100 Stories for Queensland - it is out!

My review for "100 Stories for Queensland" is pasted below -

A Veritable Choc Box - Whatever the flavour you favour it's here!

If life is a box of chocolates, then this is the ultimate assortment! This collection is a remarkable mix of stories across numerous genres with something to suit, no matter what your tastes, age, or background. The stories have been drawn from all over the globe and all round Australia. A smorgasbord and it is all for a very good cause, helping Queensland's flood victims rebuild their shattered lives.

Whether you are an animal lover [try "Kittens!" by Sam Adamson] or you want a belly-laugh of a read [try "Why Can't I take Life Easier?" by Keith Havers], something multicultural ["Cake" by Lunar Hine or "Burka" by Sylvia Petter], a story of unrequited love with a twist ["Her Smile", Emma Newman], SciFi adventure ["Transmutator" by Devin Watson or "Drake M. Causeway" by Tomara Armstrong], a tale for the nature lover ["The Speaking Tree" by Alan Baxter or "The Miracle Tree" by E.N. De Choudens], the psycho drama [“Daisy” by Theresa Milstein] or something a bit trippily surreal and poignant at the same time ["Surviving the Kitchen Tiles" by Jessica Bell], it is all there. All collected together for you to dip into at your pleasure, whatever you mood, there will be a read for you!

And there is, as the adman says, MORE! At the end of the volume is a collection of 17 bonus stories, including the novel in miniature "Summer at the Sugar Palace" by Tanya Bell, the boy's own adventure of "The Quest" by Trevor Belshaw, "Clutch" a cruise ship romance with a difference by Jodi Cleghorn, my own tragi-comic "Her Ladyship Awaits..." under my other persona, J.R.McRae, and the uplifting and delightful "Smile" by Stacey Larner.

Short story collections have gained a new impetus with the advent of e-books, i-pads and Apps. A short story is the ideal way to indulge your reading passion on the move, waiting for a bus, train, plane or lift. They are the ideal online read during coffee-break or welcome diversion whilst whiling away time because your partner, lover, friend or colleague is late.

If you know someone going on a cruise or a long journey or a reader with eclectic tastes, this is the perfect present! It is like a box or Haigh's assorted chocs, you just can't wait to dip in! Do yourself a flavour! BUY IT!

Reviews on Amazon, The Book Depository, Boomerang Books

Teller2Teller - storytelling in prose, poetry and off the cuff

Friday, 24th, was my first live gig for a while and my first ever storytelling using grown up material for a grown up audience. The event was hosted by Teller2Teller at the Brisbane Square Library. Director/Founder/coordinator, Marlene Butteriss, did an outstanding job of bringing the whole together, despite a number of out of left field glitches along the way, including Brisbane Square Library halving the allotted time for our gig! :} On the programme was YA/children's author, Eddie Dowd, Marilyn Roberts, performance poet and yours truly.

Eddie gave a sterling performance of a whimsically funny story of potions and portions and manufacturing and realising your life goals. Marilyn regaled us with her "Pink Lady"- a rumbustious, rollicking, raunch of piece and a story about knocking on windows late at night in her birthday suit and borrowed coat...
For me, it was a good opportunity to spruke "100 Stories for Queensland" [all monies going to flood victims] and "Stories for Sendai" [launching 30th June, all monies going to Japan's tsunami survivors, some of whose stories are included]. Both books are available from Amazon and The Book Depository. I read "Her Ladyship Awaits..." [loosely based on a true story] from "100 Stories for Queensland" and "Soup", first published in Rose and Thorn and now also available in "Pot Luck" edited by Chris Bartholomew, Static Movement, USA.

Udderly Amazing! interview by Jesse Grayson of Channel 10, News at 5

Using MS Word to Auto-Outline and Keep Track of Revelations

Using MS Word to Auto-Outline and Keep Track of Revelations
Excellent blog article for Word users - writers in particular!

Twisted Velvet Chains!

Jessica Ball's new collection of poems is now out! Check it out on Good Reads. My review link: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/162967921

Review by J.R.McRae - "Letters from the Asylum", poetry by John Knight

Letters from the Asylum by John Knight

Review by J.R.McRae

I generally read collections of poetry randomly. This gives me, I feel, better access to the variant moods of the poet. If you like, I feel I am looking over his/her shoulder unexpected and capturing something extra, something they may not have imagined was about to break lose from their verse.

Look at this will you…
Pages 74 and 75 …the juxtaposition is something alone to mull over!

On facing pages we have the ultimate still life, a dead swaggy with all the irony of the ‘life’ his death is giving –

“white ants built a nest in his head.”

And the opposite page is “affirmation” with its powerful and wryly inspirational second last line -

“Maybe it’s time to send flowers to yourself,“

Here is something more than poetry, it is the mirror our words create in themselves, between themselves and up to us.

Let’s jump to John’s remembrances of his parents. Poor souls who love to give us life and then try… all their lives to live up to our expectations, live down our excesses.

Remembrances ”Seventy-Three Years” Page 21
and the wedding portrait’s
due formality can’t hide his chin, her smile,
their hope.

Only a child can censor a parent’s wedding photo and comment with a soft, sly touch. Then there are the death watch poems. The angst is gone, a sad humour remains. They are his parents. He has forgiven them. Now he stands beside them and slowly notes the last details of their existence…. It is almost excruciating.

“blind worm and greedy time’s decay” Page 20


1979 Oliver William Knight

I scraped the stubborn blade
across my father’s face
at his request. My sister’s hair
fell on his chest. My mother
held his hand and willed him life.
‘I want to wee,’ he whispered half-asleep.

1993 Blanche Marybelle Thirza Knight

Blind worm and greedy time’s decay
may waste that shrivelled womb and foul
the withered breast. Where I once sucked,
and on the arm that cradled me
vile cankers spread. But the raven hair
you shook out for his pleasuring
endures, and the plain ring on your finger.

Let’s travel on.

Pulped Fiction [P. 26] is a series of awfully pointedly observed images, pinned together to and irony and build to a painful insight – the sort that makes you stop mid laugh and cry.

The last lines sum it up perfectly –

… And last week, when I sent flowers
to the woman I love, her brother’s dog bit the delivery boy.
Is the universe trying to tell me something?

On the opposite page [P. 27] is one of the most beautiful and poignant poems I have ever read on suicide, “The People You Leave Behind”. I can’t pick out just one image. They are all inextricably linked and carry the reader like a gradually building wave towards the crash onshore.

Pages 32 and 33 are experimental verse – shaped and extravaganced. Do they work? I think so. They are John playing at being John – a sort of dress rehearsal for the main act.

Where will we go now…. We’ll have a “meeting in the op shop of desire” … [Page 46] What are titles for – to say more. They introduce, sum up and are the neon lit ad enticing us into their dark underground. This title does it well.

The poem flits like a moth in dark places looking for the deadly candle light.
“The trick is not to get yourself... deleted.”
Along the way, we play with rhyme schemes to emphasis the rhythm in this dance macabre.

War poems, replete with headlined images and the harsh economy of words that only works when too much is too much, these are terse yet tender. These are voyeur and would be peace worker trying to do their bit. The four stark poems on pages 64 to 65 are must read.

Philosophising on life and everything else is best done succinctly. John achieves this, reflecting on the sad state of politics in “The Day After”
“we woke up sad and sorry
but the sun was still there.”
[page 84] and everything else [page 85] in “there is a light”. “I have given my days blindly” and “now the Earth beckons…”

A perfect ending to the collection is not on page 94 but on page 90, “peace”.
I love every line of this little gem, so I reproduce it entire –

this house has
peace in its
timber, the slow
blowfly hums
peace, the pines
and the clean sky
echo peace, the
kingfisher calls
peace and the
water breaking on
the flat sand
sings

Taupo Bay
Tai Tokerau

As this is likely, alas, to be John’s final collection, I have added some excerpts from his ‘Introduction”.
Extracts: [Page 11] For the greater part of my adult life, I have experienced recurrent
severe depression — in the clinical as well as the popular sense of the
term — alternating with shorter periods of considerable exhilaration.

The association of depression with creativity is not uncommon,
and a substantial number of artists and thinkers are said to have been
affected by it.

My own experience suggests that it is in the shift from one state to the
other (either manic or depressive) that creativity finds purchase;

And on “the process of writing” [Page 14]
there comes a time, if the work is to have its own
veridicality, its own conviction, when it starts to speak back to me
so to speak. It assumes an independent existence, and tells me what
it will be. [Page 15] Out of it I seek to … assert an identity—this person, John Knight—and thus discover, uncover, recover an essential me.

Letters from the Asylum, Sudden Valley Press, Christchurch, NZ, 2009 ISBN 978-0-9582091-9-9 by John Knight

Availability: From John Knight, 38 Suncroft St., Mt Gravatt, 4122. $20.00 including postage within Australia. $A20 plus $5 p&p overseas, payment by paypal or direct deposit.

View all my reviews

Poetry Magazines, Presses & related promotional sites

Poetry Magazines and Publishers and Promoters of Poetry on FaceBook & elsewhere – please feel free to add to this evolving list!

Adirondack Review – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1606723468


Ahadada Books – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=547067182


Anhinga Press – http://www.facebook.com/anhingapress


Apex Reviews – http://www.facebook.com/apexreviews


Australian Poetry Centre – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1437276855


Around Poetry – http://www.facebook.com/around.poetry


Artifice Mag – http://www.facebook.com/artificemag


Askew Poetry Journal – on FaceBook


Australian Book Review – on FaceBook
Australian Poetry – on FaceBook


Bellevue Literary Press – on FaceBook
Bellevue Literary Review – on FaceBook


Black Coffee Press – on FaceBook
Black Lawrence Press – on FaceBook


Blood Lotus Journal – http://www.facebook.com/bloodlotusjournal


Blueorangepublishing Ceret – FaceBook


Boa Editions – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1021828669


Broadsided Press – on FaceBook


Brownstone Press – on FaceBook


Burnside Review – on FaceBook


Carcanet Press – on FaceBook


Comma Press – on FaceBook


Coffee House Press – http://www.facebook.com/CoffeeHousePress


Copperfield Review – on FaceBook


Covert Press – on FaceBook


Dark Coast Press – on FaceBook –


SDivan – http://www.bhtafe.edu.au/Courses/CI/Pages/divan.aspx


Dusie Press – on FaceBook


ElephantEars Press – on FaceBook


Ethical Poets – on FAceBook


Farrago Poetry – on FaceBook


Finishing Line Press – on FaceBook


Five Islands Press – on Face Book – http://www.fiveislandspress.com/


Fulcrum Books – on FaceBook


FullofCrow Press – on FaceBook


Fushicho Imprint – on FaceBook


Guernica Mag – on FaceBook


Guildhall Press – on FaceBook


Hande Book Publishers – on FaceBook


Harper Imprint on FaceBook
Haibun Today – http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com


Indiana Review on FaceBook


Indie Lit – on FaceBook
IP [Interactive Press] – http://www.ipoz.biz/


Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics – onFaceBook


John F. Blair Publisher – on FaceBook


Kilmog Press – on FaceBook
Kore Press – women’s writing – articles, stories, poetry
http://www.facebook.com/korepress http://www.korepress.org/about.htm
Leucrota Press – on FaceBook


Luciole Press – on FaceBook


Manic D Press – on FaceBook


Mascara Literary Review – on FaceBook

Meanjin – on FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Meanjin-Quarterly/49183750265?ref=ts&v=wall


Midway Journal – on FaceBook


Missing Spoke Press – on FaceBook


Naugatuck River Review – on FaceBook


Neopoiesis Press -http://www.facebook.com/neopoiesispress


Next Wave – on FaceBook


On a Shoestring – on FaceBook


Outsider Writers – on FaceBook


Overland Literary Journal – on FaceBook


Overlook Press – on FaceBook


Pale House – on FaceBook


Paper Wasp, Australian Haiku Journal – Janice Bostock – on MySpace


Poem a Day – on FaceBook
Poetry Pulse.com – http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000917025873


Poetry N Prose – on FaceBook


Quadrant – online and in hard copy – on FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Quadrant/104045959633305?ref=ts


Quick Fiction – on FaceBook


Rattapallax Press – on FaceBook


Raw Poetry – http://www.facebook.com/rawpoetry


Red Hen Press – on FaceBook


Red Room – on FaceBook


Ripples – ripplesmagazine@gmail.com


Salmon Poetry – on FaceBook – http://www.salmonpoetry.com/details.php?ID=207&a=88


Sandstone Press – on FaceBook


Sentient Publications – on FaceBook


Silenced Press – on FaceBook


Small Change Press – on MySpace – http://www.smallchangepress.com.au


Speed Poets – on MySpace – anotherlostshark.com


The Mozzie – Ron Heard & Bill Henderson [on LinkedIn.com]


Southerly Journal – on FaceBook


Stone Bridge Press – on FaceBook


Sugar House Review – on FaceBook


The Toronto Quarterly – on FaceBook


Tlon Books Publishing – on FaceBook


Trailer Park Quarterly – on FaceBook


UAkron Press – on FaceBook


University of Alabama Press – on FaceBook


Untitled Pocketbook – on FaceBook


Upthestaircase Quarterly – on FaceBook


Virgogray Press – on FaceBook


Voicebox Freemantle – on FaceBook


WA POETS – on FaceBook


Wakefield Press – on Facebook


Wired Ruby Literary Zine – on FaceBook


Word Jammin’ – on FaceBook


Writers Hub – on FaceBook


Writers News Show – on FaceBook

If your site is not listed, either I have not yet found you or you have not yet ‘accepted’ my friend request!