Magic Hole

Unsettling new animation from illustrator/hero Ian Stevenson and filmaker Luke Seomore. Check out the hypochondriac burger and then their fantastic websites.

Ideas Tap Runner Up - Kirsty Logan

05

We doze with limbs straight as cutlery 

on an empty plate, fingers slotted tight

as wicker. Insomniac traffic echoes

with someone else's stereo. Sleepless,

we press belly to belly. The slimmest

of mirrors could not fit between us.

Bodies packed, her swell of child

fits like a socket into the cup

of my hip-bones. I breathe

her breath. On the rags of sleep

I feel my baby kick and forget for a moment

the barrier between us.

------------

Kirsty Logan is the final of our IdeasTap runners up to be featured on the blog. Her poetry is sparse while still managing to be sensual. And it's provocative; she embeds you in the pressing importance of a situation within a poem, yet you leave it realising she's only let you in on half the story.

Kirsty started co-founded and co-edits Fractured West, a new magazine for flash fiction. Her website and more of her poetry and writing is here.

Also, check out our other two runners up, George Meredith and Danny Sorby.

Young Fresh and Relevant journal

A while back Young Fresh and Relevant opened a call for submissions for their first art writing journal, a copy of which has just arrived in my possession.

Ironically named after the blurb in an advertisement for short story reading, Young Fresh and Relevant is a biannual journal of art writing that has no interest in any of the previous adjectives. Its bias is towards texts exploring the boundary between conventional story telling and art writing, and work that may not be shown in a gallery setting.

This first instalment of the journal is a beautiful book, from its 300gsm Bordeaux front cover (with gold letter pressed title!) right the way through to its back counterpart every single page is a pleasure to read – clearly real attention has been paid to the textual layout and its relevance to the story it contains. The journal contains 10 new pieces of writing ranging from flash fiction to poetry and art writing; while each of the pieces clearly demonstrates their own individual merits and worthiness of publication – the standard is incredibly high – they also all hang together in a curiously cohesive whole, despite the differences and range of work here.

Highlights for me have to be Clinic favourites Becca Voelcker and Paul Wasserman and a new discovery for me (which fast became my favourite piece in the journal) David Berridge's 'Stories for a condition of (w)reading in public'.

At the miniscule price of £3 you'd be a fool not to buy one, it is literally cheaper than a pint, and provides infinitely more pleasure. Also with an extremely limited run of only 60 copies, I'd get in as soon as possible; I keep finding myself reading and rereading the journal and can't think of better use of £3. Head over here to purchase your copy!

Also in even more exciting news they've opened submissions for the next issue, which will be translated into both German and English! So if you write as all of, part of, or alongside your practice they want to hear from you, see here for submissions guidelines and info.

Launches and Lunges

The rad chaps over at fourteen-nineteen are holding a party to launch their physical bookshop at NewGallery in Peckham tomorrow night, and we suggest you get down to check out their freshly unwrapped library. Here's a few words from them, more event details underneath.

"For a year now, we have been running an online bookshop / distro service, providing a platform for young self-publishing photographers and independent publishers to sell their work - as well as a place for us to sell our own releases. Tomorrow, rather excitingly, we are launching our physical bookshop in South London!  We'll be opening it and launching the second issue of our book series Minus Five from 6-11. If you're in London, come down, have a beer and look at some zines! We'll have some good deals and stuff going on too."

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=156779681047452 

And in the same breath, Alex F Webb, one half of said dreamteam, has some incredible photos of American Football video footage, cropping textures and framing the already framed. Through what are essentially screenshots, he stops the game and lifts segments of information to the surface, aestheticising otherwise invisible compositions. Fantastic.

Tumble Press – Call for submissions

It is often noted that there are very few platforms for up-and-coming writers to publish their work, the majority of publishing houses focusing on those already published – the question often being how can one begin to publish work if you must already be published first? As of late there has been a resurgence in independent presses attempting to address this imbalance (well documented by Cambridge Varsity here) of which we at Clinic are proud to be considered a part.

In the wake of this rise in DIY and independent publishing comes the venture of Camberwell Graphic Design student Helen Randall,the brand new publishing house Tumble Press, who have just opened a call for short stories and poems to be submitted for their first anthology, Young and Restless.

The anthology looks set to be a beautiful hardback book, leather-bound with different papers and printing styles throughout, including sporadic vellum sections with segments of text/colour creating a supplementary narrative in the book's very form. The book's focus though is primarily on the texts within, featuring only a few, simple illustrations throughout so as not to impact or impose visuals upon the writing.

Each featured contributor will receive a copy of the final publication and should the publishing press ever make a profit each featured writer will also receive a percentage of the profits from sales. 

Click the image to read/see more about the anthology

Submission guidelines: There are no thematic requirements or limitations for submissions and work does not necessarily have to be new. Please send a pdf  or basic e-mail text version of your story/poem, formatted as you would like it to appear, to tumblepress@gmail.com with the subject line: Submission. Please also include a mini bio, contact and website/blog details for inclusion in the contributors page.

DEADLINE: 3RD APRIL 2011

Make sure to send something off for this exciting new venture, it's going to be an amazing book and we'll definitely be sending some work from the Clinic camp.

Daniel Sluman

Here's a couple of poems submitted by Daniel Sluman. Daniel is a 24 year old Undergraduate studying English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Gloucestershire. He has been published in magazines including Popshot, Shit Creek Review & Orbis. His debut full-length collection will be published in 2012 through Nine Arches Press.

When our pupils had swallowed the irises black

The party was a fist of jazz notes,
all wrong except in context;

fashionistas bashed their fists
to a pulp on the bathroom wall,

the love-slashed girls rattled
in the throats of middle-aged men.

This morning we clear the cans that gleamed
neon in the arse-end of the evening,

clutch the red-spittled glasses
that rolled on the floor. Next week

we will have forgotten the motives
that slipped down our throats,

the afterthoughts stiffening in smoke.
We'll return where we left, forgetting

when we started; each breath
binding us tighter to the past.

Snow/Swinging

The forecast promises
                                                            staggered fall-out,
our lives on hold,
                                                            we'll ignore it,
you ask if it will settle,
                                                            but we're hardened to softness,
tomorrow we'll choke    
                                                            the curtain, our eyes packed

                                      with glitter.