pardon my ducks

We Are Moving Into Our New Old Home

2011-01-04T20:13:00.004+08:00

Hullo kind readers of our humble blog,

We have moved all our posts to our homepage (dotdotdash.org), and for convenience's sake we will probably only update there from now on. It just might be easier for you too, reader, since everything you could want to know about dotdotdash will be right there where you read. I say this today because I've written a new post addressing the turning of the year, and how things are new and full of promise, which is as appropriate as any first post in a new place can be. Well, what are you waiting for? Go, go, go check out our new and shiny website!

Warm regards,
Sj Finch
for dotdotdash

Composing Writing

2010-11-25T23:15:00.003+08:00

Most writers will tell you very definitively whether they can or can't write to music. Those that say they can will, most of the time, find that music very important and may have entire playlists dedicated to various current works or at least a selection they tend to play more than others. Some even have different lists for short stories, poetry, essays, creative non fiction and so on. However those that say they can't usually mean more than just they don't find it easy. Rather, they frequently express the need to expunge even background radio music or tuneful whistling (tuneless whistling gets on your nerves whether you like writing to music or not).

So this issue being themed Jukebox we at dotdotdash are intrigued by what camp you fall into. Do you have to have the right music and find the ideas flow better if you do? Or do you find it an annoyance beyond all others? Then, if you do write to music, what kind of music do you write to? If someone out there writes rhyming poetry to death metal though that is just plain awesome...

Rosalind for dotdotdash
Image by [nati]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/natita2/

Moving Day

2010-11-16T21:55:00.002+08:00

I'm in the middle of moving house. It's a period of transition and I have mixed feelings. I'm excited to be moving on...but already I miss the place that I'm leaving. I've lived here for five years and have grown very attached to its spacious rooms and convenient location. I'll miss the little IGA down the road. The familiar winding streets that I know off by heart. The lounge room I've shared with my Xbox... and other friends. I'll always remember it for the freedom it afforded me. It was the first place I moved into after leaving home. It was my first love. We've had adventures together this house and I. There were parties, first dates, Xbox marathons and caffeinated late nights completing assignments all held within its walls. I nursed it back to health when the air conditioner was full of bees and repaired the towel rack when the fixture came loose. I feel the churning of my stomach and know deep down I'm betraying a friend. The thought of leaving my comfy nook to for someone else to stylise and rearrange sickens me.

But aside from that, what am I supposed to do with all my stuff? Where did it all come from? Only now that I’m disassembling my room do I realise how much junk I’ve accumulated. It’s like layers of paperwork and clothing have slowly built up in the way that particles of broken asteroids and other material gradually coat the Earth and increase its size. Knick knacks and thingamabobs have snuck onto my shelves and occupied my cupboards. I feel like an archaeologist sifting through it all. There’s a complete history of movies I’ve watched in a fat wad of used ticket stubs. Digging through my draws I realise I’ve become ‘that guy’ who owns a crap load of tacky t-shirts... although at what point that happened I’ve been unable to pinpoint.

I’m now standing before a mound of heavy boxes and I realise that my life has been quantified. This is the sum of my parts. These are the things I need on a daily basis, the things that occupy my time. It is what I wear, what I read, what I keep as mementos and what I use to operate out in the world. A lot of it is worthless and worn but these things are me. By taking this stuff with me, I am admitting I need these things in order to continue the life I’m accustomed to. Now’s would be a good time to edit, to reshape who I am and what I own. Time to make a fresh start. But I’ll probably just take all my baggage with me...and curse at it for being so damn heavy.

Luke
for dotdotdash

image found at http://babyccinokids.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/moving-house.jpg

NaNoWriMo! Extreme Noveling!

2010-11-11T22:43:00.008+08:00

Nanowrimo, for those who haven't heard, stands for National Novel Writing Month. It's an annual challenge that was begun by Chris Baty from San Francisco in 1999, and has since become an international writing event. People from around the world huddle around their humble laptops and clicketyclack out the 50 000 words required for the challenge, staving off the various quotidian elements of life - the jobs, the socialising, the family, the sunlight - for a chance of that congratulatory electronic certificate that says 'You did Nanowrimo, and that makes you okay!'. (On that international note, it really should be Innanowrimo nowadays, but that's a little less catchy.) I love Nanowrimo not because it forces people to produce tonnes of unpublishable writing. It gets people used to the idea of it, the strain and emptybellied stress of it. It's as much about the journey as the challenge. So there's a tonne of helpful content on the site (here) about writer's block, plotting and writing endurance.

And if you don't have any idea of what to write, then that's okay. The offical slogan of Nanowrimo is 'No plot? No problem!'. So what are you waiting for? Get off your figurative arse and put your figurative fingers to work! Tap those keys, squeeze that pen, take your writerly self out for a mindwalk.

Now to the point of this blog post. I have wanted to win Nanowrimo since I heard about it five years ago, and I have decided that this must be the year. I have not yet started however, and it's almost the middle of the month...

So what I'm proposing is EXTREME NANOWRIMO! Writing 50 000 words in fifteen days. It's going to be tough, unusual and unnecessary, but it's going to be FUN. And I want you, any of you, to join me on the quest for novelism. It will start on Monday, and we could maybe meet for coffee and sleep deprivation stories that are related to the stories we struggle with.

Also, the above picture is a reference to Arrested Development, the television show. Michael, a real estate company manager, promises the board that he will build a new model home in six weeks, but his brother Gob (pictured) in a spectacularly misguided effort at oneup-manship declares that he will build it in three weeks. Then since Gob is a magician by trade pennies suddenly appear in his hand and he throws them on the boardroom table. So come do the EXTREME challenge and I will throw pennies at you.

I will also update this blog entry as I continue on my journey.

Sj Finch
for dotdotdash
and extreme noveling

Compression of the Narrative

2010-11-09T22:05:00.004+08:00

We live in the age of 'more is better'. We produce more, we consume more and we are constantly striving to increase the rates of both. The way we understand stories is becoming increasingly complex as we can rely on a wealth of shorthand tropes to communicate messages already layered with a history of meanings in order to expedite the story telling process. Internet communication is abbreviated to extremes and movie and TV set a narrative pace that can leave the older generation exhausted and struggling to keep up.In short, we are telling more stories and can do so at a quicker pace than ever.

So what effect does this have on narrative structure and how we consume it?

I told a friend the other day that I had recently watched two seasons of Dexter (24 episodes - nearly 24 hours of footage) within a matter of weeks. This is not how the network intends you to view it, but it is an increasingly popular way to consume the content. Ten years ago, these episodes would be digested over the course of 24 weeks (plus a couple month break between seasons). Each episode would have it's 'water-cooler' moment for discussion with friends and fellow enthusiasts. The narrative trajectory could be pondered and dissected in a lengthy way. Watching a season in one hit means that the water-cooler effect is now to discuss the season as a whole. The season becomes one large episode for discussion and dissection (pun intended when referring to Dexter). I have consumed an entire year's worth of production within the space of a few weeks. In doing so I have compressed the narrative (and the time it takes to tell it) and bypassed the digestion of each individual episode with insight from others. Does the thrill of consuming this narrative quickly mean that I cheat myself from interjecting my own thoughts into the narrative journey? Am I allowing myself to be dumbed down under the weight of multiple rapid rate TV shows? I know I enjoy the rapid rate at which I can absorb the narrative and the pace of the narrative when consumed in this way is exhilarating. But I'm lead to wonder what affect telling more stories at a faster pace will have on our understanding of narrative. Surely the common narrative will have to contain more information to support this trend, but where does that leave the writer?

Although this 'narrative compression' will occur differently across different media, this has me wondering about the impact such consumption will have on future narratives. Is more better? And what are the implications for the writer?

Luke for dotdotdash

Zine Spotlights #3

2010-10-26T11:25:00.013+08:00

Bullshit Movies
Tristan Fidler
$?, available from ??? (See sheepish footnote)
Or read more at bs-movies.blogspot.com

This is a zine for so-bad-it’s-good movie lovers. It consists of ingeniously written synopses of ridiculous action movies like Blind Fury, Ghost Rider and McBain (yes, there’s another McBain besides this one) – movies so bizarre, misogynistic, xenophobic and terribly scripted that their existence blows my mind, really. You’d think these kinds of movies are a thing of the past, but this zine isn’t limited to corny eighties and early nineties films. For example, Taken was released in 2008, and just reading about it in Bullshit Movies and Wikipedia makes me so uneasy that I might just derail this review to talk about its problematic plot. Basically, Liam Neeson’s daughter, against the wishes of her father, travels to Paris and gets kidnapped by Albanian sex traders and is saved by trigger-happy daddy just in time because she’s a ‘highly valuable virgin’ and thus the last girl to be sold. (Meanwhile, her fellow kidnapped and presumably non-virginal friend dies.) WTF? You wouldn’t think that ‘awesomely funny’ and ‘awesomely depressing’ would be next-door neighbours, but they are in Bullshit Movies. This zine also contains pretty cool illustrations of Nicolas Cage, Christopher Walken and other action heroes.

Sheepish footnote: Immediately after writing this review I discovered that not only did the person from whom I borrowed this zine not remember the price of it, but that this zine is probably out of print. But just because you can’t buy this zine doesn’t mean I can’t review it, right? Right?

Not a zine review but a response to ‘The Bubble – zines and constructive criticism’

The October issue of Sticky Institute’s excellent newsletter has some interesting thoughts on the practice of reviewing zines. ‘I enjoy a good discussion about what makes zines great,’ writes Candace. ‘But it pains me that many people I come across only seem to want to discuss the good stuff.’ In her short article, ‘The Bubble – zines and constructive criticism’ (a reference to 30 Rock which I thoroughly appreciated), Candace questions the general resistance of zinesters to criticise other zines, a resistance which seems ‘ironically conservative’ given that zines themselves, often, are all about fostering criticism and debate.

Candace’s thoughts reminded me of when we first decided to talk about zines on this blog. I remember thinking that I’m not sure if I could publicly express negative sentiments about a zine. It was a conscious decision to call these posts ‘Zine Spotlights’ rather than ‘Zine Reviews’ – to create a space for pointing out zines that we thought made good company. My reluctance to write ‘reviews’ also sprang from not knowing very much about zine culture, its unspoken etiquette. Sometimes I still find myself filled with the same nervous ache of the first time I sold my zines, even though they are just frivolous things, nowhere near as serious and heartfelt as many others, nor engaging in the kind of ideological criticism as the aforementioned Bullshit Movies does. I don’t think zines, or any text, should live in a protective bubble. I definitely agree with Candace that problematic elements of a zine deserve discussion. But I guess when zinemakers are reviewing other zinemakers, the vulnerability is just too familiar. Candace is calling for ‘reasonable feedback, aimed at seasoned zinesters’, to which the newsletter’s editor slipped in a parenthetical remark: ‘How do you know who’s a seasoned zinester and who’s a newbie? Should that even be an issue?’

I don’t know if the giving or receiving on feedback should rest on one’s level of expertise as a zinester, but I think that you don’t have to look further than to the individual zine itself to determine what kind of criticism it can withstand. A lot of zines I’ve read have this particular intimacy about them, like you’re being led into somebody’s house, and it would be poor form to start criticising the décor. Others seem to invite dialogue, disagreement even; some zines are openly critical and will justifiably generate a response. Some zines are just play; others veer into mean-spirited territory. There needs to be tact, as Candace mentions. Not all criticism is vital to put out there, but sometimes it really is necessary.

I really appreciate that Sticky’s newsletter not only reviews zines but talks about the ethics and practice of reviewing. As a sporadic and inexperienced zinester, I am a still little bit resistant to saying outright bad things about other zines – hopefully not unreasonably so. Although I’m still chewing over how to define what my actual position is, this article has prompted me to renew my perspectives on zine criticism, for which Candace has my gratitude.

Elizabeth Tan
for dotdotdash

Freedom and Franzen

2010-10-21T04:45:00.000+08:00

Jonathan Franzen has had buzz from the very beginning. His debut novel The Corrections was that unique blend of page-turning storytelling and bona fide jaw-dropping prose. His two novels since have been received more quietly. While I have not read Strong Motion or either of his non-fiction works, I did prior to the release of Freedom read The Twenty-Seventh City, a St. Louis-set novel whose writing embraced the postmodern aesthetic with more loose ends and a cacophony of characters who seem to multiply and fracture as the work progresses. The story in The Twenty-Seventh City doesn’t unfold so much as collapse. All in all, if The Corrections was a work of art ready for mass consumption, The Twenty-Seventh City was a work for the elite, those in-the-know and a work bound to disappoint the chain bookstore shoppers who wanted a cleanly started, cleanly finished page-turner.

Which brings us to Freedom – the novel whose back cover incorrectly (and tellingly) identifies it as Franzen’s second novel, rather than his fourth. Freedom is the literary though not the literal follow-up to The Corrections, and like Franzen’s hit debut, Freedom is a story of average middle-class middle Americans muddling through life. His sentences track the minutiae of their lives, the consumption of things and the piling up of days that define contemporary life. The story is tight and complete, a read as satisfying as it is insightful.

Like The Corrections the narration is in close third person, shifting between characters, so that we are drawn into an individual’s world and shown their perceptions before moving to another character. The three core characters form a modern-day love triangle. The main character, whose therapeutic memoirs are close to half the novel, is Patty Berglund, a former basketball star turned housewife prone to depression. Her eventual husband Walter Berglund is an all-around great guy with a preoccupation with overpopulation who succeeds at everything but lacks that one central ingredient for success in America – charisma. Rounding out the love triangle is Richard Kern, Walter’s college roommate and Patty’s lifelong crush, a musician cliché who stumbles onto a hit record after a tryst with Patty. The sex and love of Freedom is 100% new millennia, devoid of Victorian frothing, and rooted (pardon the pun) more in boredom and narcissism than any romantic ideals.

The central triangle of characters each has a match in the next generation, a clever and well-employed device that shows how this particular story is interesting because it is not unique: the same dramas that play out between Patty, Walter and Richard will repeat with the Berglund’s own children as they pass from childhood to college and eventually into adulthood. Patty and Walter’s son Joey (my favorite character) is in many ways like Richard. Joey’s girlfriend Connie is much like Patty. Patty and Walter’s daughter Jessica is similar to Walter. Of course, these three don’t form a love triangle themselves (the novel is not that clean), but they do seem fated to play out the same roles as their pairs in love triangles of their own making. The pairings come down to an immutable characteristic that doesn’t so much shape as handicap the particular character to a predictable reaction. Patty and Connie are prone to depression, to an obsessive need for someone else that leaves them always short of their own potential. Richard and Joey are charismatic, floating through life with ease, successful unintentionally, never trying too hard or taking on the problems of those they leave behind. Walter and Jessica do everything right, but are never the characters you want to read about (because readers, like everyone else, inevitably fall prey to the charisma of Richard and Joey).

Perhaps the greatest criticism that can be given to Franzen is that as much as he can empathize and develop a host of characters, his style is incredibly rigid. No matter what character is telling the story, the writer is always Franzen. Unlike other masters of the close third person, including a personal favourite William Faulkner, Franzen’s voice never varies (perhaps, another reason he sets his novels in America’s heartland, a place where the sameness of voices represents the sameness of middle America’s suburban dream). He is a writer for a generation brought up watching stories on screens. He sets the scene, masters the lighting, the angle, the close-ups, the landscapes, but never quite the voices, which are all scripted beautifully, but never sounded out in their pockmarked humanity. This particular blind spot in Franzen’s work is also responsible for another of his strengths – the ability to write male and female characters equally well.

Freedom may not be perfect, but it is still Franzen at his character-driven, story-telling best and the book, even in the early days of its release, is proving popular with counterculture hipsters, critics and Oprah bookclubbers alike. Franzen’s writing style and ability to so fully immerse himself in the lives he creates means that the details and surface story is a great read in and of itself, but the novel’s literary greatness comes from so much of the dysfunction that is unspoken or implied or left unresolved, such as Patty’s homoerotic obsessive relationship with her college best friend Eliza and Patty’s quasi-incestuous relationship with her son Joey. Whether these relationships actually turn sexual is doubtful (in the case of Eliza we are explicitly told it didn’t) is largely unimportant. What is important is Franzen’s ability to imply and weave into his wholesome white-bread character such subversive impulses that the characters themselves are scarcely aware of their own base nature. To the discerning reader the base nature that lies between the lines of Franzen’s detailed prose further rounds out and brings to life some of the best-developed characters in the English language.

All in all, Freedom is a novel very much deserving of the fanfare with which it has been received, and time will tell if it becomes, as tipped by some, the novel of our generation.

Megan Smith

Americanisms, Australianisms and English

2010-10-14T14:20:00.002+08:00

A month or so ago I was sitting next to a girl at work on exchange from Arizona, the United States of America. Gradually we got onto the topic of language and it opened my eyes to a few things I hadn't realised about both American English and its relationship with Australian English.

- Reckon -

Used frequently among many Australians, in the US “reckon” is bad slang and seen as sloppy language. This is true for Canada as well who see the use of “reckon” as a country hick Americanism.

- Rhyme -

In Australia Pizza Hut has a “cheaper Tuesday” as that is the closest rhyme to our pronunciation of Tuesday. However in the US Tuesday is pronounced with an “oo” sound and thus Pizza Hut has “two for Tuesday” as that is the rhyme that their pronunciation gives. They also rhyme Hyundai with "Sunday", in fact there is a whole advertising brief designed around that rhyme specifically.

- Dodgy -

Is used by a lot of Australians meaning something that is not quite right, something to be wary of. In the US though such a usage is seen as old hat and dates the user significantly to the extent that they find it very strange that it is still used so frequently here.

- Extra Comma -

One of the most obvious differences between Australian and American English I have always been taught is in the use of commas. For Australians a list of three things would be transcribed as “agave, pumpernickel and a rose” while in the US it would be “agave, pumpernickel, and a rose.” However, according to my friend this is a usage that is becoming obsolete and we may even see the disappearance of it eventually.

- Brilliant -

Apparently “brilliant” is used very rarely in the US and is seen as something very British. Even though Australians speak British English it is not seen as Australian in the least and so even inadvertent usage may confuse people as to where you are from.

Rosalind for dotdotdash

Image by tanakawho (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/)

Propel Youth Arts

2010-10-11T16:41:00.004+08:00

Amplifier is back in 2010 with an array of sessions to get those creative ideas on the move! Hosted by Propel Youth Arts WA, the FREE arts and business workshop and forum program gives you professional development skills, networking opportunities and a chance to explore arts issues with leading industry professionals!

This year’s workshop series features a impressive collective of local creatives including; the crew behind Dot Dot Dash, Katie Lenanton (Love is My Velocity), Serena Chalker (Anything Is Valid Dance Theatre AIVDT) and Rachael Dease & Tristen Parr (Schvendes). Workshop topics include:

GETTING STARTED - Develop and plan your arts business

GETTING THE WORD OUT - Marketing know how

GROWING MONEY ON TREES - How to get that grant

ARTS FINANCE - All the basics, Tax, ABN, GST etc.

ARTS LAW - What you need to know

EVENT 101- Make your event happen

PRICING YOUR PRODUCT - Learn how to price your work and get it out there
This year's forum series features Amanda Premici (Awesome Arts) and William Heery & Sean Morris (Last Chance Studios) and more!

ART AT THE HEART - A Community Cultural Development forum featuring Lenine Bourke from Young People and the Arts
Australia (YPAA)

BEHIND THE SCENES - An opportunity for emerging arts workers and artists to connect with the industry

CREATIVE COLLABORATIONS - An informal discussion on the nature of creative collaborationBecome a jack-of-all-trades and register now to get your share of insider tips, advice and tricks of the trade from Perth's own artists! Amplifier is held thoughout September – October. Visit http://www.propel.org.au/

Image found at http://www.propel.org.au

Thoughts From Abroad

2010-10-05T16:13:00.005+08:00

It’s been more than a month since I’ve arrived back home in Singapore. Many things have changed or sprouted out more like it. The population has definitely grown and they are definitely not born or bred here. Everywhere one turns you see somebody that represents their part of the globe. Either working, or studying or just on a holiday. Buildings have taken over our limited land space- If there is lack of horizontal space why not try to reach for the skies right? We have Marina bay sands. We have Resort World Sentosa. We have a casino. We have Universal Studios (the main ride is still undergoing safety inspection) and a water theme park! Our night life extends far beyond Clarke Quay (the one place where you can bar/club hop in 2 seconds.) Every other day we are digging and digging to build colossal buildings and sophisticated transportation systems, to name a few. Which explains the massive ‘swimming pools’ that appears in the city area when there is excessive rain.

As far as I know August is not a very exciting month other than my birthday. Ok maybe, there might be a day where the entire country comes together, all adorn in red and white (colours of our national flag) and celebrate the birth of this fast paced, globalized nation. The moment 9th of August is over the people of Singapore falls back into their daily monotonous routine of work. So that is August for you.

As the heat and sudden burst of the occasional rain rolls over to September, tourism is at its peak. Why? It is the month of Formula 1 Grand Prix. The first and only night race in the world. Parties begin a few days before the weekend of the race which last till the last day of the official event. This is the 3rd year we are hosting the Grand Prix and the excitement is indescribable. I did go for the race in the first year, 2008 and I have to say it is an exhilarated feeling one can have when sitting so close to the tracks. In some insane way, the sounds of these fast machines can be quite therapeutic. Alas, the weekend of F1 has finally come to an end and peace has been restored in our Central Business Districts (CBD), where the road closure and re-routing of buses and cars have caused the usual annoyance and complaints amongst the masses.

So here I am sitting in my bedroom at 10.08pm on a rainy Monday evening, 27 September, 2010, the aftermath of F1 thinking if I should continue to write more or wait till October hits me in my face one morning.

I should just go with the latter.

Thulasi for dotdotdash

Image found at www.flickr.com/photos/adforce1/4230549644/

The Hunchback and Disney

2010-09-30T12:02:00.000+08:00

Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is undoubtedly, due to Disney, one of the books with the most misconceptions surrounding it. A French classic from 1831, Hunchback the novel does deal with many of the same characters from the Disney movie, but in a radically different way. While everything is simple black and white in Disney, Hunchback deals with the characters as they would have lived as people in seventeenth century Paris. From priests to gypsies to the aristocracy and the guild of thieves, the characters of Paris are presented as realistic people with flaws, secrets, desires and idiosyncrasies. Esmeralda, Claude Frollo and Phoebus are all given pasts, and while there is a cruel judge, it is not Claude Frollo. Claude is rather the strange alchemist priest who goes through journey of self discovery that covers theology, science and love.

It is not only the characters who do not fit with the Disney idea of Hunchback either. The novel deals extensively with seventeenth century Paris, to the extent that the central “story” is marginalised in sections. At times this can become trying with extensive descriptions of Parisian buildings designed for those that lived there, not those that come hundreds of years after. However in this way Hunchback is reminiscent of classic music, it has layers and is best when it is enjoyed in sections and for its atmosphere, style and subtlety rather than its electric guitar riffs. While there is nothing wrong with the later, there is also nothing wrong with the former if you give it the time it needs.

However, not the entire book is academic analysis, and the chapters that are can be skipped without much harm being done to the story that it contains. The story is definitely worth time though as it builds masterfully through all the characters and the situations they are put in. Like a train as a reader you watch the different tracks take them in certain directions until a confrontation is essential, and when it comes it is masterfully played out. A great dramatist Victor Hugo certainly is.

Rosalind for dotdotdash.

Image by spjwebster (http://www.flickr.com/photos/spjwebster/)

The Science of Sue

2010-09-28T12:12:00.000+08:00

Recently I read a most interesting book about the discovery of the then largest tyrannosaurus remains and the ensuing legal battle over its possession. Steve Fiffer is definitely on the side of those who dug the skeleton up, however, he does draw attention to the problems endemic to palaeontology, namely, the frequent differences between those who dig up the specimens and those who study them in academic institutions. While that is not to say people can't do both (there are a significant number of people in Tyrannosaurus Sue who do) it does highlight the perceived divide between those who dig up fossils as a business and those who do so with the backing of a university or museum.

Also intriguing was the way in which this discovery caused all sorts of controversy in the legal sphere. The land Sue was found on had contested ownership and the US government, a Native American tribe, the man who actually lived on the land and the company that dug it up were all involved. As the legal twists of the book unfold one of the most gripping ideas the book seems to explore, if not name, is the relationship between possession and science.

As a science palaeontology is very given to dealing in possessions with bones and imprints and rock samples being key. It also has a close connection with museums, themselves an educational institution that is based on possession. Thus, while Peter Larson, the man who headed the company that dug Sue up, planned to let anyone who wanted to research her, who had possession had to be decided first. This resulted in the bones being in storage for many years as the case went to court and a significant delay in any research or further restoration possibilities.

Such an event begs the question of when possession became more important than science and if there are in fact times when possession should become more important than science. Certainly the stealing of bones and sacred objects from the inhabitants of colonised lands would be something that could be examined in this light, and the question of whether the so-called advancement of science should be done at the expense of people, particularly people who have occupied such a disempowered position in history.

Yet when science is threatened from within by warring academics and exploratory palaeontologists is this really necessary and should some effort be made to think of the public good and not the egos of the people involved? Obviously the issue of ownership in Sue's case was extensively more complicated than depicted here and involved issues of legality, something many people have argued justified the means that were taken. However, the scandal as outlined in Fiffer's book does draw our attention to the links between science and possession and the dilemmas that can occur when ownership of an item is so hotly contested.

Rosalind for dotdotdash

Graphic Novel Master Class with Justin Randall

2010-09-16T15:32:00.007+08:00

The Fellowship of Writers Western Australia (FAWWA) offer some interesting classes for writers looking to extend their skills or simply network with other local writers.

One of the classes coming up is the Graphic Novel Master Class with Justin Randall and I've included some details below:

Justin Randall is a design lecturer for Curtin University, a commercial illustrator and a graphic novelist. He has worked on franchises such as 30 Days of Night and Silent Hill, produced artwork for albums, book covers, magazines and currently writes and illustrates his own graphic novel series titled Changing Ways, published by Gestalt Publishing. Gestalt Publishing is Australia's largest, independent graphic novel publishing house. The company was officially founded in Applecross, Western Australia on the 1st July 2005 by Wolfgang Bylsma and Skye Ogden, although they had previously been involved in creating, editing and publishing underground and editorial comics since the early-1990s. Gestalt operates out of Perth, Western Australia and Tokyo, Japan.

For more info and behind the scenes stuff be sure and check out www.fetish55.deviantart.com

The class is scheduled for Thursday 30th September 7.00 - 9.00 pm $30 members, $45 non-members

FAWWA is open 10 - 5 Tuesdays & Thursdays

www.fawwa.org.au

Luke for dotdotdash

Image by fetish55 (http://www.fetish55.deviantart.com/)

A Review of Particia Piccinini's Relativity

2010-09-14T22:20:00.000+08:00

A most interesting sculpture installation was recently housed in the WA Art Gallery and for those lucky enough to make it, Patricia Piccinini's Relativity was very thought provoking. The exhibition was sculpture, but took a fantastical view of the world. Having studied anatomy Piccinini ascribed much of her work to the idea of genetic engineering and how science could affect mammals, including humans. One of the most engaging, and for some people disturbing elements of her work, is how life-like her sculptures are and how easy to empathise with the creatures depicted in them it is. Furthermore, her incredibly detailed depiction of children and how they would interact with such beings is fascinating as the presence of these sculptures encourages viewers to interact with them in the same wide-eyed curious but accepting way the child sculptures appear able to. Certainly children frequently accept things around them that adults may have trouble with as it is all they have ever known, and such a suggestion is one of the most interesting implications of Piccinini's work. Ultimately though it is the expressions and the empathy that all the sculptures inspire that really touched me. As intriguing as the scientific questions are, the fact that they are presented in such an identifiable way makes the exhibition all the more effective. In this sense it reminded me of the poem “The Golden Mean” in Antimatter. Both utilise science but neither let it control or overwhelm their expression, rather it is a perfect balance.

Rosalind for dotdotdash.

Image by tanakawho (http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/)

Never Put Off What Can Be Written T...

2010-09-10T10:41:00.003+08:00

Procrastination...

It’s is a naughty friend that calls you out into the sunshine when there is work to be done.

It’s the only time when cleaning your room and doing the dishes become desirable activities.

It’s elation and freedom followed by a difficulty to breathe when it hits you that the deadline is tomorrow.

It’s a surge of adrenaline in the intellectual sprint to the finish line.

It’s a perverse thrill and the purest form of motivation.

It’s the writer’s best friend and most detested enemy...and....
...it’s the reason that this post is late. Sorry!

Luke Webster
For dotdotdash.

Spotted: dotdotdash!

2010-09-06T23:44:00.005+08:00

Species: dotdotdash

Other names: That cool magazine

Description: dotdotdash is a type of magazine that can be found in scattered populations throughout the urban savannahs of Perth and Melbourne.

Status: Endangered. The most recent sighting of dotdotdash was in Oxford St Books last Saturday morning at 10:14 am. Consider signing up for our “Adopt” a dotdotdash program – for $15 you can ensure the survival of just one more copy.

Diet: Creative, motivated and proactive individuals who like to support local arts initiatives. We’re pretty sure this sounds like you.

Habitat: Independent stores that foster home-grown creativity. If such a habitat exists near you, and it’s dotdotdash colony is extinct , we recommend you suggest the manager contact the dotdotdash headquarters for a male and female copy to establish a new population. Perth will thank you for it.

ctj
for dotdotdash

Dear hand, Please type. Regards, Luke.

2010-09-01T17:09:00.009+08:00

An empty white page and that blinking cursor. That damn blinking cursor. Go on and write something, it mocks you, you’ve got my full attention. It taps away like the impatient leg of a child forced to wait. A child whose wide eyed desperation to be entertained leaves you embarrassingly flabbergasted.

The problem isn’t getting an idea; no those bad boys are popping like fireworks in my mind. To grab hold of one of those streaking lights and spread it onto the page would be so revelatory that my contemporaries would nod their heads rapturously and cry, “Yes that’s it! You’ve said what I always wanted to say but never knew how! You’ve totally nailed the key to the human experience!” The problem is most of these fireworks are streaking in colour and scope only I can see and how can I possibly begin to convey something so revolutionary?

The idea always feels so perfect and fully formed in my head. Where can I possibly start?

I once spent six months solely devoted to writing. I bought a laptop, arranged my desk into neat open spaces and cut out little square business cards. At parties friends would elicit sighs of wonder at my chosen occupation, “Wow I wish I had the courage to quit my job and do that!” and, “I really admire you for having the skills to write.” But my nonchalant shrug would inevitably be interrupted by the cringe inducing question: “So what are you writing?”

“Well there are a few things I’m working on,” (getting up late, going to coffee shops), “I’m doing a lot of research,” (reading a lot of books), “and I have a novel in development,” (I’ve thought of a title so I’ve effectively started). But such vagaries only left me open to further scrutiny.

“How’s the novel coming along?”

Gestating is the word I relied on. “Oh it’s gestating”. It implied the novel was in my head. Growing, developing, evolving into a complex being. It also implied that one day it would become something tangible: a legacy of my life to cradle and nurture. Whether the project would make it that far was uncertain, but it was an effective stalling tactic to avoid facing that damn blinking cursor.

In the six months of my well intentioned writing sabbatical only a mere handful of projects made it to the birthing stage... and the birthing process was inevitably painful. I would spend hours in front of the laptop crying and writhing in agony and wondering how I ever got myself here trying to push a monster idea out of my head. But it is possible to stare down that damn blinking cursor and I’d recommend you try. If nothing else it’s a good story to tell at a party.

Luke Webster

Novel Expectations

2010-08-31T21:21:00.006+08:00

Everyone has favourite authors and occasionally you find that author who so intrigues you that you have read all their books, may have a couple of theories about their style or characterisation and certainly lend their books to all your friends so you can talk about them with others.
For me that author is David Mitchell, an English born writer who spent a considerable time living in Japan and whose works (at that time four novels) were the subject of my Honours' dissertation. Okay, so that is going slightly beyond the interest described in the first paragraph but there is something in Mitchell's work that just plain interests me.

However, when he announced the publication and subject matter of his new novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (due out this year, so six months after the completion of my dissertation) I was more than a little apprehensive. To start with, my dissertation had focused on structure in Mitchell's novels, an element that is very strong and very adeptly constructed in his three early works, but less innovative in his fourth, and with the announcement that his fifth would be a linear historical novel I was, as you can imagine, devastated.

Taking a step back this seems a strange reaction, as the novel is set in a historical period I have much interest in (Japan just before it was forced to open its borders) and was focused on two cultures I have an abiding interest in, Japanese and Dutch. Further, it being written by my favourite author, why was I not leaping about in excitement?

Put simply, I thought Mitchell would forgo any inventive structural elements and become more of a “traditional linear storyteller” interested in facts and not in the power that words can have. I describe Mitchell as a two tier writer, and as I explained to my father, it is like he creates a wonderful garden full of interesting plants, yet they are also grounded in well fed soil. In addition, for those that are prepared to look a little further, he has hidden small Easter eggs in various places that are hard to hunt out, but when you do find them it is incredibly rewarding, and together they all make a pattern. Thus, he is an academically inclined writer who nevertheless does not let this interfere or lessen the quality of his stories and characters.

So I spent months grumbling to various people about how I was going to hate the new novel and that it was all a terrible travesty, but I still bought Jacob de Zoet and left it on my bedside table, waiting for the time I would pluck up enough courage to read it. Which was last week, stuck at home with the winter lurgy. I found that perhaps I was mistaken about several things.

Firstly, I was disappointed in the setting being historical seeing as I associated Mitchell with such contemporary themes and at the forefront of what is either the late postmodern or what will come after postmodernism (if you are interested in such ideas try this New Yorker article on David Mitchell and Jacob de Zoet). But if you examine his earlier works a large chunk of it is set in non contemporary times. Certainly not as distant as in this latest instalment, but nonetheless noticeably not present day.

Further, after a few chapters I was so sucked into the book and its characters that I was having trouble putting it down, a fact that reminded me that while I had spent my Honours year hunting Easter eggs in Mitchell's garden, it was actually the garden itself I had initially come to inspect and love. It was characters like Eiji from number9dream, Robert Frobisher from Cloud Atlas, Jason from Black Swan Green and the woman on the Holy Mountain in Ghostwritten that had first made me fall in love with Mitchell's books, so why would it be any different in Jacob de Zoet?

That is not to say that Jacob de Zoet is entirely the same or different when it comes to such elements in Mitchell's other work. One of the most intriguing “Easter eggs” of his work is the character crossovers that exist between his books. In every novel bar his first at least one character (often minor) reappears from one of his former books. Such a network is fascinating when dealing with the novels as a whole, as such sharing creates a metaworld that is both supported and made problematic by the individual novels (characters that are doomed to die in one novel come back in middle to old age in others and thus call into question their nature). Thankfully in Jacob de Zoet Mitchell continues such a tradition, having the young midshipman who appears near the end of the book (not to spoil things) being Boerhaave, a sailor who features as an older man in Adam Ewing's section of Cloud Atlas (Mitchell's third book). While such links are easily looked over and may seem overly pedantic, such treasures make the reading of all of Mitchell's works something more than just being able to say that you know what happens in each one.

Finally, in my study of Mitchell I found that a surprising number of goats appear in his works. Prominent examples are Goatwriter in number9dream, a character from a “children's story” read by the main character, and the goat from Ghostwritten that plays a role at the turning point in the story set on Clear Island. As such, I was on the lookout for goats and many, many appeared, much to my delight. Significantly, they were a feature of history at the time and place Mitchell was writing and they do not dominate the story noticeably in comparison to other animals, however every mention was a delight as it reaffirmed that this was truly my favourite author as I had studied him.

Thus, my reading of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was a much more enjoyable experience than I initially expected, reminding me of some of the things I had started to overlook about my favourite author, and confirming a number of those that in my mind sets him apart and makes him all the more special.

Poetry Festival and Workshop

2010-08-26T22:21:00.004+08:00

So many of you may know about the upcoming WA Poets Inc Spring Poetry Festival, but do you know that dotdotdash and the Zine Collective are running a workshop together during it?
It's from 10am to noon on Friday the 3rd of September at the Blue Room and costs are:
For WA Poets members full - $15, concession - $10
For non-WA Poets members full - $20, concession - $12.
So come down, make a zine, meet up with your favourite dotdotdash people and have a whale of a time. Literally, you can draw whales.

More details: http://www.wapoets.net.au/pages/wa%20spring%20poetry%20festival%20&%20national%20poetry%20week.html

Image by Fremlin: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fremlin/

Meet Anna Dunnill, dotdotdash Art Panelist, Zine Maker and Dorkestra Ensemble Member

2010-08-24T23:20:00.006+08:00

If you make a point of rising before dawn and follow the Kwinana south to the fringes of the protected Fremantle district, there's a chance you’ll catch a rare glimpse of a most elusive and unique creature, species name Anna Dunnill, identifiable by her distinct brown curls, pink umbrella, and retro dinosaur-themed accessories. The Dunnill is a creature of many regional myths: writer, artist, dotdotdash art editor, zine maker, violinist, and perhaps most worryingly, recovering former chess club member. The dotdotdash blog dispatched a highly trained crack team of interviewers* to find out the truth behind the stories.
Alex: So, let’s start asking questions now.
Anna: Sure.
Alex: What is your role on dotdotdash?
Anna: I am one of the art-editing people. And, for about an hour and a half every issue, we sit down and look at some pictures, and we decide which ones Alex will hate the most, and those are the ones that go into dotdotdash. We think about the ones that everyone will hate the most. Not just Alex.
Steph: And then you choose them.
Anna: Yes, and then we choose them.
Steph: There’s no criteria where we have, you know, aesthetic qualities, technique …
Anna: Nope.
Steph: Pieces that Alex will hate, pieces that Steve will hate …
Anna: Yep.
Alex: Pieces of urine-stained toilet paper.
Steph: Yes, tell us about that particular piece.
Anna: Well, we thought that was a very funny piece. And there weren’t many funny pieces. And we thought it fitted in with Feast because it was like “after the Feast”.
Steph: It comes out the other end.
Anna: Exactly. But actually, seriously, we did really enjoy the pieces as photographs, and they were oddly beautiful, I think, in that they were all glowing. I know that was the urine – obviously that was the urine. But I think it was interesting, and there was certainly nothing else like it. And yes, they’re kind of ridiculous, but they’re aware of their ridiculousness. That’s why we chose them.
Steph: We’ve had a couple of pieces from that particular artist before. I know the submission process is blind so you don’t have any names attached to them, but do you have any thoughts on work from the same submitter over a number of issues? Mel Pearce, for instance, is a local artist in Perth who has had a number of works across the four issues we’ve put out so far.
Anna: Yes, she’s been in all of them, and I think she’s got a piece on the cover of the next one. Is that correct, Alex?
Alex: Yep.
Anna: Well, we do have a lot of people who are submitting repeatedly, and that’s not because we haven’t done callouts to other people, but I think particularly if people have been selected once, they’re going to be encouraged to submit again and if a work is of good quality, I don’t see why it shouldn’t get accepted, especially if it’s amongst the best work we have for that issue.
Steph: Do you have any favourite pieces from any of the issues so far? Anything off the top of your head that strikes you as, “Gee, I’m really glad we published that?”
Anna: Not that I can think of off the top of my head, but I do really like Mel Pearce’s work. Oh, and of course, Tess’ pieces. The Clawbot. Those were really, really excellent pieces and I think they lifted the aesthetic of the magazine because they were scattered throughout it and they fitted so well with the theme, and other work, and the pieces they were paired with, which was good work by the designer, so thumbs up.
Alex: They set a tone for the magazine.
Anna: I think so. They were of a really professional quality, and really well documented.
Steph: Can you tell us about this term “documentation”? It’s something that was raised at the production meeting on the weekend and I’ve never heard it used before in that context. What exactly does it mean?
Alex: Yes, tell us what the required resolution is for digital submissions?
Anna: Oh, I don’t know what the resolution is. I know nothing about that. Big. Of course, big. But in terms of art, when you’re doing sculptures, especially, the documentation of them is really important because, the way they’re photographed, you can’t just scan them. For example, we had a submission where the individual pieces were very, very good but the way they were photographed, you could tell it was a classroom , you could see chairs in the background and unrelated things that were really distracting. Even though we could tell the quality of the actual sculptures was professional, since what was going to be published was the photographs, they needed to be of really high aesthetic quality and, what’s the word … I don’t mean layout … tell me the art word, guys.
Steph: Like … you used when you were talking about Clawbot, when you said it was very well set out on the page?
Alex: Perspective?
Steph: Three writers at this table and we can’t think of the right word.
Anna: Good God. And it’s a basic art word, and I’ve forgotten.
Steph: Let’s mull over this for a second …
Alex: We’ll edit all this silence out.
Steph: It’s like, when you have photography, and they … orientate well …
Anna: And they fit together well …
Alex: Oh, rule of thirds?
Anna: No, there’s a term. The “something” is very good. The …
Alex: Composition.
Anna: Thank you. Thank you very much. High five to you, Alex. The composition is very important. So this time we asked a couple of people who we felt like the individual pieces were very good but in terms of us publishing the photographs, they were of amateurish quality and we felt they could be better presented, better documented.
Steph: So did you ask them to resubmit?
Anna: I believe we asked them for additional documentation and specified the aspects that could be improved.
Alex: Wait – have you actually specified what documentation is?
Anna: Haven’t I? Oh, well, if you have a sculpture, the documentation of it is going to be a photograph, because obviously you can’t publish the actual sculpture. The same goes for the documentation of a painting, but it’s probably more evident in sculptural works; they’re a lot harder to capture, for obvious reasons.
Alex: You’re capturing one particular perspective.
Anna: Of course. And in terms of lighting and camera angles and composition of the piece – that’s really important as to how the piece is going to be viewed.
Steph: I think that’s one of the things that really stood out about Tess’ pieces as well – in addition to being technically astounding and well-representative of the theme of Antimatter, they were also very well documented.
Anna: They were very professionally documented, yes. They were very effectively portrayed.
Steph: So it just goes to show how crucial it is to think about documentation.
Steph: So let’s talk about you. What sort of projects have you been involved in recently? What’s your background?
Anna: My background. Well, I studied art for three years at TAFE, you mean, that kind of background?
Steph: Compose a movie trailer for yourself. With a deep voice and everything.
Anna: There would be a lot of images of me sitting in my room, drawing pictures or reading books. That would be most of the film. No seriously … I went to study art almost by accident because I wanted to do one year and then go and do creative writing except that I kept studying art and then I got an Advanced Diploma but most of the art I was doing was writing anyway, and so then I went to do art at uni and then I didn’t like that very much and so I decided to do creative writing and I make zines because they’re very nicely between art and writing. As a medium, they’re initially literary, but they’re also art pieces. I’m not just talking about pictures, but the medium itself … in terms of reproducing and distributing, it’s like an art project.
Alex: For the readers at home, what’s a zine?
Anna: That’s a very good question. A zine is usually a booklet you make yourself, you typeset or handwrite or draw in, or print out and glue together. They’re usually photocopied and stapled but not always; they can be sewn or put in bags, or anything. They can contain any content at all, but traditionally a lot of zines are based in music, and the punk scene but not so much now. There were a lot of feminist zines in the 90s and now most of the ones I come across – not all by any means, but most - are art-based, in Perth at least. There are a lot of art students doing zines and a lot of poetry people doing zines and also other people doing personal zines which are bits of diaries and personal narratives and pictures and collages and all kinds of things. I make zines. There’s one I’ve done three issues of, which is called Okay Ampersand, which has writing and art. And a few other one off zines that I’ve done. And I help run the Perth Zine Collective which Steve Finch and Rachel Kuan and Michelle Higgins started about a year ago. We distribute a bunch of other zines made by Perth people. I calculated the other day, we’d sold about 80 different titles over that time period which I was really excited about because we never advertised or did anything like that, people just kind of found us.
Steph: You guys have been very generous as well, giving up your time and spending many hours behind a table, running things, and not taking any commission; all the profits go back to the maker.
Anna: That’s right, although hopefully by the end of August, although it’s looking like it might not be, we’re hoping to get the zine distro online so people can order over the internet and we’re going to start taking commission when we do that because there’re going to be more time issues and potentially more costs. It’s been really good to be able to sell people’s zines and give them the whole profits, not just because it feels true to the movement but we’re all really bad at maths and it’s a lot easier to work out what you owe people. I really dislike maths. I was fine at maths in school but it just didn’t interest me in the slightest, so I never wanted to try very hard.
Steph: What about school? What kind of person were you like at school?
Anna: I was a big dork. *laughs* I had a glasses chain, which seems to be coming into fashion with certain hipsters, which is really frightening because I was taunted for my glasses chain. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bring myself wear one, the memories are just too raw … not really.
Steph: I hear you were in chess club.
Anna: No, I was not in chess club! I was in creative writing club.
Steph: Who spread this false and malicious rumour that you were in chess club?
Anna: I don’t know. I’ve never been good at chess. I was also in the bell ringing club, where we learned to ring bells. That was one of my dorkier societies that I belonged to, along with the senior recorder ensemble. That might top it. I played the violin a lot. I read a lot of Tamora Pierce.
Alex: Do you still play the violin?
Anna: Yes, I do. I play in a community ensemble called the Dorkestra because everyone is really dorky in it. They’re mostly middle-aged women, and it’s really fun. We meet at North Fremantle bowls club and drink one and play fairly easy chamber pieces. If anyone’s interested in joining the Dorkestra, let me know.
Steph: You were a writer first before you considered yourself an artist.
Anna: Absolutely. I did art by accident and I’m glad I did because I really enjoy it but ever since I was about eight, I’d always tell people I was going to be a writer and they all looked at me very indulgently and smiled … but now I’m being a writer *evil laugh* so there. My favourite author when I was eight, just in case anyone cares, was Enid Blyton.
Steph: What’s your favourite Enid Blyton series? I mean, they were all the same, they were all like X number of kids plus a very intelligent animal and they went and foiled robbers and discovered treasure.
Anna: I did enjoy the Famous Five for all of those reasons, but I also did enjoy the Faraway Tree and I read a lot of her school series.
Steph: Did you notice she always hated American people?
Anna: She did. And she was also pretty racist quite a lot as well. Whenever she talked about gypsies – which they’ve now changed to “travelers” in modern editions, because that’s the PC term – they were dirty and rude and beat their children and stole things. Even if there’s like a good gypsy character, the rest of them are really awful. All the girls are either housewives or they’re boys, like George, or they’re almost as good as a boy. I think George gets told that once.
Steph: They were also kind of comforting. Everyone gets scones and lemonade.
Anna: I always enjoyed reading what they were going to eat for their picnics, like tinned sardines and pork pies and ginger beer …
Alex: Whoa. Ginger beer?
Anna: Yeah!
Alex: I want to be a member of the Famous Five.
Steph: If you could be a character in an Enid Blyton novel, who would you be? And if you say Anne, I’ll have to kill you.
Anna: There’s no way I could be Anne. She enjoys tidying her kitchen too much, and she finds little places to keep the milk cool … in the famous five, I might be George because she’s really fun, but she’s not the boys who are always like, “No George, this is a boy’s job”, though she goes and does it anyway, and she has good adventures. And hopefully one day she grows up and becomes a feminist. And also she gets to have a really excellent dog. But otherwise I might be a magical character in one of the lands in the Faraway Tree. Mr Pinkwhistle’s cat, Sooty, who can talk. Did you ever read the Narnia series where in the Last Battle, the talking cat is the one that betrays everybody. The talking cat is, like, Judas, man. What happens to him in the end is he gets turned back into a dumb animal because he is not worthy of being able to talk. That should be a lesson to us all.
Steph: Do you find it dangerous that so many children’s books have moral implications that imply certain moral codes without making the children aware that they are biased? I speak of the CS Lewis books in particular because there’s been a lot of discussion in recent years about how CS Lewis wrote Christianity into his books, where Phillip Pullman went in the other direction and deliberately made an atheist fantasy.
Anna: The CS Lewis books are definitely biased. He set out to make a children’s version of the Bible, I guess, but while it implicitly contains Christian values, “values” inverted commas, I don’t think he makes a … if you didn’t know the Christian story, I don’t think it would make a difference to the story itself. I don’t think anyone would be converted by reading CS Lewis as opposed to the Bible. It’s an interesting question. I like Phillip Pullman’s books – I like both of them. And I think it is a bit iffy and dangerous when people deliberately try to set a certain world view into their books. I recently re-read a book I had when I was a kid – it was called the Bracelet of Grood [by Norman Moss] – and it was very clearly a Christian story but it was a fantasy, and I had no idea as a child that this had anything to do with the place I went on Sundays every week with my family. It was very strange to realize that, but I don’t think it had any implications on my morals or ethical beliefs. Maybe subconsciously. I suppose all books are biased in some ways; I’m just thinking of Enid Blyton who was obviously well-loved by many people, but she did have a lot of racist and sexist views that would never stand up today.
Steph: Even Harry Potter –
Anna: Yeah, there are a lot of links to the Christian story in Harry Potter.
Steph: And she got so lambasted for promoting witchcraft and magic.
Anna: My RE [religious education] teacher was getting brochures about how to stop your class from reading Harry Potter, which was very peculiar. These themes of resurrection and betrayal are not in any way unique to the Christian story. They go back a lot further than that. I think it’s really interesting, especially towards the end when you could match certain characters in Harry Potter to characters in the Bible …
Steph: Tell me about your current projects.
Anna: My current projects are … Well, I’m working on a zine with a guy in Melbourne called Luke, and he makes a zine called “You” which is mostly distributed around Melbourne but I’ve seen a few which have made it to Perth. He makes it every week and it’s free and it’s usually in paper bags and it’s a letter addressed to “Dear You”. He also makes another zine called Plastic Knife and we’re making a Plastic Knife/Okay Ampersand split zine where we're making a list of people’s names and we’re both writing short piece based on those, and then we’re making short pieces responding to each other’s. I’m not sure how it’s going to work, and I haven’t actually started writing yet, but it’s in the process. And mostly just working on things for the Zine Collective, trying to get it online and starting to think about all my uni assignments, which are going to be due very shortly. When I get time, I have some art projects of my own that I want to expand, but I don’t expect that will happen for quite a while. But I would like to have an exhibition sometime soon, so I am thinking vaguely, very vaguely, about that.
Steph: Any final words? Any advice?
Anna: Show, don’t tell, children … You should come to the opening of the Spring Poetry Festival on the 27th and I’ll be reading at that. You should also come to Cottonmouth on September 2nd, because it’s starting again – yay, we can all cheer – and there’ll also be a giant zine table I’ll be facilitating. See you there, everybody.
*Alex Kannis and Steph Moriarty daylight as dotdotdotash’s lead designer and short story editor respectively; sometimes at night, they put on capes and fight crime, but mostly they just hang out at Taka and tempt innocents into undergoing ruthless interrogations with the delicious, delicious promise of teriyaki. Actually, you know, they both have other day jobs, but being a superhero pays better.
Bonus excerpt:
Steph: Anna Dunnill, who would you pick to be interviewed next in this series of blog things that have never been talked about before but that I will now pitch to Megan and Clea?
Anna: I would choose … my cat, Triceratops Dunnill.
Steph: I thought you were going to say, “I choose you, Pikachu.”
Anna: *laughs* I choose you.
Steph: That doesn’t count. I can’t interview myself.
Anna: Someone else can interview you.
Steph: I can talk to a mirror.
Alex: You know we’re going to edit this interview so it doesn’t resemble what you said to us in the order you said it to us. It will just be this mash-up of crazy, very pertinent, conversational, kind of, continual and subtle "eggs" on our magazine.
Steph: It’ll be like, “Steve Finch … is … a twelve-year-old … in a … lab coat.”
Anna: My God. Anyway. Yes. He’s not. I do not concur with that statement.
Steph: Steve Finch is not a twelve-year-old in a lab coat.
Anna: No. Neither is my boyfriend.
Alex: I am.
Anna: Are you? That’s all right.

Competition Post: Aesthetica Creative Works

2010-08-23T21:28:00.008+08:00

So recently we got a very exciting email in our inbox about an international competition open to Australian entries. It read:

The Aesthetica Creative Works Competition is now open for entries! Aesthetica Magazine is inviting all photographers, artists, writers and poets to submit their work into the Aesthetica Creative Works Competition 2010. Now in its third year, the Creative Works Competition dedicated to celebrating and championing creative talent across three disciplines, identifying new artists and writers and bringing them to international attention.

The Competition has three categories, Artwork & Photography, Poetry and Fiction.
Winners and finalists are published in the Aesthetica Creative Works Annual.
Winners of each category receive £500 prize money (apx. $880) plus other prizes.
Entry to the Creative Works Competition is £10 (apx. $17).
The entry fee allows the submission of 2 images, 2 poems or 2 short stories.
The deadline for submissions is the 31^st August 2010.
More guidelines on how to submit can be found online at http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/submission_guide.htm

It's very close, but the prizes look wonderful and doesn't 2010 just seem like the year to enter that piece?

Interview with Briony Stewart, Children's Book Author

2010-08-19T18:35:00.009+08:00

When I was little, my mum used to meal out bedtime stories in chapters. No matter that I employed my full box of children’s tricks, she could never be convinced to read “just one more page”. Eventually, when I became old enough to read myself, the whole problem was bypassed by turning my bedside light back on after she left my room, to continue the story in secret. Now a so-called adult, I still find myself drawn to the children’s literature section in bookshops, lingering on titles by Shaun Tan and Neil Gaiman as well as the classics my mum used to read to me as a child. So,when I heard a children’s author was moving in next door, I thought a dotdotdash interview would be the perfect way to find out all the stuff I wanted to know about thinking and making children’s books. Briony Stewart indulged my 101 questions, explaining the practice and process behind her Kumiko and the Dragon trilogy.

Tell us a bit about your books...

So far I have published two short novels for children which are part of a trilogy, and I am working on the last instalment now. These books are about a girl called Kumiko who has a guardian dragon. They are loosely set in Japan, and draw heavily on a lot of imagery from that part of the world, as well as from ideas of folktales and mythology.

The first book was never intended for a particular age group, but rather for two particular people. One was my Nanna, who the story is based on. She grew up in Japan during the war and didn't get much of a chance to learn to read. The other was my nine year old brother who was a bit of a 'non-reader'. I wanted to write an inspiring adventure for the little girl my Nanna once was, as well as something with claws and teeth that might interest my brother. But I hope that there is something to be found there for the young and fearless, and for old romantics too.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Well, I do have a fascination with the romanticism and whimsy of the 18th and 19th Century in Europe. The idea of the grand adventure, which was popular at the time, evoked a lot of delightful fantasy in literature for children. But I draw inspiration from all over, and very eclectically really, from the scientific illustrations of Ernst Haeckel to the latest Pixar film. The stories I end up writing, however, all usually originate from ideas derived from my own memories and family stories.

How did you make the transition from practising writer to published author? I heard it all began in a Writing for Children class at Curtin University...

It did! I had just finished uni and was looking for writing opportunities. I found a competition for unpublished manuscripts at a children’s literature festival in Queensland. I had a story I had finished for uni just sitting there and thought it wouldn’t hurt to enter it. I was pretty much just thinking of the prize money! When it won I decided to fly myself to Queensland and attend the festival. It was a good choice because while I was there I met an editor who asked to publish it! I had geared myself up for publisher rejections (after proper submissions,) so to bypass that was amazing. The following year I had to apply for a fellowship through the Department for Culture and the Arts to learn a bit more about publishing! It was a lucky break, but at the same time I guess it shows that it’s worth putting yourself out there and making the most of opportunities.

Shaun Tan says he writes for himself, and I've heard other children's book authors talk about shaping their material to suit a particular age group - who do you keep in mind when writing your books?

This will sound stupid, but when I was little my favourite thing was to lie in bed, in the dark, and listen to audio books on my Fisher Price tape player. When I was older, I used to lie in bed and make up stories and scenarios in my head. When I write now, I pretty much imagine myself as a kid – any age that seems to fit, in that warm, dark place, listening to the words and imagining the pictures of a story. Through the phases of growing up I think there was a time when I was just about any kid - the social butterfly, the social reject, the creative, the nerd, the girly girl, the tom boy, the shy kid and the boisterous clown… I try to keep all those versions of that kid lying in the dark, listening to the story, in mind when I’m writing.

It's always fascinating to hear about the author's processes - can you talk us through how you get from the beginning of a work to the end?

To be honest I think I’m only just starting to work that out myself! But usually I mull over the idea of a story for a long time before I start writing. When I begin to type a story, I like to start at the beginning and work chronologically. If I am particularly tempted, I might draft out some interesting scenes, but only in my notebook. I always work chronologically on the computer, and only type out anything I’ve written in my notebook when I actually reach that scene, and adjust it depending on what‘s changed along the way. I don’t really plot out chapters, I don’t restrict the story that much, but I usually have a vague idea of what I want to happen by the end of a scene or chapter. For someone so poor at spelling and grammar I am a meticulous editor, and constantly keep going back over a story or chapter with a fine tooth comb as I’m working on it. I find it hard to progress unless I am confident I have got each passage just right. This means I’m a really slow worker, but once I have reached the end of a ‘first draft’ it is pretty polished.

You've both written and illustrated Kumiko and the Dragon and Kumiko and the Dragon’s Secret - do you think of yourself as more of a writer or an illustrator? And which one (if any!) comes first when making a book?

Oh! I wish I was just one or the other! It would be nice to be able to totally focus on one discipline! But in truth both things are too closely related for me, and I am equally both. My writing is very imagery based, and my art is narrativistic. When it comes to books though, the writing always comes first for me (or at least the story), because that directs my illustrations. But I am equally happy to be writing a novel with no pictures, as I am making paintings for an exhibition.

I've always been interested in the relationship between text and images in children's books - do you have any particular approach to illustrating your written work?

I think I am still developing my style, but I guess for me the pictures need to do the writing justice; they need to match the text in their style. Also, when I’m writing I can never include every detail I’ve imagined in the description, I have to pick the best bits. But there’s room to put some of that extra detail into the pictures, as a natural extension of the story, so being able to illustrate a text is always fun.

What's the best thing about making children's books?

I think the best thing is getting to reopen the wonderment and silliness of the child inside you. A close second would be that books for children are so important. The books you read as a child which really capture your heart and your imagination, stay with you forever. It’s nice to be part of that, to be part of someone’s childhood.

Who are some of your most inspiring children's book authors?

Oh, I’m a fan of too many children’s books! Francis Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is magical, as is Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery. I love Roald Dahl and Paul Jennings, Shaun Tan, John Marsden and would give just about anything to go to Hogwarts!

The Kumiko and the Dragon trilogy are published by the University of Queensland Press, and the first two instalments, Kumiko and the Dragon and Kumiko and the Dragon’s Secret, retail at $14.95 in most bookstores.

ctj

Anaïs Nin v. Patti Smith – an art community memoir mash-up

2010-08-16T23:21:00.008+08:00

There is something about reading the memoirs of artists of past generations that serves as a reminder of just why creative types are driven to form communities. Recently, I’ve been alternating between The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol IV, which covers the period of 1944-1947, and Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids, which spans two decades plus of her friendship and sometime intimate relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Both memoirs are set in the art underground of New York City, one generation removed from the other. Nin circulates amongst literati against the backdrop of World War II, while Patti Smith descends into the dens and lounges of misfits, from Janis Joplin to Salvador Dali, who swirl around Andy Warhol’s factory and The Chelsea Hotel.

So, what role does the community play for these artists? For any artist?

Nin chronicles her affair and later correspondence of letters with Henry Miller, weaving tales of her love/hate (though mostly the latter) relationship with bigwig critic of the day Edmund Wilson and analysing her friendship with Gore Vidal, detailing her desire to unmask his sensitive, less political side. For those who have read Nin, her writing is characteristically fluid, at times amorphous, yet always lending itself to proverbial wisdom with a good dose of Freud. It is through her artistry of words that Nin explores the world of the artists who surround her.

For Patti Smith, the form is slightly different. She crafts a novel, a posthumous ode to her lifelong friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, from her diaries spanning the mid-60s to the late 80s. But the themes are very much the same – even amid her romantic relationship with Mapplethorpe, it is always art which forms the real lasting bond between them. She supports him financially for a period, and he is the first to urge her to turn her poetry into songs. Together they spend most of the 60s starving, scraping by on what they can save together, but never questioning their commitment to one another and their quest, initially without the direction of a specific medium, to be artists.

But at some point, why write of great writers, when they have already expressed so much, so eloquently… Here, in two of my favourite excerpts, Anaïs Nin predates social networking and talks of the need for real, profound human connection, and Patti Smith captures the title moment of her novel, when she and Robert walked the streets of New York – young, bold, starving artists soon to rise.

We have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision. –Anaïs Nin, May 1946

One Indian summer day we dressed in our favorite things, me in my beatnik sandals and ragged scarves, and Robert with his love beads and sheepskin vest. We took the subway to West Fourth Street and spent the afternoon in Washington Square. We shared coffee from a thermos, watching the stream of tourists, stoners, and folksingers. Agitated revolutionaries distributed antiwar leaflets. Chess players drew a crowd of their own. Everyone coexisted with the continuous drone of verbal diatribes, bongos, and barking dogs.

We were walking toward the fountain, the epicenter of activity, when an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand.

“Oh take their picture,” said the woman to her bemused husband, “I think they’re artists.”

“Oh, go on,” he shrugged. “They’re just kids.” –Patti Smith, summer of 1967

-Megan Smith

Staff Book Review # 1

2010-08-12T16:59:00.016+08:00

Yes, we make dotdotdash, but as you can imagine we also write and read a lot too. This week dotdotdash short fiction editor and distribution member Patricia Johnson reviews what she's recently been reading.

Destroying Avalon
Kate McCaffrey
Fremantle Press
$17.95

What is it really like to be bullied? Avalon is a fifteen year old girl who is targeted when she starts at a new school. Following an initial worrying incident, her problems escalate as they change into a viciously anonymous cyber-bullying campaign.

Avalon, and through her the reader, finds herself dealing with issues beyond her years; any young person reading this book will be faced with the experience of living in a world rife with adult difficulties. The fact that the adults in the story, including her parents, are not in touch with the virtual world that the young people are living in, makes them impotent to detect what is really going on.

Author Kate McCaffrey guides us through Avalon’s painful journey step by step, showing how the bullying affects her and her relationships with her family, teachers, and friends, while skilfully exposing the pressures on young people today. The climax of the story and its resolution are both unexpected and logical.

Written in the first person, Destroying Avalon is a cautionary tale for our time. Well written and absorbing, the style is direct and straightforward with a realistic conversational style. Published in paperback by Fremantle Press, I recommend this book for older readers (and their teachers and parents).

Patricia Johnson

Guest Post: Perth Spring Poetry Festival

2010-08-06T22:50:00.012+08:00

1. Do you think Perth lags behind the rest of Oz culturally?
Prove it isn't so.

2. Come along to the Perth Spring Poetry Festival, August 27th to 29th continuing into National Poetry Week.

3. This is a case where the audience is as important as the performers. Oh, and by the way, you too will be given a chance to perform

4. My son, a Sydney journalist, says that poetry is dead.
How can this be with so many people writing poetry?
With every poem you see in print, there are hundreds that didn’t make it, or that weren’t sent out in the first place.

5. Who hasn’t felt like writing a poem after some happy/tragic event in the family? And we appreciate others who have managed to sum up the happy/tragic events of life for us. Come and listen to Joanna Preston, who has recently won the Mary Gilmore Award, Chris Mansell, founder of Press Press, Meg Mooney, and your popular WA poets.

6. Look us up on http://www.wapoets.net.au/

Zine Spotlights #2

2010-08-05T12:44:00.006+08:00

Dates I’ve been on and not been on
Anonymous
$3.50, available from Sticky Institute

I know that dating – and in particular, bad dates – are fodder for pretty much every other narrative in existence. I guess this zine manages to undermine the usual dating narratives through its unpinnability – does the title mean that some of the stories are fabricated? Perhaps the zine contains several people’s stories – reshaped and focused through a single narrator? This could have easily become a vapid account of the casual dating scene, and indeed there are some sitcom-esque dates of stunning cluelessness (e.g. the guy who sends the narrator on an ill-conceived scavenger hunt). But I find that many of the stories are infused with a kind of peculiar sadness, as if dating – more often than not – brings out the worst in people, or draws one’s attention more strongly to another’s faults. This zine isn’t for everybody, but as someone who has never really done the casual dating thing, I found it interesting that dating/courting narratives are so familiar to us that even I could relate to some of these stories.

Okay Ampersand
Anna Dunnill
$3.50, available from the Perth Zine Collective

I wasn’t sure if it would be somewhat incestuous to review a zine created by a member of both dotdotdash and the Perth Zine Collective. Then I remembered the whole of Perth’s art scene is incestuous. Also, how can I not spotlight a zine that’s been described as ‘fucking delightful’? Okay Ampersand is beautifully and warmly presented – the grizzled typewriter font, the hand-stitched spine and the pictures of envelopes, buttons, sketches and fabric off-cuts make this a very tactile and intimate zine, but not overbearingly so. (I think the found objects have been pressed up against a scanner rather than photographed, and I like the detailed textures that this technique produces.) The opening vignette about an event on a train platform neatly encapsulates the appeal of this zine – it’s alive with empathy and specificity, focused on tiny but somehow life-changing moments. I’ve only got the first issue of Okay Ampersand (pictured), so I’m not sure if all of these things apply to the second and third issues. But sure – fucking delightful sounds about right.

Delightedly,
Elizabeth Tan

"Pleased to meet you."

2010-08-03T23:49:00.009+08:00

Whenever I used to think of publications, I imagined large, fuzzy entities whose individuals melded into some kind of super magazine-worker with the face of the most recent edition's cover. I knew that there had to be plenty of people beavering away to produce the end product I held in my hands, but still, there it was, a shiny, titled cover page that collectively represented the whole magazine and its staff. I might be alone on this one, but just in case someone else suffers the same lack of imaginary powers, we thought we’d introduce some of the dotdotdash kids here on our blog. This week, meet the lovely Jennifer Browne who style edits our very own publication. Style editing? What’s that, you might ask? Read on, read on!

1. How did you come to be a style editor for dotdotdash?
I was part of the original group of people who came together to start up dotdotdash. When we were deciding who got to do what, I thought that style editing might be right up my alley! Because, in fact, it's what I spent most of my time doing in writing workshops at university.

2. Tell us a bit about what you do as a style editor for our publication...
Style editing basically involves going over the articles with a fine-toothed comb. We have to catch typos, change spelling to Australian English, make all the punctuation and layout consistent ... sort of what my English teachers used to do in school. Then we go through the magazine draft and check everything again. It requires a lot of attention to detail, but all the hard work has already been done by the contributors, section editors and designers - what we do is just one of the finishing touches in the whole process. (Also, this means that if you spot an error in dotdotdash - it's our fault.)

3. We’ve heard you also do some editing for an educational medical website - what's that like?
It requires attention to detail of a different sort. Not only do I edit for spelling and grammar, but I also have to make sure the information is correct and nothing's gone awry in the distillation of research material! That often involves checking the article against the sources used by the researcher. The sources can be hard to find sometimes, because a lot of the medical journals charge a subscription fee for access. Actually, the most fun aspect of doing work for the website is playing around with the images and diagrams. Labelling them, for example. The worst part is I sometimes feel a little hypochondriacal - I'd be editing a disease page, get to a list of possible symptoms for the condition and start to think, 'Hey, I might have this!' (I don't.)

4. What do you enjoy (and not!) about the editing process?
The best part is reading all the poetry, stories and articles that everyone's put so much effort into. I'm a bit of a lazy leisure reader, so I probably wouldn't read half of them if I didn't have to - and that would be seriously missing out on great work. The worst part is checking them for the third time. And the fourth, and the fifth ... because there's always *something* that gets missed the first time through.

5. Any tips on getting into the editing industry?
The ability to nitpick - and be right when you do - is often undervalued. But if you do have it, a lot of people will love you (if you're not obnoxious about it). I originally started out as a part-time student researcher for the medical website (found the job on the university careers board) and my boss moved me into editing and quality control pretty quickly. In other words, you may just fall into editing. But if you want more experience with editing, the best way is to volunteer - ask the university publishing centres or admin offices, or the local publishers such as Fremantle Press. Offer to go over your friends' work. Join dotdotdash! Volunteer work may pay nothing or very little, but it gives invaluable experience and can sometimes lead to a paid job. Another thing to do is get connected with other local editors, perhaps by joining an editors' group such as the Society of Editors (WA) Inc.

ctj

I Was A Teenage Mormon

2010-07-29T21:14:00.007+08:00

The last time I was in Melbourne, there was one place I had to go – The Sticky Institute. The Sticky Institute is one of those very Melbourne spots, the sort of place that prompts us West Coast writers to talk of packing up and heading east for a city with more, er, culture. A small shop in a subterranean mall under Degraves Street, The Sticky Institute stocks basically any ‘zine someone gives it. So, having heard of this fabled place of underground writing, both literal and metaphoric, I decided to check it out and pick up a ‘zine to read on the flight back to Perth.

The Sticky Institute is not the largest of spaces, but every bit of wall and tabletop is covered with ‘zines for sale. I flicked through a few waiting for the one that really drew me in… and then I saw it, the ‘zine that seemed made just for me – I Used to be a Teenage Mormon. If there was one sentence that would sum up my life, there it was, my life story told by a Melbourne ‘zinemaker with whom I shared a seven-word life epithet.

The ‘zine was small but thick, and told with a great deal of humour, mostly dark, of a budding artist’s adolescent flirtation with fundamentalist religion – the desire to belong, to have instant community and to get some easy answers to life’s hard questions. Though a few parts were a testament (sorry, religious humour) to why proofreading, even in alternative mediums, is a good thing, the ‘zine was compellingly told by a girl clearly needing to exorcise the demons of her religions past. Or as one blog commentator puts it “Mormonism AND puberty at the same time?!?? holy god!!”

Not in Melbourne? Well, Perth may not have a Sticky Institute but it does have a nice ‘zine rack at Planet Books and a sweet ‘zine collective, so go find a ‘zine of your own.

Megan Smith

(image by tanakawho: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28481088@N00/)

Three Common Errors in Writing Science

2010-07-27T19:58:00.013+08:00

Lack of Research:

Research in creative writing and science is frequently viewed in radically different terms. For many writers research is what gives them ideas and helps them to create more believable worlds or characters while for most scientists research is the essential and most time consuming aspect of the process, the writing up comes later and can be seen as a lot less important. That is not to say that every piece of writing that involves science must be so painstakingly researched it could be a scientific paper in its own right, but getting the balance right is essential. Even if all you want to do is depict how futuristic science or technology influences or could influence society some research on society and sociological theory could be beneficial. If all this is sounding rather onerous and boring remember that if you are really engaged in a topic for a creative piece the research should inspire and interest you, not frustrate you. So choose the right mix of science and other aspects and choose the right science. There is much more out there than physics or chemistry. If neither are working for you try things like biology, geology or even medical imaging. The world of science is large and expanding so don't reject exploring it just because you hated high school chemistry.

Depiction of Scientists:

There is a tendency to portray scientists as evil, mad geniuses who have strange behavioural patterns and exist in filthy laboratories. Firstly, real life scientists tend to be optimistic people who believe what they do contributes positively to the communities they live in. Even those who discover methods that are used to build terrible things are often only thinking of the positive benefits their research could bring when developing such technologies. After all, many new developments have more than one use, some of which could be life saving and others that could be disastrous. Secondly, as any scientist who has worked on a long term experiment will tell you constancy is frequently a key aspect. Leaving your experiment for weeks on end or doing things at different times of the day just does not deliver the reliable results many scientists look for. Successful scientists are much more likely to exhibit signs of obsessive compulsive disorder than they are to be Byronic figures. Thirdly, scientific laboratories are more often than not extremely clean. Whatever you are dealing with you don't want foreign materials to contaminate your experiment as then you would not be able to isolate the causing factor if it works. This is not to say that some of the best discoveries were not made in this way, but it is generally the intention of scientists to eliminate as many outside influences as possible. For all those Frankensteins in filthy labs creating creatures, has anyone thought about hygiene and the possibility of infection for either the creature or the scientist? I bet you if they existed in real life they definitely would.

Science is Always Futuristic:

The title of Antimatter naturally suggested futuristic technologies as well as physics and chemistry but that is not to say that all good scientific fiction uses these aspects. Many wonderful books that utilise science in interesting ways are in fact set in the past, particularly in the Victorian period, and consider the rise of science and how theories such as evolution changed the way people thought about and saw their world. Certainly while biology and botany may now today be considered not as ground breaking as physics, in those days they certainly had some of the most exciting discoveries. Just imagine being Joseph Banks, Captain Cook's botanist, and seeing Australia and New Zealand for the first time. There is so much potential, don't dismiss science just because you don't want to deal with the futuristic physics of spaceships.

So challenge yourself to look at science and writing about science differently. After all, if Antimatter contains works that utilise science that also feature giant chameleons and salt lakes there is obviously a very large area to explore.

Rosalind for dotdotdash.

(image by rieh, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rieorie/)

Poeticised Lyrics

2010-07-22T23:17:00.012+08:00

The question of whether song lyrics can be poetry has been a long standing one and both sides draw examples from as far back as minstrels and epic poetry. The debate, however, seems to be hung up on the idea that the answer is either yes or no rather than examining some of the key differences and key similarities between the two. Poetry can be read to music and anyone who has heard good spoken word knows that the human voice can be a very powerful instrument. Conversely, people tend not to read song lyrics if they do not know the music that goes along with them. Yet one of the most interesting things is the techniques that poetry and song lyrics share, even if they are frequently used differently.

Rhyme:

Many people feel that rhyme has become overdone and hackneyed in contemporary poetry. Whether they are right or not, certainly rhyme goes down better in songs than it usually does on the page. Still, a good rhyming pattern can draw attention to certain lines in both songs and poetry and add that little something special that can set the work apart. Some good examples of rhyme in song are:

Imogen Heap's “Not Now But Soon”:
Not now but soon
The most beautiful light
Will wake us to pillow fighting excitement
Not now but soon

And Mew's “The Zookeeper's Boy”:
You're tall just like a giraffe
You have to climb to find its head
But if there's a glitch
You're an ostrich
You've got your head in the sand.

Both rhyming patterns work better, naturally, in context with the music they are set to as this sets the rhythm which makes the rhyme match up, something that a reader with only the words on the page may struggle to do so. Yet in both the rhyme sets the tone of the song, “Not Now But Soon” may be about bad times and waiting for the good but the rhyme between “light” and “excitement” brings out the positive tone of the song. Similarly, “The Zookeeper's Boy” is a song about love however the rhyming of “glitch” and “ostrich” highlights the quirky aspects rather than dwelling on the angst.

Rhythm:

A suitable rhythm is essential for both good poetry and an important feature of well written lyrics. However, for both poetry and lyrics rhythm comes from very different places with poetry frequently being reliant entirely on markings on the page. Lyrics, however, tend to rely on the music they are set to. Great examples of lyrics where the rhythm of the song makes all the difference include:

Imogen Heap's “Wait it Out”:
Pain on pain on play repeating
With the backup makeshift life in waiting

Here the clunky rhythm gives the effect of juddering and halting progress that actually gets nowhere, a result that adds greatly to the atmosphere of the song.

Another great example is Gnarls Barkley's “Smiley Faces”:
What went right? What went wrong?
Was it a story or was it a song?
Was it overnight or did it take you long?
Was knowing your weakness what make you strong?

Of course there is very strong rhyme here too but it is the rhythm of this piece, combined with the rhyme, that makes such a series of questions fun and playful rather than interrogatory, a good thing if you song is indeed entitled “Smiley Faces”.

Alliteration:

This technique is yet another thing that is frequently seen as trite in poetry circles but can work wonderfully in lyrics, especially as songs can place words in such a way that the alliteration is heard but does not overwhelm. Again:

Imogen Heap's “Not Now But Soon”:
If we swallow "it’s all over" and open wide on these make-to-believe
Sullen, chewed up, sodden soliloquies

Such a collection of “s” would usually be more than a little over the top but set to music such a set up enhances the song as it emphasises the ease of “slipping”, especially at the last gate.

Repetition:

Certainly songs use repetition to a greater extent than poetry generally does and it is much easier to get away with it in a good song, but there are still songs out there that use it brilliantly. One of the best examples is:

Chairlift's “Bruises”:
I tried to do handstands for you
I tried to do handstands for you
But every time I fell for you, yeah every time I fell
I tried to do handstands for you
But every time I fell for you
I'm permanently black and blue, permanently
Blue for you.

It may look exceptionally trite on the page but set to music the repetition works wonderfully, as what sees to be at first a whimsical song takes, by way of repetition, many of the clichés of love and turns them on their heads.

WA Poets Inc is also currently running a song lyric competition (no music needed) so if this has sparked your interest go and check out http://www.wapoets.net.au/pages/competitions.html for details.

(Image by oddsock, http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/)

Zine Spotlights #1

2010-07-20T00:43:00.015+08:00

Diayr
Jenii
$2.00, available from the Perth Zine Collective
Reviewer: Sj Finch

Diayr, the almost diary, was made in 168 hours during the This is Not Art (TINA) Festival, and it’s brimming with brilliance. The kind of affable brilliance that doesn’t let you forget that it was made under pressure, that makes you excited about the AWESOME POWER of zines. It contains ironic instructions for these things called Shag Bands, a page full of 374 squares drawn in six minutes and eight seconds, a faux ad for retro party pantsuits and a note from the publisher saying, ‘This page has been left blank intentionally to allow more convenient page turns.’ Throughout Diayr are stream-of-consciousness diary entries providing context for Shag Bands and all that jazz. These paragraphs are immediately personable and gripping. This is Jenii’s first zine, but you couldn’t tell. It’s one of the best I’ve read in my short zine-reading life.

Poems by P.P worcester
P.P worcester
$6.00, available from the Perth Zine Collective
Reviewer: Elizabeth Tan

This offering is from a mysterious man who brought a whole stack of his zines to the dotdotdash Issue 1: ‘Quicksand’ Launch Party and didn’t reclaim them at the end of the night. Like a collection of scribbled notes passed around in class, the poems and sketches in this zine are at turns snarky, strange, sweet and funny. This is a very easy zine to pick up and get a sense of quickly; it’s kind of like Demetri Martin stand-up. At $6.00 it might scare off some zine shoppers, but you can’t put a price on insights such as: ‘Bacteria will be the death of us all. You’ll see.’ Mr worcester, if you are reading this, please contact us sometime before we squander your earnings on a second-hand foot spa.

Signing off,
Sj Finch and Elizabeth

Zine from the North

2010-07-13T06:57:00.033+08:00

I’m amazed at how easy it is to read unfamiliar cities. With no knowledge of a town’s layout, it’s possible to instinctually navigate the landscape to points of interest that are unique to you.

At the moment I’m in Gothenburg, Sweden, visiting extended family that my mother and I said goodbye to many, many years ago. We moved to Australia when I was four, and though I have vague recollections of a large-windowed apartment and a favourite swing that creaked a greeting every time you sat in it, most of my remembered childhood is within West Leederville.

Now that my mum and I have returned, I’ve been reorienting myself with Gothenburg city using a navigation system of happenstance left and right. This involves standing on street corners, glancing in both directions and picking whichever looks the more happening. While it’s resulted in a few full circles, it’s also led to some real gems. A few days ago, I came across this courtyard, which led through to the following studio:

The owner invited me in and explained that it was her place, and that it doubled as a gallery and a zine store to boot. She told me that there was a healthy zine community in Gothenburg, and showed some examples made by students at the city’s local university, Valand. I was so pleased with chancing across the place that I had to buy one: “Wast Land”, by Jacob Hurtig. It contains a series of Adidas clad figures in forested landscapes, and is deliciously eerie. Here’s a little peek inside:

That's it from the international zine front, but check back in over the coming weeks as we’ll be reviewing some local zines in full. In the meantime, WA's very own Perth Zine Collective have the juice on our local scene.

ctj

Draw Rites 4: The Feastening!

2010-07-11T17:07:00.014+08:00

What is Draw Rites?

The simple definition of a Draw Rites piece is: 'Any collaborative work that responds to a dotdotdash theme, and consists of both literary and artistic components.'

The collaboration can be between two or more people; there's no limit to how many people can collaborate. Artistic and literary components can be anything – performance art, sculptures, comics, illustration, food reviews, non-fiction articles, essays, stories, poems – whatever you can fit onto an a4 page is okay.

I think one of our art editors, Kiki Hunwick, summed it up pretty nicely when she said that the idea is 'to make words sculptural'.

Who is Draw Rites?

Draw Rites is a pun (Draw plus Write) that I and Sam Santoro came up with last year. We started it as a dotdotdash submissions genre because we both felt that the magazine needed to have an interactive and personable element to the submissions process, but we didn't want to encroach on the established anonymous judging process for selecting successful pieces. We thought that by holding workshops and workshopping people's pieces before they submit, we might be able to help those who might not normally consider submitting to a creative journal. We also wanted there to be more communication between different artistic genres, especially between writers and visual artists. We figured that there's so many interesting things that happen on the borderline between the semiotic and the haptic, and it's pretty damn fun to explore this while working with someone who comes from a completely different artistic place.

What happened at the last Draw Rites workshop

A Draw Rites workshop gives you the chance to meet, talk and get thinking about the kind of project you'll create. It's not essential to come to a workshop if you wish to submit; it's just fun to get you in a Draw Rites mood. Here’s a round up of our last workshop event held at Genesis in the Hills:

Well. The moon was beach-ball sized, and hung in the air with an eerie benevolence as we drove up to Genesis in the Hills. The vegetarian restaurant hung over a slope and glowed warm like a candle. We were greeted by Ita and Rivka who had prepared an amazing cake and coffee welcome. We gathered in a circle and talked a little about what Draw Rites is. Erin and Mel Pearce offered up examples from their Draw Rites work, and talked about their process. We were paired up and began a series of speed brainstorming sessions, where each pair was given a word from which to brainstorm a project, and every five minutes everyone swapped partners. We came up a million ideas. It was immense and immediate fun and we would do it over a trillion times.

What now?

Have a look at past examples, such as those on our website (http://dotdotdash.org/projects.html), and other sources of art and writing. Anna Dunnill and Kiki Hunwick have compiled together the following list of people to look to for examples of art that incorporates words and/or collaboration -

David Shrigley
Emma Rooksby
Emma Rooksby
Nedko Solakov: Several of his best pieces
Very Funny
Tom Gauld
Jenny Holzer
Sara Fanelli
Shelley Jackson (a story made of tattoos)
Miranda July:Official Website
Learning to Love You More
'The Hallway', an installation work consisting of words in a hallway
Sculpture installation with text at Venice Biennale
Thurl White
Emily Floyd
Nick Bantock
Postsecret
A Softer World

Send an email to editor@dotdotdash.org with your contact details. Anyone at all may do this. We'll reply with a contact list of people registered to be Draw Rites participants.
Send an email to people and get a project idea together. Our upcoming issue is 'Feast', and the deadline is Monday the 26th of July. Feel free to send your work in progress to editor@dotdotdash.org beforehand so that we can help you workshop it.
But remember when you go to submit the work, please send it to dotdotdash.submissions@gmail.com and follow the guidelines here: http://dotdotdash.org/submit-draw-rites.html

dingalingalingalingaling,

Sj Finch

for dotdotdash

Guest Blog: Fremantle Poetry Month

2010-06-25T07:14:00.005+08:00

Fremantle Poetry Month is fast approaching and it promises to be an exciting month. How so? Well, for me personally it’ll see the launch of my first major book. But it’s not just about the launch of my book – how ever dizzying and exciting that very thought is – it’s about connecting with the wider community and them, in turn, connecting with poetry.

It feels strange saying ‘my book’. I guess the correct term is ‘our book’ really, since I’m appearing in an anthology of sorts called New Poets. It’s the first in a series for Fremantle Press, this book featuring collections from three emerging West Australian poets: Emma Rooksby, J.P Quinton and myself. We each have a collection of approximately 40 poems within the book, the whole thing coming together under the keen eye of poetry editor Tracy Ryan. It’s exciting, since for each of us three emerging poets, this is the major step in to a pretty exciting future.

So that’s ‘my book’. Sort of.

I mean, I could mention how incredibly exciting the prospect is, but I think that goes without saying. As does the sense of accomplishment, that glowing sense of pride, that inner nod that says ‘well done, well done’. If anything, what people perhaps don’t realise is how incredibly supportive Fremantle Press are, from everything they provide to the detail by which they lay it out. It might sound cliché, but it feels like you’re part of something… part of a family.

My work itself is a dizzy experiment in mapping human experience. Think of a Rorschach, one of those ink spots which psychologists use to see what you perceive, what underlying images clamber up out of the blob. My collection is sort of like that, it’s two halves examining the place of the individual within nature and then society. If it were an outfit and I were having my photo taken for the social pages I’d describe it – in three words – as ‘mathematical, edgy, concise’. It also contains experimentation aplenty – I’m so glad Tracy understood the musical nature of punctuated enjambment, even though I still get editors from the stuffier journals writing back saying ‘I don’t understand why your punctuation appears at the beginning of the lines?!’ Because it wants to. And because full-stops and commas feel like they’ve lost some of their power, complacently placed at the end of a line. It almost feels common and unimaginative to do that. But that’s just me: I’m not striving to be modern, just unique.

Also launching during Fremantle Poetry Month are works from John Mateer (The West) and Caroline Caddy (Burning Bright). Together the five of us are essentially the representatives of Fremantle Poetry Month. We are like The Fremantle Press Poetry All-Star Five for the month, ranging from emerging to established, each of our voices unique, overlapping in imagery and motifs and filling in gaps beyond the range of each other.

Fremantle Poetry Month kicks off proper with a mega launch on Thursday July 8 from 6:30pm down at the Fremantle Arts Centre. It’ll be big, with the line-up including special guests like Tracy Ryan, Kevin Gillam, Nandi Chinna, Amber Fresh & Lil Leonie Lionheart (who are amazing together!) and Xave Brown. Oh, and The Fremantle Press Poetry All-Star Five naturally (that’s Mateer, Caddy, Rooksby, Quinton and myself). Best bit it’s a free event with heaps of sponsors and lots of literary fair. All you need to do is RSVP by 5 July to admin@fremantlepress.com.au or 08 9430 6331. Simple? Simple.

There’s a Reading and Q & A night a little later in the month, on Thursday July 15. This is a bit more of intimate event and features Mateer, Quinton and myself. It takes place at the Fremantle Library and is open to the public. It’s an opportunity to hear us read, discuss our works and then field questions. I recommend this for anyone interested in contemporary West Australian poetry because my colleagues are so incredibly gifted at what they do. Both, in fact, are beguiling poets, so the opportunity to hear them talk on a much more intimate and personable level is definitely worth it.

At the end of Fremantle Poetry Month is a two-fold development series taking place at The Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. Now, these aren’t open to the public as such but rather to secondary school students and English teachers. The first seminar is for high school kids, and here Caroline Caddy and myself will be talking to students interested in writing poetry about the craft and process. We’ll also be encouraging the students to write and workshopping their work. It’s exciting because the crucial phrase in that description is ‘students interested in writing poetry’. In a day and age where the school curriculums are considering dropping some of the classics and teaching the song writing of Nick Cave, John Lennon and even Billy Bragg in their place (not that I have a problem with that at all), I think it’s critical that poets have a chance to share their knowledge. I know that I personally would have enjoyed poetry more at high school if I had learnt what was happening now, in the real time poetry world, as opposed to having to learn the past and build up. I understand the need to ‘earn your stripes’, but sometimes what’s happening now is incredibly exciting and inspiring. The past can be taught in conjunction, to help fill in the blanks.

Later that same day I’ll join John Mateer and Roland Leach for Practical Poetry: A Professional Development Seminar. Here, we’ll be working with English teachers and offering tips on how to inspire secondary students to read, enjoy and write their own poetry. I’m working with Fremantle Press to develop some material specifically for this, but if you’ve read the previous paragraph, I think you’ll have a healthy clue as to my point of view and what I’ll be presenting. Both of these workshops take place on Monday July 26.

If you want a greater insight to the Fremantle Press Poetry All-Star Five (read: Fremantle Poetry Month Featured Poets), then there will be a series of video interviews being conducted with The West. These are going to appear online so make sure you watch them – I think more than anything they’ll give you an insight into each of the poets involved.

And finally, if you’re looking to keep up to date I recommend the Fremantle Press blog . Here are interviews, giveaways, blogs and more. It’s like a hub of literary goodness, steaming fresh from the oven of imagination. OK, so that’s a little ‘flowery’, but it really is a good place to go and read and connect.

Now, if you excuse me, I have to (dot dot) dash. I desperately need a haircut, something effortless for all this running around and public appearing. Something that’ll go perfectly with ‘mathematical, edgy, concise’. A book signing haircut, perhaps.

See you during Fremantle Poetry Month!
Scott-Patrick Mitchell

ddd & The Bodhi Tree

2010-06-22T22:46:00.009+08:00

I often like to imagine an alternate me who gets to do all the stuff that I don’t have time for. Right now, I’d send her on ventures to get to know my neighbourhood better, so that she could report back with all the bounties that Leederville has to offer. She’d show me the gem of a saucepan she found outside a Good Sammy’s bin, tell me about the cactus tree that looks like a stick figure and advise me of which Vietnamese corner shop sells pork buns for $1.00.

She’d also tell me that at the end of Oxford Street, ten minutes from my house, is a bookstore cafe called the Bodhi Tree. Within the Bodhi Tree she’d find books and coffee, yes, but also a promo for a weeklong event titled A Celebration of Writing. She’d tell me (quite excitedly) that on day two, the 25th of July, dotdotdash will be hosting a panel discussion on building literary communities, and that we should totally pencil it in to my diary. In all likelihood she’d also check here to see what else was on during the weeklong event.

Then she’d offer tea and a muffin, and get the floors, oven and shower curtain sorted for Thursday’s rent inspection. She’s pretty awesome like that. You might even meet her if you come down to the Bodhi Tree on the 25th of July.

-ctj

(Props to Poppy van Oorde-Grainger for the photo)

Clawbot wants YOU

2010-06-18T20:12:00.003+08:00

Tessa Maloney - 'Clawbot'

...to join us at the dotdotdash Issue 4: Antimatter Launch Party

When: 7:30 PM, Friday 2 July
Where: upstairs at The Claremont Hotel,
on the corner of Bayview Tce and Gugeri St, Claremont
Cost of entry: $15 + free magazine!

Interested in performing spoken word? dotdotdash will be releasing a CD of spoken word art and local music with its sixth issue, Jukebox. All spoken word acts at the Antimatter launch will be recorded for possible inclusion in the Jukebox CD. If you'd like to participate, please contact editor@dotdotdash.org before Thursday 1 July.

Letter Teaser

2010-06-16T00:01:00.005+08:00

Watch this space as the dotdotdash bloggers will shortly be announcing a project that will bring us to a shelf near you. How? We aren’t saying just yet, but take this post as a subtle hint of a collective, interactive initiative that we’ll be launching soon. There’ll be bookstores, there’ll be libraries and there’ll be anonymous writings. But you’ll have to check back later to find out more...

Sincerely,

Lovers of Letters

Profile: Underground Writers

2010-06-08T22:42:00.014+08:00

Volunteer arts organisations are inspiring. They champion their creative fields and support fledgling talent, all with minimal facilities and funding. Often, they’re the result of a few motivated individuals who want to see their local scene develop into new areas. One such gem is Underground Writers, a literary street zine which can be found in Perth’s libraries and cafes. We spoke with them to learn more.

How did Underground Writers come about?
The five of us who serve as the editors for Underground Writers are all friends from uni who were happy to discover that there were people as nutty (creative, they call it) as ourselves in first year writing courses. From there, we hung around together until the end of our second year, when in between discussing movies, music, video games and other awesome topics, we eventually got onto our own writing and submitting to journals.

We found that a big issue with creative writing journals is that the majority of the public don’t know they exist - as writers by trade, we figured that we're going to struggle to scrape together enough money to eat anyway, so we decided to see if we could create an intermediary 'zine that we could distribute for free around libraries, cafes and other places people would be.

With support from various writing groups and other writing publications, we were out the door and the rest is history. ECU recently funded our latest issue, of which there are 500 copies floating out in the wild (what do you mean you haven't picked one up yet?!), and overall it's just been a matter of trying every avenue available to us.

What does Underground Writers address in Perth's writing scene that other publications might not?
Our aim is to hit the local, mainly young, talent that other publications haven't managed to yet. A lot of our submissions are from first-time submitters, whose work wouldn't normally be out there in any way, shape or form. On top of that, we provide feedback to our submitters, even if their work is accepted or not, based on what we've learnt about the publishing world from our own ventures or from university study. Professional journals are aimed at people who already know a bit about this sort of thing! Our 'zine is specifically aimed at the public.

What kind of stuff do you publish?
 Anything and everything! Obviously the rules of common sense apply, but as long as it's written to a professional standard (plz dun send us a submishn lyk dis) we're happy to accept anything people send our way. We've had poetry, flash fiction, haikus and short stories thus far; if it's the written word, it's fine with us. By having five editors who read all content we do our best to cover all genres so that each style of writing is given an equal chance of publication with us.

Who submits to your zine?
We've got a colourful range of submitters; our first submissions were from Tasmania and NSW of all places, which is quite the feat considering we're a WA based publication who hadn't even launched their first issue yet. To this day we get submissions from all over the country as well as locally.

In your website's "about" section you mention an untapped market that Underground Writers would love to see flourish - tell us a bit more about that...
Basically, Underground Writers are dedicated to getting the work of unpublished writers out into the public. Submitting to a literary journal is a big step, and so we aimed to (and hope we have!) bridge that gap as a sort of stepping stone. There is a lot of prestige associated with journals, and starving artists rarely believe their work is good enough to find space in a compilation journal. From our classes at university alone, we've managed to find many, many talented writers who don't submit to journals, and it's a shame because without something like Underground Writers, their work would otherwise go unnoticed.

Where can we find your printed zine?
We are currently leaving copies of Underground around local libraries, cafes, and the Mt Lawley campus of ECU. As most of us live north of the river most of these locations will also be north of the river (unfortunately it is difficult for us to get issues elsewhere, although we make every effort to help our readers obtain a hard copy issue).

Otherwise we post all of our issues online at our website - http://underground-writers.org - and we are more than happy for our followers to print out their own copies. Also, free subscriptions allow us to email the issue to your inbox with each new release (and we promise your details will not be given to any other party).

Underground Writers are currently accepting works for Issue 4.

ctj

Help, Do, Laugh

2010-06-03T19:02:00.018+08:00

Help
Dr Deborah Hunn, stalwart defender of dotdotdash and lecturer at Curtin University, is seeking respondents to a questionnaire that is part of a research project that examines the participation of emergent writers in online fan fiction forums and/or hard copy zine making (whether or not fan oriented). The project seeks to explore how zine making and fanfic might shape the skills and knowledge of emergent writers. Potential survey persons must be over 18 and should have attempted some study in creative and professional writing units at an Australian University, though you don't need to have completed it. Take the survey.

Do
Imagine participating in a Perth-wide creative project where teams of writers and artists gather in various Perth suburbs to record one single day in Perth together. Now stop imagining it, because it's called 'The K-2 Expedition' and it's being organised by Donovan de Souza and he needs more teams to make the project more awesome. Basically, the idea with k-2 is we climb a mountain, like the way climbing k-9 is this enormous task made smaller by the fact that you know other people have made the climb, and other people are making the climb with you. Also, k-2 are the coordinates on each page of Perth's road map that each team will go to. The goal is to interpret their experiences and produce a document about each location, both in terms of a tour guide 'what you can do' review of the place as well as artistic interpretations such as sketches of boring suburban streets, poems about bore-water stained playgrounds and happy snaps in an industrial area. The final work will be collated and combined into a website that Donovan will be hosting from his server. I'm pretty sure this will just be one of many psychogeographical defamiliarisation trips. Email editor@dotdotdash.org or donovan@donovandesouza.com

Laugh
Well, not really laugh. I laughed, but that's mostly because I'm a nerd. Below is a YouTube video of Vladimir Nabokov hanging out, and doing his thing. Like hunting butterflies in picturesque mountains, trashing Thomas De Mann's Death In Venice as 'asinine', reading out his books in various tongues, and obliterating his wife in a friendly game of chess.

Sj Finch

Antimatter: General Commentary on This Issue's Submissions

2010-06-01T09:29:00.005+08:00

Most affectionate and smiling thanks to all who sent in their entries to Antimatter. You should be receiving your notification letters soon (if not already). In the meantime, here are a few general observations and advice from the editors and staff about this issue’s submissions:

1. The theme. The general consensus amongst the editorial panels was that this rather specific and challenging theme produced some of the best writing and art we’ve received. Many people were writing or creating outside of their comfort zones, and that was exciting. The standard of submissions was pretty high.

2. Remember to check your facts. Perhaps it was just the science fiction theme that revealed this particular vulnerability. Some poems were founded upon blatant statements of incorrect scientific facts, and the sparseness of the form tended to make them rather noticeable (and unpublishable, since their omission would undo the entire poem). Research might have solved this very easily – even Wikipedia.

3. The story-that-isn’t-a-story. A remark from both the short story and CNF editors was that some entries were built around an image or description which, while well-written, was not counterbalanced by a substantial plot. This is not to suggest that character sketches, object sketches, stories in which nothing happens or stories with no character development can never have any merit, but that in many cases it makes for purposeless prose. There was also some discussion about arbitrary endings, and one of the editors referred me to this useful blog post.

4. …And its antithesis, the poem-that-is-really-a-short-story. Meanwhile, the poetry panel remarked on some entries that read like stories with occasional line breaks, or with a little expansion, would have made intriguing stories. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to consider which category best suits your submission, or what genre plays to your strengths.

5. Art miscellany. Art submissions to dotdotdash received a considerable boost this issue, and photography was particularly prominent. The art panel seemed especially interested in pieces which had narrative depth and were more than a show of technical skill. Poor composition, balance of colour and overall harmony were also mentioned by one editor as recurring sticking-points.

6. Draw Rites. A weakness with some Draw Rites submissions was that the writing and pictures had only a superficial connection to each other, or had an inconsistent mood. There were also works in which one component didn’t live up to the standard or effort of the accompanying work. The more successful works over the past few issues were achieved when the writer and the artist not only collaborated on the idea itself, but figured out together the best way to execute the individual parts.

7. Assorted administrative woes. Please make sure that the author’s name is not visible on the manuscript and please don’t send us submissions that are under consideration for publication elsewhere.

8. Nice! The majority of people were supergood at following submission guidelines, and were kind, encouraging, polite and professional in their emails. Thank you! Your awesomeness makes the world go round. In particular, thanks to artists who sent their work at a high resolution and at 300dpi; you made our job a whole lot easier.

9. Cross-country telepathy. Sometimes a handful of submitters from completely different places will uncannily hit upon the same images and topics. This is beguiling and kinda cool. Last issue: goats and ochre. This issue: cats, ghosts and sphinxes.

Please don’t be discouraged if your work was not selected for publication this time around. Remember that you can request feedback on your submission anytime after you’ve received your notification email, but please make your request well before the end of June.

Submissions to Issue 5: Feast are now open and will close on Monday 26 July 2010.

Just the messenger,
Elizabeth

Another writing competition this way comes...

2010-05-27T09:00:00.001+08:00

The Poets Union invites submissions of poems to Science Made Marvellous, a collaborative national poetry and science project involving State, Territory and regional poetry and writing organizations for National Science Week in 2010.

Poets are asked to submit poems that take up science matters in the fields of Engineering, Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, Physics, scientific discoveries, scientists or any other scientific thing you can think of.

Submit up to five poems, as either text or as audio for consideration for an anthology of four chap books and an audio program.

Selection: The poems selected will be available both as a book and as downloadable PDF and audio file from the Poets Union, APC and partners’ websites. Successful submissions will be notified in mid July. The selected poems will be launched at a series of events coordinated in each state and territory in National Science Week, 14-22 August, 2010.

The deadlines for submission is 30 June 2010.

Guidelines for Submission:

Poems previously published can be submitted.

Up to five poems submitted as text should be emailed as a single word document attachment to their email.
Email the poems - the emails should have the subject heading : Science Made Marvellous submission + Your Name
In the body of the email: Contact details, the title of the poems, acknowledgements from previous publication where relevant and a 25 word biographical note should be included in the body of the email. Where a poem is available as an audio recording please indicate this in the covering email.
Send by email: Submissions should be emailed to: ScienceMadeMarvellous@gmail.com
Or send by mail : Submissions + (on a separate sheet) your contact details, the title of the poems, acknowledgements from previous publication where relevant and a 25 word biographical note should be included. Address to ‘Science Made Marvellous Submission’ , Poets Union Inc, PO Box 755, Potts Point, NSW, 1335.
Successful submissions will be notified in mid July, 2010.
The ‘Science Made Marvellous’ project will be launched in National Science Week, 14-22 August, 2010

Now entering its thirteenth year, National Science Week has well and truly cemented itself as Australia’s largest festival, with last year’s calendar offering over 1,000 events throughout Australia, reaching an audience of over a million people. In 2010, National Science Week events are expected to be held right throughout Australia from Dubbo, Davenport, Darwin and everywhere in between, offering an array of activities with everything from science festivals, music and comedy shows, interactive hands-on displays, open days and online activities.

Writing and Publishing at University

2010-05-25T16:00:00.003+08:00

A Guide to the Birds, the Bees and the Occasional Armadillo in University Writing Options

The Armadillo

Unfortunately this article can start with neither the birds nor the bees. but, as usual, the armadillo in the room and that armadillo takes the form of a disclaimer. The nose of the armadillo is the fact that this article is not specifically about dot dot dash, writing for dot dot dash or even people who write for dot dot dash. This article is for those who want to know a little more about opportunities to publish articles and creative pieces at university. Much like how the armadillo could be put in the same kingdom as the birds and the bees (Animalia) but isn't really a part of the saying.

The tail of the armadillo is the fact that this article has been written using references from the University of Western Australia as the writer has experience of that place. However, there are certainly opportunities to publish at other universities and the best place to start asking about these is at the respective guilds. That or build your own. I'm sure the birds and the bees and the armadillo would love some companions at other universities.

The Birds

One of the most engaging aspects of writing and publishing at university is the fact that there is a lot of freedom of choice in both what you can write and where you can get it published. At UWA for example there is Pelican, the student newspaper; PROSH, the satirical newspaper created and sold once a year for charity; and Peacock, the undergraduate academic publication that will publish your essays or assignments or referenced philosophical musings. So what are the benefits and strengths of each?

Writing for a regularly published student newspaper, like Pelican, will probably give you the broadest scope of writing opportunities as you have the option of writing articles on whichever topic is the current theme (though that isn't always necessitated), reviews for things such as new release books and the latest CDs or movies (often given out free in exchange for a review) or creative pieces which includes visual mediums. Student newspapers are also often published frequently and as such give many opportunities for publishing every few months which means there is always the option to try again and/or see your work in print in a relatively short period of time. Perfect if you are trying to make yourself write more frequently and want the boost of being published to assist you with that.

Publications such as PROSH are run rather differently as they are an annual production. However, this is perfect if you are starting out and would rather try your hand at something than commit to writing a full article. It's also an opportunity for those who would like to be involved in the actual design or editing of a publication without having to dedicate regular time over a period (being the editor or in the team for student newspapers often has a yearly term rather than being an one-off experience).

The final bird is publications such as Peacock which are aimed at academic papers and ideally suited to that great essay you wrote that you just want to share with the world. Not only do they encourage you to make your academic work as well written and accessible as possible but it opens the doors to discussions on more specialised topics with fellow researchers that your tutorial heads or lecturers may not have time to delve into.

The Bees

Finally, the bees, how can being involved in such publications help with getting published or making your submissions better? Well, it might be a little obvious (but then bees with their bright stripes aren't exactly subtle) but writing articles is great for the development of a good solid prose style which can assist in other prose writing such as short stories or creative non-fiction. Submitting creative pieces can give you other outlets in which to express your work and meet up with others who do similar things while simultaneously developing the flexibility that is so often vital in these areas. Similarly publishing academic articles allows your ideas to develop further than may be allowed (often due to word counts) in assignments, a practice that frequently requires creative thinking and engagement with interesting ideas, a key ingredient in any creative process.

Rosalind McFarlane

Lost: Inspiration

2010-05-21T19:56:00.013+08:00

I’ve lost my inspiration. If you find it, I’d really appreciate it back. It’s sneaky by nature, and if you look too hard, you’ll never come across it. In case you do, here's what it looks like:

(n.b. photo was taken three years ago - appearance may have changed)

The best approach is to pretend you’re otherwise occupied, as it seems to favour the most unexpected (and inopportune) moments. Past favourites have included: in the middle of parallel parking, midnight stumbles to the toilet, or half-way through counting out five-cent coins to a cashier. I’d also advise trying to forget about it all together, as at the precise moment you’ve achieved this near impossible state - bam! - you’ll likely stumble right across it. And if you do, please make sure it’s returned. I’ve got a lot of work on, and I really do need it back.

ctj

Competition Inspiration

2010-05-18T20:37:00.007+08:00

While perusing the literary blogosphere, I stumbled across some major literary competitions that stretch across the genres and provide a bit of cash incentive to put a deadline on that unfinished project. Here are four of my favourites - some may be a reminder, others may be news, either way, I hope you find them helpful...

Richard Burton Play Submissions
What? Unproduced plays
When? Submit before Friday, 2 July 2010
How much? Prize pool of $30,000
For competition and submission details: Black Swan State Theatre Company (www.bsstc.com.au/the-richard-burton-award-for-new-plays/)

Wet Ink Short Story Prize
What? Short stories
When? Submit before Tuesday, 31 August 2010
How much? $3000
For competition and submission details: Wet Ink magazine (www.wetink.com.au/prize.htm). Please note there is an entry fee of $15, or $25 for two submissions.

Place and Experience Poetry Prize
What? Poetry
When? Submit before Monday, 5 July 2010
How much? $1500 first prize, plus two additional prizes of $250
For competition and submission details: Tasmania's Fullers Bookshop is sponsoring and has the details (www.fullersbookshop.com.au/)

T.A.G. Hungerford Award
What? Previously unpublished fiction or creative non-fiction work by a WA author, minimum of 50 000 words
When? Submit before 5pm, Friday, 30 July 2010
How much? $12,000
For competition and submission details: WritingWA (www.writingwa.org/about/programmes-services/tag-award/)

Good luck!

Megan Smith

Novel Seeking Author

2010-05-13T15:06:00.023+08:00

Length: 30 000 words

Body Type: Novella

Personality: Warm, humorous, impossible to put down

Novel is Seeking: An author who is genuine, diligent and a non-procrastinator. Must be able to put in regular one-on-one writing time. Preferably does not consume hot drinks while reading.

A Little About Novel: Novel wants to be about something timely. After many late night discussions, Novel has realised that it would like to address the problems of technology and modern life - specifically, the dangers associated with internet use. Novel is concerned about the internet, and is privately a little worried that printed books, and thereby novels, might become obsolete. Novel would prefer interested authors not to mention this possibility, as it makes Novel feel anxious and can induce seizures of self dog-earing. Otherwise, Novel is open to all other conversations, and is described by many friends as fun-loving and easy-going. Why not try something new? Novel would love to hear from you.

ctj

That ol' Tom Collins

2010-05-11T18:05:00.007+08:00

This could be something pretty special

Generally, the people of Perth (myself included) take for granted the space we inhabit. The city, the buildings, the parks, the organisations, they are all out there somewhere self-subsisting and faraway. Our thoughts are on more immediate things, on the houses that our friends live in, on the places we have to go to work or to study, on where the shops are, on those few entertainment centres where we go to take pleasure. The city is just there. It doesn't pay heed to our microcosm; it's just a big machine.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this. There's definitely some truth, some good, in cultivating your microcosm: your friends and work/study life. But it gets to be a problem when everyone stops paying attention to their spaces. A pretty big problem, I think. Cause what happens when people stop paying attention to things is that whatever is automated takes over, and you get a plague of what is most immediate (coke/mcdonalds/alcohol), and then life gets a lot less interesting. You get less choice and less ability to make an individual decision. It happens to me a lot. Sometimes I feel so disconnected from an experience of Perth that going to a new place makes me feel like a tourist.

So I think what is needed is more people (such as yourself, maybe?) paying attention to the different spaces in Perth, to all those organisations that champion individual choice and creative existence. A place that I think is disappearing further under the radar is the headquarters of the Fellowship of Australian Writers West Australia (FAWWA): Tom Collins' House. Like many creative writing spaces in Perth, it's sadly under-used. It was the site of our last Jukebox recording, which was a strange, nostalgic, pseudo-historical and very evocative night. Spectres of history surrounded us and cheered, and lights and food made the writing centre feel more like home than anyplace, even as it felt like we were all in a different city.

It's a good city, Perth. It's full of things that are undiscovered. It's bustling with magazine launches and creative projects and art galleries and people who are themselves bustling to do some good work, to interact with their city, to assist in the recreation of a life that's free and full of choice. There's going to be a whole lot happening this year.

And if you're asking for more inspiration before starting your own path, check out Dave Egger's TED Speech:

It's pretty much amazing.

Perth Writer’s Festival Podcast

2010-05-06T10:00:00.012+08:00

www.abc.net.au/local/podcasts/perthwriters.xml

This link is really all you need to know from this blog.

Yet if you are still here reading, let me explain... Though February and Perth Writer’s Festival are long gone, the above little link means writers can still access the wisdom and wisecracks from the festival.

Back in February, I cleared a full weekend to take advantage of the panel discussions, readings and workshops from Perth Writer’s Festival. I expected to come away with an even longer reading list and a few new favourite authors. What I didn’t expect was to have my view of writing fundamentally change because I realized that with writing there is a great inevitability: rejection.

Rejection may seem a strange starting point for inspiration, but it was the single most important thing I heard from the festival. Authors said it, publishers said it, agents said it, reviewers said it. Everyone agreed – if you are going to write, you are going to be rejected... a lot.

The upside is – it happens to everyone, so don’t take it personally. Everyone also agreed that if you want to write, do it. When you finish a story, put it out there. And if that story is universally rejected, write another. Above all, we were told, write and write well – love what you write and if your first novel, story collection or poem isn’t published, write another... and another... because regardless if a million people read your work, or just those obligated by blood relation, completing a project of the written word is a major, even life-defining, accomplishment.

At the festival, every author knew what it was like to face the blank page and the potential rejections it held. Everyone also knew what it was to overcome that spate of white and fill it with words. To be amid people who intimately know rejection and the fear of it, to hear them talk about the projects they undertook anyway, to read from the stories that resulted and to discuss the work behind those stories – it’s something I still go back to, a reminder of a community that came together for a weekend before returning to the seeds of ideas half begun, and works partially completed, all the more determined.

Megan Smith

Arts Grants Gumption

2010-04-29T10:34:00.010+08:00

Ever wonder how ventures like dotdotdash get off the ground? Or furthermore, what funding and support might be out there for your own creative pursuits? While plenty of frothing projects are backed by hard work (and a little gumption), many also enjoy the support available to emerging creatives within our shores.

Following on from our Creative Reference Desk post, dotdotdash brings you the low-down on current arts grants, ranging from mentorship programs designed to hone your skills, to monetary backing to make your projects happen. Brylcreemed, back-combed and finger-flicked, the following selection of good-looking grants are available to all motivated, enthusiastic and daring arts practitioners.

JUMP - www.jumpmentoring.com.au/Default.aspx - A mentorship program linking young artists (18-30 years) with experienced practitioners, plus up to $5000 to realise a creative concept

Healthway - www.healthway.wa.gov.au/default.aspx?MenuID=511 - Financial support for arts projects which have the potential to promote health messages

YCulture Metro - www.propel.org.au/projects/yculture - Grants of up to $3000 for artists aged 12-26 years to co-ordinate a creative project

Realise Your Dream - www.realiseyourdream.org.au/ - Professional development placement in the UK in your chosen field and $8000 to fund the trip there

Department of Culture and the Arts - www.dca.wa.gov.au/funding/grants/young_people - Hosting a stable of grants in various fields, the DCA also runs a Young People and the Arts program for those aged 18-26 years who want to participate in artistic pursuits

Australia Council for the Arts - www.australiacouncil.gov.au/ - The principle arts funding body in Australia, with a large selection of grants for the emerging, as well as the established, arts practitioner

Go!

ctj for dotdotdash

Jukebox: The Spoken Word Recording Tour

2010-04-26T21:46:00.016+08:00

It isn't very often that a spoken word recording tour flies around our sunny Perth. They are one-of-a-kind nights. Rare breeds that, like the Muntarojl bird of eastern Paraguay, subsist on a diet of words and meta descriptions in order to achieve their rich and variously evocative frontal plumage.

I should explain Jukebox. Jukebox is a series of live spoken word and music recordings that will be placed on a CD and released in December with dotdotdash issue #6, which will also be called ‘Jukebox’. Each performance is a submission, and performers will also get a CD of the night that they perform. Music performers may also submit a demo to Spaceship News (projects@spaceshipnews.com.au), a local organisation which promotes talent from Perth's music scene, who are collaborating with dotdotdash on the project. We’ll be holding dotdotdash Jukebox nights throughout the year, and it'll no doubt be a pretty sweet trip. We hope to record many spoken word artists in WA and we’ll be posting the occasional performance up here.

Our first posted performance is Belowsky's epic finish to our last launch party. I am not sure where he got the energy, but Belowsky ecstatically rang out 4 straight poems from memory, without pause for a clap or anything. Check him out at the link posted below. It was amazing.

And it will happen again. This Friday April 30th, the Jukebox Spoken Word Recording Tour comes to Tom Collins house, the FAWWA (Fellowship of Australian Writers WA) headquarters, corner of Wood Street and Kirkwood Road in Swanbourne. The night begins at 7pm in the Hollow, a small, grassy amphitheatre next to the Tom Collins house. It's BYO alcohol. A light a la carte dinner will be served. Most importantly however, poets will speak and sing and voice their things.

Peace and strength,
Sj Finch

Belowsky's Performance at the Welcome (to) home dotdotdash launch

*With many thanks to Steph Moriarty for the great photo of Belowsky doing his thing

Blog Takes Flight, Needs More Ducks!

2010-04-22T11:47:00.012+08:00

Hello hello hello,

We at dotdotdash have been making plans. In the rolypoly haze and bright sparkle of grass at sunrise, in the bakerfresh beginning of a wide open year, we announced a live spoken word project with Spaceship News. Through good fortune and hard work, we also achieved distribution in Melbourne. Our third issue launch party at the Brass Monkey earlier this month was amazing fun to organise - everyone showed with a smile and threw themselves into the night. Well, we want to throw ourselves into the rest of the year, with élan.

One of our plans is to make our blog as communal as possible. We will be publishing interviews with artists, arts workers, writers, writing centres, editors, and creatives. We will have articles about what the creative life is like. We will have links to interesting projects and events. We are also opening our blog to volunteers. We want dialogue most of all. We want everyone to create something, to have their own projects to talk about.

Our team currently plans to publish two entries a week. Contact editor@dotdotdash.org if you would like to volunteer.

To throw it into the water and see what ripples it makes, that is the dotdotdash way.

Sj Finch

The Creative Reference Desk

2010-04-19T22:28:00.010+08:00

When I was a youngster, 80s fashion was not an oxymoron, the age of Internet information overload was still the stuff of sci-fi TV shows and research required a trip to the library, card catalogues and the Dewey Decimal system. Back in those days, the hub of all knowledge was not a computer with a decent WiFi card, but an appropriately stodgy librarian seated behind a reference desk covered with intimidatingly thick encyclopedias.

Now, we live in 2010, where the bifocaled librarian has been replaced by high-speed Internet, card catalogues are defunct by dint of Google and Wikipedia is cited far more often than Brittanica. Yet, the purpose is the same, and in honour of research in all its varied forms, dotdotdash pulls a few generally arty, often literary, websites (alphabetised, of course) for the budding creative to reference - it's research without the musty smell of yellowed index cards.

artsHub - www.artshub.com.au - job info that takes the starving out of artist
The Butcher Shop - www.thebutchershop.com.au/news/ - a surprisingly meatless mixed bag of events and products
Form - www.form.net.au - "building a state of creativity", the state being Western Australia
Propel Youth Arts WA - www.propel.org.au - grants and programs for young writers/artists
Six Thousand - www.sixthousand.com.au - a guide to Perth subculture
writingWA - www.writingwa.org - news, advice and all-round starting point

Megan Smith
[Smith, Megan, "The Literary Reference Desk", Blogger: Pardon My Ducks. April 20, 2010.]

Another clipping for the collection - thanks William & WritingWA!

2010-03-23T09:37:00.004+08:00

The West Australian, Tuesday 23 March, page 6 of the 'Today' liftout

Home, Jukebox and $avings to rival Coles

2010-03-11T21:12:00.008+08:00

Issue 3: Home Launch Party

Date: 1 April 2010
Time: 7:30 PM - 12:00 PM
Place: the upstairs loft at the Brass Monkey Hotel, on the corner of James St and William St, Northbridge
Price of entry: $15, including a free magazine

Jukebox: The Spoken Word Tour

There's been talk of including a CD with dotdotdash magazine for a while, and now we're finally going to make it happen. In a rare bout of forward-planning, dotdotdash issue 6 (to be released December 2010/January 2011) will be themed Jukebox. As well as getting your fix of writing and art from Perth and beyond, you'll be getting a compilation of awesome spoken word poetry and music too.

And it all starts Thursday 1 April at The Brass Monkey Hotel. For your chance to get your spoken word recorded live, and possibly make the Jukebox compilation CD, buy a ticket to our launch party and email us at editor@dotdotdash.org if you're frightened and intrigued. Frightrigued. YEAH.

If you're a non-Perth resident and you're chomping at the spit to get involved, don't worry - details on how to submit spoken word will be released with the Issue 6 call for submissions later this year.

An Offer You Could Refuse, But Why Would You

We are proud that we have now accumulated enough issues under our tiny belts to engage in bundle pricing. Until 1 April 2010, you can buy three issues of dotdotdash for $30. That's Issue 1: Quicksand, Issue 2: Ugly, and the upcoming Issue 3: Home, for $30+postage.

Feel smug about your consumer savvy by purchasing here.

You can also pre-purchase a copy of Issue 3: Home for $13+postage up until 1 April 2010 from the same link. Expediency, ahoy!

Perth Poetry Slams and the Dark Horse They Rode In On

2010-03-03T10:52:00.011+08:00

My introduction to slam poetry began in 2008, my final semester as an undergrad. I was sitting in on a creative writing class called Experimental writing when the unknown tutor wandered in. He had a weathered red cap and mangy jeans. He was grizzly and animated, with a voice so warm, so damn normal that he was halo-ed with amicability.

When he decided to show us a performance poem, the voice turned guttural and threatening. The room closed in. His mouth was a cannon, spouting antagonisticly ripping and vaguely melodic lines.

This was Allan Boyd. I'd later find out that much of Perth was introduced to spoken word courtesy of Al. He ran a legendary spoken word event called 'Openmouth'. And he also runs the Perth Poetry Slams with Tonya Boyd, his partner.

Poetry slams are technically competitions. Each competitor has two minutes to perform their poem or poems. They are then judged by five random audience members on a scale of one to ten. The highest and lowest scores are taken off to give a fair average. In pratice however, poetry slams are much more of a community-orientated affair. Some competitors are even downright anti-competitive, often hilariously so. Last year, Stephanie Megatron Low shaked and slapped his arse to the crowd while spitting 'Com-Pe-Ti-Tion!' like a mantra. Two weeks ago, he was up again, introducing himself as a robot from another planet named 'Megatron' who likes performing poems about pollution and the solution. Allan chuckled, 'It's not very often that we have Megatron grace us with his presence.'

At the bar after the slam, I heard him talking to Janet Jackson about his strategies for losing. Janet also desired the coveted last place. Her poem opened quiet and evocative, with almost haikulike phrases. But she quickly spilled into a climax that involved her dry humping the air and screaming 'Fuck Authority'. It was pretty fantastic.

There are a few cliches and tired stances that sometimes occur - three of which: bureacracy sucks and makes us all confused, people should stand and be free, this is a poem that I am speaking to you - but generally slam poems usually make for some pretty engrossing literary performances. The raw drama of a complete stranger opening up to you is magnetic. One of the audience judges compared it to low-budget soapies (which are the best soapies). Third place winner Michelle, performed an eloquent rhyming couplet on how overhearing her neighbours domestic violence on Father's day showed her how much she didn't know about everyday people. Some slams open up a space to explore human character, human dialogue, the thoughts and experiences are not normally told to people. Group therapy, basically.

Belowsky (who took second place) practices a very different form of poetry. With a perfectly stentorian voice he spouts a horse-racing commentary about the end of the world. The horses have been given names like 'Thermo-nuclear war' and 'utopia'. It is amazing to witness, to behold such a mighty poem. It's perfectly representative of the tendency for slam poems to sometimes converge with stand-up comedy. They're not exactly equatable: these kind of poems tend towards a performance that you know is a performance, an artistic sorta humour.

But Belowsky was bested that night by a poem from Scott-Patrick Mitchell, a poem which managed to combine the elements of confession with humour. It began quite simply. Scott-Patrick Mitchell approached the microphone and, after a beat, swept his arms and proclaimed with grandiose vigor

'Ladies and gentlemen! I. Like. FEET!'

Brilliance. Theatrical and candid brilliance. Slam finals are this Wednesday the 17th, 8pm, at the Blue Room. Come down and witness this brilliance for yourself.

Perth Poetry Slam Website

Sj Finch

Sticky Sticky

2010-02-21T15:16:00.004+08:00

Fine people of Perth, something sticky your way comes. Tonight from 6pm, the sneeping happens. For those who don't know what sneeping is keep an eye to the streets for dotdotdashers as they plaster and post -- they are very good people to ask about sneeping (and other things).

Submissions for Issue 4 are now open!

2010-02-20T20:08:00.020+08:00

Antimatter.
The Metallic Star-rise in Spaceships, Space-time Fabric Sewn by My Mother; Android Aliens Enslaving Humans, Hunting Humans, Mounting Humans on their Walls; Aliens are Our Friends; Hello Dystopia, How do you like Your Nuclear War? Black Hole, Two Sugar?; Time Machines Conspire, Human Bodies Sweat; It Came From Over There; Do Individuals Dream of Electric Sheeple? Psionics/ Nano-technology/ Secret Government Man/ Cyber-hacking Cyborgs and iPhones; Alternative Timelines and Sexualities; Steampunk music. Origami UFOs. We're happy to have both hard and soft science fiction.

Doesn't inspire? Don't worry, we accept themed and unthemed work alike.

Does inspire? Here are the category limits again.

Short fiction: up to two stories no longer than 3,000 words each.
Poetry: up to three poems no longer than 100 lines each.
Creative non-fiction: up to two pieces no longer than 3,000 words each. (E.g. Travel writing, personal essay, memoir, literary journalism.)
Visual Art: up to three complete works, regardless of the number of components in each work. (E.g. a set of related photographs can be considered one work.)
Draw Rites: ingredients = one writer + one artist. Submit up to three collaborative projects.

The challenge for Issue 4 is to build a diorama of a scene from a make-believe world. Take photos of your diorama and send them in to us.

Click here to submit!

Hints/things we've learned/observations from this quiet little voice of reason

It hardly needs to be said, but editors strongly favour work that has been proofread for clarity, structure and grammar.
Designers love artwork that is larger than or close to 2480x3248 pixels in size and around 300dpi.
While we regularly have a two-page spread of short poems, flash fiction is generally difficult to publish (outside of the 50-word story challenges we've had in the past). If you have a short story that's around 800 words or less, consider expanding it or pairing up with an artist and submitting to Draw Rites.
Enquiries along the lines of, 'Have you read my submission yet? Are you going to publish it? When the hell will you notify me?' make us flustered (especially when they come before submissions have even closed). We will contact you six to eight weeks after the submission deadline. We haven't forgotten about you.
Submitters that are familiar with the standard/style that we publish naturally have a better shot at getting in. You can surreptitiously read our magazine at these stores. You can squint at thumbnails of previously published visual art on this page. You can scrutinise past Draw Rites projects here.
Please do not paste your submission into the body of your email - sometimes the formatting turns out weird.
Here is a pie chart that demonstrates what each category contributed to the total number of submissions for Issue 3. Extrapolate what you will.

Key: Draw Rites Visual Art Challenges Creative Non-Fiction Essay competition (Issue 3 only) Short Fiction Poetry

The deadline for Issue 4 submissions is 30 April 2010, at 5pm (that's West Australian time). Good luck!

housekeeping

2010-01-22T22:10:00.006+08:00

Ascent into the vortex unknown: a temporary art fixture
assembled from the paperclips of postal submissions;
a conceptual piece which lingers on the impermanence
and fragility of fixed meanings in narratives
as we advance, ever-hopeful, towards enlightenment.

Thank you for submitting to dotdotdash Issue 3: Home. We're pretty sure the last of the postal submissions has surely floated in by now. Also floating our way are questions along the lines of: when do I find out if my entry has been accepted?

The answer is thus: we will let you know by the end of February, or early March at the very latest. As with previous issues, editors are not handed their entries until after the deadline, and the decision-making process usually lasts about a month after that. We make every effort not to leave you hanging for too long.

Draw Rites submissions are still open until 31 January 2010. More info in the blog post below. There are currently two short story writers looking for collaborators, so if you're art-inclined, please check it out.

The theme for dotdotdash Issue 4...will be announced sometime next week.

Apologies there hasn't been any writing exercises of late. We are weary from our travels in the literary world.

Draw Rites

2010-01-12T10:29:00.011+08:00

'The slump in his shoulders was coming from the inside, like an ancient city crumbling.'
-- From Erin Pearce and Mel Pearce's 'Debris'

'The teacher spoke of the war. They had lost a city to the north, which was called something unpronounceable. The Creatures were impaling them on their horns and roasting them in green fire. They ate thoughts too; they ate the parts of people that could not be seen.'
-- From Sj Finch's 'In the Belly of the Lagomorpha' with accompanying artwork from Artemis Kitsios

'I think you would have made a good mother. You looked warm and soft and protective and although you couldn't tell me I knew you really cared. I peered out the window each morning when I awoke just out of curiosity to see how far you'd come.'
-- From Apriry Ly and Rebecca Orchard's 'Small Accidents'

'The Lady found she could not tear her gaze from the eyes of the doppelganger in front of her. As the Lady stared into her mirrored eyes she could sense rather than see the anomaly move back into line.'
-- From Alex Finlayson's 'The Lady' with accompanying artwork by Aidan Nelson

'They never told me how you died but sometimes I wonder,
inappropriately, during meetings, on the tram, in the shower,
tracing the new longitude along my chest bone,
was it a gun, a drunk driver, a sober driver,
an anvil, a pea off the edge of a ten storey 'scraper?'
-- From Steph Moriarty's 'Psychosomatic' with accompanying artwork from Cielito Marbus

Draw Rites started out as a collaborative workshop for artists and writers to meet up and work on a project together. This resulted in the five collaborative projects published in Issue 2: Ugly.

After some backstage whispering, Draw Rites submissions for Issue 3: Home are now open! To get your entry in, follow these steps:

1. Send your project as an attachment to dotdotdash.submissions@gmail.com with ‘Draw Rites Submission’ in the subject line.

2. Writing can be submitted in DOC format, and images in JPEG, PNG or TIFF format. However, if writing and art is combined in the one format (e.g. Erin Pearce and Mel Pearce’s ‘Debris’), please ensure that you keep a copy of the original document in case alterations to the text are necessary. Please also keep in mind that the dimensions of a single page of dotdotdash are 200x265mm (or 2480x3248 pixels at 300 dpi).

3. Include the following information in the body of your email for both participants:

Name
Published name (if different to the above)
Email address
Postal address, including state and postcode
Phone number

4. State the title of the work. As you can see from the examples above, some projects carry a single title (e.g. ‘The Lady’) and others carry individual titles for the artwork and text along with a single unifying title (e.g. ‘Cry me a Mirror’, with ‘Psychosomatic’ by Steph Moriarty and ‘Waiting for Hot Water’ and ‘Wasting Hot Water’ by Cielito Marbus). We don’t mind which way you go, so long as it’s clearly stated here.

5. Send your project by 5pm, Sunday 31 January 2010.

Rules, conditions and clarifications

Please ensure that the author’s and artist’s names are not present on the works themselves so that work may be judged anonymously.
There is a limit of three entries per person (i.e. a person may only participate in and submit up to three projects).
dotdotdash reserves the right to publish your work on the website and in the magazine. The copyright remains with you.
The extent to which the text and images are integrated is entirely up to you and your partner. Works like ‘Debris’ and ‘Small Accidents’ were submitted to us exactly as you see it here; others like ‘Cry Me a Mirror’ were submitted as separate components (i.e. The text in its own Word document), with page layout determined by our designer – in other words, some works are conceived from the get-go as a unity and others are conceived as a set of complements. Both kinds of collaborations are equally valid in our eyes and we are happy to consider all of them.
If you would like to participate in Draw Rites but you haven’t got a partner, head over to the Facebook page and announce yourself! We’ll try to hook you up. If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact editor@dotdotdash.org.

Jewels in your pockets: dotdotdash in X-Press Magazine

2010-01-10T22:41:00.004+08:00

X-Press Magazine issue 07.01.10, page 24

Thank you to Max Noakes for the kind words and the sweet punny title. The Write Stuff indeed.

13 days left to submit to dotdotdash Issue 3: Home

2010-01-02T20:45:00.010+08:00

Happy New Year, ducklings. Here we are, still recovering from 2009, fanning ourselves from the heat and flurry of Issue 2...and we've already received 92 submissions to Issue 3. Yes, 92! (Mostly poetry!) Aaah! We'd better get cranking.

dotdotdash Issue 3: Home will come out in late March-ish. That's right, two issues in and we're vaguer than ever. Perhaps we really are 'amorphous' and 'irregular' just like this article from the Australian has us pinned (cursoryacknowledgementfromanationalpublicationyay!).

Here are those all-important catagories again:

Short Stories: up to two stories no longer than 3,000 words each.
Poetry: up to three poems no longer than 100 lines each.
Creative Non-fiction: up to two pieces no longer than 3,000 words each.
Visual Art: up to three complete works, regardless of the number of components in each work.
Post-it Note Challenge: create a work that fits onto a Post-it note. (And then send us the Post-it Note.)
The dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts Competition: a 2,000-word critical essay on the key thought 'Home'. ($200 prize money for the winner.)

Submit the Old School Way: download a submission form and send two copies of your entry to PO Box 7255, Karawara WA 6152. (Unless it's a Post-it Note challenge, in which case one copy is just fine. Apologies and sincere thanks to people who went to the trouble of including two copies; that was very kind of you.)

Submit the Postmodern Way: send your work as an attachment to dotdotdash.submissions@gmail.com and please include the following information in the body of your email:

Name
Published name (if different to the above)
Email address
Full postal address, including state and postcode
Phone number
Category of submission (e.g. short story, poetry, etc.)
Submission title
Word length or line count (if applicable)

Please note that as much as we like being helpful, it wouldn't be fair for us to give you feedback on your entry before the submission deadline (i.e. some sort of indication of your work's chance of being selected). For the best indication of whether your work is a good fit for our magazine, please do take a look at past issues of dotdotdash. Heeding the guidelines would also make our hearts a-flutter.

And finally, if you've read dotdotdash Issue 2, we'd love to hear your thoughts. Please do write to editor@dotdotdash.org, or leave a comment right here on our blog, or leave a mysterious and anonymous card at a dotdotdash staff member's house and deny knowledge of the incident when questioned while we vex ourselves over how somebody found a staff member's home address and contemplate how we might better-protect ourselves in this dangerous and uncertain new decade.

dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly - OUT NOW!

2009-12-14T23:43:00.004+08:00

Kore my child is gone
under a tree a pomegranate
opens like a wound
-- Carla Sari, 'From Demeter's Diary' (excerpt)

There was a great spreading crack in the car windscreen where he had punched it. At the time, it had hurt his knuckles and so, angry with the glass for not shattering, he had punched the dashboard for good measure and drawn blood. He still hadn't felt any better so had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of Jack Daniels straight up, passed out, woken up angry, drunk the resht of the boddle and sum cooking sherry and gone looking for a fight.
-- Jude Bridge, 'Chef' (excerpt)

Our cultures survive even when we do not name them. Our peoples survive even when they go underground and pass for other than what they are. That which does not change does not survive.
-- Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán, 'Both' (excerpt)

Sam Pash, 'Second Decline'

There's that intriguing cover again. dotdotdash Issue 2 is hitting the streets this week. 80 pages of art, poetry, short fiction, creative non-fiction and more, it's glossier than the coat of a unicorn galloping like a free shimmering ribbon across your overloaded simile. It's thoughtful like a person gazing chin-in-hands at the still landscape beyond the window. It's carefully edited like a puppeteer whittling at the wood he wishes were his son. It's asking for a closer look like a ladybird perched on your nose. It's the achievement of 20 staff members and 50 contributors; it's a culmination of effort and faith. And it's for you.

RRP: $15
Buy it online from: our website
Find it in stores such as: these ones here

dotdotdash thanks everybody who has supported them over this past year - everybody who has had kind words and wise words, who has raised their hands when others shrank away, who has given us joy.

Competition Results and Sneak Preview of Issue 2: Ugly!

2009-12-08T22:59:00.018+08:00

Cover art: 'Second Decline' by Sam Pash

Okay, so on the week that we plan to have a huge website update after months of no news, our host is migrating servers. Not unlike rain on your wedding day, or a free ride when you've already paid. Never mind! We shall carry on as planned on our humble blog, and update the website when the opportunity arises.

Here's how it goes
dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly will be officially released on 12 December 2009. Until midnight 11 December, you can pre-order the magazine for the special price of $13 (plus postage) by clicking here; or, come to our launch party and receive a complimentary copy.

To tide you over, we'd like to officially announce the winners of the Brian Dibble Shortest Story Competition, the Deborah Hunn Haiku Competition and the dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts Competition, as well as give you a sneak preview of the magazine.

Special thanks to Professor Brian Dibble, Dr Deborah Hunn and Dr Alzena D'Costa for judging and sponsoring the competitions, and to Naama Amram, Sj Finch and Alice Yeow for their editorial assitance.

Special kudos to Alex Kannis and Samantha Santoro for their accompanying artwork.

Without further ado:

The Brian Dibble Shortest Story Competition
Winner: Michael Burrows (WA)
Highly commended: Jason McNamara (WA), Heather Mackenzie (QLD), Erin Pearce (WA) and Anne Salatlija (WA)

Click to download PDF

The Deborah Hunn Haiku Competition
Winner: Sara Elderfield (WA)
Highly commended: Sara Elderfield (WA), Rebecca Higgie (WA), Gavin Austin (NSW), Gary Colombo De Piazzi (WA), Jo Mills (WA), Annie Otness (WA) and Gail Willems (WA).

Click to download PDF

The dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts Competition
Winner: Pam Sutton (WA) - 'Ugly'
Runner-up: James Pengelley (WA) - 'Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder' (web only)

Click to download PDF

So there you have it. We hope you like what you see! Perhaps we'll meet you at our launch or send you a pre-ordered copy of Issue 2: Ugly as soon as it's out!

Good tidings!
the dotdotdash team

10/12/09 - links now updated so all you have to do is click!

the dotdotdash launch party: UGLY!

2009-12-05T20:42:00.003+08:00

dotdotdashers never sleep! Issue 2: Ugly is nearly in print, Issue 3: Home submissions are trickling in, and now we're gearing up for our second launch party on Saturday 12 December at the North Perth Town Hall!

I demand precision!
Location: North Perth Town Hall, 26 View St (just up the road from the Rosemount Hotel! The place of our first launch!)
Time: Saturday 12 December. Come at 6pm if you would like hear readings from the magazine and have some nibblies with us; come at 8pm for the bands, commissioned poets, art exhibition, zine stall and more.
Entry: $13, which includes a complimentary copy of dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly.

I do not reside in Perth and cannot attend this 'party' you speak of. This makes me sad and resentful.
Not to worry! Until 11 December, you can pre-order a copy of Issue 2 here for the special price of $13 (plus a postage fee). Miniscule savings for every reader! Also, look out for the results of this issue's competitions (and a sneak preview of the magazine) on our website in the coming week. And finally, don't forget that submissions are open for Issue 3!

I wish to express my bewilderment to you. How may I do so?
Send any queries to editor@dotdotdash.org!

Submissions for Issue 3 are now open!

2009-10-22T16:25:00.004+08:00

The theme for dotdotdash Issue 3 is: HOME.
dotdotdash welcomes themed and unthemed work. Themed work does tend to win more smiles. Justsoyouknow.

What to send:

Short stories: up to two stories no longer than 3000 words each
Poetry: up to three poems of no longer than 100 lines each
Creative non-fiction: up to two pieces no longer than 3000 words each
Visual art: up to three complete works (regardless of the number of components in each work)
Challenges: up to three challenges. See below!

dotdotdash now accepts electronic submissions for all categories. All the details are available here. Enquries? Please write to editor@dotdotdash.org.

The challenge for dotdotdash Issue 3: draw or write something on a Post-it Note (of whatever size, but the smaller, the more impressive). Scan it in or send it by post - the most intriguing entries will be published in dotdotdash Issue 3! Things that fit on a Post-it Note include: a sketch, a haiku, a rhyming couplet, a six-word story, a confession, a message…surprise us!

Selections for dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly are almost over! There were over 200 entries this time around, so please bear with us while we finish up our decisions. Pardon My Ducks is gonna go on hiatus until Ugly is out, or at least until this crazy semester is over.

Also, check out Underground Writers, who are accepting submissions for their indie writing newsletter! As well as poetry and short stories, they also accept flash fiction (up to 350 words) and offer feedback on submissions.

Pardon My Pluck #13: Extraordinary Luck

2009-10-17T23:05:00.004+08:00

Today's challenge!
Write a rhyming couplet about luck (of any kind). Begin one line with 'unluckily' and the other line with 'luckily'.

Example 1
Luckily, the waiter extracted the hair from the steak in time.
Unluckily, he delivered sirloin when the customer ordered prime.

Example 2
Unluckily, the would-be diner was only five cents short.
Luckily, the cafe had failed its health inspector's report.

Example 3
Luckily, the tank outcast overthrew the alpha crab.
Unluckily, his posture made him the seafood chef's first grab.

Somewhat hungry,
Elizabeth

Duck Meets Slam!

2009-10-14T21:05:00.005+08:00

The Perth heats of the Australian Poetry Slam have begun! Contestants have a microphone and two minutes to impress five randomly-chosen judges (it could be you!) with their spoken word poetry.

If this sounds like your kind of Friday evening, there are three more heats you can attend besides the state final:

Third heat: 16 October
Fourth heat: 23 October
Fifth heat: 30 October
FINAL: 6 November

All heats begin at 7:30 PM in the Rosemount Hotel 459 Bar, 459 Fitzgerald St, North Perth. It costs $5 to enter.

The official website is here if you would like to looksee.

And you know what else? dotdotdash is holding a zine stall at the final on 6 November! If you would like us to stock your zine, please contact editor@dotdotdash.org and we'll arrange a pick-up; if not, you can always bring your zine on the night. We will stock your zine for free, so all profits go to you.

Incidentally, if you stocked zines at the dotdotdash launch party and you still haven't collected your zines or money, please contact us immediately!

Pardon My Pluck #12: Fearsome Creatures

2009-10-11T23:52:00.009+08:00

So right now I'm thinking of this incident when a local newspaper was doing a story on dotdotdash, and they sent this photographer to uni to take a picture of us, and he kept saying things like, don't you guys have an office, or a classroom where you have meetings, or a place where you put the actual magazine together? You know, where do you guys make this magazine? And we were so very confused and unhelpful, so in the end he just sat us down at a cafe and took pictures of us while we pretended to look at submissions with our laptops open and drank from empty coffee cups.

Don't get me wrong, it was a sweet photo. It just made me so acutely aware of how crazy this is. We don't have an office. We don't have regular meetings with everybody present. I'm sure some dotdotdash staff members didn't even meet each other in person until our first launch party. It doesn't mean we're not close, or we don't know each other very well, or we're not professional where it counts. We have lots of small meetings. We have lots of big emails and big conversations. But this thing is so sprawling. There's no one place where dotdotdash is made. It's made everywhere, in between classes and homework and jobs and exams.

All of this is to say that it's been a crazy week and it will be crazy right up until our projected Issue 2 completion date in December, so forgive us for any tardiness, and forgive me for having absolutely no idea what the writing exercise for this week is, so I'll just have to pluck something out of the air.

Today's challenge!

So I was looking at this list of thirteen amazing and scary looking animals, and they really are freakin' unbelievable. I mean, there is a fish with a see-through head. A see-through head! Can you imagine how awkward social situations would be if you had a see-through head?

Anyway, my favourite is the giraffe weevil (pictured at the beginning of this post), just because it is easily the most endearing of the bunch. Incidentally, the first time I went to save this picture, my laptop froze. With fear, I presume.

So, today's challenge: look at these incredible pictures and write something! Anything! How can you not?

I chose to write in haiku form, because the haiku is the cheese-on-toast of the poetry world, simple to prepare and good for a snack.

Example 1
Poised on pinched legs, red-
winged thing. Stretched its knuckled neck.
Shone like faux leather.

Example 2
Elegant design!
Just one thing: how will it keep
its neck from breaking?

And finally, one last reminder: the dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts competition closes very soon on 14 October. To be in the running for some cool prize money, write a critical essay on the key thought 'ugly' and possibly get published in our magazine! (If the idea of writing an essay is off-putting or daunting: this competition is basically Issue 2's version of Janice Loreck's fantastic piece 'Quicksand & Culture' on page 11 of Issue 1. It's an essay competition, but of course there is room for personal voice. It doesn't necessarily make it easier to write, but perhaps more enjoyable.)

Also, if these terrifically ugly animals have inspired you, join the Draw Rites workshop and pair up with an artist or writer to create collaborative works. In particular (off the top of my head), there is one writer looking for an artist to discuss project ideas, another writer looking for an artist to illustrate a short story, and one artist keen on working in black-and-white who needs a writer partner. The project completion deadline is 30 October, so there is still time!

With blurriness,
Elizabeth

dotdotdash in today's West Australian!

2009-10-06T19:25:00.004+08:00

The West Australian, Tuesday 6 October, page 7 of the 'Today' liftout

What can we say? Except *glee!*

And also: the deadline for last-chance visual art submissions to dotdotdash Issue 2 closes tomorrow (7 October) at 5pm! Send visual submissions to dotdotdash.submissions@gmail.com and don't forget to attach a submission form. Easy-peasy. You could do it right now.

And also: the dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts essay competition deadline is 14 October. Details are here if you'd like to enter.

And also: don't forget about Draw Rites! Highlights from the Draw Rites project will be published in our magazine. Sign up and pair up fast (take the initiative! introduce your good self!), because the deadline is 30 October.

Thank you again to everybody who has submitted their work to us. The short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction and challenge editors have commenced reading all your entries, and so far it's a treat.

Pardon My Pluck #11: Full Circle

2009-10-03T19:35:00.005+08:00

Today's challenge!
Write a seven-line poem, of whatever meter you like. Write it in such a way that the last three lines of the poem are actually the first three lines with the order reversed (and feel free to indulge in wordplay).

Line A
Line B
Line C
Line D
Line C
Line B
Line A

Need a topic? You know where to go.

Example 1
Stitched together
like notes
clustered with black hats
The schoolgirls huddle
clustered with black hats
like notes
stitched together.

Example 2
The unbearable thing
to do with
not knowing what
to say to one so indecisive, is
not knowing what
to do with
the unbearable thing.

Example 3
A way home
marked by breadcrumbs
through the forest
where the birds ate supper, and flew
through the forest
marked by breadcrumbs
away home.

Back where she begun,
Elizabeth

(Don't forget - if you have any suggestions for challenges or ideas for entries, you can post them here or contact blog@dotdotdash.org.)

It's a storm of announcements!

2009-09-29T00:34:00.008+08:00

(I really wanted to find a picture of Storm the Gladiator, but this other Storm also has comedic value, I guess.)

Who's stocking dotdotdash Issue 1?
These are all WA stockists. If you own a bookstore (whether here or elsewhere) and you think you'd like to stock dotdotdash, please write to editor@dotdotdash.org.

Coastal Shelf
181 William St, Northbridge

William Topp
452 William St, Perth

The State Library
That big building with the books in the heart of Perth city

Mixtape
454 William St, Perth

Harry Highpants
259 William St, Perth

New Edition
82 High St, Fremantle

Planet Books
636-646 Beaufort St, Mt Lawley

PICA
Perth Cultural Centre, James St, Northbridge

Oxford Books
119 Oxford St, Leederville

FORM
357 Murray St, Perth

And don't forget our website, where you can take out an annual or half-yearly subscription.

Another reminder
There is a Draw Rites workshop this Wednesday, 30 September! Visit the Facebook page or the Ning. There will be another workshop on 4 October, but I believe the idea is to pair up with an artist/writer, so sign up ASAP if you wanna get involved so you can snag a cool partner. Highlights from the workshops will be published in dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly, coming out in December.

Last-chance dotdotdash submissions!
If you're running late and you don't think you can make the 30 September deadline for dotdotdash general submissions, don't worry. Not only can you get involved in Draw Rites, but the deadline for visual art submissions has been extended to 7 October, and the deadline for the dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts Competition has been extended to 14 October. Lucky ducks!

Special hint for the dotdotdash Issue 3 theme!
It has four letters and stands to welcome you.

Pardon My Pluck #10: Tender Memories

2009-09-26T20:46:00.005+08:00

Just a reminder that the deadline for submissions to dotdotdash Issue 2 is closing on Wednesday! If you're scared you won't make it, don't worry; as long as it's postmarked by 30 September 2009, your entry is still valid. If you don't make that, there's no need to despair either; it just means you're super early for dotdotdash Issue 3! Yeah, you beat all those laggards who still haven't got their entry in! The theme for Issue 3 will be unveiled sometime in October.

Thank you to everybody who has submitted to us thus far. We feel lucky every time we receive a new submission.

It's Pardon My Pluck's 10th post! We're celebrating by turning off that comment moderation thingo so that we no longer have to approve your comments before they get published. Let's embark on a whole new era of trust/laziness.

When I turned ten, my violin teacher said, 'Oh look, you're onto double digits! Once you get those you never go back.' Turning ten is filled with significance and change. (It's really just the decimal system though.)

Today's challenge!
Write an acrostic poem about something that happened to you when you were ten.

Example 1
Totally not understanding why swear words were unacceptable, I
Enunciated one in class.
Not cool.

Example 2
Tooth snapped from its socket,
Exiting the mouth in blood-filled spit.
Now a pink, sore gap.

(Hey, that one was almost a haiku.)

Self-consciously,

Elizabeeth
(That typo is so cute I'll leave it in.)

Only 10 days left to submit to dotdotdash Issue 2!

2009-09-21T20:27:00.004+08:00

The submissions deadline is drawing perilously near, so if you have some artwork lying in your dusty bottom drawer, or a scrunched-up short story you wrote in first year, send it in! Who knows what will happen. Also, don't forget the three competitions that close 30 September!

Another forget-me-not: the Draw Rites workshops! Collaborate with other writers and artists to create superworks.

Pardon My Pluck #9: Ahoy-hoy!

2009-09-19T21:24:00.005+08:00

So, yesterday was International Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day. And having said that, I can't think of a segue to the next paragraph, so I'll just cut straight to it.

Today's Challenge!

Create a dialogue between two people having a debate about a particular issue. It can be about anything, but they must do it all like pirates.

Here are some useful resources if you need to get started!

Example 1

A: Avast! What be this blight upon me windscreen?
B: Ay, it be a notice. The Town of Vincent feels ye have swindled it, and now ye be compensatin' them.
A: What bilgewater are ye talkin'?
B: It be a parking ticket.
A: Yargh, those cursed clods. This bay is as idle as a serving wench in Davy Jones' Locker! I'd sooner be thrown into the briney deep before I pay this beastly tariff.
B: Ay, but it is Thursday and this be a zone where ye cannot anchor.
A: Those scurvy scalliwags! Why must we pay for this dubious privilege?! This bay is tighter'n a cutlass scabbard, and still they demand me finest gold!
B: Bays be scarce treasure, matey. If they be given freely, nobody be appreciatin' them.
A: Then why do we pay those pillagin' council rats?!
B: They be responsible for more'n parkin'.
A: Like what?
B: Public healthcare and the like.
A: Yargh. I be defeated.

Hoist the colours!

Elizabeth

Pardon My Pluck #8: uh-ode

2009-09-13T19:26:00.001+08:00

We've been out-of-action for a while, but now we're back. That's right: the blog of questionable sustainability lives on! Do we have a plan? No. But we have hopes, dreams and awful puns. And sometimes that's all you need to succeed.

Today's Challenge!
Write an ode to a utilitarian object that is so utilitarian we hardly think about its utility. The ode can be as short or as long as you like (look at past exercises for ideas if you need a form to get you started). You may or may not reveal what you are writing about. It can be as specific or obscure as you wish.

Example 1
Triangular teeth.
A neat snip! And so turns the
wheel of adhesive.

Example 2
Oh Lids In General
Lids for nail polish
Lids for Milo tins
Lids for toilets
Lids for our eyes
Lids that cover the spokes of plugs on new electric equipment
And those cleverest of lids
Those Liddle Facts.

The world has forgotten your use!
Your ability!
Your frugal generosity!

You get off on being withholding!
You are strong!

Warmly,
Sj Finch and Elizabeth

dotdotdash Issue 1: Quicksand - OUT NOW!

2009-09-07T17:35:00.012+08:00

This! This is the product of our collective glee, panic, sweat and toil for the past nine months - and YOU (yes you) could own it!

It's 80 pages of pictures and words from gifted Australian artists and writers.

It's 80 pages that would not have existed without an idea in somebody's head; without a team of classmates; without word-of-mouth; without submitters who thought, 'Why not?'; without various supporters, encouragers and launch partygoers; without Lamb Print; without tutors and lecturers who kindled our ideas in the first place.

If this makes you stroke your chin and think, 'Yes, I will joyfully part with $15 to procure this publication...' click here.

And while you're stroking your chin, also consider:

Submissions are open for dotdotdash Issue 2: Ugly! In addition to accepting short stories, poetry, creative non-fiction, artwork and challenges (this issue, it's three-panel comic strips), dotdotdash is running three competitions:

1) The Deborah Hunn Haiku Competition: self-explanatory! Send us your best haiku.
2) The Brian Dibble Shortest Story Competition: write a story in 50 words, including the title.
3) The dotdotdash Interesting Thoughts Competition: write a critical essay of up to 2,000 words on the thought 'Ugly'.

All of these competitions hold the promise of prize money and publication in dotdotdash!

Competitions and general entries to dotdotdash close 30 September 2009, which is coming up soon. Don't miss it! For more details, click here.

a request

2009-08-28T01:18:00.004+08:00

ALEX K!!!!!!! » once more, into the breach says (1:06 AM):
hey you can update the blog at some point and explain that we fell off the radar because of bats and dealing with issue 1 details

ALEX K!!!!!!! » once more, into the breach says (1:06 AM):
and if you use the "radar" metaphor mention MIGs and bats

And done.

But this blog entry should really have another point (although MIGs and bats are all very pointy), so here it is: the dotdotdash launch party is nearly upon us! Details here!

And right here:

The dotdotdash Launch Party
8:00pm Friday 4th September
The Rosemount Hotel (corner of Angove and Fitzgerald Street, North Perth)
Expect spoken word performances, an art exhibition, poems-on-demand, zines, bands (Blac Blocks, L'il Leonie Lionheart, Stereoflower and Boys Boys Boys!) and other activities
All for the princely sum of $12 on the door (which includes a free copy of dotdotdash)
Pre-sale tickets are $10 - please contact editor@dotdotdash.org for details

It's all happening, happening at once!

Elizabeth
(Once again, sorry that we haven't updated in a while.)

Draw Rites #1: The Journey of Ugly

2009-08-19T11:26:00.006+08:00

Hello lo lo,

We’re putting on workshops! Woo. We’re calling em ‘Draw Rites’. The tagline is that they create artistic dialogue between words (typographical and semiotic) and pictures (sensory and symbolic). Artists and writers will work together to create UGLY. Highlights will be featured in dotdotdash Issue 2. And all works will be exhibited at the launch party. These workshops are free and fun and will make you re-think the nature of words, art, and ugliness. Get involved because you will learn lots and feel very creative and like you are a part of something. Please check the facebook event. More details will be added soon.

Although these workshops take place in a physical place (put place here), it is also possible to collaborate over the wide blue internets. Besides our Flickr and Facebook, we are also creating a mailing list where people will be paired and collaborate via email.

Cheerio,
Sj Finch

Ps. Production never really stops for a quarterly, does it?

Pps. Workshop poster. Too much? Too ugly? Is it scaring people away from our collaborative workshops?

Pardon My Pluck #7: Yoda-lay-hee-hoo

2009-08-16T15:02:00.011+08:00

A preamble, this challenge does not require.

Today's challenge!
Write a rhyming couplet that contains advice or some sort of simple truth, in the voice of Yoda.

Example 1
Find trouble, you will
in gunfire standing still.

Example 2
A sacred temple, your mind is, see?
A sweatband, let its guardian be.

Example 3
Do not doubt! Do.
Or your doubt will master you.

To your future, advance!

Elizabeth and Sj Finch

Pardon My Pabulum #3: Things That Are Getting Quite A Bit Out Of Hand

2009-08-11T00:01:00.011+08:00

...In which Elizabeth talks about things that are getting quite a bit out of hand. Particularly food-related things.

1. Lingering MasterChef Australia hype
This one’s my fault. The series ended at least a month ago, and when a conversation with a friend lapses for more than three seconds, I find myself saying, ‘So did you follow MasterChef?’ The show is over, and I am still using it as my wedge drive when I’m in a conversation bunker. I mean, I don’t even normally watch TV. This is getting quite a bit out of hand.

2. Poorly justified restaurant reviews
I’m all for creative journalism, but sometimes when I read restaurant reviews I get the feeling that incidental or petty events are disproportionately colouring the critic’s score. Like if the critic had an argument with his/her dining companion on the way to the restaurant, or if the critic thinks vegetarians are skinny twits (and says so in the review) right before reviewing a vegetarian place. Don’t they know how silly they look? This is getting quite a bit out of hand.

3. Burgers
This isn’t much of a complaint really. I mean, if I’m paying in excess of $11 for a burger (just a burger, with no fries), I do kind of expect it to get out of hand. Quite a bit out of hand. All over my hands.

4. Freshness
That cake/apple/fish/lamb was not baked/plucked/caught/torn from its mother’s teat today, so freaking what? I once walked past Red Rooster and actually heard a customer in the drive thru say, ‘Can you make it fresh? My wife’s pregnant.’ Good sir, it’s fast food: some element of it was prepared earlier to facilitate this fastness. This is getting quite a bit out of hand.

5. Food and dietary choice snobbery
This category includes people who feel the need to comment on other people’s food, and people who think that their dietary choice is the One True Way. But mostly it’s the former category that annoys me, because it’s just so stunningly rude. In what world is it okay to eww-gross-how-can-you-eat-that at somebody else’s food? This is getting quite a bit out of hand.

6. Bubble tea flavours
This isn’t much of a complaint either, but it sure is beguiling and out of hand. I am never brave enough to try the Vanilla Hazelnut Winter Love Milk Tea, but I can imagine how complex and intriguing it would be. This is getting deliciously out of hand.

7. Food not resembling what it looks like in commercials
I know the food in food advertisements wear make-up to withstand all the lights and long shoots. I know that. But as part of my terribly applicable marketing degree, I learnt that one of the major sources of customer dissatisfaction is the gap between the product's promoted image and the actual product. And even I can’t not feel a twinge of disappointment when I unwrap my burger and can see, in its sagging folds and slipshod cheese, the miserable minimum-wage employee that bunched it together. So this disparity is actually a form of self-sabotage, and none of my marketing textbooks say that self-sabotage is a winning strategy. This is all getting quite a bit out of hand.

8. Food pity
I wish I wasn’t so empathetic. Whenever I’m at a party and I notice one tray of dip and crackers, or fruit, or any dish that seems to be have left untouched while all the surrounding dishes are almost finished, I have to, have to, have to take some of the unpopular food. How can I stop feeling sorry for unpopular party food? Since when did food become relatable? This is getting quite a bit out of hand!

9. Ambitious airline menu descriptions
This isn’t something I really mind, but it is getting quite a bit out of hand. I guess it’s related to #7. I’m flying Economy, so any attempt to temporarily arrest my awareness of this fact by dividing the menu into ‘Entrée’, ‘Main’, ‘Dessert’ and ‘From the Bakery’, and describing the meals with scented-with-star-anise-served-with-herbed-butter-and-a-red-wine-jus flourishes, is only going to make me amused when I eventually receive my foil-covered and perfectly tessellating white boxes on a white tray with plastic playschool knife. Airlines don’t need to bother with this pretentiousness! Plane food is delicious and the highlight of any flight! This is getting quite a bit out of HAND!

10. Discussion Questions
1. What do you think is getting quite a bit out of hand? (This need not be limited to the culinary world.)
2. What do you think doesn’t have quite enough hands?
3. What are you doing with your hands this week?

Pardon My Pluck #6: Character Caravan

2009-08-09T20:28:00.013+08:00

'The older we get, the more... you realize there's a whole range of things that you will never do, of things and people you will never be. As life becomes more and more limiting, there is something wonderful about being able to get inside the skin of people unlike yourself.'
Lee smith

I spent Saturday night at a Gypsy-themed birthday party. It was actually called 'Gypsy Caravan'. The host would say 'Welcome to the Gypsy Caravan', while shaking her bead-clad hips and grinning like this party was a jeweled necklace found on the side of the road. Like it was dirt magic and the moon. Her backyard was arranged like a gypsy tent. Cushions, curtains, mulled wine, and candlelight. It made it seem like everyone there was a real gypsy.

Everyone was someone who would read your palm and speak of curses, who would lie/swindle/grin/drink. Eyes were piercing, were hidden behind smoke. Life was wrapped in mystic here-says and stereotypical posturings.

The night made me remember how it is so exciting to meet someone new and wonder about them in myth; all their wildwander extended family and hopscotch mannerisms. The way a new person seems is as if you're seeing the silhouette before getting to know their real character, the real image of them that's reveled to you eventually. So this week, I thought, why not have a challenge where people share those character silhouettes, complete with myth.

This Week's Challenge!

Using up to 100 words write about either an interesting character you know, or an interesting character you can make up.

Here are some examples:

Fictional
Lestan Blackfang the bloody

For the past few months, Lester had insisted on calling himself 'Lestan Blackfang the bloody'. He was changing, hair becoming blacker, skin becoming luminous and pale yellow, eyes now black and heavily lidded.

His friends- Joseph, who laughed like a horse, and the kindly, long-necked Jude- no longer wanted to see him in public. All Lester talked about was his blood line, verses in Genesis, his diary, Amira, emotion and pain, and his father’s condition.

Lestan’s father was in a coma in the attic. Lestan understood that his father needed a human kidney.

Non-Fictional
Alex Kannis

Alex is one of the dotdotdash designers. A few weeks ago, he started a band even though he cannot play anything. It was called 'You Can Have Boyfriends But Not Men' but is now 'That Stupid Frog Eyes Cover Band'. Nowadays you can find him learning to play the piano, designing, or linking me to web comics. He's also a poet, and in the March edition of Cottonmouth he wrote this bio:

Alexander Kannis is gonna get things DONE! He’s FORWARD THINKING! He likes THINGS! He does STUFF! He’s gonna SELL OUT! Get the BIG BUCKS! Just you wait and SEE!

This bio may be the best I've ever seen. He's single, ladies.

Indirect Characterisation
Humpty Dumpty from Through The Looking Glass and What Alice Found There

`Must a name mean something?' Alice asked doubtfully.
`Of course it must,' Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: `my name means the shape I am -- and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.'
`Why do you sit out here all alone?' said Alice, not wishing to begin an argument.
`Why, because there's nobody with me!' cried Humpty Dumpty. `Did you think I didn't know the answer to that? Ask another.'

Get characterisin'!

Sj Finch

With thanks to:

Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft 6th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.

Carrol, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Available as a free e-book from http://www.sabian.org/alice.htm.

Picture taken by Jason Boudville
Also, Happy Birthday again, Naama and Benji. Thank you for a wonderful party with some very awesome chocolate cake and mulled wine.

Pardon my Pluck #5: one-two-three-four...

2009-07-30T22:18:00.008+08:00

Impromptu Announcement

Our website has been revamped! Everything is clearly labelled and user-friendly! Submissions are open for Issue 2 of dotdotdash! Tell your friends, pets and mothers! Tell yourself in the mirror.

Today's challenge!

Write a cinquain about a stranger you encountered or observed this week.

(Cinquain = five lines that have two, four, six, eight and two syllables respectively)

Here are some examples:

I won't
stamp your card for
purchases of under
fifteen dollars. I'm sorry, it's
the rules.

But don't forget nice encounters.

"Get on,"
the driver said
to the boy who lacked change
to pay his fare. "No worries. Just
get on."

High-five!

Elizabeth

Pardon My Pabulum #2: and now for something diffident

2009-07-30T17:04:00.008+08:00

Today's edition of Pardon My Pabulum comes from Sam, with her reflections on art and writing. See, we're not all about loud playfulness. We also like to think quietly about ourselves, gazing into our murky interiors, wondering how we have come to be this murky.

Visual Perspectives

Art is different to writing. That may seem like an obvious statement, but until you do both – really do both – you don’t realise just how different. And how similar.

There are certain assumptions one makes about both writing and art – reasonable judgments that come with the territory. Coming into my first year at university, these assumptions were fresh in my mind, and it took me a while to realize that everything I thought I knew was wrong. And here is why:

Assumption #1: Writing is more structured.

Seems obvious, right? Writing is subject to grammar, syntax, tone and voice, narrative structure and of course, genre. A lot less freedom than art, wouldn’t you say? Nowadays a red dot on a wall is considered art.

But art is subject to as many rules, if not more. There’s proportion, line, positioning, balance, tone, colour, unity and aesthetics to consider. What is the intention of the piece? How did the artist covey this and was he/she successful?

And even in art, there are genre boundaries. Do you want your piece performed? Is it digital art? Paint on canvas? Gothic style? Is it a comic? Genre informs how you convey subject matter – can it be obscure, or does it have to be instantly recognisable? Light and tone varies, not just in technique, but importance. But it all comes down to intention. What point are you trying to make, and how best will it be conveyed?

Assumption #2: Writing is easier to edit than art.

I used to think writing, in comparison to art, was like maths. In maths, there is a right answer and a wrong answer. Art is more ambiguous, and I thought in comparison to writing, with all its rigid rules and guidelines, art would be harder to judge. For example, it is easier to say the grammar is wrong or the syntax doesn’t belong to the subject matter, than: ‘This piece of art doesn’t convey the feeling the artist intended because...’

Artists don’t try and make the audience understand. The pieces will always remain their own.

But writing, too, can get away from the author. It shifts and warps in the hands of others – it becomes something it was not. A reader can change the words to mean anything. In a recent writing class, a group member was writing a piece called ‘The Lake’. The entire piece was written from the point of view of a desolate lake, and he mentioned a man who lived next to him, a squatter of sorts. There were many references to black and white. It became unclear whether the focus of the piece was on the man, the lake, or the references to desolation, dark and light. It was one sentence, worded powerfully, that made me doubt whether I understood the point of the piece. Only one sentence. At times it can be one word that throws me off.

The truth is, writing is more ambiguous than people realise.

Assumption #3: Artists and writers have different personalities.

Artists are weird. Out there. They dress in bright clashing colours and patterns. Their hair is pink or blue, somehow noticeable, and they are always covered in some kind of art supply. Paint, ink, charcoal. Me, it was always pastel. They run around in packs, singing and laughing, smoking cigarettes in loud puffs.

Writers are quiet. They live in a world separate from the rest of us. Brows always creased, scribbling away in a notebook that says ‘do not touch’. Rarely seen in groups of more than two. Writers are hermits, artists are not.

Wrong again. I walked into an art lecture on my first day, expecting an abundance of mad hairstyles and fluorescent socks. Most of the students were sitting neatly in their chairs, brown hair clipped back. There was an orange shirt paired with green pants in one instance (which hurt my eyes) but otherwise black tank tops, AC/DC shirts and skinny leg jeans were the fashion. Arriving at my writing class, yells and giggling assaulted my ears. One guy was talking about writing with ink-dipped spoons. A lecture on scriptwriting was interrupted by a class member’s lengthy interlude about the history of Aboriginal Rights.

That being said, you do get a different vibe when you are around artists than you do when around writers. Artists are more social beings, and they are always thinking about art. When I am around them I get this uncontrollable urge to grab something and start drawing. My fingers actually itch.

When I am around writers, I get addicted to writing. There is this longing to explore all the different ways one word or phrase can be written. But more than that, I get pensive. I start thinking. How can that be presented? How can I convey that idea? Why do I find that interesting?

Assumption # 4: Writing will take you places.

There is this assumption that writing or studying communications will give you more career opportunities than studying or doing art. This goes back to high school, and even before that: English is an essential subject, communication a necessary skill. True. But art is downplayed in WA. (Truthfully, so is writing.) Art isn’t just theoretical, it’s practical. Communication and research skills are taught in art. Application of knowledge is fundamental. It’s not just about creative flair and smelling like Turpentine.

In Communications, art skills overlap. Concepts like balance, tone, presentation and unity are needed in a piece of writing, not just visual arts. The same questions are asked in the editing process: what is the intention of the piece? Is the author successful in conveying the objectives/criteria?

So are art and writing so different?

Art and writing are treated differently. That doesn’t mean they are.

Art shifts every time a fresh set of eyes gaze at it, like an illusion, a kaleidoscope. Just like writing, art can be changed, read differently, interpreted in an unexpected way.

Both art and writing are open wide to conflicting interpretations. There is no right answer in either. You are never wrong.

Both rely on signs. Both rely on audience. Both rely on guidelines, on reputation, on genre. Both rely on visual language.

The truth is, they rely on each other.

Questions

1. What is the difference between the act of looking and the act of writing?

2. How many artists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Pardon my Pluck #4: Of Sunday Symbols

2009-07-24T12:20:00.015+08:00

We know we've been doing mostly poetry exercises, and that's because poems tend to be brief, and 'brevity' and 'participation' are happy neighbours who borrow each other's sugar. However, if you prefer to write a short prose piece (like a drabble) for the next exercise, that's also cool, because prose and poetry are also happy neighbours, separated only by line breaks.

We also know this is the second time we've used the random Wiki article thing. I suspect we'll be using it a lot. I mean, it's just so convenient.

This Week's Challenge!

Write a four-line stanza on this subject matter, which incorporates:

First line: an exclamation mark!
Second line: a question mark?
Third line: three (or more) consecutive non-letter symbols (numbers are okay)
Fourth line: a riotous declaration of your love for the subject.

Example 1: mass graves in the Soviet Union

Mass graves in the Soviet Union, you say!
What is the government going to do?
A man on the street said ***THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN DEEMED SEDITIOUS BY THE GOVERNMENT.
MASS GRAVES ARE FOR THE GOOD OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE.***

Example 2: Port Eliot

Port Eliot house of the green, green lawns!
How can it not have a large and splendid history?
With its buildings that feature this rooftop pattern: |¯|_|¯|_|¯|
Oh, Port Eliot, of festivals and mystery!

Get 'em!

Elizabeth