Tincture Journal Issue 20 submissions

At Tincture Journal we’re seeking fiction, scripts and creative non-fiction for Issue 20 (December 2017).

Poetry submissions for Issue 20 will open September 13 and close October 13.

We have an Australian focus, but consider writers from all around the world. We would particularly like to see some more English writing from the Asia Pacific region and by Indigenous Australians and Indigenous people around the world. We are committed to publishing a diverse range of voices, including diversity of race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, and writing experience.

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Writers in their landscapes

Thanks to Queensland Writers Centre for asking me to contribute to WQ’s Writers in their landscapes series. Here’s an extract:

‘We are the children of our landscape,’ wrote Lawrence Durrell in The Alexandria Quartet. ‘[It] dictates behaviour and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it.’

I think often about four kinds of landscape: the physical, the natural, the dream, the psychic. All dictate my behaviour and thought, but my responsiveness to each varies.

I’ve learnt that I can’t manipulate, and must accept, my dream and natural landscapes (reiterated by experiencing 2015’s Tropical Cyclone Marcia, which sparked a series of poems for my first collection Glasshouses, and Rockhampton’s 2017 post-Tropical Cyclone Debbie flood), but can largely control my physical and psychic landscapes.

[…]

‘All truly great thoughts,’ declared Nietzsche, ‘are conceived while walking’, and while I don’t agree entirely (some of mine originate in dreams, at my desk, while watching films), I do know that walking, especially at 4pm, when the light is ‘perfect: buttery and dense and fat’, to quote from Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, on desire paths or constructed tracks or both, is crucial to my writing.

You can read my piece in full here.

New poem in Rabbit Poetry Journal

Thanks to Jennifer Mackenzie and Jessica Wilkinson for publishing my pantoum ‘Sweet Puff’ in Rabbit Poetry Journal Issue 20: Dance, which includes writing by Adam Aitken, Jordie Albiston, Cassandra Atherton, Jennifer Compton and Ravi Shankar, and Jonathan Dunk’s review of Tony Birch’s Broken Teeth.

Also available are Rabbit Issue 21: Indigenous (ed. Alison Whittaker), which includes writing by Evelyn Araluen, Phillip Hall, Natalie Harkin, Craig Santos Perez and Sam Wagan Watson, and, from the Rabbit Poet Series, Dave Drayton’s P(oe)Ms and Melody Paloma’s In Some Ways Dingo.

Transportation Press’ Smoke One

Recently, Transportation Press announced the winner—Daniel Young, for ‘Dalian Blood Futures’ (huzzah!)—and runners-up—Robbie Arnott and Patrick Lenton, for ‘Zoo’ and ‘What is a Hornet’, respectively—for its first international microfiction competition, Smoke, judged by Adam Ouston. Congratulations to Daniel, Robbie and Patrick!

I’m delighted my ‘Do You Mind If (after OW & SB)’ was highly commended alongside writing by Bella Li, Kali Myers and Ben Walter et al. Thanks to Adam, Transportation Press, and Fullers Bookshop, who sponsored the competition.

Smoke One is a collection of the microfiction by the winner, the runners-up and eighteen highly commended writers, and is available in print and electronically.

Glasshouses poems at Verity La, Mary Gilmore Award winner

Thanks to Michele Seminara, Managing Editor of the fabulous Verity La, for publishing four poems from Glasshouses. ‘ENDONE® Oxycodone hydrochloride 5 mg’, ‘Port Curtis Road’s End’, ‘Black Cockatoos’ (after David Brooks) and ‘Matrimonies’ (a cento from Gwen Harwood) are accompanied by Untitled, 2016, by friend and photographer Leigh Backhouse.

And congratulations to Aden Rolfe, winner of the 2017 ASAL Mary Gilmore Award for False Nostalgia! You can read Tony Messenger’s interviews with Aden, Carmine Frascarelli (shortlisted for Sydney Road Poems), Alison Whittaker (shortlisted for Lemons in the Chicken Wire), Claire Nashar (highly commended for Lake) and me (shortlisted for Glasshouses) here.

2017 Mary Gilmore Award interviews

Recently, Tony Messenger generously interviewed the four poets shortlisted for the 2017 ASAL Mary Gilmore Award for best first book of poetry—Carmine Frascarelli (for Sydney Road Poems), Aden Rolfe (for False Nostalgia), Alison Whittaker (for Lemons in the Chicken Wire), me (for Glasshouses)—and Claire Nashar (highly commended, for Lake).

You can read these interviews here.

The winner of the 2017 Mary Gilmore Award will be announced 11 July.