tribute chapbook Adrift. Her volume of poetry, Fairweather’s Raft, was published in 2012 by Walleah Press:
http://store.walleahpress.com.au/dael-allisons-fairweathers-raft/
Editor of three anthologies for Poetry At The Pub, Newcastle, in 2012 she co-edited, with Michael Sharkey, the final issue, of Famous Reporter.
Based near Taree, NSW, Dael has worked on Aid projects in Indonesia, and in Kiribati, Central Pacific, where she currently lives.
Stoned Crow: Jude Aquilina
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
For over a decade, I caught public transport to Adelaide’s CBD every working day. I don’t read; I’m not plugged into a pod or gadget. I like to people-watch, and that includes bus drivers, of whom I have witnessed the good, the bad and the dastardly. I thought it time to recognize these iconic ‘modern people herders’ so wrote the poem included in Stoned Crows.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
For this poem, and with many others, I began with a few lines in my notebook, jotted down on the bus and in a hurry. Then when I had some rare spare time, I looked through my notebook and extended the poem. When it filled the page, with lots of crossings-out and arrows, it was time to type it onto my computer. From there it underwent around a dozen edits, each time pruning more than adding. I don’t print out every draft. I usually have a crop of about a dozen poems I’m writing, so when I’m editing, I graze over them all, only printing when I think I’ve reached the final draft … Ha! That final draft can actually be months, years down the track.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Here is the list of tips I give my creative writing students at TAFE:
Jude’s Top Ten Tips:
1. Enjoy: Writing is meant to be enjoyable, never viewed as a chore. Be playful and experimental. Writing a story or poem is like nutting out a crossword puzzle and just as satisfying when you feel you have got it right.
2. Store your ideas: Keep notebooks, or scraps of paper used at the time of inspiration. This is your idea pool. Artists sketch, poets note.
3. Read widely: Explore all types of books. A good book will give you ideas. You don’t even have to read it fully, just flip through and take notes.
4. Stop. Sit. Listen: Resist the pressures of modern life now and then. Allow yourself time in an interruption-free place.
5. Use all your senses: The inclusion of sounds smells, tastes or unusual textures will enrich any piece of writing.
6. Show but do not tell: Writing should never preach. Good poetry allows the readers space to think and come to their own conclusions.
7. Be original, be strange: Do not self-censor. Explore all thoughts. Forget what anyone else says.
8. Edit. Edit. Edit: It is common for poems and stories to go through more than 10 drafts. A gap in time between the first and final draft of a piece is essential. It allows you to stand apart from your work and see it afresh.
9. Share your writing: Learn from the mistakes of others. Join a writers’ group to increase your editing skills and to receive valuable feedback.
10. Just do it: You can think about it all you like, but unless you actually write and finish pieces, you will have achieved little. You will be surprised how much easier it becomes the more you write.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I am inspired by contemporary women poets with zing and pluck, such as Lorna Crozier (Canada), Sharon Olds (US), Dorothy Porter (Australia) and Louise Nicholas (Australia).
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
I like to write the first lines for around 10 poems at the top of each page in a spiral bound notebook. Then later, I come back and add something to those lines. Then I tear the page down the spiral a little way and fold it back, so I can only see the last line I wrote. I wait of a while then come back and add to those lines, then fold the page back again, and so on, until I reach the bottom of the page. I then unfold the poem and read it. This method seems to take poems to different/strange places (because I can’t remember how the poem started). Of course, then the editing process begins, which I find equally exciting.
Jude Aquilina has published four collections of poetry, including Knifing the Ice and WomanSpeak. She lives on a walnut farm in the Adelaide Hills and teaches creative writing at TAFE.
The joanne burns Award
As the only publisher of an annual Australian book of prose poems and microfiction, SPINELESS WONDERS is very excited to announce an award named in honour of renowned experimental poet, joanne burns.
About joanne burns
joanne burns writes poetry [including prose poems], monologues, and short futurist fictions or farables. She has been writing prose poems since the late 1970s. Since 1972 many collections of her work have been published, the most recent being ‘an illustrated history of dairies’ 2007, and ‘amphora’ 2011, both published by Giramondo Books. ‘kept busy’, a cd of joanne burns reading a selection of her work, was released in 2007 by River Road Publishing. Prose poems from ‘on a clear day’ UQP 1992, an ETT Imprint book since 1997, are included on the current NSW HSC English syllabus. She is working on assembling a Selected poems collection, and on a new poetry collection ‘brush’.
… && …
**Some comments by joanne burns on the prose poem [contrasting it with the usual line break poem form] -
In her poetics statement ‘space dust’ [Poetry and Gender: Statements and Essays in Australian Women's Poetry and Poetics, edited Brooks/Walker UQP 1989] joanne burns wrote:
…..[the] poem is a show off, and desperate to be noticed; but the prose poem…..is more humble, or perhaps more patient, more subtle……the prose poem says find me.
Today she might add ‘the prose poem is perhaps more sly’.
… && …
**Some other aspects of the prose poem that interest her…
i) The flexibility of the prose poem form – how it blends or bends the genres of poetry and prose.
ii) The ‘political’ nature of the prose poem – its subversiveness – how it challenges and undermines the iconic territory and shape of the [line break] poem on the page.
** She likes to call paragraphs in the prose poem ‘stanzagraphs’.
Messages of congratulations
joanne burns has long been a virtuoso purveyor of the prose poem (and poem-prose) that concisely picks out the entrails of a scene, in wildly imaginative narratives that juggle the comic with the more considered. Waylaid by her flickering surrealist imagery that strobes across suburban life, religious iconography, and satires on prescriptions of the feminine, one can also discern a persistently gripping poignancy embarking on analytic pilgrimage through time and memory. Burns wraps entire novels into the Tardis of the prose poem, a ringing telephone-box – with optional peel-off jokes attached.
Gig Ryan
Joanne – a great social satirist – and how we need one! – writer extraordinaire on the border of prose and poem – generous with advice and encouragement – felicidades!
Barbara Brooks
Congratulations to Spineless Wonders on this much needed initiative for an all too often overlooked form of writing. And congratulations to Joanne Burns, whose wonderful work has the recognition it deserves in having this award named for her.
Anna Gibbs
It is up-lifting to see that long-time Sydney poet, joanne burns, is to have an award named after her. She has been a champion of the prose poem, one of the great but often misunderstood and under-rated literary genres. The beginning of the twenty-first century, driven as it is by digital technology, is the time of the short form that includes micro fiction as well as the prose poem. Spineless Wonders is without doubt one the most stunning things to happen in Australian, and indeed international, publishing this century. They are twenty-first century ready, for they have recognised the time of the short form in a digital publishing environment that also enfolds the printed book .
Moya Costello
I can’t think of a better name for an annual award for prose poems and microfiction than ‘the joanne burns award’. For years now joanne’s writing has been at the sparkling point of the pin of short but deadly literary gems. Her tiny darts are on target every time, and punch well above their apparent weight. Their brief texts carry a huge load of generous humour and humanity.
John Tranter
About The joanne burns Award
The precise form that The joanne burns Award will take each year may change. For the past two years, for instance, the Spineless Wonders prose poem/microfiction competition has called for submissions with a maximum of 800 word limit. In future years, The joanne burns Award may be for other brief forms, such as nanofiction or for blended, genre-bending prose poem or poetic prose forms yet to be developed.
The theme of each year’s joanne burns Award will also vary. Some years the theme may be open whilst in others, such as in the 2012 Australian icons competition, the theme will be specified.
As in previous years, the competition will be blind judged according to the criteria set out in the Terms and Conditions. The joanne burns Award judge for each year, along with the competition parameters, will be announced in the first half of each year.
The joanne burns Award will carry a monetary reward as well as an offer of publication for those pieces judged to be the highest quality entries in our annual competitive cull.
About the Spinelesss Wonders annual anthology of prose poems and microfiction
The annual anthology of prose poems and microfiction is edited and produced separately from the annual competition. Previous publications include Small Wonder and Stoned Crows & other Australian icons. Contributions for the annual anthology may be selected from finalists, as well as other entrants in The joanne burns Award, as well as other writers selected by the editors.
The joanne burns Award for 2013 is now open, see our submissions page, here, for details.
Jean Bedford launches Stoned Crows @SWF2013
Stoned Crows & other Australian icons Launched by Newtown Review of Books
As Linda Funnell said, it’s great that small presses like Spineless Wonders will take the risk on these utterly local pieces, edgy as many of them are. Microfiction has established its own space since the days when people like Vicki Viidikas and Anna Couani were considered highly experimental, with what John Tranter so descriptively calls these ‘splinters’ of prose, splinters that hook and snag at the reader’s imagination using language and images that will instantly resonate with the Australian reader.
Only a few minutes to discuss 46 pieces, so I have made up some general categories and some lists of the specifics they include.
The themes divide loosely into terminology, the sense of place, nostalgia, popular activities, institutions/personalities/landmarks and flora & fauna, all employing the vernacular in not always ironic ways. It’s interesting that as a culture that prides itself on being iconoclastic we should have so many loving evocations of our familiar icons. But there’s an underlying and I think shared social and political consciousness here so that familiar objects and symbols are deconstructed, adapted and transformed, some of them mocked and derided and some of them celebrated in new ways.
We’ll all be familiar with the Australian-specific terminology here – bum cracks, chooks, cockies (the birds, not the roaches) and barbies.
Place is very important to this collection – and specific places are described from Townsville through Byron Bay to Sydney and Melbourne and Port Macquarie, and others around and in between. And although this new generation of writers strongly acknowledges our urban nature, there is still a harking back to the icons of the bush and the outback as well as a trip to a possible future. Landmarks include the Bridge, Circular Quay, Luna Park, and of course Uluru. I was interested to note there were no ‘big’ things – what about the giant potato at Robertson? The big merino? The giant prawn? Perhaps these could be considered for the next volume.
Familiar fauna appears – kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, cockatoos, brolgas, Phar Lap, the funnel-web spider and the brown snake. And, of course prawns and crocodiles. I didn’t notice much flora – just the odd casuarina and mangrove, though you could perhaps include the Hills Hoist, our national tree, here transformed into a poetic image of shapes and meaning.
In fact the transformations of iconic cliche into something new and freshly interpreted is one of the charms of the book – Bunnings as a site for sexual fantasy (I imagine the Bunning sausage sizzle is also a peculiarly Australian way of claiming the space) – the Opera House as an operating theatre, a road train like a gigantic mechanical animal, reminiscent of the sandworms of Dune.
Institutions and iconic figures appear – the ABC and Harold Holt – with the many, particularly Australian, resonances his name evokes – who could ever forget that photo of the chubby balding man in his SCUBA gear? The ANZACs get a mention, both as biscuits and as soldiers, as do lamingtons and Vegemite. Many of our pastimes are referred to – sport, surfing, barbies, agricultural shows, Sculpture by the Sea.
Interestingly, imported items are included – Coke, Bunnings and McDonald’s, for example, are adopted and adapted, reinterpreted as belonging to our own landscape. Is this a case of us being brainwashed by the forces of international capitalism or cheeky examples of post-colonialist satire? You could certainly make that argument for the way we infantalise the monolithic MacDonald’s into the rather fondly patronising Maccas.
Sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, provocative, self-reflective and self-satirising, nostalgic, angry, sad, poetic and personal, realist and stream of consciousness, this collection is above all a celebration of the many things Australia can mean to us, not in a jingoistic way, or even particularly patriotically, it’s a celebration of particular moments in time and space that are virtually untranslateable to those who haven’t grown up with them. For example, I defy any non-Australian to make head or tail of the first piece – Peter Lack-Lewinsky’s ‘iconostasis’, and it doesn’t get much easier after that … I say this with the sort of smugness with which we watched the Olympic opening ceremony. This is our stuff – outsiders, live with it.
Stoned Crows & other Australian icons is a lucky dip full of small delights for the reader and we congratulate everybody involved.
Carol Jenkins riffs on Stoned Crows
Judge’s report by Carol Jenkins
Last year I went to the launch of Small Wonders, and while I had really liked the work on paper, I loved hearing it read aloud. It threw the spotlight on the language, the tight and immediate narrative pace and the very funny juggling and juxtaposing of words: The whole thing as sharp as Tics.
So, when Bron Mehan asked if I would judge the prose poem/microfiction competition, I was really pleased to get in first and start reading. Microfiction and prose poems might seem a bit of blow-in genre, but I think it’s really the classic conversational rave, a kind of two-sandwiches extra in the play-lunch, a souped up and distilled, honed short story, not an anecdote but an überdote, it’s getting these out of the pubs and barbies and onto paper, a kind of head high tackle of top oratory onto the page. You might notice from the paper today that the Man Booker prize judges have recently taken a cue from Bron and awarded that prize to a micro- fiction collection by Lydia Davies.
Now, on judging things, judging sounds a bit highhanded, so I like to think of what I was doing as classifying and sorting them on merit. In a previous life I had a job which involved developing criteria for the classification of hazardous substance, so the first thing I think about is criteria. I ranked for Grab, resonance, theme/power, craft, with an additional criteria for Bonus Points, chutzpah or the extra oomph that doesn’t fall into the other categories. Then, true nerd that I am, I assign scores for each and add it all up! Judging is usually too subjective and it is one of my fond delusions that one can aspire to be fair and rigorous and systematic about these things. The other thing about this method is it helps to stop you from getting sucked into the story and forgetting why you’re reading. The kind of OMG I was supposed to be judging this (oops, classifying based on merit) and not just slacking off reading and having a good laugh.
When I added it all up there really wasn’t a great deal of arithmetic between the pieces. There is a lot to like here, and as a collection there is a Luna Park Hall of Mirrors feel to it. It’s an urban, urbane, satiric, keithless (no Murdoch or Urban hegemony here), foodie, post apopo-lyptical, popularist, artie, punning, dark and murderous, with heritage incinerators, EPNS teaspoons, piss-taking shoe-footed Men of Stamina, ex-tram-ified dockland that goes via Belanglo, with Aunties, office-politics, outsourcing, flocking, code squares and transgenics. This small book, Stoned Crows & other Australian icons, has more plots turns than a packet of Twisties.
The winning story is Mark OFlynn’s Under the Maw of Luna Park, I penciled on the top, ‘Crazy Good’. This story has resonance, a lyric bravado, one-liners to kill for. It’s a madhouse trip of total sanity, and I would steal bits of it if it weren’t for All My Own Work software.
So Congratulations Mark O’Flynn and all those who wrote so well and so succinctly for this terrific collection! Bravo !
Carol Jenkins’ first book of poetry Fishing in the Devonian (Puncher & Wattmann, 2008) was short listed for the 2009 Anne Elder & Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Billy Collins, the former US Poet Laureate, says “Fishing in the Devonian is one of the most interesting books I have the pleasure of reading in some time. Every poem is lively with conceptual and emotional play.” In 2007 she established River Road Press (www.riverroadpress.net) which produces audio CDs of Australian poetry and blogs at www.showmethetreasure.blogspot.com. Her next book, Exit Speed is due out from Puncher &Wattmann late in 2013.
Stoned Crow: Caroline Reid
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
An idea to write a trilogy of 3 very short stories, each with a character called Michael in it. Could be the same Michael, or could be three different Michaels . This is the first story in that trilogy. There’s also a writing exercise I was thinking of where you tell a lie about yourself. So that inspired me to make the storyteller in ‘Custard’ a compulsive liar and I discovered fairly quickly he was a kid living in the suburbs, obsessed with famous American actors.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
A lot of intuition. I don’t have much structure before I begin writing. In ‘Custard’ I tapped into the voice of the narrator fairly quickly – what sort of stories he was telling about himself, (that’s not always the case, btw). Also, I was waiting for Michael to turn up in the story so I listened out for that character.
I start fairly broadly. Sometimes too broadly and I discover I’m trying to shove 2 or 3 stories in the one, so that involves some tricky decision making. Sometimes I narrow it down too quickly and need to go explore more, in a different scene or location –it’s like there’s something missing and I need to dig broader to find what it is.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
I don’t have any advice.
I tend towards symbolism in my titles.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Images. Other writers. Overheard conversation. Stories people tell me. Places. Dreams. People. Personal experience. I’m inspired by the idea of magic in reality.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
If I haven’t written for a while I just listen for a bit to the natter that’s going on in my mind and begin from there, just a writing ramble and often something turns up on the page that’s worth pursuing. Or I just begin by describing a place, opening up the senses, then focus on one thing in great detail and start to ask questions – why is this important? who does it belong to? Then someone enters that place – more questions: who are they? what is the first thing they do? what connection do they have to this place? what is about to happen?
Caroline Reid’s plays have been performed and published, as have her stories. She’s finishing off a first collection, Satisfied, and curates Spineless Wonders Presents … a short evening of tall stories at Adelaide’s Wheatsheaf Hotel. carolinereidwrites.blogspot.com.au
Spineless Wonders Presents … a short evening of tall stories.
“A reliably enchanting event … closer to New York’s Selected Shorts than anything else in Australia.” (Overland)
@ The Wheatsheaf Hotel, Thebarton, Adelaide
Short story readings at The Wheatsheaf Hotel in Adelaide where professional actors read work by contemporary Australian authors. These nights began in 2011, born out of a desire to bring people together and to provide a platform for new, quality Australian writing. Many of the writers are published by Spineless Wonders. Stories read so far include those by Jennifer Mills, Tom Cho, Ryan O’Neill, Julie Chevalier, Kim Westwood, Josephine Rowe, A S Patric, Cameron Raynes and Shady Cosgrove. Actors include Emma Beech, Craig Behenna, Patrick Frost, Tamar Lee, Holly Myers and Hew Parham.
Stoned Crow: Barrie Walsh
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
Inspiration for Howbeit I Howszat came from Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival 2013 at the time of writing to Stoned Crows.
2.Tell us about your process. Take us through an example if you want.
My thought process is lateral. I definitely research. I do a lot of editing. I work intuitively, although it’s not pure as such. My hunches over-indulge in conspiracy.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
None… I don’t consider myself a writer.
Note: I include some background that may or may not be relevant.
For 20-years I’d an studio architectural practice in New Zealand & so also wrote specifications, during which I did architectural competitions, practical [winner gets commission ] & theoretical [winner & also ran get prestige for future clients ].
Architecture has a story. Its blurb is the written brief. Architect as narrator flushes it out into a story. The architect’s POV is restricted by the aim to satisfy the client, who controls the plot & much of the themes & dialogue.
Practical architecture comes with a brief & so the above allegory applies, but theoretical architecture is more arbitrary in every respect, so my technical writing branched into writing briefs etc. as both architect & client.
Cut to the chase: my business failed after years of highs & lows such is the bust & boom building industry & I’d gone off on a tangent of conspiracy architecture.
I moved to Australia in 1997 & concentrating on theoretical architecture, over the last few years I started entering writing competition & submitting to writing outlets, furthering the above storyboard.
As to you question: first & last lines are important, as is the title & everything else; like a plan evolves from concept, thru sketches to working drawing & then into the built world with refinement throughout.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I’ve always read both fact & fiction & continue to do so. Like there’s a lot good & some great buildings about with much dross, so is literature – I include all popular genres in this, as that’s where most of my favourite writers are classified.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
I’ve no answer to this question. Don’t give up is seems too obtuse.
Barrie Walsh is a fruitpicker in Griffith NSW writing a collection of short stories & the ocassional poem on conspiracy architecture under the working title Noctural U-Turn Suite [NUTS]. A handful of stories & one poem have been published. He has a misguided background in both practical & theoretical architecture. He is published in Cordite and Mary: a journal of new writing (forthcoming).
Stoned Crow: Paul Mitchell
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
‘The Veteran’ came out of a number of dream sequences I’d written that formed part of a novel. Now in about its sixth draft. I no longer needed them in the novel, but I always liked them. I decided to play around with joining them together, condensed, into a dreamy prose poem. ‘The Old Man and the Pool’ came out of an experience I had at the pool, strangely enough. And I wanted to play with The Old Man and the Sea in a contemporary context then blow it all apart with some bicycle references.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
I don’t write a lot of prose poetry or microfiction. But if they come that way I don’t hold them back. Just let them be themselves.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Again, I don’t have any advice about this kind of writing. Except to say that if it takes this form, let it. Don’t let a good piece of writing become ordinary by trying to force it to fit another form.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
When it comes to prose poetry, Charles Simic, Charles Wright and Kevin Brophy work this territory with aplomb. Simic, especially, makes me want to argue with him, in a cheeky way, with a prose poem fired in his direction.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
I remember not being able to write poetry after my first book came out. I panicked. Then I realized I had about nine voices in my head. So I let them argue and then melded most of what they had to say into the poems for my second book. I should have called it a Univocal Decadron, not Awake Despite the Hour.
Paul Mitchell has published a short story collection, Dodging the Bull (Wakefield Press) and two collections of poetry, Awake Despite the Hour (Five Islands Press) and Minorphysics (IP). paul-mitchell.com.au
Stoned Crow: Anna Kerdijk Nicholson
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?There were a number of inspirations for these prose poems.
‘At Sculpture by the Sea’ is probably self-explanatory. It was a damaging experience in many ways.
‘The Mind Travels’ was my awareness that the mind goes as the speed of light, but the pen travels slower and that the disjunction is constant. I decided to record just one complete disjunction. It seemed to me that trout were a rather lovely image for the wriggling and beauteous operation of the mind which I experience as three-dimensional, not linear.
‘Diurnal: Slurry Heights’ was my first attempt to record my daily experience of living in Surry Hills in Sydney. I lived there for 11 years, the longest period I lived anywhere in my life. I couldn’t understand, before writing this poem under self-imposed compulsion, why I had not written about my ‘diurnal’ experience before. I’m still not clear because it’s a wonderfully diverse community.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
For these prose poems, I worked at them in stages. Initially, I poured detail into my journal, longhand, and then selected phrases which I thought most telling. A fluent response to the subject, followed by a refining process, helps me when I am crafting a prose poem. It is a different process from other forms of free verse poems. Generally, I allow myself a lighter touch with prose poems—I may use speech rhythms and syntax; or experiment by removing all indefinite articles; or mash images and let the flow-on of the lines influence the meaning.
If I am disciplined, I might catch a rainbow trout on the page and if I’m a good journeyman, I’ll skin and fillet it adequately. Sometimes, the product is thought worth preserving (pickled, dried, smoked?) [Was that a dad-joke metaphor?]
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Hard question. It’s a very sensitive and important thing, the first and last line question, not that you think about it overtly while you are writing. However, they — and the title — are very important to the editing process, I find. There are no rules, so far as I’m aware, but there are many things to be tried out. Sometimes ‘title’ is about theme or grand statement, other times it’s about obliquity or intimation; the last line/lines are about suggestion, other times about resolution, others about perception. It’s not possible to be legalistic about them. It’s a matter of tone, purpose, subtlety.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I could go on for about a month. Charles Wright, Federica Garcia Lorca and The King James Bible all send me into fits of creativity. Solitude and simplicity. Poetry which I read in journals, saturating myself in entire books – reading from cover to cover and re-reading; reading articles in journals, essays, attending poetry events at writers festivals. Poetics papers given on panels … for some reason they are catalytic. I find the original synaptic connections which spark my poems are fleeting, that they are easily silenced or noised-out by everyday city life. To capture them I carry a notebook. After a weekend in the country where I have started to attend to the ideas and to heed the excitement of them coming up to the surface, I drive home and have to pull into the side of the road about 5 or more times, slam on the handbrake and pull out the notebook and start scribbling. As far as I’m concerned, this is a state of ecstasy. Cheap, huh?
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
Oh yes, I know this so well! To quieten the self-critic, I use the classic journal writing exercise. It’s more fun done with a writer-friend in a café (and dispels neurosis) but works solo too. I focus on each sense in turn and record without stopping what the sense is reporting to me about the world. I might allow myself a time in which to complete the work. I don’t change what I’ve written, I don’t edit it, I don’t worry about gaps in the information-feed coming through, my aim is just to keep being a channel for the sense’s report and always to keep writing, until the time is up. Then I turn the page and go on to the next exercise. I try not to judge myself or the product, just take pleasure in the process. If I’m with someone who enjoys doing these exercises, we may read our work aloud to each another (it’s very interesting hearing the product of the other person’s senses given the same environment and we will often be able to surprise ourselves with the quality of what we are reading/listening to). I do a couple of these before then giving myself a long, long time to continue to write—I might open a book, close my eyes and stab the pen or pencil on the page. Wherever it lands, I transcribe a phrase into my journal and then start with this phrase and write for a given period of time, say 20 mins, or for 3 full pages of the journal. Just the same as the sensory exercise, no stopping, no scratching out, no editing.
It is, of course, an artificial technique. However, be amazed by where your brain has led you by the time you are on that third page.
Anna Kerdijk Nicholson’s second collection of poetry, Possession (Five Islands Press, 2010) won the 2010 Victorian Premier’s C J Dennis Prize and the 2010 Wesley Michel Wright Prize and was shortlisted for both the 2011 ACT Judith Wright Poetry Prize and the 2011 NSW Premier’s Prize for poetry. Her first book of poetry, The Bundanon Cantos, was a Sydney Morning Herald Best Book of 2003. She was a committee member of the Poets Union Inc (NSW) and co-edited its journal, Five Bells. She was born in England, lives in Sydney, works in law and is a director of Australian Poetry.
Stoned Crow: Mark O’Flynn
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Stoned Crows & other Australian icons?
I had collected a bunch of short aphorisms over several years that appealed to me. These took the form of pearls of wisdom from a range of different sources, including philosophy, haiku, other poets and many others. I was wondering what to do with them, then, during a dry spell, I thought I would rewrite them, distort and otherwise try to engage in a little private dialogue with them.
2. Tell us about your process. (Do you start sparse and widen out, or do you write down every possible association and cut back? Do you research the subject matter you are writing about? Is it pure intuition?) Take us through an example if you want.
Usually I start fast, then slow down. Initial speed, once the idea strikes, is important for getting the basic bones down, then I go through a long process of adding, revising, taking away, layering. This case was different however. Here it was a gradual gestation. Collecting the aphorisms felt more intuitive than anything like research, and I think too much research for me tends to stifle the idea. So how much research would I ever do? Just enough. In this case the idea of the dialogue with the aphorisms was a vague and amorphous one. It was never all that clear in my mind what I was doing. For example I used Chekhov’s last words (‘It’s been so long since I tasted champagne’). I then rewrote, or rather bounced off this and all of the other sayings so as to personalize them, and sometimes invert them perhaps to suggest the opposite. Plus I added in a few of my own in the hope it might all hang together. You can see how I have completely distorted Chekhov’s words, and most of the others you wouldn’t be able to pick from the original, so much so that I’ve forgotten where they came from. I’d have to go and look. Here’s one: the first sentence derives from a Zen saying: ‘Leap and the net will appear.’ Much better than my line.
3. What advice do you have for other writers ? about the first or last line? About how to choose the title? Do you follow any rules?
Again, probably intuition. Trust the gut, trust the ear. Does it feel right? Read; read more would be the single most valuable piece of advice you can say to anyone. As Mark Twain said: He who does not read has no advantage over he who can not. Something like that. As for titles, I find if they don’t come instantly, then they can be hard work. Often the title is buried somewhere within the piece. If I have any rules I try regularly to break them. I’m also aware of trying not to repeat myself (too much).
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
That’s harder, and I think it changes all the time. Paintings, other writers are always good to kick start a piece of writing. Inspiration is a bit of a loaded word, so I probably think more in terms of what gives the impetus. Often this is a small thing; a fleeting image, an overheard line, an anecdote picked up from somewhere. In the other piece in Stoned Crows I read the line in Song of Songs – ‘How graceful are your feet in sandals’ and I thought why just sandals? and started thinking about shoes. I don’t know why, but the line appealed to me. I’m getting better at writing the idea down straight away, but it’s not always possible.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
Apart from using the above kick-starters (reading, looking at paintings etc) I would recommend going for a walk. If ever I get stuck with something, or as you say, want to get started again, I go for a walk and by the time I get back the problem is often solved, or else I’ve seen something interesting that feeds what I’ve been thinking about. I suppose it’s a way of subverting a linear way of thinking, of getting out of my head.
An exercise I find useful is the acrostic form. It’s mechanical, but can lead to some interesting discoveries and can be as simple or complex as you like.
Changing the tense is also a useful exercise.
Mark O’Flynn lives in the Blue Mountains. After studying at the Victorian College of the Arts, and working for a number of years in the theatre where several plays were produced, Mark turned to fiction and also poetry. A first collection of poems The Too Bright Sun was published in 1996. A second book of poems The Good Oil was published in 2000. What Can Be Proven, a third collection of poems was published in 2007. A selection of these poems, Falling Awake, was published by Picaro Press in 2010. He won Third Prize in the 2012 Newcastle Poetry Prize.
His short stories, articles, reviews, and poems have appeared in a wide range of journals and magazines both here and overseas. Grassdogs was published in 2006 after winning the Harper Collins/Varuna manuscript prize. False Start, A Memoir of things Best Forgotten, is published by Finch Publishing and his latest new novel, The Forgotten World, is published by Fourth Estate/HarperCollins Australia.
This entertaining collection includes a romp of a novella called The Rattler, as well as short stories and micro fictions all set in and around contemporary Melbourne. Sometimes serious, sometimes seriously playful –always written in breathtakingly beautiful prose – these stories uncover the heartbreaking tragedies, slow-burning emotions and serendipity of ordinary lives.
Cover image by Miles Allinson, illustrated by Miles Allinson & Maxine Beneba Clarke
Praise for The Rattler & other stories:
“Spare and taut, sometimes tricky, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply and satisfyingly tender. A great collection.”
Paddy O’Reilly.
“An explosive mix of muscular prose and sharp originality. In this collection, A. S. Patric proves himself to be a writer who must be taken very seriously.” Vanessa Gebbie, author of Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story.
“A.S. Patric is that rarest of writers- he is absolutely fearless. His stories take risks, his characters soar and his prose sings. Be careful. These stories might cut you.” Ryan O’Neill.
In Permission to Lie, Julie Chevalier casts a curious eye into many different worlds. Her characters ride the citybound bus route, spend the night in a nudist colony and wait tables. Quirky and beautifully-written, these stories provide insights that ring with integrity and compassion.
‘A new voice in Australian fiction, wry, gritty, knowing and true.’
Fiona McGregor, Indelible Ink
Read an interview with the author, here.
What makes a man?
In this collection of short stories, Pierz Newton John moves through the full range of masculine experience, with an openness not afraid to show men at their most lonely, sexual, loving, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes abusive. First touch of a woman’s body in a cold and foreign land, tender moments between father and son, the deep love of a father separated from his child, treachery and opportunism mixed up with loneliness and internet dating, the casual violence of young boys exploring the world, rites of passage from young rebels to comfortable suburbanites, and what men feel and think about women. In Pierz Newton John’s stories it always come back to emotion?tenderness with children, warmth with wives after dreams of alienation, the pain of treacherous girlfriends, the loneliness of men. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose…….the reader is lulled by the seamless prose, undercurrents of contemporary music, the urbane writing, the suburban settings, but it is all happening behind closed doors.
Read an interview with the author, here
Purchase a copy, here.
In these seventeen stories, Melbourne writer, Mary Manning, looks at the ways people are shaped, or damaged, by their circumstances. The results may sometimes be humorous, sometimes tragic. Whether set on a tram, along a highway or on an outback road?it is the journey, the characters and the telling of the tale that will capture your attention.
Cover and illustrations by Paden Hunter
‘Mary Manning takes her stories to places few writers would dare to go. She ranges across different styles with ease in a unique voice that is tart, tight and compulsively readable.’ PADDY O’REILLY
Read our interview with the author, Mary Manning here
To purchase, click here
If you like your genres with a bit of edge, you’ll love this diverse collection of stories from Spineless Wonders.
Features award-winning writers such as Ryan O’Neill, Jen Mills, Andy Kissane, Louise Swinn, Julie Chevalier, A.S. Patric and Kim Westwood as well as stories chosen by Sophie Cunningham in the inaugural Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award.
Contains illustrations by talented young artist, Paden Hunter.
‘Quality short fiction, packed with surprises. Prepare to be transported.’ Marion Halligan
Purchase here
Read interviews with our contributors, here.
Listen to audio samples here.
An anthology of prose poems and microfiction from 30 Australian writers.
- Includes award-winning writers Michael Farrell, Keri Glastonbury, Judith Beveridge and Peter Boyle.
- Features prose poems and microfiction selected by competition judge, joanne burns.
- Cover and evocative sketches by talented artist, Paden Hunter.
- Read interviews with our contributors here
- Click here to here audio
To purchase, click here
Escape audio stories Vol. 2
Playlist
Those Gauls Must Be Crazy – Claire Aman 14:36
The End of the Beginning – Meredyth Cilento 25:50
Poioumenon – John Steiner 8:22
The Gardener – Susan McCreery 21:50
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD click here. Also available as mp3.
Escape – audio stories Vol. 1
Playlist
Paper Anniversary – SJ Finn/JR Davidson 19:35
Under the Skin – Sue Booker 21:39
Unnameable – M. Giacometti 20:14
Home – Yin Lin 13:36
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD, click here. Also available as mp3.
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