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Towards the back of my zine I’ll Never Get Over Any Of Them is one of the shortest poems I’ve written, titled After ‘Professor Marston And The Wonder Women’. It goes like this: After Professor Marston And The Wonder Women you assign us each a main character a real person who existed we think about who they are alone who they are together and our answers change ‘I want to live in a house with you both,’ you say, ‘I want to have kids’ we all volunteer to die at the end I wrote this after watching the 2017 movie with two partners. It follows Professor William Moulton Marston and his wife Elizabeth as they fall in love with their lab assistant, Olive. The Marstons worked in psychology and developed DISC theory, a theory of human behaviour they later infused with theories of BDSM. They invented the lie detector, though it’s now considered defunct. And Mr Marston is credited with the creation of DC’s Wonder Woman, whom he based on Elizabeth and Olive. But most importantly, the three of them built a life together until Mr Marston died of cancer in 1947. Elizabeth and Olive lived together for another 43 years, until Olive’s death in 1990. Elizabeth lived to be 100. After ‘Professor Marston And The Wonder Women’ is an ekphrastic poem. You can probably now guess what that means from context, but essentially ekphrasis is the process of responding. Ekphrastic poetry is traditionally poetry which responds to a piece of visual art, but poets have expanded its meaning to any response – whether to music, a movie, an interview, an ad, or another poet’s performance. But wait, I hear you saying. That sounds a lot like fan poetry. Just like fan fiction is fiction written in response to existing work, surely you can just write poetry which does the same? The answer is yes, you can. Just like fan fiction usually engages with a work by offering a new perspective on it, filling in a gap or adding a new element to it, fan poetry can do the same. This is where the two genres differ; where fan poetry usually engages directly with the text in a fannish way, ekphrastic poetry usually focuses on an emotional response. In After ‘Professor Marston And The Wonder Women’ , for example, I recounted my emotional experience watching the movie instead of inserting myself into it. Have you written any ekphrastic poems, reader? Any fan poems to show? Or do you have a text you want to see reflected in a poem? Word Count: 427

If I asked you to think of a ‘literary city’, where would your mind go? Maybe London, in which just the small district of Bloomsbury once housed Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Dorothy L. Sayers, and William Butler Yeats? Or Oxford, the university town where J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis found their feet? Or New York City, where three of the ‘big five’ publishing houses are headquartered? Or would you think of a UNESCO City of Literature – one of the cities which has made a bid for the UN to promote their literary arts scene? We have one in Australia. No prizes for guessing where (Naarm/Melbourne). Meanjin/Magandjin is not included in the UNESCO Creative Cities initiative , but I want to argue for our place as a ‘literary city’ in maybe a less official capacity. Here’s my pitch: 1. Brisbane Writers Festival is the longest-running writers festival in Australia Brisbane Writers Festival, hosted annually at the State Library of Queensland, is over 200 years old . When celebrating BWF’s 200-year anniversary in 2022, CEO Sarah Runcie noted the “culturally valuable and unique” scene in Meanjin/Magandjin where “you can hardly run out of talent”. The State Library also hosted the now-defunct Queensland Poetry Festival, while this year’s Brisbane Festival Storytelling program includes eight events and Anywhere Festival has staged nearly 1,000 productions over its 14-year life so far . 2. The Avid Reader is Australia’s favourite bookshop This independent bookstore in West End won the 2021 Bookshop of the Year award at the Australian Book Industry Awards, and its owner Fiona Stager this year was awarded the ABIA’s Lloyd O’Neil award for “fostering a vibrant literary community in Brisbane”. The Avid Reader is the jewel of Boundary Street, along with its sister bookstore Where The Wild Things Are and friendly rival Bent Books. For those seeking independent bookstores a bit further out, Books@Stones down in (you guessed it) Stones Corner hosts a monthly poetry night , and Harry Hartog opened in Carindale just a few years ago. 3. We’re home to Australia’s darling writers If you can think of an Australian author, I swear there’s at least a one-in-three chance they’re from Meanjin/Magandjin. Writers from our little-city-that-could are over-represented in our own and the world’s view of Australian literature, and that’s because we’re good . Trent Dalton, of Boy Swallows Universe fame, grew up on the West side. Former 7:30 anchor and Any Ordinary Day author Leigh Sales went to the Queensland University of Technology . Kim Wilkins, the MVP of Australian fantasy, teaches at the University of Queensland . We have Benjamin Law. We have Nick Earls. We have Rae White. We have Melissa Lucashenko. Are you kidding me? We’re unbeatable. 4. We have a fledgeling publishing scene During my master’s, my university mates and I were repeatedly told we should move to Sydney if we wanted to get into publishing. Sydney hosts the Australian offices belonging to the ‘big five’, they said. Our literary publishing scene is dominated by the University of Queensland Press, they said, with only a textbook publisher and a series of pay-to-print services nearby. But zine publishers like Mid-Latitude and literary journals like Blue Bottle are diversifying the mediums under which we can produce literary work from home. This is an area in which I see Meanjin/Magandjin developing a bit further to support our literary talent. 5. Hollywood is pushing into Queensland, and our screenwriters are running with it An hour’s drive south of Meanjin/Magandjin sits the massive warehouses Hollywood filmmakers are making more and more use of on the Gold Coast, thanks to its cheaper rents compared to Los Angeles. The move has provided work for crew members including make-up and special effects teams, editors, etc. But it’s also brought more money and attention to Queensland’s film talent, which Screen Queensland is leveraging to uplift voices across the state. Brisbane International Film Festival kicks off next month , alongside sister events New Farm Queer Film Festival and Noosa International Film Festival. Shayne Armstrong, the script doctor who made Bait bearable, teaches at QUT and UQ. But if you’ve been involved in our supposedly thriving literary community over the last couple of years, I’m sure you’ve noticed a change. The closing of Cinnamon & Co. in West End also brought an end to SpeakEasy Poetry. When Lonely’s closed, so did its poetry night. And I mentioned before that the Queensland Poetry Festival is now defunct – that’s because Queensland Poetry is now defunct, wrapped in to the Queensland Writers Centre with cuts to events like Volta. In a period where our publishing sector is still hungry for more literary houses based at home and our screenwriters are only just beginning to see the benefits of a larger film industry presence in Queensland, we don’t exactly need cuts to literary institutions. As promising as Meanjin/Magandjin is as a literary city, it isn’t yet as established as London and New York. It needs help to grow. We still need publishing houses to invest in an office in Meanjin/Magandjin. We need studios to invest in Queensland stories told on screen. And now more than ever we need a place for people to share their work aloud. My housemates and I are putting on a monthly, curated backyard poetry gig featuring four poets and accompanied by baked goods and tea. But to regain our footing after blow after blow to the literary community in the last couple of years, we need poets and organisers to commandeer more venues. We need to re-sow now, so we can all bloom again. Word count: 929 Photo credit: Chloë Callistemon

During an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast with professional suck-up Josh Horowitz, professional Irish treasure Cillian Murphy re-ran his weirdly hustle-culture-influencer phrase ‘work begets work’. (He also says ‘good work begets good work’, which, maybe I enjoy more?) It’s his go-to interview line; he’s re-used it when speaking to The New York Times , The Washington Post , and The Irish Times . And I know this because of work which I got… from other work. I think you know what it means, but if you don’t, it means if you take a job and you’re good at it then you’re probably going to get another job through that one. Either someone at that job will offer you something (better) within the same company, or someone will remember you from that job when they move into another (better) project, or just having that job as a reference will be the reason you’re hired when you’re applying for something (better) else. It’s pretty simple, and also just a nice idea to remember when you’re in the rut of ‘why am I even doing this’ – like, remembering the possibility is essential for wondering what you’re going to do with it. Freelancers sometimes call this the ‘snowball effect’. You get one gig, and it goes well, and that client kind of recommends you to their friends, and suddenly you have two clients, then three, then five. I had this when I was house-sitting and dog-sitting – suddenly I was spending every second week at an upper-class middle-aged lady’s place in inner-south Brisbane walking two Labradors and trying desperately to figure out how rich people showers work (it’s different, I swear). But there’s another side to work begets work. It’s not just good work begets good work; it’s this work begets this work. Let me explain. I came across Cillian Murphy’s quote while working for Cover Media, a UK-based news agency which produces a lot of arts and entertainment content for Yahoo , MSN , tabloids, and random sketchy websites you’ve never heard of before . I don’t work there anymore, but my path to getting the job was part of a long-haul ongoing project to write in the arts and entertainment space. I started on this goal in university, photographing for events like Brisbane Writers Festival and Supanova Comic-Con, indie musicians like Patrick Williams and Amy Elise, and The Photo Studio in West End. I wasn’t the sharpest photographer in the world, but I was cheap (mostly free) and keen. The Supanova gig led me to write for their website, on Supanova News . For four years, I (sporadically) produced interviews , reviews , and advertorials . It was this volunteer work on my resume which convinced Cover to hire me. But I was foiled. During my volunteering years, I received a job offer at a marketing company which would come to be known as Constructiv Digital . Of course I took it; I needed money. There, I wrote website and blog copy for clients in the industrial sector and articles for the (now defunct) Flapping Mouth trade magazine. I do not come from a construction background, but I learnt the lingo and now play games with friends whenever we drive past a construction site: Name That Machine. I started asking industry folks the right questions, which meant I was hirable as an industrial writer. My work at Constructiv Digital led me to One Mandate Media, which produces magazines like The Australian Farmer and Innovatia . There, I produced advertorials for The Australian Farmer and was eventually named the deputy managing editor for an Innovatia issue . I now had a string of industrial writing work under my belt, so of course, I could write a YouTube video script for the channel Engineering With Rosie – titled What Happens When Lightning Strikes A Wind Turbine? You can see how I’ve fallen off my track. If this is a cautionary tale for freelancers, the moral is to remember what ‘good’ work looks like to you. It can be difficult to work actively towards your goals when you’re taking whatever comes, and whatever comes can turn into a line of work you never asked for. Don’t forget the gig that made you say this is what I want to do more of. I’m still working towards that pop culture writing dream, even now. In a cost-of-living crisis, however, employees and freelancers are often forced to take whatever they can get. My strongest advice, if I’m in a position to give it, would be to employers: beware of specialising your workers to death, and believe in the people who want to be there rather than searching for those who already are. Word Count: 772

I recently revisited the ABC comedy series Utopia , which aired its first episode in 2014 and its last last year, for the third time. It follows Tony Woodford (Rob Stitch) as the CEO of the Nation Building Authority, a fictional government organisation which struggles to get anything done. Jim Gibson (Anthony Lehmenn), the government liaison, lands the Authority with impossible projects and additions in service of the ‘vision’. Rhonda Stewart (Kitty Flanagan), the media manager, endlessly pushes the latest digital or design fad onto the Authority and disrupts actual projects in the process. The rest of the cast is tasked with cleaning up the fallout. This time, the rewatch was with a friend from the States. He was initially insistent on taking in all-things-Aussie, including Aussie media. I lent him a copy of our first Stella Prize-winning poetry book ( Dropbear , by Evelyn Araluen) for the trip, sent him on his way with the beautiful Australian gothic novel I analysed in my dissertation ( Flyaway , by Kathleen Jennings), and turned on Netflix during a sleepy weeknight in. The Australian movie offerings fast revealed our penchant for tragedy ( Jasper Jones , Storm Boy ) and so we turned to the old favourite. During my master’s, I took an Independent Project unit which allowed me to write a single, longer work over the course of a semester under the tutelage of a supervisor. It gave me experience working one-on-one with a supervisor before my dissertation, but more importantly it offered an opportunity to fill the gap in the so-called-coursework-masters’ courses. No screenwriting class was available, and so I took aside undergraduate screenwriting tutor Shane and forced him to attend regular Zoom meetings with me. He taught me the structure of a script, I told him I wanted to test it out on writing for television, and so he taught me the structure of a show pilot. I soon discovered writing for television is considered the most rigid style of scriptwriting, and pat myself on the back for nailing it. I received a High Distinction. But that didn’t mean my idea was actually any good. Let’s flash back to Utopia . My friend had a hard time with it, to say the least. He turned to me whenever a character spoke to confirm whether or not we were ‘supposed’ to like them. After an episode or two, he was distraught to realise they were all flawed; there was no clear hero to look up to and clear villain to beat down upon. He found the jokes depressing more than they were funny, as they represented the government as incompetent and unlikely to change. He couldn’t find a way within the show to see how it was ‘supposed’ to make him feel good. I don’t tend to stake my personality on a television show. You can like or dislike Utopia . But I found these criticisms grating. Is it not childish, to need to be told what to think on your screen? To yearn for propaganda? In one exchange, my friend became frustrated that the show was unclear how it sided politically. He said if it was anti-government, it must be right-wing. But it was anti-business, too. I asked him whether everything he watched told him who to vote for. But when I wrote my pilot script, I was every bit as un-subtle as the American media I implicate in these statements. If only script readings had laugh tracks. I based my show idea partly off Utopia , but off my experience working at a volunteer radio station, too. I wanted to satirise how volunteer-run organisations can inflate themselves in importance without competence, becoming overly bureaucratic, involving restructures like a dying company without its employees or even managers ever having seen a cent. I did not, however, portray it accurately. I did not use the dry wit and pinpoint situational awareness that the Utopia writers used. My script included ridiculous antics and punchlines comparable to The Big Bang Theory . “It’s funny,” Shane the supervisor said in one of our later meetings. “That’s because you’re Gen X,” I replied, deflated, totally at a loss to write the comedy I actually enjoy. My friend would've loved it. That’s why I’ll never write jokes. Word Count: 700

Last year, University of Queensland Professor Kim Wilkins warned a class about a condition plaguing young writers. She called it ‘first manuscript syndrome’. Afflicted writers finish a draft of their first-ever manuscript and receive modest praise for it – whether that’s a commendation from assessors if submitting it for a PhD, or a mentorship, or a fellowship, or a longlisting or shortlisting on a literary competition. A manuscript might receive every encouragement without ever actually being published, she said. This is the infection. The primary symptom is obsession. Surely this means the manuscript is good, right? Let’s have a look at the feedback. It just needs a few tweaks to the characterisation, the plot, the themes, the prose. It just needs a rewrite or five. Whatever it takes to push it over the line for them, whether or not it’s good enough for me . The illness can last for years, she said, preventing young writers from moving on to the next story. She told the class it’s easy to dismiss a rejection letter with vague reasoning like ‘We’re just not looking for this story at this time.’ But that’s often actually the case. It can be a good book, a finished book, and not hit the topics or genre specifications or themes that publishers are predicting the market will enjoy for the next few years. The problem can be you need to write a different story. When writing on deadline – whether for school or university, work, a commissioned project or to submit to a market before their reading period closes – the old adages make more sense. Perfect is the enemy of the good. Done is better than perfect. Don’t be scared, just press the button. But creative work often happens individually, then goes elsewhere. Theoretically, the only deadline is death. I could keep tinkering with that song or that personal essay until I rot away in front of my laptop. And I’m resistant to the idea that a piece should be sent off as soon as I punch in the last full stop. Some tinkering is necessary. So where is the line, and how do I resist the temptation to ignore it? To answer this question, I turn to my poem Make me a woman from ancient Rome. A version of it was published in the Wingless Dreamer Wicked Young Writers Poetry Collection in 2020, before I reworked it for my zine I’ll Never Get Over Any Of Them last year. The original version is by no means up to the standard that I write to today. But I still follow the process I’d developed at the time for finishing it: Clarify the idea Jot down the lines in your head Bring them together in a beautiful poem Edit until you can’t find a specific issue Send to at least two trusted friends for feedback Address the feedback and edit it again until you can’t find a specific issue Leave it for a few days Edit it again until you can’t find a specific issue Repeat the last two steps until you open the document and immediately can’t find a specific issue (If you suddenly have an epiphany within these few days, go ahead and act on it) When I submitted the original version of this poem, I pressed the button with uncertainty in my chest. I still didn’t feel like it was ‘done’, but with my current experience writing poetry I didn’t have anything constructive to say about it. In the days that I left it, I could focus on other writing (Kim Wilkins didn’t mention that you might not be completely stumped before ‘moving on’). And in the years that I left it after submitting it and seeing it published by Wingless Dreamer, I finished my bachelor’s and started my master’s. Three years later, I checked to see if it was appropriate for re-publishing in my zine. It wasn’t. But I had three more years of writing experience under my belt and could quickly see the problem. I essentially followed steps four through 10 again, deleting lines, re-tooling lines and adding stanzas. The result: I took a piece borne from insecurity over unrealistic beauty standards and added a secondary theme, that the body keeps the score. It’s finished. For now. Word Count: 710

If you’ve seen my Instagram Stories in the last month, you’ve likely seen a screenshot of one of my ABC News stories. A screenshot will show the headline, byline, photo or video, and at least part of a summary box. Sometimes, the byline will read ‘By Aoife Hilton with wires’.

So today I announced my housemates and I are hosting a backyard poetry gig, ideally monthly, starting with our inaugural event on 26 August from 8pm. It’s a curated event with four featured poets, three of which I will reveal in the coming days. One of which you, dear newsletter reader, get to find out early. Bronwyn Joanna Fyre Bradley does many things. For work, she teaches children how to swim and tutors students of all ages in basic English to university law. She also paints, crafts, writes fan-fiction and studies for the medical entrance exam. When she performs poetry, she performs it with an electric energy. Bronwyn has an eye for a story and an ear for a rhythm and combines the two to craft ballads that sting. Her rare love poem How to Re-Magnetise a Compass Needle captures the skin-crawling, sweaty withdrawal a long-distance lover experiences when they end a phone call – and the high of the answer. Her slam piece Mother Raised a Prostitute stares hard into the face of the underlying assumptions which lead to victim-blaming after sexual assault. Her portrait piece The Art of Self-Immolation problematizes the often-rose-coloured glasses with which we view toxic romantic tropes, including the manic pixie dream girl and the messy b****. We could make a year feel like a one night stand. No one taught you how to love, And you never asked. And I never offered. Instead, I remember you like a vigil a mirror a warning Her World War II ballad William A. spawned a near-obsession with documenting the military mission which killed her great-uncle and the horrors of war more widely. She is currently working on a series of poems for this project. Each of Bronwyn’s poems use a self-imposed rhythm and rhyme scheme which invokes a musical element into her performance. The pieces’ lyricism, percussive punctuation and theatrics prompt me always to beg for a spoken-word performance. I crave ambient sound, stage lighting, the pieces strung together like a story. It’s not often that I want these things in a poetry performance. I view spoken-word a lot like the semicolon: used much too often without insight into what it does. But Bronwyn’s poetry inspires a unique drive in me to seek it. Bronwyn has performed at SpeakEasy Poetry and the Ruckus Poetry Slam competition series, being named a finalist at the latter. You can catch her at our late-night poetry tea party by going to the Facebook event . Word Count: 412