Weep for this wounded desperate soul that never
seems to heal, alone, vocalising to any passer by.
Uncomfortable for some, they turn away, but that won’t stop
her swaying, or mend her destructive pain
For Sorry Day.
Come Tweet with Me…
You may or may not be aware that the annual Emerging Writers Festival is on again in Melbourne right now. It’s a festival that’s exciting and close to our hearts here in chez Chewton, not only because it’s a festival aimed specifically at inspiring and assisting writers, but also because Anna was one of the architects of the inaugural EWF program all those years ago and it’s always gratifying to see something you helped to set up continue to fulfil its raison d’être while getting bigger and better and more amazing every year.
Anyway, it’s on, and I’m in it. In a virtual sense, mainly.
I’ve been asked to be a moderator for EWFdigital’s TwitterFest, which is a week of on-twitter live discussions about a series of virtual panels on a range of topics about the future of publishing and writing in a digital environment.
Basically that means I’ll be on The Tweetster on Monday 28th May between 2pm and 3pm encouraging those present to join in on la topique du jour, which is, conversationally enough, “What Does Digital Writing Mean to You?”
If you’re on The Tweeter and want a piece of this sure-to-be-chaotic-but-invigorating conversation (think QandA but without the sanctimoniousness), your best bet is to check out EWFdigital, which will be hosting said virtual panels in the form of to-camera videos of various experts and pundits talking about the topic at hand as a way to kick off the twitter convo.
Like this:
Review: Knuckled
Ages back now I wrote up a review of Australian poet Fiona Wright’s debut collection Knuckled, which got published over on cordite.
Short version: I liked it. For a longer version, head over to the ‘dite whydoncha?
Like this:
Review: Blue
It’s not really news to anyone that Pat Grant’s graphic novel Blue is a good’un – he’s had great press both here in Australia and overseas. That said, I have a review of Blue that I originally wrote for The Monthly, which they passed on, and then Australian Book Review and the Age passed too (mainly cos they already had reviews lined up). Seemed a shame to just leave it to moulder on the hard-drive, so here, in a slightly more formal register than I generally use on this blog, are my thoughts on this pretty speccie comic book.
And even though they didn’t take it, profuse thanks must go to John van Tiggelen at The Monthly for his excellent editorial feedback while I was writing this review.
A man reminisces about the day he and two of his high school friends went in search of a dead body on the local train line. As he tells his story he looks back at the history of his home town, lamenting its change for the worse. He attributes these changes to the arrival of a blue-skinned race of alien migrants.
Australian comic artist Pat Grant’s debut graphic novel Blue tells two stories: one about the social anxiety of adolescence, the other an exploration of racism in the face of migration.
The story’s setting on the northern coast of NSW, its focus on surfing culture, and its use of strine and slang make it distinctively Australian. Smaller details reinforce this, like sausage rolls with sauce, “We Grew Here, You Flew Here” stickers and Daily Telegraph posters.
Grant’s use of a minimal palette (black and white with shades of blue and grey) is striking, as is his lush, deft and fluid line work. His characters, both human and alien, are elastic creatures with rubber-band limbs and squashy bodies, reminiscent of 1930s cartoon characters.
Grant confidently explores the possibilities of layout in comics. Some pages are blank except for a few centred panels zeroing in on details from the landscape. Others are busy grids, each panel containing elements that can be read separately or as part of a larger picture or sequence of events. Others still are dense double-page panoramas illustrating the coastal environment that characters pass through.
Blue presents racism as an understandable response to social change. As a social commentary, despite its playfulness and humour, it never satirises the racism of its protagonists. Though aggressive and ill-educated, they are funny and likable.
The objects of their racism are less sympathetic: a mere source of confusion and resentment. There are a few moments, however, in which the aliens are convincingly humanised. These moments make Blue feel more like devil’s advocacy than a racist tract.
Some might want Grant to come out more strongly against racism, but not every book that deals with the subject has to denounce it. It’s true that Blue could be used as a pro-racist text if someone was so inclined, but it’s also a thought-provoking look from a less common angle at a significant issue in contemporary Australian society, using a relatively uncommon artform.
Grant’s illustrations have a stunning complexity and depth of meaning, and while his ability as a writer may not be as strong as his considerable illustrative powers, he is certainly a good yarn-spinner. His dialogue is a delight.
Blue is a beautiful, thought-provoking debut from an undeniable new talent, recommended for anyone interested in the graphic novel form.
Blue is available from Giramondo in Australia, Top Shelf in the US and Canada, and in full online at www.boltonblue.com.
Like this:
Down vs. Up.
Kate Middleton is the guest blogger at Southerly this month and she’s written a really good article about the incorporation of new technology in writing. She first looks at the way that TV procedural The Good Wife effortlessly incorporates online life into its plots, then looks at the new words (and new uses for old words) that the internet has bequeathed to the dictionary before considering how this new technology and its consequent language is used in poetry.
Middleton finishes with a close look at “Summer Fig”, a poem by Jaya Savige that includes the lines:
Our backyard god’s
a giant fig, downloading
gigs of shade onto the fresh cut grass.
It’s a cracker of a poem, one that I’ve thumbs-upped before on this blog, and one that has caught the eye of many a reviewer of Savige’s Surface to Air.
I coincidentally re-read “Summer Fig” this week, and I have to say I have a problem with Savige’s use of “downloading” in the context of describing a fig tree’s shade.
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Lookee eBook!
Well that was quick. As of last week I’m pleased to say that thanks to the ineffable generosity of some beyond-lovely donors, I’ve raised the money needed to buy reproduction rights for the covers of Man Bites Dog and Not Quite the Man for the Job to use in their ebook iterations. Thanks from the bottom of my everything to everyone who donated. You’re ace.
The fund actually allows three months to raise the dosh, so with roughly 61 days left, there’s still time to score yourself a cheaper-by-one-dollar copy of either book if you like.
It occurred to me yesterday that I hadn’t actually tried to make these epub versions of my books actually work on a “device” as they’re called in teh biz. The closest thing I have to a device is an iPod shuffle, and that ain’t so ebook friendly. I’ve been testing them out on Adobe Digital Editions on my laptop, with plans to try them on an iPad down the track, but I read a scary article about epub standards and validation and stuff that made me wonder if I might be completely fucking things up by doing it that way.
So I put the latest test version of the book (still some margining issues to sort out, still needs proofreading, plus some other stuff…) onto the iPad at work and, well, that was a learning curve. After I got over the whole “what do you mean you can’t just open a new file?” and got my boss to add the epub to his iTunes and then sync it to the iPad it was ready to actually test.
Which is the point where I started all giggling and shit. Because look! I made a ebook! And the pages, like, turn and stuff. Plus the subject index works. Which is a good thing.
Like I said, there’s some rough edges need knocking off, but it’s nice to know the sucker works. That would have been embarrassing.
Like this:
Bessie Smith and the Pretty Kitties
(Michael Ondaatje vs. alicia sometimes)
At first she refused to sing. But here she was. A long brown dress, with fringes. Fred Longshaw at the piano.
I slip by the mike, throw trashed words into laps.
my bass is chalk. the dearth of the carpet shows,
especially on the sad ones with grenade smiles.
She wore wings. They raised themselves with her arms each time she coaxed a phrase. The feathers black as the Steinway. You should have been there.
my words are mint. the cigarettes heckle for space.
I’m lost for stage wit. more porn dancing
in the corners and record men with old pens.
when the chorus comes I’m found out like a junkie.
When she returned she brought out the band. They were glad to have arrived on Earth, but they too had hoped for Havana. By midnight her voice was even better. She talked more between songs.
counting the heads. how many have the potential to love me?
too many shoes have been used as belts. this ending is pastry.
the feedback is messing with my encore.
We stood like sudden wheat.
I wait for the rider so I can give it to someone else
But she could not hear us.
this isn’t poetry
She could not see us
but it’s too wet for rock ‘n’ roll
Then she died again.
Like this:
My Scientific Shame
I’ve been reading the legendary Carl Sagan’s Cosmos recently and when I came to the part where he talks about the doppler shift and its use in determining whether things are moving toward or away from the Earth I realised that the line in “Are We There Yet?” about “coming at you so fast I’m bathed in red light” is arse-fucking backwards.
Because the Doppler Effect causes wavelengths to shorten when the things that are emitting them are approaching (and to lengthen when they’re moving away from you), and because blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light, if I’m coming at you that fast I’d be bathed in blue light, not red.
My first instinct was to blame someone else, like, for instance, Mr. David Gilbey. If he’s so hot with the comma placement and stuff, how’d such a basic element of astrophysics get past him? What kind of editor–
But no. We know who’s to blame. I know whose fault it is, really. Shoulda checked my facts before I declared the poem fit for human consumption.
My apologies to you all. I have left the erroneous line where it lies in the poem as it appears on this blog as a token of my shame, and of my commitment to you, my dear readers, that if I ever namedrop science in my poems again, I will check and double-check it before submitting it for your consideration.
Imma make some ebook!
(check out the full details of the Adam Ford eBook Cover Fund over on Pozible.com )
As the above video will attest, I have this crazy plan to turn Not Quite the Man for the Job and Man Bites Dog into ebooks.
I’ve been tapping away for a while now, mucking around with html and freeware ebook converters, picking the brains of other ebook publishers, and I think I’ve got most of it sorted now, at least in terms of the internal pages. Getting the poetry to sit right was a bit tricky, but I eventually sorted something out (stay tuned for a future post on how to make poems retain their line-integrity in ebooks – riveting stuff, I know…).
The covers, though, are a slightly different matter. I thought it would be good to use the covers that the print books had when they were released, but to do so I need to pay a wee licensing fee to Allen & Unwin, under whose good graces the books originally came into the world and also under whose good graces the delovely covers were commissioned.
That’s where you come in. In order to raise the money to license the rights to the covers I’m offering both ebooks for presale at a discounted price through crowdfunding website Pozible. The nice thing about Pozible is that if, for whatever reason, I don’t make the goal target, then your pledge doesn’t get honoured and you don’t have to pay any money at all, so it’s reasonably risk free.
If this interests – or even merely intrigues – you, you can pre-order the books at the aptly named adamfordsbookcovers.pozible.com and sign up to stay informed about my progress towards the lofty goal of three hundred of your Earth (i.e., “Australian”) dollars.
Further samples of Man Bites Dog and Not Quite the Man for the Job can be found on this website somewhere.
Cheers.
Rejected: Beeps, Responses and The Number Two
Last week the Age knocked back a couple of my poems: “Response”, a perhaps-a-little-obvious poem about artistic responses to terrorism, and “Second Comes Right After First”, the poem I wrote (but didn’t perform) for the Victorian final of the 2011 Australian Poetry Slam.
Their rejection was simple, polite and quite quick, which is always appreciated. It came in the form of a typed letter with a hand-correction of the words “it has not” to “they have not” in reference to the multiple submission. Given how short the letter was, I was curious as to why the edit was made in pen after printing, instead of simply changing the pronoun on-screen before printing. Maybe Gig Ryan has a large stack of pre-printed rejections tucked away somewhere, and she chose the environmentally responsible option of not using another sheet of paper for such a minor consideration? We may never know.
Upon reflection “Response” might be a bit too sarcastic and a little bit of a one-note poem. I thought it was funny, but that’s not really an indication of anything. “Second” may also be one of those poems that suited its initial context, but which may never really engender a favourable response outside of that context. I’m not sure whether I’ll retire it or continue to send it out. I’m not going to edit it – it is what it is. Getting it published will be all about finding a sympathetic ear.
In addition to the above no-thankses, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize did not, in their ineffable wisdom, shortlist “After the Beep”. Their letter confirming as much was a little coy. It said, “This is just to let you know that the shortlisted poets have now been notified – in case you wish to place your poem(s) elsewhere.” A little indirect, I thought, almost as though they didn’t actually want to say anything like “we didn’t pick you”, preferring rejection by omission. The shortlisted poets have been contacted. You haven’t been contacted? Oh – well, then. Draw your own conclusions, I suppose.
Also – veiled William Carlos Williams reference? Or am I reaching?
I kid because I love. Onwards and upwards with this poetry lark, methinks. Some new poems have been written since we last discussed rejection, and there are yet others out there awaiting validation in one form or another. The game, as they seldom actually say, is still very much afoot.
