'In this issue our contributors rage against capitalism and colonialism. In Notes on Damp, Anastasia Dale takes us through a horrifyingly familiar tale of renting which is accompanied by an immersive soundscape. In Irish Ghazal, Scout Manuel uses the ghazal form to try and make sense of the cyclical violence of English imperialism.
'‘Strike’ also looks at bodies as sites of struggle and liberation. Mel Bandara’s comic Colours of Pain and Christine Le’s artwork Pang Pang Pang! take a bold look at chronic pain. In Swimming on the Solstice, Theodore Harkin explores swimming as a practice of bodily connectedness as a trans person.
'Dive into fiction about giving birth to demons and being followed by swarms of ants, and poems about lullabies and grieving in the backseat of your family car. And don’t miss out on Henry Tran’s winning story from our partnership with the Dymocks Beyond Words short story competition in 2023. ' (Publication summary)
Metals gleam, and so does water. In reflecting and refracting impressions, memory and imagi-nation blur into each other. I often think of Toni Morrison’s writing on the attempts to straighten the Mississippi River, and how the water inevitably returns. Morrison writes:
‘Floods is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remem-bering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding”.’
(Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn, Editorial introduction)
'Pickles is the name of my cat and I love her very much. Pickles has soft, white fur, dappled with orange and tortoiseshell. Pickles likes to sit where you were just sitting, or in places you were just about to sit (perhaps she thinks the chairs are being pulled out for her). Pickles’s favourite toy is my pot of Blistex Lip Conditioner SPF30.'
(My Cat Pickles Endorses Voiceworks #123 themed 'Pickle'. Adalya Nash Hussein, Editorial introduction)
'For most of my life, I’ve lived in apartments. Some of these have outdoor spaces, but they’re managed by body corporates. You can tell which blocks have more owners than renters because the gardens are better looked after, more manicured.'
Source : Adalyah Nash Hussein, Editorial Introduction