Virgule: The Voiceworks Blog
Get Voiceworks
VOICEWORKS 81 BIRTHMARK
Johannes Jakob
Jun 30, 2010
Read more
The thing about birthmarks is you can’t ever get rid of them. Not even if you scrape, not even with a knife. Put your dishpan hands on the steering wheel, mother. Othello missed the school bus. Did he inherit the family cleft? A garble of origin binds his ear to your mouth, to your womb, to the homeland. Pencil on a beauty spot. There’s a coffee stain continent on his cheek you can’t wipe off. It is written all Geminis will be late to work today. Can you find constellations on your arms? A man slurs at the disabled sticker clotting an intersection, their windshield baptised by a gummy yob. 24601 inked along his forearm, scraping the window for a meal ticket. He lisps about his childhood, his breasts, his brother. You ask him, “Were you born from a bloody smile, knee-deep in swine muck, foreskin sliced, hollering faith?” Your pen blots his assessment journal, and he pulls up his t-shirt to show you the bruises. Voiceworks #81 Birthmark features fiction by Jack Madin, Ariella Van Luyn and Matilda Grogan; poetry by Jalen Lyle-Holmes, Holly Voigt and Adolfo Aranjuez; and an interview with Look Who's Morphing author Tom Cho. James U. Mangisi argues education will save us from breeding ourselves into extinction; Anna Angel asks us what really lies beneath our radiant Southern Cross; and Aaron Benson asks the music industry and the internet to play nice.
Birthmark Competition
Johannes Jakob
Jun 30, 2010
Read more
The Sketchbook Project
Nikita Vanderbyl
Jun 29, 2010
Read more
For those writers and artists who like Moleskines, and I've noticed there are a few of you. The Sketchbook Project is an opportunity to take part in a touring exhibition in the US. Sign up by 31 October 2010 and you'll be sent a Moleskine to transform, return it and it'll tour the US next year. Sketchbooks specifically tour Brooklyn NY, Austin TX, San Francisco CA, Portland ME, Atlanta GA and Chicago IL. There is a small fee for the Moleskine and the shipping, but it might be a small price to pay for international fame.
Q&A MONDAY: CHLOE WILSON
Jodie Kinnersley
Jun 28, 2010
Read more
Chloe Wilson is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her first collection, The Mermaid Problem, was published by the Australian Poetry Centre in 2010 and will be launched this Thursday 1 July at the Wheeler Centre. Her poetry has appeared in The Age, Blue Dog, Wet Ink, Voiceworks and is forthcoming in Going Down Swinging. In 2009 she won the Poetry and Youth categories of the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards and the Page Seventeen poetry prize. She is a former poetry editor for Voiceworks.
Friday Writing Exercise
Madeleine Crofts
Jun 25, 2010
Read moreTake a piece of paper and write ten sentences that each start with the words ‘Your mother’. The sentences don’t have to be related or connected to each other. Try to write quickly, writing the first things that come to your mind. You should now have ten sentences that start with Your mother. If you like, choose one of those sentences and keep writing for about ten minutes. See what you get. This exercise is good because the words Your mother have a lot in them. They set up three characters essentially, the narrator which is the ‘I’, another person which is the ‘you’ and of course, their mother. And mothers are typically an interesting subject, and if you are saying something about someone else’s mother then there is a wealth of potential for conflict, tension or humour there.
David Foster Wallace
Johannes Jakob
Jun 24, 2010
Read moreLet’s first of all start with the first time I really took notice of David Foster Wallace. A few weeks after his death in 2008, a girl in the same class as me gave a presentation on his story ‘Forever Overhead’. She was pretty much crying for the duration of it. I only had a general knowledge of Wallace. I knew that he was a bit of a cult figure, and for some reason that made me wary of him. I'd never read any of his work, including the story that was being discussed, and had only the vaguest understanding of his recent death. Basically I assumed that this girl was just extremely nervous or self-conscious about giving the presentation. The image of her in agony as she spoke about the story stayed with me though, and was made worse by the fact that no-one else I spoke to seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary during her presentation. Eventually it clicked though, that it was about him dying, his having died, the awful circumstance of signing up to give a presentation on a beloved author and then him dying a few weeks before you gave it. There was more to it than that, of course, but let me get to that later. This girl maybe a year later told me that she was not as 'serious' about writing as me, that she wasn't quite as into it as some of the other people in that class, but that she was altogether pretty happy with the various subjects she was studying. I guess I thought something like 'that's probably true, she probably isn't as dedicated to writing as me' and had a smug little moment to myself. It took me a long time to figure out that she was way more serious about the whole thing than I was. Books had affected me strongly, sure, and author's too. I was upset when Vonnegut died, and I continue to despair at Pratchett's illness. But the anguish that she felt at David Foster Wallace dying? I hadn't even come close. My idea of being serious about literature was way detached from that sort of thing, was maybe more about showing off and a kind of literary careerism than I'd like to admit to myself even now. And so I finally read Infinite Jest, and a lot of the above is out of hindsight, because now I am in that same position where thinking about his death makes the bottom of my eyeballs ache. Where if he died now I can imagine it physically distressing me, making me somehow ecstatic with sadness.
Let Me Show You My Magnum Opus, Baby
Johannes Jakob
Jun 23, 2010
Read moreOkay probably there won't be too many sexy times at this event, but I am nothing if not flexible when it comes to making double entendres. (Double entendres about me being flexible also welcome.) The Wheeler Centre is hosting a second speed dating night for all you single literary hunks and hotties out there. Bring along your favourite book and maybe you will find someone to help you crease those covers (the book's). Just imagine the moment when you see that not only has someone brought the same book as you, but a shiny first edition of the hardcover. Wow! You can sleep with them, and then in the morning run off before they wake up with your guilt and their first edition. Almost everyone wins! Really, I think this is a neat idea, but please, please, post lots of puns below. Update: Ladies, unfortunately this event is now booked out for women. Gents, this event is now booked out for women!
Welcome to Hogsmeade
Jenna Sten
Jun 23, 2010
Read more
Granted it’s in Florida and Hogwarts is far too close to be geographically correct, but I’m willing to overlook it. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened just a few days ago and I am so frigging excited I'm almost willing to use words like ‘magical’ and ‘wondrous’. The idea that it is now possible to walk the streets of somewhere that has for so long only existed in the psyche of children and slightly embarrassed adults is surreal. I devoured the series as a teenager and felt so strongly about it that my little brother was read nothing but Harry Potter at bedtime for years. What was once only a world on paper is now physically marked on our landscape. I find the social and cultural implications of this fascinating. Will employees of the park meet up in The Three Broomsticks to share a butterbeer after a 9-5 day, dressed in their wizarding uniforms? Will the wizarding world be elevated to that of the North Pole when children receive mail postmarked from Hogsmeade - the world's only 'real' wizarding village? Will lovers of the series meet by chance at the Hog’s Head Inn, get messy on the house brew and later slur at the Gringotts ATM for displaying ‘insufficient galleons’? I really, really hope so.
Tweeting Work In Progress
Elizabeth Redman
Jun 22, 2010
Read moreSharing your work with others can be a terrifying experience. Readers can be pretty brutal in their criticism, though, so it's key to workshop and polish your writing as much as possible before publication. One helpful hint doing the rounds of the internet this week is to share snippets of your work on Twitter. Pick one line and post it with the hashtag #wip, suggests blogger Natania Barron. This will force you to look closely at your writing while easing you into the process of sharing your work, she adds.
BIRTHMARK LAUNCH
Johannes Jakob
Jun 21, 2010
Read more
RSS
Get the Virgule RSS feed
Right now!Latest comments
Raeden Richardson commented on the post The Under Age Launch Speech:
Read the postMichael, you continue to astound me. Keep up the great work. ...
Jess commented on the post Winning Poem: ARTillery Poetry Slam:
Read the postLove it, strong message, good flow, like the realism in the content. ...
alistair commented on the post Winning Poem: ARTillery Poetry Slam:
Read the postGreat poem! V strong rhythm, compressed ideas, a good read ...
Categories
Archive
Blogroll
Blogs that Virgule loves to read: