The title “Going Down Swinging” seems less and less appropriate as time goes on – 29 years and counting, the magazine is still going strong with no sign of flagging. They ain’t going nowhere but onwards and upwards.
GDS28 recently manifested in this plane of reality and as always it’s a fine example of the literary anthology type, chockers with short stories, poetry, spoken word recordings and comics.
Standouts for this little black swan of trespass include:
- Jo Waite’s graphic novella “Flic’s Tale”, about three women in a train full of Nazis telling a collaborative story about mermaids
- Dan Lee’s “Oculus”, a spoken dialogue between himself and a computer with his voice about the connection between black holes and rhetorical questions
- alicia sometimes’s “Hope”, a bright tuneful paean to positivity that serves as a brilliant closer to the CD
- Amelia Walker’s “Donut”, a concrete poem (pictured, above – do the clicky to make it bigger and more readable) on the perennial topic of sexual satisfaction
- ∏O’s “Deborah Wardley”, an everything poem about Australia’s first female commercial pilot
- Don Walker’s (yes that Don Walker) “Country Trains”, an angry spoken word portrait of Sydney Central Station
- Jonathan Shaw’s “Correspondence”, a quiet little poem about nuclear proliferation
- Jillian Pattinson’s “Choose Your Own Advent”, a multiple-choice poem about personal origin stories
Head on over to the Going Down Swinging site to track down stockists or to buy a copy online – samples of Jo Waite’s comic and the full audio from Dan Lee’s bit are currently available for your perusal, too.
And for you writerly types – I get the feeling there’s a few of you reading this blog – I’m given to understand that submissions for Going Down Swinging 29 are open from now until the end of June for short stories, comics, poetry and non-fiction.
The Other Adam Ford 