Splog - SPUNC: Small Press Underground Networking Community

Fiction: Drawing from Real Life: guest post by Gretchen Shirm

2010-09-08T10:28:32Z

The relationship between fiction and real life has always been uncomfortable territory for writers. It is perhaps the fact that most writers cannot explain exactly where fiction comes from that makes the fiction/real life delineation so fascinating to non-writers.

I’ve just finished reading Claire Tomalin’s compelling biography Thomas Hardy: Time Torn Man. In it, she cites Hardy as denying any autobiographical link between himself and the protagonist of Jude the Obscure (Hardy’s last and by far his darkest novel). Yeah right, I thought when I read that, not autobiographical Tom, not at all.

But then I thought, hold on. Yes, there are superficial links between Jude and Thomas Hardy – Jude was, like Hardy, born in a village, unable to study at Oxford and felt himself constrained by an unhappy marriage. But for those similarities between Jude and Hardy, there are many more horrors suffered by Jude removed from Hardy’s own experience. Jude seems real because Hardy invests so much of himself in Jude; that is not autobiography, it is the mark of a good storyteller.

Superficially, similar comparisons could be made between myself and the characters in Having Cried Wolf, my debut collection of stories published this month. In it, there is a character who is, like me, a lawyer and also like me, grew up in a small coastal town (in my case two coastal towns). But nothing that happens to that character has ever happened to me; nor has anything that happens in the book. And still, somehow, I am in the book.

Virginia Woolf described fiction as ‘like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.’ Fiction isn’t life, but about life. Readers expect fiction to have the quality of real life, but it has to be wound around a central spool of narrative. The biggest buzz I get from being a fiction writer is creating a story; making something that was not there before.

The truth is that a well realised character is created by an author using a part of him or herself: Hardy nursed a life-long bitterness from never having studied at university, and Jude the Obscure manifests this. Becoming a fiction writer is to learn how to mine layers of feeling, to understand characters by filtering them through oneself.

It isn’t just feelings and attributes that fiction writers use to render their fiction life-like: place is an important element of fiction writing. The experience I have when reading a good book is that the action somehow takes place in a location that is familiar to me. My theory is that when writers use places they know, this familiarity triggers the reader’s own memories. It is for this reason that I didn’t make Kinsale either of the towns I had grown up in (Kiama or Ballina) because as I was writing, the stories were grafted onto many different places I was familiar with – sometimes Kiama, sometimes Ballina and even Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne.

I can understand why comparisons between himself and Jude annoyed Hardy, just as I can understand why all fiction writers bristle at the suggestion that their work is autobiographical. To suggest that a fiction writer has taken from their life is almost to suggest they have in some way cheated. But the truth is, it’s a compliment: it means that the writer has woven their fiction from strands of themself.

Gretchen Shirm was born on Kiama, on the south coast of New South Wales, in 1979. She currently lives in Sydney, where she works as a lawyer. In 2009, Gretchen received the D.J. O'Hern Memorial Fellowship for Emergent Writers. Her fiction has been published in numerous literary journals. Having Cried Wolf is her first collection.

Thanks to Affirm Press, SPLOG has two copies of Gretchen Shirm’s Having Cried Wolf to give away. To win, simply email us the names of the other three collections In Affirm Press' Long Story Shorts series. (hint: you can find them here).

Entries close midday, Friday 10th September with winners announced that afternoon as selected from the entries received. Having Cried Wolf* is available from all good bookstores, and you can also read a sample chapter here (the link is on the bottom right of the page).

How Twitter changed my life, gave me hope and helped me understand my business - Guest Post by Miriam Zolin

2010-09-01T14:59:45Z

I was lost …and alone
A reader and writer since I was very small, I’m also a little bit solitary, and a bit aloof. I’m not apologising. But [and you may pause here for a knowing smile] I had somehow become attached to an image of publishing that allowed for solitary hours in front of my layouts and contributions. Hah!

…and confused
Writers are allowed to spend their creative time alone. Publishers? Not since centuries ago, if ever. Publishers network and get to know people. They keep their ears to the ground and they keep their eyes peeled. And in between all this positioning and mutilation of sensory organs, they are out there, in the world, with their fingers on the pulse of ‘what readers want’ and ‘who to publish next’.

What a shock to realise that one of my main responsibilities when I started publishing a journal, was to tear myself away from words, sounds and images and go ‘out there’, mixing it up with the fresh young faces and weary old inhabitants of a community of writers and readers who might like to hear about extempore.

…and then I discovered Twitter
Twitter was a mystery, and one I had little interest in unravelling. I bought into the prevailing lack-of-wisdom that said it was just a forum for narcissistic, Gen-Y, empty-headers to tell us what they’re eating for breakfast. As you can tell, I had the arguments down pat.

But in desperation to reach and grow my readership, I discovered what Twitter is really all about. It’s about people and community. As a form of communication it can be transparent, friendly and engaging. And it also takes skill to craft short, interesting Tweets. I love a writing challenge! I use Twitter as @extemporeAus and I found a kind of magic there. I can be me [solitary, aloof and a text-based organism] and still conversing. I can combine my Twitter conversations with real-life encounters that enrich both spheres. And I can build the journal’s readership and reach by quietly, honestly, showing people what we offer and sharing what we like. Try it… people will start to find you… and you don’t have to exhaust yourself seeking them out.

Here are four things I learned about Twitter, and they changed my life:

• If you are doing something authentic and interesting, there are people in the Twitterverse who want to hear about it. Guaranteed.

• You can really boost visits to your website by combining interesting content and invitingly written Tweets.

• Twitter is a stream. And like a stream in real life, you can dip in and out, or follow it for its whole length. It will keep on flowing during the days you’re not swimming in it. You can be busy and splash around a lot or just chill out on the Li-Lo and let it carry you along. You choose, and it’s all okay.

• Find your authentic Twitter voice, your authentic Twitter pace and be your authentic self. It will show, and you’ll be irresistible, to the people who matter.

With Twitter’s help, extempore is now much better at building and participating in a community of musicians, writers and readers. I’m genuinely hopeful that we have a future. Perhaps in a different format, perhaps with a different frequency, but now I’m in touch with many of our readers and contributors and I can measure (using Twitter statistics and feedback) what information gets people excited.

And I understand a lot more about being a publisher. Now that Twitter lets me network and communicate authentically, on my own terms, I’ve started to have a lot more fun reaching out to readers and potential readers, contributors and reviewers.

Thanks Twitter!

Useful links:
Already Tweeting? I found Marian Schembari ’s Twitter Critique service very useful.

Want to read a bit more about how and why Twitter works? Try this famous blog by Kevin Marks.

And if you’d like to find out more about extempore, please visit us at our website.

Join extempore on Twitter for the announcement of the winners of the National Jazz Writing Competition. 6:30pm on Tuesday 7 September 2010, just follow @extemporeAus and take your chances. Free giveaways and the chance to chat to one or more of our winning poets (connectivity and twitter-literacy dependent).

Miriam Zolin is publisher and editor of extempore, a journal of writing and art inspired by jazz and improvised music.

XM what? – Guest Post by Chris Chinchilla

2010-08-04T15:47:19Z

Extensible Markup Language was, a few years ago, (and still kind of is) the next big thing in the tech world. Perhaps one of the principal stumbling blocks in understanding both what it is and what it can do for you is that, theoretically, it can do whatever you want. XML is the kind of technology you are using on a regular basis without even realising. XML forms are the basis of both RSS news feeds and the new office 2007 file formats. It’s a technology that even I don’t completely understand. I am still learning how best to apply and use it. What I do understand, however, is how useful and fundamental it can be in any modern publishing set up… so let’s skim the details and look at what it is and why you might want to use it as opposed to its methodology.

XML is not a programming language, but rather (as the name would suggest) a ‘markup’ language. Back in the days of yore, markup language was used in desktop publishing to layout print pages, distinguishing how a designer would like a printer to produce a page. Markup language found its way into early computerised desktop publishing packages but it’s oldest remaining vestige is something we all use on a very regular basis, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), which forms the foundation of over ninety percent of the web pages we view, but with a lot of increasingly fancy bells and whistles bolted on.

XML doesn’t actually do anything per se, but is a structured way of storing and holding data and utilising other software to represent that data. If I’ve done my job well, then that statement might just have given insight into why XML would be potentially useful to the publishing world.

To elaborate and clarify…

You have a book and you lay its structure out in XML, i.e. Chapters, headings, body text, intro, contents page. Taking this one structured representation of your content you can easily generate a print version, web version, eBook version, mobile version and even a version for your fridge (I am not making this up, there was talk of such devices in the past) using appropriate software that understands XML.

Now, this may all sound very complicated, but the good news is that everyone’s favourite Desktop publishing tool, InDesign (amongst others), will do all the hard work and generate XML for you. But that, as they say, is another story, and one I’ll delve into next time.

Random Google Search - Guest Poetry by Maxine Clarke (explicit language)

2010-08-04T15:19:02Z

writer’s block

nobody ever asked me
what if the words don’t come
said but if there’s only silence
what then
& even if they had
i wz young
& in love
& poetry
& i
we were gonna last
forever

random google search
a poem for the anniversary of a blog

probably you got here by accident
random google searches pull you to places like this
you were thinking of tennis when you entered ‘slam’
or accidentally clicked over some link
& are too embarrassed to admit it
i wd never know
you cd stumble outta here
faster than you came in
maybe you are even thinking
man / this blog is shit
& anyway / what the fuck is up
with this so-called poet
that she is so damn volatile
all the time / i mean
seriously sister / calm down

you might never come back
or were looking to be outraged
when you word searched unaustralian
are you my mother / cringing at my language again
a reader waiting for another poem
& sick as hell
of me talking about myself
where are the poems
i come here for the poems
jesus / wd you just stop all of this crapping on
& by the way
what is with these abbreviations
learn to goddamn spell

you cd be that publisher i am
talking to / or god forbid
that odd looking woman in the back row
of my last three gigs
eager faced & unpredictable

maybe you know me / or wish you did
or think you do / or thank fuck
or who or whatever you might pray to
that you don’t

it is two in the morning where you are
watching my origami unfold
you are a reader
or a writer
dutch scottish
or cambodian
did you get / what
you came here to find
tell me you left with something

blinking underscore
blinking underscore

are you still online

probably you got here by accident
random google searches pull you to places like this
you were thinking of tennis when you entered slam
or accidentally clicked over some link
bt in any case
here we both are
the cyberspace between us
unquenchable

exile

for the speechless / the silent
the tongue-cut / the breathless / for
the voiceless / the mute
the dumbstruck & ignored
from the messengers
the griots / the preachers / the toasters
the MCs / the hip-hoppers
the beat-boxers / & the bards

in the margins / on the fringes
the space between the lines

from the edges / on the outskirts

mother tongue

exile

The Greatest Line of All - Guest Post by Bel Schenk

2010-07-26T09:41:54Z

You can’t take the piss with a tag line.

Launching the latest issue of Voiceworks, writer Tom Cho quoted The Greatest Love of All. While it’s in your head (and I’m sorry, but it will be for the next hour), let’s revisit those lyrics: ‘I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.’

Unlike reality television contestants announcing they are singing Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah, you’ll forgive most people for thinking that Houston either wrote this song herself or was the first person to sing it, but neither are true.

Wikipedia says it was written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed and first performed by George Benson. But I digress. This isn’t about the song, the writer or the original recording artist. This is about children. This is about the tag line that gets them to take notice, which is actually more difficult than you might think. Express Media recently came up with a new one. It’s better than ‘Moving Forward’. It’s better than ‘Real Action’. It’s ‘we’re here for young writers’.

‘Teach them well and let them lead the way’ may well have made it, if it A) wasn’t already taken and B) synonymous with those laneway karaoke bars. You see, you can’t take the piss with a tag line. So, what does it actually mean? It may sound simple, but we took ages to come up with it, because so many lines were just not true. We tossed and turned with ‘giving young writers a go’ but that implies they can’t write without us – that they can’t get a WordPress account, or write an essay or a poem by themselves. That’s simply not true. We also thought about changing the line to suit different audiences (one for funding bodies, another for schools, another for hipsters etc), but that proved to be just as difficult.

We were deliberately vague when describing what we are actually here for. Our line suggests that we provide a broad spectrum of services. One young person might call to ask about getting a novel published, another might drop around to ask how to staple together a ‘zine. We’re here for them.

On Q & A last week, the panel debated the meaning of political slogans. Moving forward? Moving forward from what? Lots of people are talking about that, which seems to detract from the real election issues. This may be a smart move by both the major parties and perhaps I am talking about Express Media’s slogan too much while the ‘real action’ for Express Media (the next funding round, getting more kids involved) takes a back seat. But I do think it’s important to choose something you stand for and make it as noticeable as you possibly can. That’s why you’ll hopefully see ‘we’re here for young writers’ everywhere.

At Express Media’s mini-festival The Big Splash recently, Steven Amsterdam reminded us that writing is the cheapest art form, that you can do any type of special effect for free. That has nothing to do with this post, but I liked it so much that I wanted to include it. Sometimes writers forget that writing is limitless. You can go anywhere.

Express Media might be your first point of call.

Bel Schenk is the Artistic Director of Express Media. If you hadn’t quite noticed, they are here for young writers.

Pressing ahead: PressPress poetry - Guest Post by Chris Mansell

2010-07-23T14:46:02Z

Why are people interested in poetry?

It’s a non-question I’m often asked and one which has, hidden in its depths, an absent phrase – ‘instead of more profitable stuff, like prose’. This comes from a naïve idea that most writers of creative fiction make money from their work. (Snorts) As if.

Poetry is alive and well and has been for centuries. Get used to it.

What poetry doesn’t do is sell bucketloads of any one title at any one time. It is not the Olympics; it is not the Grand Prix; it is not Avatar; it is not KFC.

You’ve got a choice if you’re a poet and/or publisher. You can bemoan the state of the universe and try to educate people about how poetry is good for them, that they are morally obliged to consume it: cod liver oil for the intellect. Or you can put it out there and if people like it, they’ll come, they’ll buy it, they’ll read it, they’ll participate. If you’re not prepared to do this, I suggest you go and stand on a street corner and call out ‘Love me! Love me!’ – it will be about as effective as trying to tell people that they should like poetry.

I’m a poet. I work from the premise that poetry is good, and that (at least some) people like it. If I were an oboe player, I’d work from the premise that oboe playing was good and that some people like to hear oboes. I refuse to accept the patronising crap that some greet this with.

So. This is why I set up a small poetry press. I am not insane. I knew before I started that there were going to be distribution/sales issues, so I chose to consider those before I published a single item.

Because I’m a poet, I know how poetry is most often bought: at readings, at specialist bookshops and from poets. Because, in the past I’ve flogged off a literary magazine and books of poetry with other presses, I knew what the economies of these were and how big a slice has to go to bookshops and distribution and the question was: how much you are likely to get back from selling that way? Answer: bugger all. Or, if you did get enough to make publishing economic, the cost of a book of poetry would be high and the enterprise shaky. This went against the grain – I wanted to get it out there – and also, as I am a poet, I have very little money (aka capital) to launch such a venture. At the time I was also exceedingly time-poor. (You don’t want to know.)

Cutting to the chase: I set up PressPress to be as simple an operation as it could be, with the economies of time and money taken into account. I chose chapbooks because they are a very economic format: they use standard sizes of paper, envelopes, postage and simple, flexible technologies. I chose not to sell to bookshops and, until very recently, did not even have a trade price. I only have one now because a few of bookshops were very keen. This price only applies in very specific circumstances. Mostly the chapbooks sell from the site, from the poets, and at readings.

How does that work? Patiently. That’s how it works. The chapbooks don’t usually sell a large number immediately. They sell slowly, over a long period of time. They don’t go out of print. This means there is a backlist which is always active. No doubt in the future I will cull the backlist, but it’s early days and a small operation. I see no need to do this at the moment.

I want to support the poets where I can afford to and have the inclination and resources. The poets who sell are the poets who are proactive, who do readings and get out onto the net and into the cafes and CWA halls. PressPress gives them a page on the site and publicity when they tell readers what the poets are up to. As an operation, it’s as cut back as is possible.

Will PressPress be moving into ebooks? I don’t know. I’m thinking about it. I want poets to be paid for their work and I can’t see it being an economic model for small poetry publication yet. Yet. Further down the track I’ll be going this way. For now I’ll be sticking to the physical artefact that is designed to fit into a shirt or jeans pocket.

Each chapbook has been lovingly edited, designed, fretted over by poet and press. They’re small but taken seriously. They’re political and not, humorous and not, profound, light, socially aware or not. Because the initial investment is mostly in love and labour, I can take big risks in content. Frankly, the way the press is set up, if I love a manuscript, I publish it whether or not I think it will sell. It will always sell some.

I’ve begun to publish in languages other than English because I think it’s a good idea to expand our ideas and our reach. I’m answerable to no one other than the poets. This is the great strength of small publishing: a wild independence that feeds, quietly sometimes, into the cultural soup.

The unofficial motto of PressPress is ‘Poetry in a time of fire’. I think it has been a time of fire for a very long time. It is never an easy time for poetry, but it’s never a time when poetry is entirely extinguished either.

PressPress is hosting a number of upcoming events. For more info, head here.

Chris Mansell has an articulate take on what she does (see the note on her poetics). She writes, gives writing classes and reads extensively and has won and been short-listed for a number of awards.

For a sample of Mansell’s work, including some new media poems, head here.

Where I'm Coming From - Guest Post by Kent MacCarter

2010-07-21T13:42:25Z

Where are you from? How can you tell? You have to be from somewhere, don’t you? So, where are you from? What? Huh?

These are questions I am confronted with quite often in Australia, as I am sure they are inquired of everybody who has relocated here as an adult and has stayed long enough to forget that they are the ones who sound funny (unless you’re from Adelaide, but that’s a story for another post).

Australians are an inquisitive brood and I applaud this. Now, more often than not, I field the polite query of, “So, where in Canada are you from?” The slope of my accent clearly triggers two immediate possibilities of what nation the answer might be. My ‘fromness factor’, as I hereby dub it, is a little murky. Typically, I reply with, “No, just south of there” or, in more persnickety moods, “Nup, the other, eviler one”.

I am never offended at these guesses of Canadian ‘fromness’ (fromosity? Not a word, but ought be) because they not only prove the curiosity of the enquirer, but instantly entertain a possible answer. And that’s an engagement, if a perpetually incorrect one, that intrigues me. The capacity that ‘from’ holds is both huge and ephemeral. It’s never static. It’s flawed.

An example of from’s evasiveness:

Where are Cheezels® from? Cheezels® come from a box. Oh? No, wait. They come from the supermarket and handy milk bars when you’re legless. Really? That’s it then? Okay. Even that’s not accurate. Cheezels® come from the Snack Foods Limited company. But that company is in South Australia? Ah yes. Cheezels® must come from South Australia. My mistake.

Wow? That’s a monumentally dull conclusion, isn’t it? And likely not even accurate.

I think the truest answer to where Cheezels® come from is, quite simply, irrelevant. Thankfully, they exist. They are Australian and a miniscule part of the home I feel here. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Okay. So. I am from America. But which part? That’s a difficult question. I do not have a pinpointed, geographic ‘from’. I’ve lived all over. Is birthplace the true answer of where you’re from? Codswallop. Of course not. But if ‘from’ is so fleeting, then from what previously existing fixture, point, state of being or shutter click can from’s reference be contrasted against? At what point after? What do you grab a hold of, keep and make into you? If I were to answer the standard ‘from’ inquisition with, “I am from the marriage of my wife and me,” I’d surely solicit bemused stares. And maybe a poke in the chops. But why? It is a much more accurate answer than Lakeville, Minnesota, USA nowadays in my life, even if I was born there and do have a stoically Lutheran sense of timid pride that I was so. Yes. I am aware that most people assume a geographical starting point will be included in an answer. And this is an inherent flaw in ‘from’.

The better question is this – where’s home? Humans have the capacity to provide a sense of home. As do states of being. Once again, now we’re getting somewhere.

I think about this often and my thoughts generally careen off into un-winnable debates with myself about where lines can be drawn and exactly what utility pole I’ll smash the bumper of my reasoning into. What about the two whingeing cats I live with and dearly love? My favourite collection of August Kleinzahler poetry? My Galaxie 500 records? Tacos? Can they individually provide ‘home’? Or are they merely parts that make up a whole essence? One must respect the bigness that ‘home’ feels and clearly is. I am not sure a pet, a book or a plate of rigatoni can instill ‘home’ by themselves, even if they echo it in perfect science.

Here’s a quote from Michael Ondaatje:

A marriage exists in the space between two people – and that can be a part of the home too, but you carry it with you like a snail carries a shell.

And this from W.H. Auden in his poem ‘War Time’:

When no one whom we need is looking, Home
A sort of honour, not a building site,
Wherever we are, when, if we chose, we might
Be somewhere else, yet trust that we have chosen right.

Spot on. I would argue that a marriage, a state of being, can BE the home, not just a part of it.

See? This icy reasoning easily slides off into identity, nation building, politics, etc. Lately, all this has got me to thinking about how home, its possible abstractions and the entities that home inhabits are presented in writing from authors who no longer reside in their original geographic place of birth.

I recently attended the launch of Emmett Stinson’s short story collection, Known Unknowns. As a fellow expatriate, I was very drawn to these words in his speech that night:

The last word in Known Unknowns is the word ‘home’, and to me it’s an important word both for me and for this book. Calling someplace home doesn’t just mean that it’s where you come from; calling someplace ‘home’ also means that you’ve invested yourself in it, that you care about it and recognise a set of responsibilities and obligations to it. Calling a place home means caring about something bigger than yourself.

Bingo. I asked a few other expat writers about their take on home. Here are their replies.

Friend, colleague, master chef of both words and food in her own right (long before the show, folks) and the freshly minted Curriculum Officer at the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, Bev Laing, answered:

Home is that little bit of you that remains the same, no matter where you are in the world or what language you are operating in. It’s the kernel that survives all change, grows with growth, is the voice you had when you were a kid.

Interesting. I’m buying that. Now we have the kernel of ‘voice’ as home in the foray from none other than the reincarnation of M.F.K. Fisher herself! She knew a thing or two about home and hearth, as does Laing. Hyperbole aside, nothing in Laing’s response is fettered to a singular spot on Earth. Home’s moveable, ephemeral. It remembered to pack a towel in its suitcase. And a wine corkscrew.

Kiwi novelist, Julian Novitz, had this to say about his fromness factor:

I spent my childhood constantly being asked where I was from … I was raised with a greater awareness of what was going on in the rest of the world than the other kids I knew. The world outside of New Zealand was just much more of a focus in our household, and our parents encouraged us from quite an early age to think about living in other places, not limiting our sense of opportunity to one country. It’s probably wrong to say that it didn’t feel like home, but New Zealand and being a New Zealander seemed like it was a less important facet of my identity than it was to the New Zealanders I grew up with and still encounter.

OK. So here’s a reply that’s an outright rejection of one’s native geological space defining the sense of ‘home’. Let’s go back to my question then: where’s home for Novitz? His home lies in the potential of ‘other places’ as opposed to the ‘limiting sense of one country’. That may or may not be true for Novitz – that’s my assessment – but I would like to think (and do think) that the essence of home or feeling at home can be expressed abstractly in humans. Possibly feeling at home in worldliness versus myopia (self-imposed or not)?

I’ll wager this is exponentially truer in authors. I am linking to various authors’ laurels and details because I fancy my wager is an awfully, awfully safe bet. I don’t have the answer to why that is, other than my own experiences, but it intrigues me immensely.

Plus, this is a blog. They’re good writers. Read about ’em.

Finally, another expat writer’s crack at home’s truth according to her. This one from 2009 Prize for an Unpublished Manuscript by an Emerging Victorian Writer prize winner, Amy Espeseth:

Home for me is Wisconsin, but I am occasionally confused between my actual hometown of Barron and my fictional hometown of Failing. I spent my first eighteen years living in that real place, but I’ve spent the rest creating a shadow world for my characters. In some ways, I’ve lived in Failing much more than I ever lived in Barron; I pay more attention in fiction.

This seals the deal on my earlier bet. I win. But so do you. It also adds another intriguing layer: is home a capacious state entirely of an experiencer’s making? Can it be damned well whatever you want it to be, even if that semblance of home is a 100% netherworld concocted in your own head and spilled out onto paper? Why not.

Two Americans, a Canadian and a New Zealander – like me, all now permanently living and writing in Australia. Here’s my tale on how I got here (issue 40 of Gangway ,the story I read at Dog’s Bar Storytelling event). Veering off a bit again, I argue that these nations are ‘easy’ locations to be from, call home, attest something in between or be in rebellion of. In all four spots, there is common language, identical pursuits of stuff and prefab allegiances to help you along the way.

Problems with ‘from’ exacerbate when gulfs of language churn into the mix … but that doesn’t affect ‘home’ at all, does it? Veering further, is home’s potential to be felt strictly via mental state(s) its only saving, accurate grace against it being as equally flawed as ‘from’ if, say, you’ve been in prison for 30 years? Denuded of place variety? Melbourne PEN’s Writers from Prison program is something I need to know more about.

I’ve lobbed questions in this post left, right and kitty-corner. I’m not an admiral in a boatload of answers. Who is? And what is her or his fromosity?

Home is alive, well and collecting its 9% superannuation from all of us nicely, thankyouverymuch. From? From … panhandles. Both have been written about for eons and will be for more no matter where you started and moved on to or remained. What writers put in to ‘home’ in waking life, we later extract in attempts toward a smattering of paragraphs that run, not walk. And when you look back down through that palimpsest of lines, it’s shape, their symbols, you discover that it spells your name.

Kent MacCarter studied writing at University of Chicago and University of Melbourne. An expatriate of various places in Minnesota, Montana and New Mexico, he is now a permanent resident in Melbourne, Australia. His first collection of poetry, In the Hungry Middle of Here, was published by Transit Lounge Press in 2009. He is currently on the executive board of SPUNC (Small Press Underground Networking Community) as Treasurer.

His poetry collection, In the Hungry Middle of Here is available from Transit Lounge, and he is appearing at Debut Mondays on August 2nd.

Writing in the West; Pitfalls and Benefits: Guest Post by Sj Finch

2010-07-15T13:48:00Z

Earlier this year indigo journal’s managing editor Donna Ward sent a message to fans of the Indigo facebook page. The journal had failed to secure a grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts (DCA) and is not going to continue past its sixth issue. The DCA’s main reason for doing so – I’m lead to believe – is that the journal has a policy of only publishing West Australian writers. The DCA would much rather a product that’s nationally or internationally viable.

Here in the West, people in the arts community like to tell themselves that the west is not enough. ‘Melbourne,’ they say. ‘Fair Melbourne is where the publishing houses grow glorious, and the streets are teeming with an intelligent and stylish readership.’ I don’t know Melbourne, so I won’t disagree necessarily, but I do think you have to be pretty blind to not realise that the Western Australian writing scene has been surging up these past five years. I also believe it’s a simple grass-is-greener case. You’re not necessarily going to be better off as a writer or as a publisher in a new environment. Wherever you are, you got to do that same hard work if you want to make it in this crazy biz.

In a conversation I had with Alisa Krasnostein, head of Twelfth Planet Press, a small speculative fiction publishing house in Perth, she told me that she initially got into small presses thinking that they were a good stepping stone. But what she’s been increasingly finding is that major presses – as well as struggling to survive – are more likely to provide coffee table books and novelty reads than actual reading content. Small presses are not just an transitional period for emerging writers. They’re now essential. Writers and editors can deliver well-crafted and well-loved content without pandering. And as small presses generally have the time to give their readership close contact with the author and the publishing house, readerships are loyal, active, and can sometimes cross over to become authors. I jubilantly agree with Alisa. I think it’s an exciting time for new writing and art. As mass communication and technology makes everything more accessible, and cheaper to produce, the writing community at large multiplies, becoming many micro-communities – writing has never been more vital and more present.

I digress. I was asked for a report on the WA writing scene, not a rant about small presses and reader-writer relationships. And yet this rant seemed inevitably given that in the West – in a completely non-parochial sense – we are grassroots and promise. With my background as the editor of dotdotdash magazine, I’ve seen a lot of proactive talent from many different organisations. The aforementioned Aurealis award-winning Twelfth Planet Press, powered by Alisa, is publishing among many exciting projects this year, acclaimed horror writer Rob Hood.

The good folk at Fremantle Press are currently organising/hosting numerous events tied into Fremantle Poetry Month, one of which was the launch of the book New Poets, a collection of works from Scott-Patrick Mitchell, J.P. Quinton & Emma Rooksby. They also have a fairly wonderful blog. Love is my Velocity, although originally an indie club night and mostly a record label, intermittently publishes numerous literary artefacts of choice – a collection of short story and artwork collaborations from emerging talent called First Page; a series of A3 Riso posters collected a paper bag aptly named Riso; two issues of The Love is My Velocity Cookbook, which are a series of collaborations between local artists and bands, pairing up artworks with homemade recipes from local indie bands. There are pockets of creativity. Underground writers is a local online literary zine run by five exuberant university students.

The Three Day Blow is another literary zine distributed freely to local independent cafes and book stores. The Perth Zine Collective have collated together over 40 local publications that are completely independent – written, conceived and printed by the authors themselves. There is also WA’s burgeoning spoken word scene – the Perth Poetry Club gathers together fine readers every Saturday; a venue called Double Lucky in Leederville is also hosting weekly poetry readings; and lastly, there is Cottonmouth, who have recently released The Cottonmouth Anthology, which collated together over a year of incredible readings from many talented writers and speakers. But sadly, it also tied in with Cottonmouth’s indeterminate hiatus from the spoken word scene.

Which brings me back to Indigo journal – both Cottonmouth and indigo journal shared in common the fact that they had relatively unparalleled success, hosting launch events that were joy and literature, that were pure, unabashed glances of a creative community. First fleeting loves. They were part of what inspired me to try my hand WA’s literary community; they made me realise how essential and good it was as a university student to form a community, to become independent and proactive with our literary careers.

In answer to the question as to how to write in the west, I will say the process is the same as anywhere nowadays. Get independent! Get independent right now! Support independent publishing, either learn how to physically and professionally create the story and the collection of poetry that you want to, or seek out independent literary journal and publishing houses and build relationships with them. Most people that work in creative journals and independent publishers earn very little, and simply do it for the love – they are waiting for the chance to help polite and eager new authors. Most, if not all, successful authors begin with support from local publishing houses, editors, and journals.

Of course, success is not a permanent thing; it’s ever-striving. It’s terribly sad that the organisers of Cottonmouth have seemingly moved on to other projects, and that indigo journal is currently unable to continue, but it’s a consequence of time. At some point, new blood is needed to keep the wheels turning. What I’m saying is that the scene has space for you; jump into it.

Sj Finch is currently the managing editor of dotdotdash, a local creative journal begun by Curtin University students that publishes artwork, short stories, poems, creative non-fiction essays, and interviews from Perth and beyond. He began PhD study earlier this year, and is still freaking out about how little he knows about his proposed topic: Kierkegaardian theories of original sin as they relate to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. But it’ll be okay, cause his supervisors have got his back. www.dotdotdash.org

If you’d like to support Indigo journal, please visit the website for more information. http://www.indigojournal.org.au/

WritingWA’s website (an essential resource for West Australian writers)

Music and Poetry - Guest Post by Paul Kooperman

2010-07-12T12:00:57Z

Is Bob Dylan a lyricist or poet? Does it matter?

He has been heard to simply call himself a ‘song and dance man’, but he often mocks the question, as in the lyrics to one of his songs: ”I’m a poet, and I know it. Hope I don’t blow it.” And in the liner notes of his second album, he writes: “Anything I can sing, I call a song. Anything I can’t sing, I call a poem."When the Australian Poetry Centre ran its Songwriters Wax Lyrical event earlier this year, featuring Kate Ceberano reading her lyrics to Pash as poetry, Facebook users scoffed. Some said the Centre should be supporting poets. Not Kate Ceberano!

But what about Nick Cave? Leonard Cohen? And Paul Simon has had books published of his lyrics, that seem to stand alone without music. Are they poets? They write songs, publish lyrics, carefully select and arrange words for performance and publication using tools of rhyme, rhythm, simile and metaphor to convey meaning and connect with readers (and audience) on an emotional level.

So what is poetry? And if they don’t write it, who does? Some definitions of poetry, found in the more popular reference books, are as follows: “poetry is literature in metrical form”, “any communication which evokes a feeling”, or “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”. Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry”, whereas Dylan Thomas suggests: “Poetry is what makes me laugh or cry or yawn, what makes my toenails twinkle, what makes me want to do this or that or nothing.” Who could possibly write that? Maybe very few of us are poets? Maybe all of us are. It is certainly not the role of any person or organisation to judge who is or isn’t a poet, what is or isn’t poetry.

James Roche, from the Aria Award Winning Band, Bachelor Girl, has written a pop tune and is calling for lyrics – whether you be a poet, novelist, zine-maker, songwriter, lyricist, full time wordsmith or part time scribbler – download the track and pen some words to this can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head tune. Deadline is September 30th. Details are here:

Paul is the current Director of the Australian Poetry Centre and has initiated many of the innovative programs run by the APC this year, including: the Poetry in Film Festival, Cafe Poet Program, poetry radio shows with RRR and SYNFM, the Dear Dad publication for Father’s Day, the Mobile Poetry Library, the Out Loud program, School Poet Laureate Program and the education website, Poetopia. Paul has a background in writing for theatre, film and television, having had a feature film produced in 2006 (WIL) and been in-house as a writer for Home and Away, while also being a published author with Macmillan Education and Insight Publications. He currently lectures in screenwriting and has recently received a commission by the Queensland Music Festival to write their opening show for 2011, Drag Queensland.

Publishing Online Part One: Smashwords - Guest Post by Chris Chinchilla

2010-06-30T12:33:48Z

There are many options for publishing your print titles and more importantly, getting them distributed online. Some of these I will cover at a later date, but first let’s take a step by step tour through using one of the better all-in-one services, the web service Smashwords.

Smashwords has many positive features including support for pretty much all the major eBook formats including Kindle (.mob), Stanza (ePub) and plain old PDFs. It also distributes to a plethora of stores including what it terms ‘premium stores’ such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the new Apple bookstore. However one of its main downfalls is its inability to create eBooks from any format other than word files. For many this may not be an issue, but if you’re creating image heavy titles (such as cook books) it may not be your best option.

Your mission, should you accept it, is to go to Smashwords, register, and then come back to this page…

The first task is to set up the title. Click the ‘publish’ link in the menu bar; more astute readers will notice the three warnings in the green box at the top of the page. I assume and hope we can ignore most of those, but pay attention to the first warning as it will save us a lot of trouble in the long run.

Whilst the Smashwords book converter is pretty solid and does a frankly amazing job at crunching your word file, it requires documents to be laid out in a particular way. But don’t worry! Smashwords produces an easy to understand guide to what it requires. If you still have problems in your document, it tries to tell you what they might be, but not, sadly, what line they’re on.

Have a read of the aforementioned guide, format your document and fill in the rest of the form. Most of it is pretty self explanatory and can always be changed at a later date. When it comes to the subject of price bear in mind that Smashwords takes a very generous 15% commission. While it may also seem strange to offer 50% sampling (what customers can see before they choose to buy the book) this is a usual figure across most eBook suppliers.

Another question that may confuse is the ‘ghost author’; this enables you to set up authors for your titles and you can manage ‘ghost authors’ on the accounts page.

Now that everything is filled in, it’s time to click that tempting ‘publish’ button!

All things going according to plan you will be met with success… but it’s more likely Smashwords will find a problem with your word file (probably with the premium store guidelines). Review your doc and keep uploading until everything flows smoothly. You should now be greeted with the books profile page. There are a bunch of helpful titbits that appear here, such as the number of copies sold, coupon management, print and audio book version links. For further investigations, settings tweaking and a wide variety of other goodies such as coupons, affiliate deals, sales histories and more, take a look at the ‘dashboard’ link.

That’s it for now! Soon your book will be available in dozens of eBook stores, and all without you having to pick up the phone or even leave the comfy chair.

Chris Chinchilla has been a ground breaking eZine writer, indie rockstar, solo troubadour, professional geek, activist, street press writer and much more… He believes in not preaching to the converted and breaking open ideas to make them appealing and accesible to everyone. Now as the new publisher at aduki Independent press he intends to do much the same. Watch this space…

Embracing Digital Possibilities - Guest Post by Lisa Dempster

2010-06-16T13:20:20Z

Chris Meade from the Institute of the Future of the Book recently visited Australia and the Emerging Writers' Festival were lucky enough to have him for a guest with us in Melbourne.

His thoughts about ‘future books’ at our online chat was aimed at emerging writers but some of his comments are also relevant to indie publishers:

I’m especially interested in how emerging writers respond to the big shift going on with digital. I’m excited because it seems to me that there’s now a clear continuum for those who want to write to ‘amplify’ their words.We all have the ability to put our words on the global bookshelf of the web for free…

In the UK independent booksellers are folding all the time which is sad, but I think it could be a great time to create the Future of the Book Shop and think afresh about how people want to spend their money on and off line. The future belongs to those who can think clearly about NOW and stop trying to compare the past to the future…

I think there’s also a new kind of reader who doesn’t buy paper books but does read intelligent writing on websites who may well be lured to reading whole books on their iphone or kindle. Don’t you think most readers of literary fiction and poetry are also writing their own or wanting to?? It’s been a read/write art form for a long time I reckon…

You can see the full transcript archived at our site: Bloggers' Brunch hosted by Chris Meade.

He also stopped by our indie press fair, Page Parlour, and had a few words to say about how independent publishing will be affected by the digitisation of our media here:

Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers Festival.The 2010 Emerging Writers Festival ran from May 21st to May 30th. If you would like to become a festival pen pal for 2011, go here.

It's Hip to Be (Four) Square: Guest Post by Chris Chinchilla

2010-06-09T09:49:03Z

You may not have heard of foursquare yet, but you undoubtedly will over the coming months. It received an official seal of approval at this years prime tech get together, South by South West, and many other businesses and people are jumping on board.

What is foursquare?
Many call it a social network, but it’s not really. Most users see it as more of a large scale social game. The premise is simple: as you visit locations, you check in. The more check-ins, the more points you get and if you check into a location more times than anyone else, you become it’s ‘mayor’. Checking in to locations requires a fairly modern fancy phone (apps are available for most smart phones), test messaging or lugging a laptop around with you, so most current users are fairly tech savvy. Foursquare’s increase in popularity means more switched on and open minded businesses are learning how to use it to their advantage, offering discounts and special offers to users who check in the most, or incentives to ‘swarm’ events (when 50 or more users check in at one time; there have only been a handful of these in Australia).

How can it possibly be of any use to publishers?
The most relevant features to publishers are ‘Tips’ and ‘To Do’ that allow users to add nuggets of advice about locations in your vicinity. For a publisher like Aduki, the uses are obvious: we could take brief summarised versions (200 characters) of reviews from, say, the Veg Food guide and add them to each relevant venue, giving users a taste of what we offer and encouraging them to check out our site and titles. Likewise, you could add tips to smaller bookshops that stock your titles, promoting them and yourself. But what about books that aren’t so easily chopped up, or aren’t about promoting specific places or products. How could a service like foursquare be of any use to you, indeed of any use to its users?

By being a little more inventive and having a bit of fun!

If your book is based in the ‘real world’, find locations that are mentioned in it (Whilst foursquare discourages checking into venues you’re not at, adding tips is fine) and add snippets from the characters or author, i.e. at Kings Cross station in London, you could add something like “Visit platform 93/4 to catch the Hogwarts Express! (Harry Potter)”, or if you have a piece of prose written at or inspired by a particular location, you could add, “Piece title was inspired by here, I hope you are too! (Book Title)”. As with any kind of free, user based service, you have to be wary of pushing products down people’s throats or being too pushy in trying to sell things. Sometimes clever and subtle use is enough to encourage users to look further into what you said and will earn you all the more respect in the long run.

Tales of Independent Publishing in Melbourne and Sydney - Guest Post by Alice Gage

2010-06-04T12:41:54Z

“There’s no comparison. Melbourne is a city with a heart; Sydney is a city with a wallet and inside that wallet is a credit card.” -Robert Doyle, Melbourne Lord Mayor

Before I attempt a diplomatic but insightful response to this theme, let’s get my history out in the open. I was born and bred in Sydney. I came to live in Melbourne when I was 22 and did a Masters of Publishing at Melbourne Uni. I stayed for three years, and in that time started Ampersand Magazine. I fell for a guy that lived in Sydney and I was ready for a change so I moved back north. We broke up. Now I’m in love with a guy that lives in Melbourne. What a shit. But I would be very happy to move back and am sure at some point I will.

Whether or not Cr Doyle’s sentiment has any kind of philosophical truth to it is up to you, but in the case of independent publishing, God knows I wish it were so now I’m in Sydney. But it’s not; in fact the opposite is true. Melbourne, named a UNESCO City of Literature in 2008 and with the newly opened Wheeler Centre, has received the official nod – a government-sanctioned vindication of the city’s literary culture and a huge amount of money and infrastructure pumped into independent publishing and everything wordy. (SPUNC of course has had the huge boon of getting office space at the Centre and perhaps other kinds of support, but I’ll leave Zoe and the rest of the team to divulge that information – perhaps you could entreaty us in the comments below, guys.)

By contrast, last year I submitted a grant application to the City of Sydney’s creative development round which incurred such pain that only shitting an apartment block can compare, and which I was assured had a good chance of being successful. When it was knocked back, I was told the reason was that there was a conflict with ‘freedom of the press’, that is, the City felt it would be vulnerable to being portrayed in a poor light in that medium more so than say, an installation or an event. These guys have no idea. They don’t see publishing to be a legitimate artistic medium. Perhaps that’s the first difference in the cities’ two scenes: one is valued and invested in and the other is barely recognised and unsupported.

Of course Melbourne’s success is fantastic, and well deserved. Melbourne has always produced outstanding literature and has a resplendent publishing tradition. The reward has come because of quality and quantity of the city’s output.

It is an unknowable supposition that I never would have started Ampersand had I not lived in Melbourne and been surrounded by such interesting projects and supportive people. But I have a feeling it is true. What’s more, Melbourne leads Australia in education in the field. The post-graduate course that I did was the first of its kind in the country, initiated by former Meanjin editor Jenny Lee and outspoken publishing all-rounder Mark Davis in their desire to train good editors, particularly in an age where Hawke-era primary schoolers who had never learned formal grammar, and who were rapidly evolving their own digi-speak, were entering the professional world. Since its inception the course has been mimicked in universities around Australia. I loved this course and took a huge amount from it.

In my first year of living in Melbourne I went from never having even contemplated starting a publication of my own to believing, knowing, that it was an entirely possible venture.

Back up north though, we’re getting there, despite the lack of formal support. There is a burgeoning indie press scene happening here but it isn’t strictly literary – which is a good reflection on this city’s varied interests, and that is, after all, at the very heart of what magazines are about.

Sydney’s visual arts and performance scenes are huge, so that’s a major theme of our press, with titles like Monster Children, Empty , Runway , Realtime , Locksmiths Project , and Das Superpaper.

Music has a finger in the pie, too, with Cyclic Defrost and Mountain Fold.

Some of them are great, some of them tow the line. Just like Melbourne’s offerings.

As far as literary publications go, however, they are few and far between, and as far as I know Ampersand stands alone in this new guard (and we are not purely literary). But there is a huge groundswell of events and communities that celebrate the ins and outs of all things literary, even if physical print doesn’t quite have the air time it does in Melbz. There is Even Books, a group that puts on parties for book geeks. Penguin Plays Rough is a fantastic monthly reading night. Rainoff Books is a publishing house that runs pop-up bookshops. There’s Imperial Panda, an interdisciplinary DIY arts festival that gave birth to Erotic Fan Fiction – a curated reading event where local luminaries are asked to write and perform short stories about their favourite celebrities doing each other (the event has become a highlight of the Sydney Writers Festival and sold out this and last year). And going back a few years there was Token Word, a massively successful monthly spoken word event that ran at the now-defunct Knot Gallery that drew together and had brawling a feast of young arty nerds, most of whom are now running this mongrel scene.

Taking all of that into account, you start to get a picture of a city that has a cracking and ballsy independent arts scene that is run on the smell of an oily rag and manifests in a wonderful cross-over of interests. While none of my friends are publishers, they are amazingly supportive of what I do and the confluence of our interests is at the heart of what Ampersand is all about.

In that way, Sydney has a blend of disciplines that seems less rigid than in Melbourne. We have less pride in an analytical culture so we’re not constrained to proving our intelligence, which is where I feel Melbourne’s journals often try to go.

So here comes my major and final and probably most arguable point of this article. Sydney is a town, and please forgive me for coining this horrible phrase, of ‘intelligent larrikinism’. Sure we publish Women’s Weekly, not The Monthly, but we are also home to the Ern Malley hoax, Oz Magazine, The Chaser, and Erotic Fan Fiction: this is the output of a city that has little credibility to lose.

While I love the amount of energy and faith and activity there is in Melbourne, there is a lack of supervision and pretension and expectation, and a real Fuck Yeah! culture that makes working on an indie magazine in Sydney very fun, despite Robert Doyle’s convictions (and those of so many Melburnians). Professionally, however, I’d wager that there are more opportunities to build a career in the field in Melbourne – unless you want to end up Chief Editor at New Idea.

Alice Gage is the founding editor of Sydney-based art and culture journal Ampersand Magazine. She is a member of the live publishing collective I Can Draw You A Picture, which will launch its first project at Underbelly Festival this July. And she is helping to build a Librarium (part library, part aquarium) at Redfern ARI, Bill & George. Alice loves magazines, hip music and swanky dinners.

Ampersand Magazine is an Australian curiosity journal. Ampersand explores creativity, societal change and the human condition through multi-disciplines. We are interested in the discussion of any subject matter, particularly that which is unfashionable, unorthodox, illuminating or rare. We intertwine it all with absurdity, sex and cheap laughs.

Recognise these SPUNCs?

2010-05-26T13:07:49Z

SPUNC is literally brimming with charismatic, enigmatic and never-static authors and publishers, all challenging notions of both the written word and the minimal income required to produce quality fiction. Being nearly the middle of 2010, we figured it was time to celebrate those whose rocked us, moved us, and taken us to new literary and poetical dimensions so far this year.

We’ve deliberately withheld the names. Your mission, should you accept it, is to match the names to the faces. Have fun!

Note: We have also thrown in a couple of decoys…see if you can spot them.

Sue Hawthorne (Co-founder, Spinifex Press)
Kate Eltham (CEO, Queensland Writers Centre)
Nathan Curnow (Poet, The Ghost Project, Puncher and Wattmann)
Vivienne Glance (Poet, Indigo Journal)
Patrick Cullen (Writer, The Sleepers Almanac and various Best Australian Stories)
Emmett Stinson (Editor, Wet Ink, author Known Unknowns, Affirm Press)
Fiona Wright (Assistant editor, Heat magazine)
Les Murray (Poet,Taller When Prone, Black Inc)

Speculative Podcasts Volume Two: Terra Incognita

2010-05-14T08:33:44Z

Speculative fiction fans, you owe me a beer. Or maybe I owe these podcasters a beer…it’s all a bit confusing.

As if Galactic Suburbia wasn’t enough to satisfy even the most hungry spec-fiction fan, I have been alerted to the presence of Terra Incognita Speculative Fiction (TISF). This podcast brings you both the best Australian Speculative Fiction read by the authors and reviews from Keith Stevenson from Couer De Lion publishing, and is released monthly.

I really enjoyed this podcast. I’m not traditionally a huge speculative fiction fan, but podcasting a story now really appeals to me, while also bypassing my traditional excuse of “not having enough time to read”. Perhaps they’ll convert me to TISF one story at a time?

Download the podcasts here.

Terra Incognita has recently been shortlisted for the 2010 Parsec Awards for podcasts and podiobooks. The awards will be presented at the Dragon*Con convention held in September in Atlanta, Georgia, and I wish them luck. In the meantime, if you fancy a story or two, head down to TISF and take in some of the best speculative fiction writers you’ve yet to discover.

Galactic Suburbia and the Pleasure in Podcasting

2010-05-12T13:57:50Z

Here at the Small Press network, we’re a fan of new things. And, after much deliberation we’ve decided we wouldn’t be truly embracing the digital realm if we didn’t link to a podcast every now and then.

This month’s featured podcast is Galactic Suburbia, as presented by Tansy, Alex, and Alisa from Twelfth Planet Press. If you’re a fan of science or speculative fiction, then you really can’t go past this podcast. They discuss anything and everything happening in the genre, from the Hugo nominations to Swancon as well as the latest book deals and anthologies in the works.

Start the journey here:

Twelfth Planet Press also runs a number of online projects including New Ceres (Issue #1 of the series is currently being offered free from the site) and Shiny, an ezine of Young adult speculative fiction.

There will be more SPUNC member podcasts featured as and when we discover them, or you can speed up the process by adding your podcast to the comments under this entry.

Three Times the Rhyme ~ Guest Post by Tiggy Johnson

2010-05-07T11:15:59Z

There’s a general consensus that publishing poetry isn’t going to bring in the big bucks, yet more and more poetry is being published. Some of it’s coming from already established presses, and of course there are poets who self-publish chapbooks. One publisher doing things a little differently is Blemish Books.

Gregory Gould established Blemish Books, an independent press based in Canberra, in 2009 and wasted no time in putting out a submission call to Australian poets for what will be their first poetry publication: The Triptych Poets series.

Rather than present just one poet’s work, the Triptych Poets series will showcase suites of poems from three emerging Australian poets in one publication. The idea is that poetry is ‘both a reflection and reaction to the poetry that came before it and the poetry that surrounds it’ and Gould expects the series will provide readers an opportunity to engage with poets on a different level.

‘With a single author collection it’s all about one poet and one voice. With Triptych the reader gets to experience multiple voices, yet they can also spend enough time with them to get a sense of what each poet is about.’

Like many new publishers, Blemish Books did not seek funding for Triptych. ‘Grants are great if you can get them, but we don’t want to feel like we can’t do a book without one.’

Despite being a press that nobody had heard of twelve months ago, Gould has been pleasantly surprised with both the number of and the quality of the submissions received, and believes this is a sign of how hungry poets are for opportunities.

‘As it was our first poetry book, I was worried we wouldn’t be taken seriously and that we’d have trouble finding anything publishable. However, after the first read I started worrying we wouldn’t be able to pick just three!’

While we have to wait for an announcement of who the first Triptych poets will be, and wait even longer before we can get hold of a copy, Gould is clear that sales won’t be the measuring stick for the book’s success. ‘Our real goal is to produce a high quality, professional book of poetry. If we can do that, then we’ll consider our venture worthwhile. Besides, if we wanted to make money, we wouldn’t be publishing poetry. We’d be publishing self-help books.’

Issue 1 of the Triptych Poets series is due for release in August/September and copies will be available directly from Blemish Books and selected bookstores. Price TBA.

Tiggy Johnson is a founding editor of page seventeen, which is produced annually and boasts work from several new writers in each issue. Her own writing has been published in several Australian journals and she maintains both the page seventeen Blog and a personal blog at www.tiggyjohnson.blogspot.com.

Painting the Town Red, Yellow and Black ~ Guest Post by Martin Hughes, Publisher at Affirm Press

2010-05-05T10:19:47Z

We published a book this month called Peace of Wall – Street Art from East Timor, featuring photographs and interviews collected by Chris Parkinson in his four years working for NGOs there. As our distributor pointed out – by way of explaining why they’ve ‘shipped’ fewer copies than could be delivered in a rickety handcart – this is the most niche book we’ve published. Regardless, we reckon it’s already been a success.

In a place like East Timor, yet to experience the ambiguous pleasures of mass media as President Jose Ramos-Horta says in his foreword, the walls are the medium for many. What’s painted on them reflects the country’s tumultuous history, precarious present and hopeful future.

Our motivation for publishing Peace of Wall is to engage a new audience in their plight, to invite people to consider this tiny and fragile country wedged – in more ways than one – between the giants of Indonesia and Australia. I love the idea of a city like Melbourne, so savvy in its appreciation of street art, learning about East Timor in this light, and people have responded really enthusiastically.

We’re bringing over three young artists – Etson, Alfeo and Zito – from Dili this week, to participate in a week-long programme of events we hope will create enduring links between street artists here and in East Timor. (Etson’s visa was delayed while he awaited clearance for TB, which in itself paints a fairly vivid picture of the differences between these neighbouring nations.) The cultures are so different that putting them together in one medium is bound to create some fizz. I’m looking forward to seeing what they make of each other’s work – the stylised scene in Melbourne compared to the more rudimentary, descriptive and political-charged art from East Timor.

The lads are part of the independent Arte Moris (Art is Life) School in Dili, and we’re delighted to have hooked them up with SIGNAL Youth Art Space, a fantastic new facility in Melbourne that will be a fulcrum for the two-way exchange of work and ideas in the future. They will also be teaming up with local street artists including HaHa and Vexta to lead workshops with teenagers at SIGNAL. The contrast between these cultures is bound to be an eye-opener, and we hope they’ll be impressed with the storytelling potential of graffiti.

They will be painting a wall in Hoiser Lane, the epicentre of Melbourne’s street art, and we hope it will fare better than did the work of that other cultural tourist, Banksy.

We also figured Peace of Wall had potential to positively impact on youth in East Timor itself – by letting them know their voice is being heard outside their country and promoting the book’s overarching theme of peace. A recent cover story in the Weekend Australian Magazine suggested that gang violence is threatening East Timor’s prospects for lasting peace and future prosperity, so the publication of this book could hardly be more timely.

We got word from President Jose Ramos-Horta, saying he reckons Peace of Wall is the best book he’s seen on East Timor – and he has personally kicked in US$5000 to have it produced in Tetun and distributed alongside the Australian edition in East Timor.

Meanwhile, we’ve been offered the conversation hour on ABC Darwin, but do you think we can get a single store in Darwin to stock the book? Oh well, if it were all about sales, I dare say there’d be no SPUNC, no blog and nobody reading this.

Open invitation to all SPUNCettes

Saturday 8 May at 5pm
Painting a wall in Hosier Lane, followed by the opening of Chris Parkinson’s Exhibition at the Until Never Gallery.

Tuesday 11 May at 7.30pm
official launch of Peace of Wall – Street Art from East Timor Southpaw Bar, 189 Gertrude St, Fitzroy (with a live painting by the lads and music by East Timorese musician, Gil Santos)

Thursday 20 May
Restoration of East Timorese Independence Day.

For more information, drop Affirm Press at line at info[at]affirmpress.com.au.

Martin Hughes is the publisher at Affirm Press. He used to ‘work' for Lonely Planet as a writer, editor and photographer. He’s had various other jobs in media and publishing, including a three-year stint as the editor of The Big Issue magazine. He started Affirm Press in 2007 along with his boss, mentor and friend Graeme Wise.

Getting People Reading Again - Guest Post by Anthony Howcroft

2010-04-23T16:26:44Z

InkTears has a simple tag line - we aim to bring readers and writers together. We want to get people reading again, and with broader tastes. Given that you're looking at this blog entry you're probably a writer, publisher, voracious reader. In my work I meet many intelligent, educated people and the majority have an exclusive diet of email, while snacking on magazines at the weekend. I have one friend who still buys books regularly but never gets to read them. Like many people, he claims to be too busy.

My name's Anthony Howcroft and I'm a part-time writer. The rest of the time I try to earn money, mainly in software. Twelve years ago, while between technology start-ups, I wrote a terrible novel and luckily nobody published it. Then I wrote another, which was much worse. At this point I sought help via a two-year diploma in Creative Writing from Oxford University. Most assignments were based around short fiction. I'm convinced that the resurgence in the short story form is partially linked to the growth in the Creative Writing industry, and certainly it got me into short stories as both a writer (first) and then a reader.

Six years later I had built up a good track record with various stories published in anthologies and literary magazines, winning smaller prizes and being commended or shortlisted for the bigger competitions. I started approaching independent publishers that specialised in short story collections, and got some luke-warm interest. Then the worldwide financial markets crashed and people stopped buying books. Or at least, the publishers feared that would happen so they stopped publishing books - especially those by new authors and short story collections in particular. I didn't want to wait until the world economy recovered so I decided to self-publish. Once I got over my own ego issues, I found it surprisingly easy to commit to – and it gave me more control. I released half of my collection online at a low price (4.50 GBP) and attempted to build a readership before self-publishing a high-quality hardback.

I had a website developed, published the first stories and threw open the URL to friends, family and linked-in colleagues. A month later I called my brother to persuade him that it would cost less than the price of a beer to join the twenty paid-up subscribers, and realised the model was never going to work. People expect the Internet to be free. At this point I was also noticing the same writers turning up frequently in competition, and I discovered there was a large community of people with a good track record of short story success but no publisher. Coincidentally, I found that when I asked my colleagues the last book they read, faces would go blank and they would stare into the distant as though trying to recall a childhood memory. Eventually these pieces came together and a new model emerged: InkTears.

InkTears is free for all readers. We publish one story a month via email, so that people can read it in a few minutes over lunch, or print and enjoy at their leisure. We welcome all readers and put up no barriers to joining. There's no spamming or overt sales emails. If our readers like a story we hope they might consider buying a collection from the author, and we will soon make it easy for people to do that. The more readers we build, the more chance we have of writers finding a target audience. We're also trying to do more to bring readers and writers together: for example, readers can provide feedback on any story they read with a star system and free-form comments, which go straight back to the writer.

I initially used ten of my own stories to seed InkTears. Each year will now see a blend of new and established writers and we expect to have some well-known authors making guest appearances. To identify the new writers we hold an annual competition and invite everyone to put their best stories forward – either brand new or those that have done well in competitions and already been published in magazines. We also offer to publish their collections or include them in anthologies if they do not have the volume of published work.

The first collections are in progress now. They will be simultaneous high quality hardback, paperback, and ebooks with the look and feel that I would want as both a reader and writer - not the cheap rubbish that too many self-publishing sites promote. The goal for each book is to break even. InkTears is not a non-profit organisation but we don't believe there's a lot of money in traditional publishing. We have wider horizons and see the short story collection as an advanced form of business card.

I genuinely believe the publishing industry is going through a revolution. The transition to ebooks and ereaders will take some time (we’ve all heard about the death of the printed book far too often), but it is happening. Devices like the iPad and the next generation of Kindle will have a huge impact although they are only one small part of the changes taking place. We also have to look at the death of the bookstore - not because of an evil internet retailer, but because the majority of readers are choosing to browse in shops but purchase online. ePublishing is a fantastic opportunity for authors, but potentially a terrifying one for readers searching for quality.

I believe one of the key roles for the new generation of publishers will be to create media-crossing brands based on quality, and to do this by building and listening to a community. You can argue that many publishers already do this, and there are certainly some good examples. Unfortunately there are also organizations that are set in concrete, with values, technology, and a conservative outlook from a previous era.

When I look at what I wanted as a publisher for my own book, I didn’t see it in the market. That’s why I created InkTears. Sometimes, it’s easier to start something new rather than try to change what’s already there.

Anthony Howcroft is a writer, technology entrepreneur and the creator of InkTears and is based in Oxford, England. Most recently he was one of the co-founders of a software company sold to Microsoft in 2008. Much of his writing is done on planes, in cafe’s or late at night. He has a Creative Writing Diploma from Oxford University and is married with one daughter and a weimaraner dog that won’t let strangers touch her ears.

Content and Contenment: Adding Value to the Book ~ by Laurie Steed

2010-04-14T13:41:33Z

There is a strange immediacy that comes with downloading.

My most recent digital purchase was Daniel Merriweather's Love and War, purchased at a reduced price of $9.99 online through Itunes. I enjoyed the album in its digital form and it took only seconds to acquire it. That said, I may have enjoyed it more had it come as a compact disc.

Why? Well first and foremost, I like physical objects. I find their presence makes me feel safer, structured, more "real." I like when friends come around, pick up my CD's and say either "Wow, Daniel Merriweather; you've really got your finger on the pulse of today's urban youth culture", or "Laurie, you're thirty-three and you live in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs, stop acting like you're the lost cousin of Biggie Smalls.

The absence of a CD means I cannot just put the music on and drift away. I must remember if I've synced my MP3 player since I downloaded the album, and if not, I must swear, curse, and eventually listen to that same Angus and Julia Stone CD I bought because I liked the sleeve design.

My art and literature are a reflection of myself, and this reflection is hard to evoke in digital form. I know this by experience thanks to a cousin of mine who has a Terabyte of films, music and TV shows from the internet on a portable hard-drive. The hard drive itself is slick and impressive. What's on it is a whole lot of folders, distinguishable only by the folder names. With so much data, it's becoming more and more difficult to separate the trash from the treasure.

I am by no means criticising the technology here. My MP3 player enables me to take an entire collection on a tram, train or anywhere else I choose. Such capabilities have undoubtedly changed my life and will continue to do so. What's funny though, is that while my love of music remains, my respect for each individual album has greatly waned. What once was an individual item is now simply "content".

This needn't be a bad thing. Well designed content can maintain and sometimes even improve on the standards inherent in material items. The key then, is to provide exemplary content that not only engages and entertains the reader, but takes them to that next level of interactivity.

This is all the more relevant when it comes to books (or whatever you choose to define as books). In digital realms, things work differently. Not necessarily better or worse, but differently. Indeed, Digital technologies excel where books cannot (if you're in any doubt of that, see the video at the top of the page). Books, whether we like it or not, are unable to take readers into the same realm of interactivity.

Books may not have the interactivity of digital realms, but they engage us and our imaginations in a way that digital technologies cannot, due to waning batteries, eyestrain and limited power supplies. Somewhere, somehow digital technologies need to humanise their products and indeed the reading experience. How this can be done is perhaps better dealt with in another blog post.

I personally hope books live long and prosper in the digital age, but that only extends to certain books. I would not be at all upset, for example, if all the Di Morrissey, Matthew Reilly, Jodi Piccoult and Dan Brown books disappeared from bookstores and were instead replaced by a small online kiosk, preferably away from the books I loved. Why? Because to me, some books are as much about form as content, and until digital formats can properly replicate them, I don't want to see a digitally reproduced Annie Leibowitz retrospective, 1st edition JD Salinger or Folio society reprint. I like buying such books for my friends and family, I like buying such books for myself and their physical life generates as much emotion in me as the content between their pages.

All this talk about the pending digital revolution, to me at least, is focusing on the wrong topics; what's important, regardless of format, is the production of quality content. Depending on the form or genre of that content, it may be open to interactivity of all kinds; some forms may be terribly suited to such interactivity, in which case you would hope publishers would have the common sense to then revert the item back to its most sellable form.

Adding value is not attributable to only form or content, it is a combination of both... and that is what makes the books we read so open to this mind-melting, at times confusing discussion on the future of literature.