Cover Unveiled

OOOOooooh. Check out the first blurry glimpse of the cover art I designed for Overland Literary Journal here. No back cover view yet. The issue is being launched tonight at Trades Hall.

Negrophilia: a poem

she said in my country
there is a name for white men
who like women like you

ooooooooh

africa's daughters
africa's daughters
africa's daughters

continental thighs closed
& those sharp black wits about you

Going Down Swinging Commission

Going Down Swinging has commissioned me to create a fifteen minute performance work, to be debuted at the Melbourne Writers Festival in late August.

No themes, no restrictions, no guidelines.

Perfect.

I'm honoured to have been asked and excited to have the time and audience to create something boundary-pushing and way left of my normal left centre.

Confession

Literary Kids

Sometimes I think having a writer for a parent is a form of child abuse. My long weekend was full of literary commentary from my four-year old. Here are the best of the lot, verbatim:

1.
If William Winkle (Wee Willie Winkie) comes while I’m sleeping and tries to shove me in his sack, will you and Mama S grab great big sticks and bash him like an enormous Piñata?

2.
Why do I always have to wear clothes when Mowgli (of Jungle Book fame) gets to go naked every day?

3.
Little Red Riding Hood’s Mama should take her to an op shop so she can get some other different coloured hoods nice and cheap.

4.
In real life, would Goldilocks go to jail?

5.
So why do the other animals still always listen to Brer Anancy when all he does is trick them every day? Why don’t they learn?

6.
Well, that was just rubbish, wasn’t it? : If I was Rapunzel I would cut off my hair and make a ladder to climb out of there all on my own.
7.
When you fall in love, does it hurt really badly? (then, at my perplexed look:) I mean, when that fat little boy (Cupid) stabs you with the arrow?

8.
Mum, I just made a book. I stapled it and everything and now we can have a launch and invite everyone over. The only thing that’s missing is one of those prizes on the front cover. Do we have a sticker to put on the front for a prize please? It’s a really good book so it needs a prize.

9.
But I’m not Mali, I’m Jenny the Library Lady and it’s not time for my lunchbreak yet (busily checking out books with a ‘beeping stick’).

10.
Did Nana really give you dessert every single night when you were little (dubiously)? Well, what about the nights she went out and did her poetry shows?

Poetry Is...