Since my life is, as Bilbo Baggins once put it, like, “butter scraped over too much bread,” I am running out of hours in the day. I find it interesting that my own work is reflecting this truncated approach to creativity. I write in my lunch breaks, the early hours of dawn, one AM after one too many cups of black tea, on my work commutes on the trusty T4. I’m the weed in the cracks of the pavement; I force space, no matter how minute.
And so much of my work is short. Lately I’ve been working on poetry as an exploration of condensation and the microscopic. I’m also nursing some short stories for publishing which have gone through so many iterations that none were the same story I started with. I have been steadily working on longer form stuff but even that is indicative of the state of things; one project is still in its research phase, requiring me to flit from one interest point to the next while another is cobbled together short stories. It seems I cannot escape the short. Or maybe the short cannot escape me?
So I’m sharing with you the things that I love, the works that have informed me so intimately. It’s kind of like parallel playing, we both sit in absolute silence doing our own thing but it’s somehow communal, collaborative. We’re really vibing each other, okay?
As always, let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any of these before. But if you haven’t, I want to hear your thoughts. These are meant to provoke ideas, conversations, feelings. The more confusing the better.
Let’s play in the soup.
Senaa Ahmad’s Let’s Play Dead
I found Senaa Ahmad’s short story tucked inside a Tumblr masterpost of short stories (my Tumblr is lost to the annals of time so I have no way of crediting, apologies) a few years back and have been in love with her writing ever since.
There’s nothing more that I love than strange speculative fiction and ‘Let’s Play Dead’ delivers it in spades. I’m also going to say something controversial but I think this is what I was hoping Lapvona to be, which it personally wasn’t for me. Ahmad uses the flat, factual voice of the fairy tale narrator but hers springs to life with broken tooth sharp wit. Her writing feels tactile, alive.
I think Ahmad also drops you into the world without concessions. She doesn’t announce that she is going to play with time travel or gravity or reality, she is gloriously and unapologetically absurd. And she doesn’t explain the joke! Hooray! If you’re interested in my critique of Lapvona, read it here. TW for the short story for death & violence.
Jazz Money’s bila, a river cycle
I first saw Jazz Money (She/They), a Wiradjuri poet and artist based on Gadigal land, at the State Library of NSW’s ‘All a Homeland’ where Jazz curated a beautiful night of First Nations poets from 'Australia' and Aotearoa who spoke to the power of Country, body and song.
bila, a river cycle is a tour de force of a poem and we are lucky enough to have a video of Jazz reading the poem on Youtube (I’ve embedded the video but if it doesn’t play the link is here— note that the poem starts at 1:47 but I think her introduction is important to listen to as is her choice not to translate words from Wiradjuri). I highly encourage you to hear her speak, she is a beautiful reader of poetry and I found myself becoming emotional a few times throughout her performance at the State Library.
Jazz has an infectious energy and their love for the craft and for Country is palpable. It is a deeply visceral and powerful poem and the poetics are both embodied and sensual. I hope you enjoy as much as I did.
Alyssa Wong’s Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers
Winning the Nebula Award for best short story in 2015 as well as the World Fantasy Award (also nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction), ‘Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers’ by Alyssa Wong (They/Them) is a completely fresh take on the vampire mythos yet instead of feeding on blood, they feed on the ichor of violent men and inherited trauma (TW for both including SA references and racism).
I think this is the kind of story where less preamble is best since it took a number of turns that I wasn’t expecting and which made the reading experience all the more enjoyable. What I will focus on here, however, is the prose. Often fantasy and gothic horror takes on a rather verbose quality which, don’t get me wrong, I adore— but Wong’s conversational writing lends the story an uncomfortable proximity. It means it gets under your skin. It means I feel the ugliness swirling in my stomach because it all feels so bloody real.
I’m particularly interested to read everyone’s thoughts on this one.
Jorge Luis Borges’ The House of Asterion
Funnily enough, this was my most used short story back when I was an English tutor. I taught creative writing from kids aged 12-17 which still remains one of the most wholesome and delightful things I’ve ever done. Kids write the wackest shit and with so much conviction, it’s awesome. It’s especially awesome when they write super wack shit that their parents try and restrict to which I reveal (like an inebriated magician) that I, too, wrote wack shit at the same age and look how I turned out.
Anyway, I find that often people botch the emotional/weird short story. There’s not enough time for deftness or restraint or nuance and so it comes off hammy, unless you’re Jorge Luis Borges, of course. Which is why I always use this story as an example of what to do.
This is easily one of the most painful short stories I’ve read and immediately Frankenstein is called to mind. No, not the sci-fi focus (which is incidentally why I am not interested in Guillermo’s version of it. I fundamentally believe we will only ever get an accurate adaptation of Frankenstein when a woman directs it), but the profound, aching love letter to the human condition. ‘The House of Asterion’ gives me the same joyous pain; the longing for connection, the vulnerable flame of hope. It even hurts thinking about it which is why it is so good.
The pay off is even better, as is the clever intertextuality of gothic literature and Greek mythology.
Marco Denevi’s A Dog in Durer’s Etching ‘The Knight, Death and the Devil’
I found this maybe two months ago at the beginnings of a research project. I don’t even know how I found it considering citing it is a task let alone describing it.
What can I say? I’m just so niche.1
This has easily become one of my favourite short stories. Written in the 60s it’s indicative of the time; intensely postmodern, purposefully obfuscating, acerbic. The punctuation is fast and loose considering the entire story is one sentence, and yet it never loses its way. It meanders, the horse strays off the path and we encounter bandits, famine, and yes, a stray dog, but we remain aloft as Denevi charts us through hellish waters.
TW for themes of SA and violence, yet instead of its use as a game of thrones style shock value (UGH), it instead presents a sharp critique of chivalric code and our abuses of power.
Wallace Steven’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
The full text can be found here, thirteen stanzas, fragmented and disjointed yet which form a mosaic portrait of a blackbird (or several).
The first time I read this poem was back in my HSC year. Ms. Garnsey (an English teacher and certified legend) was gently shaping my Extension 2 Major Work, a bloated nihilistic piece (with terrible use of punctuation) about a man who had died in the London Blitz but had created a false sense of reality in death to stop him from going mad.
Real cosy stuff.
But beyond helping me play with the aesthetics of writing to reflect nihilism and oblivion, she offered this poem to me as an example of Perspectivism. Since my short story was told from a number of different characters, even London itself, she helped me weave a tapestry with multi-coloured threads. One thread, when unravelled, would not detract from the whole, yet one added would enhance its brilliance.
I’ve been returning to the poem ever since.
Margo Lanagan’s Singing My Sister Down
Fair warning to my gorgeous, delectable readers, this one is fairly gnarly. Easily one of the most disturbing short stories I’ve ever read, here’s a big TW for ritualised death. In saying that, it’s right up my alley. It is absurd, off putting, alarmingly scary.
It won both the Aurealis Award, Ditmar and World Fantasy Award for best short story in 2004 and 2005. Likewise it was nominated for a Hugo, Bram Stoker and Nebula Award in 2004 and 2006. It’s a lesser known short story and I first came across it as a required reading for my Master of Creative Writing as an exercise in focalisation.
We view this entire awful dystopian world through the eyes of a child, the world of violence and shame and sexism through the lens of innocence, or at least purported innocence. No one agreed on this story. We all had strong opinions. Hopefully it’ll stir some up in you, too.
Richard Tipping’s Mangoes
And finally, Richard Tipping’s Mangoes which is delightfully sensual, tactile, it gets you hot under the collar, as well as being a new acquisition in my ever-growing list of favourites. As the poem says, it is a positive good in this world. I’ll let this work speak for itself.
Mangoes (1972), Richard Tipping, from the portfolio The Sydney Morning, volume I: word works & ideagraphics 1967-1988
My partner has asked me to confess that I stole this line from him and that I should get my greedy paws OFF his favourite phrases.
Wow so many amazing recs, and how’d you make this post look so good too 🔥
Delectable 👌🏼