Nearly forgot: after being shortlisted for the Monash Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing (amongst 13 other amazingly talented writers from a range of universities), I popped into the opening gala night for the launch of the Emerging Writers’ Festival. Cue inspirational speakers, hilarious performances (I remember asking myself what I had just watched) and a generally lovely crowd.
Of course, the Prize was also awarded. Special congratulations to Tully Hansen from RMIT for taking out first place ($4000, the lucky thing) and Veronica Sullivan for her highly commended piece. I’m also incredibly stoked to have been the highest placed Monash University entrant and took home a sweet $1000 and a Golden Ticket to the festival.
Penguin will be publishing the Revolution shorts soon. EWF has just begun. I don’t see much being done during the next two weeks of swotvac (in fact, after celebrating end-of-semester last night and going to the Melbourne Theatre Company tonight, I’m afraid I’m off to a bad start) but one can hope.
Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again.
“Fools,” said I, “You do not know silence, like a cancer, grows. Hear my words that I might teach you; take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words, like silent raindrops, fell… and echoed, in the wells of silence.
And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, and the sign flashed out its warning in the words that it was forming, and the sign said, “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.”
“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
(Source: philosophy-quotes)
“Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”
— Maurice Sendak (1928 - 2012).
Rest in peace, you beautiful man.
(Source: nedhepburn, via nefariousnewt)
I’ve been shortlisted for the Monash University Undergraduate Prize for Creative Writing. I was at my placement when it was announced, so my friend lent me her phone to check the page. Cue hysterics (and very alarmed bystanders).
Honestly, I’m so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself. All I ever wanted from this was to make the shortlist, and here we are. I’m not going to win, but I don’t care. My piece is going to be published by Penguin in a digital anthology!
I find it a little amusing that so many shortlisted entrants are Creative Writing students or involved heavily in the scene… and then there’s me, tottering around with my physiology textbooks and poking cadavers. I have so much respect for them in doing what they love and wish them all the best!
He keeps me flourishing, this boy
Whose gaze trails across my flesh
As the sun does, mocking time,
His hand thrust deep into the earth
That teems with wet and worms and cold,
Till pulsing flesh meets this widow’s heart,
These atria that twist upon themselves
So willingly, like nature’s whore.
(via cavum)
Writing prose for the first time in months and realising that you’re incapable of not inserting imagery and literary devices everywhere.
The wasteland stretches, endless,
As time replicates in proportions infinite;
Contortions of the phrases that coil
Around our necks, beautiful
In their syntax.
The fever sets deep, and the delirium
Sets us tumbling abed,
The sickly flush upon our cheeks
Like nascent plague rose blooms.
But the days are set in arcade loops
And winter’s child weighs heavy
Underneath this aching heart,
With no future to be cradled
In these trembling arms.
We see no changes in the months,
Though calendars mark them true;
I cycle through the bloody seasons
And feel no visceral stirring, save for
Acid reflux,
Retrosternal burning.
“Writers aren’t exactly people… they’re a whole lot of people trying to be one person.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
I wish to go as poets do,
Buried in the syntax of my piteous words
And hidden in the twisted warren
Of useless symbolic meaning.
I will drift asleep
In gin-soaked complacency,
Or languish in the state of mind
That is mere mortal melancholy
For there is no artistic merit in the man
Who resigns himself to the commonplace;
I refuse to play the hapless mute,
Prone and gasping in the garden beds,
Numb to the autumn cold, and pinned
By the wreath of her phantom stranglehold—
Her limbs are steady and I can trace
The rings that circle her heart;
Mine is the howl in the premonitory wind
And hers the bruised shadows, thrown against
The violent fabric of my dreams.
But in sunless waking, time suspends:
My fingers tremble and cannot play
This farce, this game, this danse macabre
That strings me tight
Like a bow that quivers
At her slightest touch—
No, my love, I choose this path:
There is more beauty in misery.
(Source: Flickr / everythings_magic, via igottashakeitoff)
“That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” — Charles Bukowski
“The happiness of our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius
(Source: mybluecanoe, via unejeunedemoiselle)