Dark Nights

I was asked if I wanted to watch The Dark Knight at a friends house who has just bought the DVD. And Dark indeed is the night that The Dark Knight inhabits. Too dark, really. Too much shadow. Ledger is mesmeric, though.

Superhero comics and graphic novels is an area I once ventured into - writing an outline story for a friend of mine who wanted to draw a comic but couldn't write a story. It was called 'Com Sat Angel', after the 80's band, but although I spent some weeks working on the story, my friend never got around to drawing much beyond the cover and the first couple of pages.

I think I still have some of the artwork somewhere and if I find it I will post it here,

New Wor(l)ds 10

A little later than usual, New Wor(l)ds volume 10 is out containing the cream of my recent short fictions and poetry.
I elected a type only design this time to emphasize the power of the word over the image in writing. I am concerned that culturally we seem to be veering away from text toward sound and image. Can this really be the beginning of the end for pure literature?

I guess that as long as me, and people like me, continue to carve away our literary niches there will always be Words.

Fictions:
Tight Fist
Deep Blue Devil
Raking the Earth
Boomerang Babies
Tidiness in Purfleet

Poetry:
Ful(l)filled i
Ful(l)filled ii

Sorry seems to be the easiest word, at least in Oz

I was struck yesterday by the text of the apology made by the Australian government to aborigines for the systematic removal of generations of infants from their families and place of birth. The full text is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_Generations and what struck me was the certainty that we will never see a British government apologise so unconditionally; Blair will never say 'sorry' for Iraq and WMD's.

I am working on a short story based on my research into this Stolen Generation issue called 'Boomerang Babies'.

Don't twitter about it, write it.

As if writers were short of excuses not to actually get down to the business of writing, I have noticed an alarming new development where lazy writers end up writing nothing more than their own blogs... which ironically are all about writing! Because of the connectivity of the awfully-named blogosphere, these 'writers' end up in perpetual connection with each other, Twittering away about how marvellous these new social medias are and fretting over how they 'as writers' are going to fit their work around those medias, all without actually generating any new original writing, unless it is more twaddle on the 'nature' of writing in this new dangerous digital age. Christ!