Other one, moron
The state of the world weighing on your shoulders like last week’s albatross? What you need, my friend, is a good injection of humour.
You’d have to be Visually Impaired Freddy not to notice that humorous stories do not, in general, do as well in literary competitions as serious, sometimes even a little, um, dull ones. Here’s a competition that seeks to remedy that:
The Best of Times short story competition #14.
Here are the conditions of entry. Note that payment can be made by Paypal, and entries may be emailed, so people outside Australia have no excuse.
What to enter:
Humorous short stories (any theme) up to 2500 words.
Prizes:
First prize: $200, second prize: $50. (That’s AUD.)
Third place, highly commended and commended certificates will be awarded too.
Closing date:
31 Oct 2012.
Conditions of entry:
Entrants can enter as many times as they like.
Each story must be written in English and be the entrant’s own original work.
Stories that have won a prize or certificate in previous Best of Times or Winter Surprise competitions are ineligible for entry.
Entrants retain copyright and all rights to their work.
Postal entries:
No entry form is required. Include a cover sheet with your name and address, story title and word count, and where you heard about the
competition.
Entry fee is $6 per story. Send a cheque or money order made out to Chris Broadribb. Post your entry to PO Box 55, Blaxcell NSW 2142.
Include a large SSAE so that your story can be returned afterwards, along with a results sheet.
E-mailed entries:
Please provide your name and address, story title and word count, and where you heard about the competition.
Email your entry to cabbook-14@yahoo.com.au
Entry fee is $6 per story. Use PayPal to pay cabbook-14@yahoo.com.au
Results:
For an electronic copy of the results, please provide your email address.
Winners will be notified by email or post by December 2012.
The list of winners will be displayed on the competition website.
Winning stories will be published on the website if the authors agree.
Competition webpage (Popups)
The contest is organised and judged by Chris Broadribb. So tickle her. Pluck a feather from that albatross and tickle her like there’s no tomorrow. Which, I sometimes think…Oh shut up.
Cricket Poetry Award: Line and length
June 15, 2012
Perhaps that should be lines. The Cricket Poetry Award closes on 31st August, so if you have an idea for a poem about playing or watching cricket, it’s time to pad up.
The prize is $2000 AUD, entry is $20, which can be done by Paypal, and the announcement of the winner is made at the SCG members pavilion. The top twenty poems from each year have previously been published in a booklet.
Entry forms and full conditions can be found here. There is a tight word limit of 150, so there is no defensive play allowed. No Boycott. Only Gower. And that has to be a good thing.
Bloody batting metaphors. Grumble grumble.
Tuesday poems: seven dwarfs
May 21, 2012
1.
Aladdin’s café
health foods, humous, saffron
Open Sesame
2.
haiku yakuza
execute punctuation!
killer formalists
3.
If poetry
is the mouth
critics pulling
are needle-mad dentists
4.
Grey ghosts of planes
winding down to Gitmo
cigar smoke blows
5.
Bonsai triffids
cut down to flowerpots
balcony stings
6.
Sun fishing
gravity snags planets
hook bites deep
7.
Manga and cartoon
smooth cheese and wasabi
spreading mayhem
P.S. Cottier
They breed like mice (dwarf, gnome, same difference…)
Now, that’s value for you!
Why not click this feather and see if any other Tuesday poet has been playing Snow White?
Poets in the corner
February 2, 2012
not everyone is such a publicist...
No, this is not a post about naughty poets (I told you to stop playing with Augusta, George*!) but about three sculptures that were just unveiled in Canberra’s Garema Place, in an area now known as Poets’ Corner. Judith Wright, David Campbell and A.D. Hope make up the triptych.
I attended the launch, and forgot to take photographs, but anyone interested can follow this link to a Canberra site called The RiotACT see what the sculptures look like. (Not everyone is as forgetful as I am.)
There were excellent poems read at the launch, and an appearance was made by Jon Stanhope, a former Chief Minister of the ACT (sort of a cross between Mayor and School Principal and Premier) who was also Arts Minister. He was supportive of this project.
While many poets pushed for something like this, I left feeling somewhat underwhelmed. Do poets need any memorial outside their words? I don’t think so. And the sculptures (while competent) show the poets at once staring into the middle distance and totally wrapped up in an internal world, with little awareness of the actual world around them. I’m afraid that’s probably how most people see poets, anyway. The idea that the real poets of the world are the dead ones is somehow supported by this type of project, in my opinion.
Byron’s memorial plaque in Westminster Abbey (a somewhat more salubrious location than Garema Place, Canberra) was not installed until the 1969, due to his most naughty reputation. Yet did the reputation of his poetry suffer in the meantime? I don’t think so. The real memorial to these three fine poets can be found in their work. A.D. Hope and David Campbell are represented at the Australian Poetry Library. Judith Wright doesn’t seem to be (copyright?) but examples of her work can be found on the net.
*Byron’s Christian name, as you all undoubtedly knew. And Augusta was his half-sister.
All about, um, me
December 15, 2011
Tim Jones, New Zealand poet and author, who seemingly never sleeps, just interviewed me on his blog. In the interview we talk about chess boxing, The Cancellation of Clouds, our ignorance of Australian poetry (Tim), our ignorance of New Zealand poetry (Penelope), depression, life choices, poetry, prose, my name and lots of other good stuff.
But not cricket. Not after what New Zealand just did to Australia in Tasmania. Not cricket at all.
the muse is drowning...
PS Cottier 