Voiceworks #85: Other

There’s always the chance that literary journals are going to be filled with stories about couples going through a crucible or revelations set around the family dinner table. Dysfunctional domesticity seems an unofficial theme editors look for when sifting through stories, usually submitted by creative writing students looking to see their name on the page.

And fair enough, because writing 101 is write what you know, and most people don’t know much more than their fucked up families and loveless relationships.

You’d especially expect this of Voiceworks, Express Media’s quarterly magazine scribed by writers under 25. So I’m happy to note that their Autumn 2011 edition, ‘Other’, isn’t all boo-hooing about who Dad’s been boning and bloated tracts about the beautiful butterfly tattoo on some babe’s butt.

Though the theme of ‘Other’ is never quite realised, the writing within these 75 pages is of stellar quality, proving that maturity and age are not prerequisites for writing talent.

Kate Cantrell’s Wild Things is as light-hearted as it is deftly paced; a story which questions the rationality of fear and exposes the ways friendship can make light of what terrifies us.

Waiting by Tayne Ephraim meanders back into the domestic, yet manages to make the story of a boy hoping to hear his brother is safe somehow menacing. Here, the boredom of home life becomes a tortuous waiting game; ‘the iron hissed’ in his mother’s hand, and Ephraim manages to convey panic as both leisurely and urgent.

The prospects of fledgling writers are considered in Michael Richardson’s Of Mortal Men and Finite Space, a well-realised and cleverly constructed piece with a great ending. However, like his pompous protagonist, after reading Richardson’s ironically glib bio, you almost want them both to fail.

On the Wicked Edge by Nick Nedeljkovic is an astonishingly nuanced observation of a man stagnating in a neighbourhood where gentrification is erasing his existence. With lines like ‘the sagging husks of tired old buildings suddenly vomit the bright entrails of cafes onto footpaths’, the story’s strength is not that only that it’s imaginatively written, but very well conceived.

In fact, the quality of the fiction in this issue of Voiceworks is immense. Dominic Amerena’s story about snoring, which opens with a couple waking in bed and almost falls into familiar literary journal territory, soon takes a symbolic turn into entirely more interesting surrounds.

Laura Vitis’ The Devil and Marie continues to mark out original ground, as does Jack Vening’s Legs. Perhaps more than the others, the ambiguity of these two tales achieve what good short fiction should – you’re left wondering the fate of the characters after you’ve turned the page.

The non-fiction pieces are also extremely well written and moving, and more successfully conjure the theme of ‘Other’ than anything else in the volume. Alexandra Fisher’s important account of Scovia, an African child soldier, is not only heartbreaking but also questions how we perceive tragedies removed from our daily existence:

‘Scovia falls silent. She bites down on her lip as tears emerge. Her words have fallen somewhere between us. Neither of us knows how to pick them up.’

Likewise, Bridget Chappell’s piece on sex work and women’s right in Iraqi Kurdistan is never judgemental or overly pitying. She draws the scene inside the female wing of an Iraqi Kurdistan prison deftly, and gives an honest voice to the inmates wallowing inside. Included is an examination of how history and Western involvement in the region has played a part in where these women are today.

While most of this issue of Voiceworks is good, the poetry doesn’t resonate as strongly as it could. Despite some excellent pieces, you’re left wishing they’d made a bigger impact. As Voiceworks features the up-and-coming, it would be also be nice to see the next issue push some boundaries. While the writing is good, the subject matter remains similar to what’s on offer in other journals.

That said, if the writers featured in Voiceworks continue to pursue their craft, the literary journals of tomorrow will have no problem avoiding the mundane.

Rating: Four stars

Voiceworks #85: Other
Edited by Johannes Jakob
Published by Express Media
RRP $10.00