Logo of a person's face with hair that reads the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction

The Body Remembers on Lip Mag

‪My short story The Body Remembers is now available to read online a Lip Mag, along with a Q&A. This story placed second in the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction!

***Read the story and Q&A here**

(Best viewed landscape on your phone or on a computer.)‬

Here’s a little example of the Q&A:

What does this year’s theme, ‘fragments’ mean to you?
In The Body Remembers this theme is reflected in the fragmentation of memory and how those memories are recaptured and reclaimed by the body: the fractured self as snippets of recollection and body-memory.

And an example of the story itself:

Your words are spliced and springing half-form from your slim-line mouth: Pink gutters. Clogged walls. Lichen lichen blanket. We don’t have the cruelty to wake you and tell you the house on Pearl St no longer exists, pink-painted walls knocked down in the ’90s to make space for a high rise. It’s okay, we chitter like a chorus of budgerigars. We pull the stiff standard-issue blanket up to your neck; tuck it neatly behind your shoulder bones. It’s okay.

Colour image of animals swimming through coloured smoke, with the text: A Celebration of Poetry, People and Cultures. Deep Listening QPF2019

Queensland Poetry Festival 2019

The incredible Queensland Poetry Festival program ‘Deep Listening’ has been launched! I’ll be part of two awesome events this year:‬

☀️ Reading Queensland with Liam Ferney, Shastra Deo and Angela Gardner. We’ll be reading from, listening to and enquiring about each other’s work in a friendly and insightful in-conversation. 

🎭 Cirquetry – a collaborative work between award-winning local poets and Vulcana circus artists, directed by Celia White and conceived by Chloe Callistemon.

** Check out the full program on the QPF website **

Colour image of animals swimming through coloured smoke, with the text: A Celebration of Poetry, People and Cultures. Deep Listening QPF2019

A photo of a visual poem incorporating shells, polaroid photos and white sticker labels on a rainbow tie-dye background. The text of the poem reads: 'clear skies' for M seashells picked & palmed swelling lips sunkissed like glinting waves i cup conch between fingers & drink you in today we are sunbeams

New visual poems

Last month I had two new visual poems published! I’ve been exploring what poetry means to me and how I can best express that, including playing with other art forms and pushing my own boundaries.

I was so proud to have my blackout poem ‘flourish, viola’ published at Honey & Lime Lit.

And my visual poem ‘clear skies’, which incorporates seashells, polaroid photos and printed labels, appeared in Baby Teeth Journal.

Logo of a person's face with hair that reads the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction

My story placed second in the 2019 Rachel Funari Prize!

Last week I won my very first fiction prize! My short story, The Body Remembers, placed second in the 2019 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction!!!

Big congratulations to the winner of the Prize Jane O’Sullivan for her story Limpet Teeth and to Emily Dang for How to Cook Pho, which placed third. And a huge thank you to the judges Alison Evans, Danielle Binks and Melanie Joosten.

You can read more about the prize at Lip Mag.

The Body Remembers follows the close relationship between a non-binary protagonist and his grandparent with Alzheimer’s disease. The story employ poetic devices while exploring themes of family, transition, and memory (of both the mind and the body).

The winning stories and author Q&As will be published at Lip Mag in the coming weeks!