Page Seventeen

One of my friends describes my poetry as “emotive confessional”, so I tend to start writing from an emotional viewpoint. In all my writing I try to be emotionally honest, which I define as my own unfiltered reaction to a topic or situation.

Black is about my grandma, who died in 2009, and it references the same hospital where my father died in 1997. I knew it was going to be a colour-driven poem, because especially against white hospital walls, it often seems to me that other colours and emotions are splashed in reaction. This poem was part of my grief response and, overall, I found it cathartic to write. Despite the line “I don’t wish to write this”, I always work through grief’s stages by writing. That was essentially a comment on a diary entry at the time of her hospitalisation, that I just felt so angry at faith in “her God”, yet would find myself singing hymns from my childhood to her, as it was the communication strand she retained longest after the stroke.

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Debbie Lee has been a regular performer at Ballarat and Melbourne poetry gigs since 2010. Winner in May 2011 of Brunswick’s Muddy Rivers Slam. Key concerns include mental health, feminism, love and lust. She especially enjoys writing from ABC to XYZ in acrostic splendour.

Debbie’s poem ‘Black’ will be included in Issue 09 of page seventeen, to be launched at Watsonia Library on November 19. You know you want it. Yes you do.

When I first arrived in Australia, I didn’t recognise Perth as a city. I adjusted my view after moving to Meekatharra, WA. Meekatharra means place of little water, but there was little of anything really. As I moved even further into Australia, to the Great Sandy Desert, the remoteness truly hit me. It’s sandy all right, and maybe even great after three years of working in this landscape.

As a geologist, my job is to create order out of chaos. I unravel a mountain range, taking steps back in time to when the rock was a simple beach or riverbed. In the most remote places of Australia, you would expect to find order in the landscape, but it is all chaos. There is a stillness that breaks people. This is what I wrote ‘Slickenside Creek’ about: how the stillness breaks people in different ways.

Some people need the radio on, some sing, others can’t stand noise and need to hear that they are in fact still alone. When you climb a sand dune and look behind you, instinctively, to make sure no one is following you, you realise that there is nothing there, just Australia.

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Ilse Oxenburgh is a Dutch geologist living in Perth. She has experience in translating, but is a new writer. She moved to Australia five years ago to search for gold. Instead, she found copper, a new home, and a passion for writing.

Ilse’s short story ‘Slickenside Creek’ will be included in Issue 09 of page seventeen. Less than two weeks till the launch on November 19!

On my first meeting with my Hungarian cousins, I learned a little of life as it was when my father played on the banks of the Danube. Despite my lack of language, I also learned of a cousin, László, who was born during the war, and died during the war.

‘Remembering László’ is a reflection on the way chance can determine the course of our lives. While we each like to think that we exercise choice and determine our own future, as infants we are dependent on the care of our parents, and on circumstance. The references in the poem to soldiers, station masters and stone masons all allude to lives lived by various members of my family. Through no fault of his own, László never had the opportunity to choose any of these lives. In fact, he had little opportunity to experience life at all.

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Greg Piko lives in Yass, New South Wales. Greg has written haiku for some time and now writes longer poems as well. He was a featured haiku poet in A New Resonance 7 (Red Moon Press, USA, 2011)

Greg’s poem, ‘Remembering Laszlo’, has been shortlisted in page seventeen’s 2011 Poetry Competition and will be published in Issue 09. The launch of Issue 09 will take place at 2pm on Saturday November 19, at Watsonia Library’s community room. See whether ‘Remembering Laszlo’ won the competiton and pick up a copy to enjoy!

Yup, what began in April is finally coming to a head here. A handsome head with a lot to say (obviously not the editor’s).

Come along to the Watsonia Library on Saturday the 19th of November and we’ll put a drink in your hand and usher you along to the official launch of page seventeen by Alec Patric, contributor to Issues 7 and 8 as well as author of The Rattler and Other Stories.

We’ll also announce the winners of our short story and poetry competitions, and unveil the cover winner. (My God, I love the cover…)

So, here’s the breakdown of the details:

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Community Room

Watsonia Library (right across from the train station)

6 Ibbottson Street

Watsonia, VIC

2-4pm

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So now that you know, you’d better make sure everyone else knows you’re busy that afternoon schmoozing it up with us. Facebook users can check into our event here.

I’m worse than a nightclub flirt; I give no straight answers. Here’s the shortlist for the cover comp:

Bree Colville – ‘The Man’

Craig Fardell – ‘Quarry’

Natalie Paine – ‘Bloom Secret’

Dina D Photography – ‘I See You’

Ladies and Gentleman, you will find listed below the shortlists for our short story and poetry competitions. These shortlists were compiled by our judges, former editor Tiggy Johnson for short stories and MPU president Wendy Fleming for poetry.

And so, the names, in alphabetical order of the writers:

Short Story Shortlist 2011

‘The Other Guy’ – Emilie Collyer

‘Not My Son’ – Jennifer Goode

‘Luck of the Draw’ – Hayley Katzen

‘Wings’ – Kerrie McCure

‘Mandrake in the Marsh’ – Lachlan Plain

‘The Smiths’ – Eugene Yang

Poetry Shortlist 2011

‘The Space Between’ – Emilie Collyer

‘I Am The Lion on the edge of your bed…’ – Nathan Curnow

‘Remembering Laszlo’ – Greg Piko

‘Night Music’ – Kristen Roberts

‘Washington NYE’ – Anna Ryan-Punch

‘Half Empty’ – Marian Spires

‘Giraffes’ – Valerie Volk

As per our usual methods of torture here at page seventeen, we will not be revealing the winners and runners-up just yet. That’s the juicy bit left for our launch. Date and place are TBA on the launch at this point in time, but suffice to say that it will be early November and that it’s going to be a blast.

To everyone that made the shortlist, congratulations and I hope to see you at the launch. For all those who missed out this year, don’t be discouraged, and I hope to see you at the launch. Hell, anyone who’s stumbled onto this site from a writers blog or random facebook link, I hope to see you – wait for it – at the launch!

A big thank you to everyone who sent in work for the competitions. There’s always plenty of material that just misses the mark, that has a moment of bad luck and bows out without specific commendation. So, to anyone who didn’t get a story or poem into this shortlist: please keep sending your work out, whether it be to us or to the next available competition you come across.

Or at least for the submission window of page seventeen in 2011.

So, we reach the end of the gathering process, and we are happily sitting on hundreds of submissions, both general and for our competitions. The prose looks great. The potential front covers look great. It’s all just … great.

So, to everyone who has entered, thank you. I know it’s going to be a tense few weeks – maybe it already has been for the early birds who sent their work in well before the deadline – but we will attempt to get back to you as soon as we possibly can. If you’re not 100% sure that your submission made it in, then simply send a query to enquire@pageseventeen.com.au.

This is only the first step to providing you with a juicy new edition of page seventeen. You can almost smell the paper, right?

The end of the submission window must feel very close this side of the seasons. We begin winter and we begin the home stretch for those of you who have been chiseling away at your prose and preparing your entry to the page seventeen smorgasbord.

So, if you have a short story or poem that you think we’ll like, send it in to our competition and it might net you some prize money (and publication to boot). If you have a photo that you think will look good on the front cover of Issue 09, send it in and that fancy might become fact.

And don’t forget about our inaugural non-fiction component, revolving around the ‘Craft of Writing‘ theme. It can be a feature piece on the Emerging Writers’ Festival, or National Young Writers’ Month, or a particularly illuminating workshop. It may be an interview with a writer or ambassador for writing and publishing. It may be a reflective piece on your own experiences with the craft of writing. There are a lot of angles that can be taken for this theme. So if you have a piece, or even just a pitch, then submit@pageseventeen.com.au is ready to receive.

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Got some free time this Sunday? Come down to Page Parlour at Federation Square. It caps of the Emerging Writers’ Festival and is a fantastic little market of magazines, journals and small presses. Of course, page seventeen will be there as well. So, I hope to see you there.

But never to be available as a suppository. I guarantee it.

But I digress. Look up p17mag on Twitter and you’ll now find us tweeting away. Just another way to keep abreast as to the goings on in our little operation.

Today marks the first day of the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne. For anyone with a free night, there’s still a chance to get in for tonight’s opening gala at Fed Square. And there’s plenty on in the days to follow; http://www.emergingwritersfestival.org.au/events/ is the place to go.

pageseventeen will be at the Page Parlour market on Sunday, June 5. Amble in to the Fed Square Atrium anytime between 12-5 and you won’t be disappointed.

Submissions are rolling in, but I still have spare time, which will simply not do. There’s just over a month left before the submission window for 2011 closes, so the home stretch for anyone putting the finishing touches on their mini magnum opus is fast approaching.

Don’t forget we also have a non-fiction section this year – anyone with a piece or pitch relating to the theme, Craft of Writing, email it though to submit@pageseventeen.com.au. It can be a feature piece (relating to, say, a workshop in the EWF, hint hint), an interview with an established writer, an opinion piece on writing or the mechanics of writing, or one of a dozen other perspectives I probably couldn’t even begin to speculate on.

Also tell your photo-oriented buddies (if you aren’t one yourself) about our cover competition; a click of a camera could earn $100 and determine the front cover of Issue 09 of pageseventeen. Not too shabby.

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As a quick little plug, I will be at Book Street (in the arcade at 521 Toorak Rd, Toorak) on Thursday June 9. The Australian Literature Review (the website can be found here) is launching its newest anthology, Basics of Life, including a panel of featured writers (one of which is yours truly). I’ll be alongside up-and-comer Belinda Dorio and the always-charming George Ivanoff, talking about whatever it is writers talk about.

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I made a plug on Facebook, but I’ll follow up here; the latest poetry collection from our editor, Ashley Capes, has been out for the entirety of 2011 and he has been pretty quiet about it. You’ll find a link to his blog on the right-hand-side of this page as a way to tell him off for this, and find Orion Tips the Saucepan here.