small wonder prose poems & micro fiction
small wonder
an anthology of prose poems and micro fiction
Is it a prose poem? Or poetic prose? Perhaps it’s postcard fiction or sudden prose. A vignette or a monologue. SPINELESSWONDERS invites you to break some rules. Try a little genre-bending. Let the line break take a stroll through the streets and fields of prose and surprise us with edgy, unexpected moments.
We are excited to have announced our new competition at Australian Poetry’s Symposium held in Newcastle this past weekend.
The competition will be judged by Sydney-based poet, joanne burns whose latest collection of poems, amphora, was published by Giramondo earlier this year. When asked what qualities she would be looking for, joanne said,’ Small and stealthy.’
So there you have it. Entries will be welcome from October 16, via this website and we are looking forward to reading lots of innovative writing. Check our Submissions page for further details
small wonder: Charles D’Anastasi
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in small wonder?
I like to build poems out of small incidents that take place around me. ‘Madame Bovary’ grew out of such an incident. During a poetry reading while listening to one of the poets, I became aware of the sound of horses’ hoofs and the accompanying noise of carriage wheels (the horse and carriage experience that’s seems to attract certain tourists) coming through one of the open windows. I stopped listening properly to the poet reading, although I still registered all sorts of minute details of the proceedings inside the room. Because of the sound of the horse’s hoofs, I gradually started to make a connection with the present and with that famous scene in the book. This connection made such an impression on me that I felt I had to try to write something about it.
2. Tell us about that 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 do start in a small way. I might have one central idea and try to build around it. Often, I find that this isn’t enough – a dead end. I might leave the piece for a few days, perhaps even weeks or months. Sometimes, I abandon it. On other occasions, when I feel that something is working well I persist. I take notes. I try to think of different lines that might propel the piece forward. It might go either way – persistence or abandonment. I do try to research the subject matter, especially if historical details are involved. Intuition comes into it of course. Surely, this has something to do with the writer taking some risks, looking for possibilities in all sorts of places. Ultimately, for me, the process involves a lot of coming and going, a lot of rewriting and discarding of some troublesome word, or even an entire piece of writing. Also, I find that sometimes insightful comments from members of the writing group I belong to are a great benefit.
Repeatedly, I find myself working in terms of associations with objects. For example, I wrote a prose piece about a small photograph of a young woman that I found in a park on one of my walks. What happened, sent me to another photograph related story of a relative, which I interweaved with the story of the found photograph. Each episode helped me link both stories, and hopefully come up with a finished piece that deals in a satisfying way with the idea of rejected or lost images.
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?
Once, I heard a poet say that there are times when the title of a poem (I suppose this also relates to other forms of writing) is a poem in itself. In other words the title has a life of its own, while at the same time it must make one feel that it’s doing something special to enhance the rest of the writing.
In regards to first lines, I think one of the most obvious rules is that these lines must really hold the reader’s attention. At the same time, rules can be bent or stretched. One could start in a very simple and innocuous way; for example, ‘It was always going to be blue…’ and then try to build on that simplicity – and somehow find a way to get under the skin of the reader.
Last lines are just as vital. They seem to work best when they clinch a situation – perhaps leaving you agitated or numb, or pondering; possibly, even feeling disgusted, which would always be preferable, to leaving you feeling indifferent.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Everything and everyone around me inspires what I write. Everyday domestic incidents, news items, snatches of overhead conversations. It’s all there in the hard rubbish collection of everyday living. I’m sure that the most wonderful treasures are just there for the taking. And of course constant reading and pouring over all sort of books. I do believe that ultimately writing and reading feed off each other.
Over the years, the writers that have inspired me are the ones whose imagination, vision and writing skills have really moved me and stayed with me, writers like Alice Munro, Borges Julio Cortazar and Marina Tsvetaeva. Also the writing of Lydia Davis, joanne burns and Emma Lew. Of the new writers, I feel that Karen Hitchcock’s writing stands out. And I keep going back to the prose poems of Gary Catalano, for their clarity, yet enigmatic insinuations, and the marble sheen quality of their stillness.
5. Tell us what do 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?
Often, when I’m stuck, I go to my notes. I’ll try to revive a piece I might have discarded, try different angles, with a word or a phrase. I find that I get many of my ideas for writing when I go for walks. Most of the time I find that walking has a calming effect on me, and creates a rhythm that puts my mind at ease and free to roam and explore. Afterwards, I might jot down a few exploratory sentences, with the hope that I can expand them into something meaningful and cohesive.
When it comes to writing poetry, which is my main interest, sometimes I try to get going by writing in some specific form, like the pantoum, which because of its repetitive line structure, provides one with a bit of a challenge, and the impetus to come up with the next line.
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I really don’t think that I have a particular writing exercise that always works for me. My own writing seems to be the result of any combination of the above, with an emphasis on persistence, revising and searching.
Charles D’Anastasi is a Melbourne poet. His work has been published in various literary journals. His chapbook The unreliable harbour was published by the Melbourne Poets Union. Recently, his prose poem The Weaver was selected as part of the program The Ariadne Project, based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne and Theseus, on the ABC 360 Documentaries.
Like to hear Charles read his prose poem, Madame Bovary? Available as audio download here.
Spineless Wonders asks Kent MacCarter
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/micro-fiction which is published in Small Wonder?
For ‘Light Foxing’, it was a confluence of events and pet likes. I think similar to most people interested in books-as-artefacts, I’m agog for the crumbling, musty hardbacks that line both the shelves of discerning antiquarian bookseller and bargain bins at naive opp shops. My first Australian whiff of foxing came while I was perusing a hoity-toity little ‘shoppe’ in Lorne, Victoria where salty, coastal air meets with brittle pages. And, oh! The foxing that was afoot in many of their volumes was rampant (heavy foxing, you might say). It was there I saw a fully foxed Bible; New Testament even.
I’ve been quite smitten with the term ‘light foxing’ for some time now. And I have always been partial to animals-as-nouns-or-verbs in the English lexicon: quit horsing around; are you fishing for a compliment; well then, you’ll have to pony up another twenty dollars; no, only you can ferret out the truth; go ape shit then. It’s one of my goals to start a new definition for ‘mongoose’, but so far nothing’s worked out for me.
Last year I ran across a brief article on what chemically occurs during the foxing process, why it occurs, how long it takes and in what conditions, etc. The degradation of fibers and chemicals got me thinking about literacy and education. I end the piece with a somewhat unnecessary slam again Wyoming – the least populated US state – for two reasons. First, while Wyoming was the state that wouldn’t get off Teddy Roosevelt’s back to enact Yellowstone National Park (the world’s first so recognised), was the first US state to allow women to vote far before any other and is the current home of Annie Proulx – all very good things – Wyoming also gave the world Dick Cheney and bred the despicable Matthew Shepard affair. Second, ‘Light Foxing’ is prose, but my lines breaks and lengths were calculated. I needed a place name or state that I knew enough about that was exactly 7 characters to fill a space just so. I find odd restrictions like this can occasionally help make a good poem.
2. Tell us about that 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 I did a bit of research, although nary an iota compared to what Proulx does for her novels and stories. This piece arrived relatively in-tact. Not sure how my obsession with trains winnowed its way into the words, but it fit the long and winding chemical process and the topography of Wyoming. If Wyoming, jagged chunk of land that it is, was a book, it’d be a Steinbeck tome with all the characters transmogrified into natural elements like trees, petrified trees, water sheds, feral weeds and native wolverines. Perhaps Of Mice and Men with nary a mouse nor man to be found amongst the pages, only the slow jujitsu of boulders, their glaciers and the grassy plains which once was an over-written description of a haircut.
Many of the poems I write are offshoots of something I am fussing over … fussing over to death. As I’ve said in other interviews, I call them ‘host’ poems. The ‘parasite’ poems that a host poem begets (which can be numerous) are typically my better efforts. ‘Light Foxing’ was absolutely a parasite poem. Oddly, I cannot even recall what catastrophe of letters was its primordial Jacuzzi.
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 a set of rules, but I advise any new writer to read Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town. It’s a collection of essays, largely centralised around the theme of his teaching creative writing for so many years, an occupation that he was quite renowned for. These are essays, distinctly not hokey how-to trumpetings.
I’m big on titles. Mine are generally ‘of’ and ‘about’ the poem that follows, but I try to put some thought or twist in them to accentuate or clue-in a reader on what’s coming next. I find they can be helpful preambles.
My only skerrick of advice – as I don’t feel to rest on any plinth with height enough for offering – is this: If you run across an event in your day that strikes you as one that you definitely must mine for a poem sometime, some day … it’s usually going to be rubbish. That and don’t force things out, expecting that which you are forcing to be genius. Writing exercises are great. They work. They can keep you sharp. Not always, but they can.
Six years ago I was on a tram in Melbourne, snaking through the CBD on Bourke Street. We stopped outside what was then Gaslight Records. There, kneeling on the kerb, crouched a corpulent man wearing a smock. His bald pate glistened. He had five one-litre bottles of Paul’s brand milk set out in front of him on the footpath like ten-pin bowling pins, each bottle equidistant from the others in a row of quintuplets. All the labels were facing the same way, outward. During the tram’s pause, I watched him unscrew the cap off the first bottle and slowly dribble its contents entirety over his head, the milk’s viscous jacket zipping all over his contours. Without flinching, he then reached for the second bottle and reenacted the cycle.
Methodically, fluidly, silently. Almost robotically? Yes.
The now-drenched man was reaching out for the third bottle as my tram pulled away. Nobody on the early week-day morning footpath seemed to notice; only me and another chap on the tram. We looked at each other in silent stupefaction. Occasionally, I wonder if what I’m telling you now actually happened … or if it was that a total stranger and I were locked inside somebody’s errant fetish or feral hallucination that simply escaped them like a cap in wind. But, I swear it’s true. And I thought that that event was one I would for sure write about. I never have. And won’t. It doesn’t need it and I know better now.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
My inspirations, if you can call them that, come via triggers (a term I freely co-opt from Hugo mentioned above). Mine are various inputs, oftentimes sound. The noise of cash register in a supermarket has triggered a poem. Listening to the album Z-Nation by Melbourne indie band Gaslight Radio, in conjunction with reading a book on population statistics, sewn together with a glass of tempranillo, catalyzed a poem in me about shipwrecks that eventually wound up in Best Australian Poetry 2009. There are occasions where I am reading – typically hefty ‘collecteds’ by O’Hara, Thom Gunn or Forbes as examples – where I am moved to jot some things down. I’d say my inspirations are fleeting.
5. Tell us what do 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?
Lately I have been shoehorning my jumpstarts into exercises with ever more stringent forms than the previous major effort. Most recently, I’ve had a go at producing a series of pantoums that also incorporate a rhyming pattern of quatrains. This is reasonably preposterous … but it has netted a few poems I rather like, some taken for publication.
Upcoming events and publications
I will be reading at the Makassar International Writers Festival, Indonesia, in early June of this year. I have recently become Managing Editor for Cordite Poetry Review with much exciting stuff to come there. I am also editing a collection of literary non-fiction memoir essays (themes based around expatriation) from a variety of writers not native to, but now living in and writing from Australia. It will be out with Affirm Press, in conjunction with Melbourne PEN, later this year.
Spineless Wonders asks Moya Costello
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
These were extracted from my unpublished PhD novella ‘Harriet Chandler’. The novella is a hybrid text of prose poem and prose fiction, but also in terms of content: art, ecocriticsm, fictional biography etc. I am very conscious of ecocriticism, or an ecological point of view in literature, because of the crises in climate and environment. Ecocriticism is a rising genre in the twenty-first century. I wanted to try my hand at it in ‘Slippery as a Fish’. I also adore the prose poem for its intensity and brevity, for its narrative and poetic language. ‘Travelling (East–West)’ is my attempt to make a prose poem from my old travel diary. The final piece ‘Australia: Terra Omnium’ is specifically related to Murray Bail’s Australian novel, Holden’s Performance. (Harriet Chandler is a minor character in that novel.) Bail lovingly critiques the white, Anglo-Australian male, and ends the novel in a kind of list that foregrounds Holden’s mechanical being. I wanted to end my novella in a list that celebrated Australia’s plurality and diversity.
2. Tell us about that 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 am a slow writer, like Bail, and I draft and re-draft a lot. I also work by imitation (intertextually). I love working with language over narrative/plot. That’s why I love the short forms. I do research.
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?
If you get the right first line, you are often away on a short piece. Listen to your voice, to what you are telling yourself about something. Generally speaking, short pieces work organically, coming to their own ‘natural’ end. When you have a larger piece of work, you need to work from the top down, imposing structure from above, otherwise the work gets out of hand. I love titles. Often there’s one somewhere in the piece. But you may have to choose one that is indicative of the piece, while also enticing, so that the reader enters the work desirously.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
My pieces for Spineless Wonders have been inspired by Murray Bail, and the prose poem as a form and writers of it, but also the need to write ecocritically, contributing, through art, to … saving the planet! I love the short forms: the novella, the prose poem. They work via intensity and resonance.
5. Tell us what do 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 read (not only fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction, but, say, New Scientist). Go to the theatre (even watch television). Listen to songs. Exercising, getting the body moving, is a great way to get inspiration. If you’re working steadily and consistently, which you should do, you are chock full of ideas, because one piece feeds another. Also, I am constantly on the look out for publishing opportunities, like Spineless Wonders, because they inspire you to think about … well, both topics/subject matter and genres/forms for work. I keep a hand-written journal, where I put down ideas, or actually start stories. Usually I write because I want to understand something, explain it to myself. Never throw anything away: there’s usually something, even a phrase, that can morph into a larger work. As well, sometimes it takes years to get the right angle on a piece, or find the right publication for it. Writing is hard work, but it’s also fun, a space to play, otherwise we’d never do it!
Moya Costello has published two collections of short creative prose and one novella. She teaches Writing in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Southern Cross University.
Spineless Wonders asks Adam Ford
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
I spent weeks walking past a poster for that Cowboys and Aliens film and I got to wondering why it is that in science fiction mashup movies the two cultures always have to be in conflict with each other (answer: it makes for a better action movie), but more than that I got to wondering what a movie where the two disparate cultures co-operated would be like. I thought it was a nice idea, and a good excuse to write about cowboys on the moon. Because: Cowboy on the Moon.
2. Tell us about that 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.
It actually started as a tweet – the first line (including the title) is quite close to what I tweeted, but the idea stuck with me, and I got the itch to expand it. So I did.
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?
Don’t be afraid to delete first lines. Even if they’re the first line you had the idea for. ESPECIALLY if they’re the first line you had the idea for. Same goes for last lines. And all the lines in between. You’d be amazed what can happen to a poem when you delete your favourite line.
Re: titles, I’m no help. They always come last and I often just cop out and make the first line the title, or repeat a phrase that I like from within the poem. The only rule that I apply to the poems I write is that they have to have the key to understanding it somewhere within itself. Sometimes I break that rule, though.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Too many things to write down in a way that doesn’t just seem like a list that is intended to make me sound clever. But maybe, if I ran that risk, I’d say something like pulp fiction, love, curiosity and pedantry. And a predilection for talking bullshit.
5. Tell us what do 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 read. I read my favourite authors, but it doesn’t have to be my favourite authors. Just reading anything gets the cogs turning, but poetry in particular is quite inspirational for the act of writing poetry.
I don’t think I have a FAVOURITE writing exercise, but I do like mashing two disparate things together to see if they can stand up independently, like villanelles and piranha movies, or sonnets and internet memes. Or aliens and cowboys, I guess.
Adam Ford is the author of one novel, three poetry collections and one short story collection, all of which can be sampled at his website, theotheradamford.wordpress.com. He lives in Chewton.
Spineless Wonders asks Anna Couani
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
The piece called The Old Manuscript was inspired by two things, one was a sculpture I saw in the 2012 Sculpture by the Sea show in Bondi and the other was thoughts about an unfinished manuscript I started writing many years ago which is partly about the Greek Australian community in Sydney in the 1960′s.
2.Tell us about that 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 always start with an idea and start researching it. In this case I started researching the sculpture 11:11 and the topic that the sculptor used. Initially I just liked the appearance of the sculpture but I found that the sculptor saw the work as having a particular numerological significance so then I followed that trail and found it led to some unusual political activists who were operating in the 1960′s.They entertained various political conspiracy theories and this reminded me of the fiction manuscript I had started that is loosely about the infiltration of the Sydney Greek community by ASIO. I widen my possibilities initially but write quite sparsely, then edit, mostly by deletion. You can also write a piece as prose and then change it into poetry or vice versa.
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 follow any rules. You might start with something but then start moving parts of the piece around or deleting things. Each piece of writing has it’s own shape. A title can be anything you want but I think it should have some connection to the piece. But after you’ve been writing for a while, you tend to repeat patterns of behaviour or writing processes. I need for my pieces to have some kind of odd connections.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
The idea for writing can come from anywhere but I think that other writers or film makers are the most useful source of ideas. I always start with ideas and tend to think formally, even if some content I use has emotive qualities. I think it’s necessary to be able to step back from your work to be able to edit it.
5. Tell us what do 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 don’t do writing exercises but I do give them to my students. One nice exercise is to take a line from somewhere, some poem or other text. I tell them to use the line in a prose piece. Sometimes I give them another variable like a journey or some change. The students have produced some very nice results that I wouldn’t call exercises but would call pieces of writing. For myself, I can write on demand but the thinking processes require time and sometimes full time work gets in the road. I spend masses of time reading student texts and sometimes need a break from print.
Anna Couani is a Sydney writer and secondary ESL teacher. Her most recent book, Small Wonders Flying Islands Press, Macao (2012), is poetry with Chinese translations and drawings by Sou Vai Keng. Her previously published work is at: http://seacruise.ath.cx/annacouani/
Spineless Wonders asks Stu Hatton
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
‘meds’ I wrote a few weeks after I began taking a medication for depression and anxiety.
‘refuse’ arose from some diary-like jottings in my notebook. It was begun many years ago and has been chipped away at, smoothed and roughed up again over time.
2.Tell us about that 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.
When writing prose poems, I tend to put sentences together like building blocks. I like playing with permutations of sentences within a paragraph. It’s partly trial and error.
Both ‘meds’ and ‘refuse’ are attempts at paratactic writing (from Greek, parataxis, ‘placing side by side’) with narrative threads running through them. In other words, these poems were written as a series of discrete sentences, and the arrangement of sentences within a paragraph became a focal point of the writing/editing process. Sometimes I like to work against the grain of traditional storytelling or rhetorical conventions, and experiment with structuring paragraphs so that the ‘link’ between one sentence and the next is oblique or lateral. I’d like to think that both of these prose poems are mosaic-like, non-linear, cumulative.
I don’t intend for these poems to be cryptic (or at least, not like a cryptic crossword is cryptic). But maybe they’re crypt-like in the sense that they’re weird archives of body and mind.
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?
First and last lines can be ‘fetishised’ in various ways, and I suspect this influences the writing (and reading) process.
For instance, it could be remarked that the first line is an opening: a door, a portal, a gate, a window … an orifice of some kind? Or it could be said that the first line is sometimes the most deceptive line.
In all honesty, I’m probably a bit obsessed with opening lines.
As for last lines, well, let’s be a bit pretentious and say the last line is a death, a disappearing, a farewell, another dissolving of consciousness.
I have no set rules for titles. Sometimes the title comes first, sometimes last. Sometimes changing the title can transform a poem, shifting agendas, or perhaps shifting genders?!
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
So many people, so many things. Maybe if I had to give a one-word answer I’d say ‘interrelationships’. But that’s probably a bit of a cop-out.
Sometimes I write poems for friends, as gifts. I think there’s something worth contemplating in this notion of writing as a gift, an act of giving (or gifting). Though a poem can be just as much an act of taking … But if a poet writes a poem as a gift, perhaps it takes on elements of writing a letter or postcard to someone, or whispering in someone’s ear, or making them a pair of shoes, or compiling a mixtape.
Perhaps the poem is also received by the poet as a gift, or a series of gifts, and then the poet passes the gift(s) on. It is a spreading of gifts. Or who knows, in some cases, the spreading of a curse? (if you believe in curses). Certainly parts of the poetry scene could be described as a gift economy … there are probably a few curses circulating too …
5. Tell us what do 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?
Grab a bunch of books from a bookshelf. Stack them in a pile. Then take the book that’s sitting at the top of the pile, and turn to a page at random. Write down the first word or phrase that hits you. Then place that book down, starting a second pile. Then take the next book from your original pile, turn to a page at random, write down the first word or phrase that hits you, then place the book on the second pile. Repeat until all the books from the first pile are now in the second pile. Check the words and phrases you’ve jotted down. Do any of them seem to link in interesting ways? Could some (or all) of these words and phrases spark a poem? Use these jottings as your starting point. If you get stuck, you can always work through your pile of books again, repeating the same process as before. Or choose some different books to ‘sample’ from if you like. You could try choosing books that might make for interesting juxtapositions, or choosing on the basis of the type of language or vocabulary they contain. Of course, feel free to modify any of your ‘sampled’ phrases to suit your poem. Gather, assemble, transform. Hopefully it’ll be the start of something.
Stu Hatton is a Melbourne-based poet and editor who teaches writing and editing at Deakin University. His debut collection, How to be Hungry, is available through http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/stuhatton
Spineless Wonders asks Jo Langdon
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
I can’t remember a particular moment of inspiration, but I suppose the story ‘Pause’ formed around ideas about memory and absence, and the accumulation of a few images: bits of gravel and Redhead matches, tree frogs and tropical fruits, blue kitchen tiles and chandelier glass.
2. Tell us about that 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 usually start sparse, with an idea or collection of images at most. Most of what I’ve written lately is very short; my recent short stories tend to resemble vignettes or episodes. I usually write in fragments, incrementally, and yet there’s always room to cut back. I definitely value concision, but it’s something I have to work at, too.
Like most pieces, ‘Pause’ has been through a number of mutations. The first draft was written an embarrassingly long time ago, and this particular piece is an offcut from a longer narrative. The two stories have since gone separate ways. Like estranged family members, or ex lovers, to throw in a dubious metaphor.
As for research, I guess it depends on your subject, but of course it’s really important for authenticity’s sake. Especially if you’re writing something that engages with an historical event, a specific time or place. For me it usually comes back to reading a wide range of texts, then figuring out what else needs to be explored, or what needs to be explored further.
How to go about including research, and ideally without being too deliberate, too hackneyed or too obvious, is something more intuitive again, I guess.
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 think I’m in a position to offer advice to other writers. But like most readers, I really savour those striking first and last lines. And perfect titles. Any writing that’s good and memorable, really. So I’m grateful to those writers whose work I will return to again and again, for whatever reasons.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Things I read, see, hear. Poetry, short stories, novels, works of non-fiction. Films, visual art, and music. History. Postcards and souvenirs. Childhood memories, and misremembered memories; ideas about memory and absence. Travel, as well as the places I’ve lived, and the place I live now.
Anything can provide inspiration, of course, but I think reading widely definitely continues to improve my writing!
5. Tell us, what do 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’m usually working to a deadline, and can’t afford to stop for too long. My poetry manuscript had a deadline last year; my PhD thesis has one fast approaching. Admittedly, I’m a bit hopeless when it comes to meeting them, but there is always a timeframe, a sense of something ticking, ticking.
If I really can’t stare at the computer screen any longer, I read. Then I’ll form a response to what I’ve been reading, even if it takes quite a different direction.
Walking is always great, too. For whatever reason, ideas seem more likely to magically arrive when I’m walking – or any time I don’t have a pen and paper at hand…c’est la vie!
Jo Langdon lives in Geelong where she is currently completing postgraduate studies at Deakin University. A chapbook of her poems, Snowline, was recently published by Whitmore Press.
Spineless Wonders asks Keri Glastonbury
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
I was travelling in China and India in 2009. After many years of teaching creative writing and facilitating other students’ work I felt very unsure of myself as a poet, but could feel myself being stimulated again by cultural differences and displacement. I had an Asialink Residency in Shimla and had never travelled to either India or China before, so was keen to get some contemporary cultural experience of these two countries that dominate the Australian media in terms of their emerging economies.
2.Tell us about that 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.
My poems are like chimney-sweeps, dumps of ash which are the remnants of thoughts that flared and then disappeared. I have lost control of lineation so the prose poem suits me well. I’m a poet who really wants to be an essayist, but instead of a Rebecca Solnit-style essay manuscript I came back to Australia with some dense prose poems, hybrid oxymorons.
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’m not very interested in conventionally well-crafted poems, and instead privilege sensibility. The poems are a matrix of a moment, but also remainders that allow me to remember how it felt to be on the cusp of something that felt alive and dynamic enough to want to transcribe it aesthetically. My poems are moments of synthesis and response to the world around me, which necessarily can’t be synthesized coherently.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Most of my poems are discontinuous dialogues with friends, even though the people who inspired them may not respond to the format of the poem at all.
5. Tell us what do 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 constantly facilitate writing exercises for my students, but I doubt I would respond to any form of organized writing prompts. I guess I don’ t practice what I preach!
Keri Glastonbury is a lecturer in Creative Writing at The University of Newcastle. Her poetry collection ‘grit salute’ will be published in 2012 by SOI3.
Audio files of Keri reading her Small Wonder’s prose poems are available here, on our Audio page.
Spineless Wonders asks Laurie Steed
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
There’s been much written about love being either romantic or dystopic, or first one and then the other. I wanted to explore the idea of love occurring at the end of a relationship; how trust, quite often, comes in letting go rather than holding on.
2. Tell us about that 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.
In But what have you done lately? I guess it was pure intuition. I usually write much longer stories. In this case I wanted to distill the emotion of a particularly pivotal experience while still honouring extraneous words, phrases and images that formed the narrative. In point, everything remotely related to the story felt vital in capturing a place, a time, and a series of overarching emotions.
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‘m hesitant to offer any advice to writers other than to trust their own intuition. The craft of writing takes time but can most certainly be developed; a willingness to go deep is more difficult to foster. It relies, first and foremost, on a great deal of emotional honesty with oneself. Writing, in this regard, is both its own punishment and reward as one seeks a greater truth or series of truths.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I’m inspired by any writer willing to be vulnerable on the page. While many of these writers are women (Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Miranda July, and Kate Cole-Adams), contemporary male writers such as Sherman Alexie, Etgar Keret, Tom Cho, and Patrick Cullen are also willing to expand upon notions of gender identity rather than relying on stereotypes. By opening up to their own flaws and insecurities, these writers inspire me to do the same. Ultimately, I guess it’s about compassion: a willingness to both read and write with acceptance rather than judgment.
5. Tell us what do 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?
For me the same exercise has fuelled countless stories, and it is, “I remember.” My initial recollection soon morphs into something else: a series of people, places, and feelings I’m unable to forget. From there I’m (thankfully) taken away from my small sense of self into a fictional context. I’m not sure how or why this works; I think it’s because I give myself permission to write without too much evaluation during what’s essentially the creative process. In a way, I’m tricking my inner critic to drop the ball for long enough for me to get a story onto the page. Once that’s done, the critic’s more than happy to guide me through the subsequent redrafts…
Often it’s enough to give yourself permission: to tell yourself that your writing is wanted and appreciated. People will tell you otherwise, that writing is at best a hobby, at worst a distraction. These people have no vision, and while I’m sure they’re lovely, they simply don’t understand what it means to be a writer.
As a writer, you do understand. Write, revise, make mistakes and most importantly, grant yourself both permission and patience to grow on your own terms, at your own pace.
Laurie Steed is a New Zealand born, Australian raised writer, editor and reviewer. He has appeared in various literary journals and is currently completing his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Western Australia.
You can listen to Laurie reading But what have you done lately? at Spineless Wonders Audio page.
Spineless Wonders asks Monica Goldberg
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/ micro fiction which is published in small wonder?
The realisation that I may never find the right words to describe my visit to Skierniewicza. My grandmother’s parents and siblings were victims of the holocaust. They simply vanished. I wanted to at least try to describe how I felt when I visited their town.
2. Tell us about the 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.
Before I left for my trip to Poland my grandmother gave me a Skierniewicza shtetl memorial book. The book contained a photo of my great grandmother. I wanted to find out what happened to her and this image became the focal point of my research. I eventually turned away from the research and looked for techniques to link the present with the past. I put the story aside and started to think about displacement and the power of the absurd.
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?
Set your direction but be prepared to change it. Perspective and distance is essential and I try to write the title as well as the first and last line after the story is complete. If I am not writing to a deadline I put the story away and come back to it later. If that is not possible, I create three or four versions of the same document then read them when I am away from the computer. I cannot explain the reason why, but this helps me get a sense of perspective. I always create documents that look professional and try to feel confident that they will find a home.
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I can still remember the days when I called my pets “Nately”, “Yossarian” and “Holden”and wrote “Sleep tight ya morons” on bathroom walls. Today, I am inspired by the elusive nature of truth and writers like Schulz, Borges, Camus, Duras and Stein. I am inspired by new forms and new codes. The relationship between politics and literature has always fascinated me and I am inspired by cultural reinvention and those who work towards conciliation. I am also inspired by marginal and disadvantaged writers. There is a lot of elitism and arrogance in the literary world and I think it is important that it is acknowledged.
5. Tell us what you do if you haven’t written anything for while and you want to get started writing again. Could you share your favourite writing exercise with our readers?
My ideas often emerge as concept and I have to wait for the story to arrive. In the early stages I express the concepts as microficton and prose. If I haven’t written anything for a while I often read over some of my old work then take a long walk and wait. I usually find another dimension or theme. I find good writing difficult to force so I tend to wait until there is something I want to write about. I need time to allow my thoughts to wander and make new associations. When I do have a good idea I write it quickly and try not to worry about spelling or grammar. I know I can edit anytime but good writing requires inspiration and a certain mood. I do not really have a favourite exercise but I do have a copy of Charles Bukowski’s poem “So you want to be a writer” above my desk and often attend literary events and festivals.
To listen to Monica reading The Stranger from Skierniewicza, click here.
Monica Goldberg is a surrealist poet writer and artist. Her short fiction and poetry has been published in literary journals and anthologies both in Australia and overseas. Her poem Theories of Everything was selected for The Best Of Every Day Poets Two (Every Day Publishing, 2012). She is currently completing a novel about converso’s and the significance of cryptic faith.
Small Wonder review
We are reproducing, in full, this terrific review by Ali Jane Smith of our first prose poetry/microfiction anthology, Small Wonder. You can find other reviews, great fiction and poetry in the final issue of Famous Reporter here. Copies of Small Wonder can be purchased from our Products Page or ask for it at your local bookstore. And you can interviews with contributors here and you can listen to audio recordings of Small Wonder prose poetry and microfiction here. And don’t forget that our next prose poetry/microfiction competition closes November 30. Details here.
Review - Small Wonder: an anthology of prose poems and microfiction
Editors Linda Godfrey and Julie Chevalier
Spineless Wonders
RRP $22.99
ALI JANE SMITH
I suspect that ‘Small Packages’ might also have been on the whiteboard when the title for Small Wonder was brainstormed, and it would have been apt, because there are many, many good things between the vibrant covers of this collection. Printed on the front free endpaper of the book is a quote from writer and editor Jonathan Carr that describes the difference between prose poetry and flash fiction. Carr’s observation that flash (or micro) fiction is about compression, whereas the prose poem “is often the very opposite … an exploding up of a form” nicely sets the paradigm. The publisher held a competition to uncover work for the anthology, as well as inviting a number of writers to contribute. A shortlist and winners were selected by poet Joanne Burns, herself an invited contributor, and the result is something that editors Linda Godfrey and Julie Chevalier describe as fusion. The sounds and flavours of the writing in the book show that the fusion metaphor has served readers well: although the prose poem form has been known to lure poets into something that reads like a parody of Italo Calvino, and there are one or two such pieces in this collection, overall the anthology is remarkable for its stylistic diversity. Contributors were encouraged “to bend genres and break rules”, and so it is to be expected the reader may love some of these pieces and loathe others. The book is something like a very good party: a few old friends to catch up with, interesting new people to meet, and all the ingredients for a strange and memorable night. A little like a Spineless Wonders book launch, perhaps.
Small Wonder opens with Dael Allison’s ‘dreaming poets dreaming’, from her series on the painter Ian Fairweather’s journey from Darwin to Timor on a flimsy, self-built raft. There is something about the visual appearance of the prose poem, about the dependability of sentences organised in square and sturdy paragraphs, that provides a handrail when the content itself becomes uncanny. Allison has taken advantage of this visual solidity to create an impossible confluence of Pablo Neruda and Michael Ondaatje as Fairweather’s shipmates. Allison’s second contribution, ‘nightburst’, is a richly visual imagining of Darwin Harbour as it might have been fifty years ago in Fairweather’s time. Both poems may lead the reader to seek out Allison’s recently released collection on this subject, Fairweather’s Raft (Walleah Press 2012).
Judith Beveridge’s ‘The book of birds’ is about queuing, about ego-conciousness, about the strange places that a search for meaning can take us. Beveridge takes advantage of the fun to be had with zoological nomenclature. She shares the pleasure she finds in language with the reader, offering wonder, humour, suspense, and narrative twists in the space of a page and a half.
In the prose poems contributed by Joanne Burns, the prosaic and the metaphysical, big things and little things, sit companionably side by side: a cheese roll and zeus, hair and Akashic records, dandruff flakes and exorcism. Joanne Burns is an extraordinary and accurate observer, and the proximity of the profound and the absurd or mundane in her work is more than funny and arresting, it is a manifestation of human experience, where small pleasures and irritations stand alongside the great things of our lives.
Anna Couani has been a significant presence in Australian poetry for decades. Her disrupted and disrupting text, ‘The old manuscript’, offers more with each reading. The poem includes repeated motifs of storytelling and creation, of watching and being watched. Although the syntax is not ‘experimental’ the piece is troubling, an aporia that has the reader tracing back and forth amongst the sentences and paragraphs to piece together a narrative or pattern.
Michael Farrell’s poem The story of what’s inside the heart makes a strange kind of sense. A line at the visual heart of this poem reads “Everyone wants to know what it means”, a question that this poet has likely been asked from time to time. The repeated use of the words “in” and “inside” do create what might be an illusion of depth of field, of inside and outside, perhaps analogous to meaning and language. As Farrell writes, “there’s so much style in style, it’s the only thing to eat, spoon by spoon”, but the question remains as to whether this poem considers the possibility that perhaps language can refer to that which is outside itself, or whether the use of images of hearts, blood and Jesus, are a play on the desire for something that lies beyond language. Best just to read the poem and see what it does to you – if you are lucky it will feel like having your brain pleasantly but relentlessly tickled.
At the micro fiction end of the Small Wonder short form spectrum, Shady Cosgrove’s ‘Visiting’, in which the narrator’s late mother is glimpsed at the wheel of a 1970s Cortina 1600, is a story with real emotional heft that unfolds in three short paragraphs of telling detail. Every word is in the right place, and not one wasted.
There are many more works in Small Wonder that deserve particular attention: Michael Sharkey’s ‘A musical offering’ employs the poet’s characteristic piquant wit, and his prose poem ‘The strong, the silent type’ is a fable that takes the breath away; Adam Ford’s contribution ‘Sequel’ begins where the graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens ends, and is a far more successful spin-off of the franchise than the movie; the always inventive and often very funny Carol Jenkins has contributed ‘An illustrated history of the bicycle’; Michelle Cahill has written a startling description of mothering; and Vivienne Plumb’s deft and amusing ‘The cinematic experience’ is a handy pocket review of whatever film you are thinking of going to see.
The winner of the competition as selected by Joanne Burns was Charles d’Anastasi’s ‘Madame Bovary’. A poetry reading becomes the carriage scene in Flaubert’s novel, an idea that makes perfect sense if you attend a great many poetry readings, and when you read this piece. Commended is the excellent ‘William Shatner vows to save the Great Basin Pocket Mouse’ by Erin Gough which lives up to its title, and Clare McHugh’s ‘Briefly’, a witty meditation on the brief for the competition.< /p>
Readers of Famous Reporter likely already know the value of the independent presses in Australia. We know that publishers like Walleah Press and Spineless Wonders guarantee the depth and diversity of our literature. More important, we know that we will have a good time with the writers and editors that they find and nurture. Spineless Wonders has presented this anthology with a bold, bright cover design and original illustrations from artist Paden Hunter that are themselves worth the price of admission.
The brief and selection process for this anthology allows the reader, and happily the reviewer, to set aside the usual hang-ups that go with anthology reading. Small Wonder does not set out to survey or comprehensively collect a field of practice, so who is represented and who is not is an irrelevance. Rather, this book operates in a space that, while guaranteeing the quality of the writing, leaves room for risk and oddity. This is not a collection to be set on a high shelf with the dictionary, the thesaurus, and your completes and collecteds. It is a book to be voraciously read and sumptuously enjoyed, and lent only to trusted, book-returning friends.
(Published in famous reporter 44)
Spineless Wonders asks Vivienne Plumb
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
I started writing prose poems a while back and really enjoy writing in that compressed form. About ten years ago, I was invited to an amazing literary festival called Vilenica in Slovenia, and it was there that I met the American poet, James Tate, who has used the prose poetry form frequently. He read in a venue which was an enormous underground cave. It was cold down there and we were offered shots of the local alcohol to warm us up. While Tate was reading bats flew over his head. It was the best writer’s festival! Hearing him read his prose poems was a bit of a big influence on me.
My poetry collection, The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and Other New Zealand Icons (Seraph Press, 2011), is about thirty prose poems that use different ‘iconic’ N.Z. subjects. (I have lived in N.Z., although I was born and grew up in Australia, with Aussie/Kiwi parents.) The ‘iconic’ prose poems have proven to be accessible poetry for people who generally never read poetry because they like the subjects: whitebait, severe weather warnings, mouthguards, luncheon sausage, motels in Taupo, the long weekend, and the cheese and onion sandwich, to name a few.
2. Tell us about that 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 write poetry, fiction, and drama, so I work in several different ways. But these are things that always work for me: I like to start work early in the morning (it’s quiet), I like to have a comfortable wheelie office chair (good for your back), I need many cups of tea, and a big wad of paper on hand – I write in longhand first of all and then edit it further as I type it into my Macbook (love my Mac).
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?
Writing is like sex – the more you do it, the better it gets. I once lived next door to a drummer. He practiced every day (ouch!) and you could hear him getting better. Most things are like that, and the same rule applies to writing. (So just sit down and do it.)
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
I believe in making my own resources. One inspiration would be my powers of observation – I think that’s a good writer’s tool. For example: why does the black rubber front door mat disappear from outside my neighbour’s apartment, and then re-appear? (My conclusion: she locks it up inside if she goes away.) I loved this funny fact and thought it would be a great beginning of something much larger.
I also have an ‘ideas box’ where I chuck in any ideas for a writing project. I believe in ideas fervently – they have the potential to become tangible magic. Always write those ideas down.
5. Tell us what do 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?
This doesn’t happen to me (not writing) because writing is my occupation and main source of income. I do it almost every day, and when I’m not physically doing it I am still thinking about it.
If you wanted to get writing or to get yourself ‘warmed up’ you could try an exercise I dreamt up and have used for some serious fun when teaching creative writing: When you are next at the supermarket find a receipt (not your own) and read it. Use this to help you create a character and write about a situation they are in.
Vivienne Plumb writes poetry, drama, and fiction. Her collections: ‘Nefarious: poems and parables’ (2004), ‘crumple’ (2010), and ‘The Cheese and Onion Sandwich and Other New Zealand Icons’ (chapbook/ 2011) all feature pieces of prose poetry.
Spineless Wonders asks Cara Munro
1. What inspired you to write the prose poem/microfiction which is published in Small Wonder?
In 2005/6 I lived in a single room apartment in Delhi with 3 other women. Our home was built on the rooftop, or terrace, of a three story building, a space usually reserved for chili drying, clothes hanging, kite flying and the like. It was a perfect world within a world. The events from that time continue to flavor my life today.
2. Tell us about that 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 am a terribly lazy writer. I can go for months not writing a word and then something happens and I feel compelled to write about it. These moments are rare and I am usually unprepared. Serviettes, envelopes, and borrowed pens have been of great assistance. I feel my healthiest when I am writing.
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?
Sometimes I find the middle of a thought, idea or sentence is a dynamic starting point (you can always go back and add a first line later). For a while there, I was writing a lot of short pieces that began with the word ‘So…’ (ie: So she told him that…, So they decided…, So in the end…, etc). Try it and let me know if it works for you. 
4. Who or what inspires your writing?
Writing is always a response to life for me. People I meet, places I visit something inspiring that someone is saying or doing.
5. Tell us what do you do if you haven’t written anything in a while and you want to get started writing again? Could you share your favorite writing exercise with our readers?
For favorite exercises, Julia Cameron’s ‘Artists Way’ is a wonderful resource. She is so gentle and encouraging and at the same time has a powerful way of persuading you that you need to write.
Cara Munro is a registered Nurse. Her work has appeared in Eureka Street and the book ‘Learnings – Lessons we are learning about living together.’ She won first prize in the 2009 Margaret Dooley Award. Her story, An Arrangement, is published in Small Wonder.
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.
Click to Buy Now
