Monthly Dispatch #3 — June 2023

A letter from the editor[s]:

In about a month, we’re opening up fiction submissions, looking for pieces under 3000 words to take us through the end of this year and into the next … That being the case, now seems a good time to give people some idea of the kind of writing we’re looking for. That’s easier said, however, than done. Calls for the best, most wonderous, sparkling, soul-wrenching, inspiring, delightful, pull-your-pants-down-and-get-you-off-through-the-sheer-mastery-of-their-literary-expression pieces abound, and, more than anything, come across as trite and banal.

Far easier, one might have thought, to list the things we don’t want (Sci-Fi! Romance! Horror! MFA-Realism!), but that feels unsatisfying, if not to say outright myopic.

Generally speaking, the fewer restrictions there are, the better. So let’s say this: whatever the topic or genre, what we really want is writing that does something interesting with language. If that’s what you’re doing, if that’s what you’ve got, or that provides the framework of your engagement with fiction, send it in:

https://oleada.io/publication/minor-literatures

Seriously though, none of that MFA shite.

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Fiction

A Glossary of Cardinal Points — J.L. Bogenschneider

“Kerber had taken to using only four words: North, South, East and West. Hypothetically, a full and comprehensive language could be formed from this quartet, using a combination of repetitions, compounds and inflections. Kerber didn’t go so far as that, but where he went was enough.”

J.L. Bogenschneider has had work featured in a number of print and online journals, including Lunate, The Pig’s Back, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, The Stinging Fly, PANK and Ambit. Twitter: @bourgnetstogner

A Legitimate Business — Jaroslav Hašek (tr. Dustin Stalnaker)

“Once upon a time, I sat on a bench in the park at Charles Square with the dearly departed Mestek.

Mestek, then the proprietor of a flea circus, was in a very despondent mood, for he had come to the realization that fleas were no longer suited for the purposes of training. A catastrophe had recently befallen his circus.”

Jaroslav Hašek (1883–1923) was a Czech humorist, satirist, and journalist. He is best known for The Good Soldier Švejk, an unfinished comic novel set during the First World War.

A Tendency to Form — Alina Ştefănescu

“She is thinking about the man who spent a year in Germany studying Hölderlin before giving up literature to attend medical school. One wouldn’t have surmised this from looking at him. He is, she believes, illegible. And it excites her that there is so little to read in the golf-course of Herr Doctor’s appearance.”

Alina Ştefănescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Her poetry collection, DOR, won the 2020 Wandering Aengus Book Prize. Twitter: @aliner

The Advancement of Learning — Addison Zeller

“Six hours a day we had lessons in the kitchen. History, Literature, Art, Geography, Music, Natural Sciences.

Instead of Music for a year it was Mathematics, a subject we appreciated without understanding. At best, we contemplated shapes. I can’t teach you the laws, she admitted, but I recognize in them a higher beauty, rarefied, and very much like Music …”

Addison Zeller is a translator and editor in Wooster, Ohio. His fiction appears or is forthcoming in 3:AM, Ligeia, Epiphany, Olney, Sleepingfish, and elsewhere. Twitter: @amhcrane87

Two Pieces — Laura Paul

“My mother taught me how to steal children. I was stolen from someone else.

She taught me to be a woman—the most slippery kind. A powerful, unshakable force.”

Laura Paul has been published by The Brooklyn Rail, LA Review of Books, Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Pangyrus, Dream Pop Journal, Heavy Feather Review, Hush Lit, and other outlets. Twitter: @laura_n_paul

Tree Line — Kristof Smeyers

“When we meet, we talk about the tree.

Then again, there isn’t much else to talk about for you and me. We don’t meet often. Chance encounters in the street: a wave and a nod, some muttered politeness, we don’t always hear each other very well, as if we’re talking and listening with our mouths and ears full of dust. Most times you’re in a rush. I’m not, but that’s ok.”

Kristof Smeyers is a historian of religion and the supernatural. He writes about fauna, flora and folklore. Twitter: @kristof_smeyers

Landlords — Sam Liptzin (tr. Zeke Levine)

“What’s that? Not every landlord is the same? I agree! There are bad landlords, worse landlords, and downright disgusting landlords.”

Sam Liptzin (1893–1980) was a self-proclaimed “radical humorist.” Born in Lipsk, Belarus, Liptzin moved to the United States in 1909 and became active in leftist politics as an organiser, speaker, and writer.

For Want of a Lack — Judson Hamilton

“There was once a man who lived on a flat geometric plane slick as ice and grey as slate. The plane was situated next to a kidney-shaped abyss the size of a small pool.”

Judson Hamilton lives in Wrocław, Poland. His most recent work includes a book of short stories Gross in Feather, Loud in Voice and a book of poems The New Make-Believe both with Dostoevsky Wannabe. Twitter: @judson_hamilton

Review

Tractatus by Róbert Gál (trans. David Short) — Jon Cone

“Róbert Gál’s Tractatus offers an epigraph by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Philosophy ought to be written only as poetry.” Gál certainly takes those words to heart as he effectively uses them for guidance to fashion a compendium of wry philosophical speculation and unclassifiable blank verse.”

Jon Cone is a Canadian poet, playwright, writer, and editor who lives in Iowa. His recent works include New Year Begun: Selected Poems (Subpress Editions: Brooklyn, NY, 2022); Liminal: Shadow Agent, pts 1 and 2 (Greying Ghost, Salem, MA, 2022); and Cold House (espresso, Toronto, Ont., 2017).  Twitter: @JonCone

Róbert Gál is a Slovak-born writer and editor living in Prague. He is the author of several books of aphorisms, fiction, and philosophical fragments available in English translation. Twitter: @Tractatus2022

Essays & Features

Here Be Monsters: Bowie & the Death of John Lennon — Adam Steiner

“In Bowie’s music, fragmented voices often appear, sometimes as splintering perspectives contained in a single narrator. In the most striking reflective lyric of “Changes,” Bowie tries to confront himself in the mirror, but in his turning, the chance of meeting the same person always seems to slip away from him: the breakdown of identity is revealed as its own aesthetic.”

Adam Steiner writes about music, street-art culture, architecture, poetry, and transgressive fiction. His previous books include Into the Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of the Downward Spiral and the novel Politics of the Asylum. Twitter: @BurndtOutWard

Interview

“Our hope is that it resonates globally with others who have experienced what it is like to survive in conflict zones”: An interview with Maria Fusco, Margaret Salmon and Annea Lockwood — Clare Archibald

History of the Present is an experimental feminist opera-film about class and conflict, which first premiered in Belfast on 19th April 2023, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and is now touring nationally and internationally. It was made collaboratively by Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon, featuring new compositions by Annea Lockwood, libretto by Maria Fusco and improvisational vocal work by Héloïse Werner.

Clare Archibald interviewed Maria, Margaret and Annea over email about the aims and process of making the piece.

Maria Fusco (b.1972) is an award-winning working-class writer, born and brought up in Ardoyne, North Belfast, now living in Scotland. Twitter: @fuscowriting

Annea Lockwood (b.1939) is an acclaimed New Zealand-born American composer based in upstate New York.

Margaret Salmon (b.1975) is a New York-born artist filmmaker based in Glasgow. She lectures in Fine Art Critical Studies and Photography at The Glasgow School of Art. Twitter: @margaretOsalmon 

Clare Archibald (b.1969) is a Scottish writer from Lanarkshire now living in coastal Fife. Twitter: @archieislander

From the Vaults

Posts — Doug Jones [27/06/2018]

“Reimagined the bomber myself, to the point where it
was new = new – for this was the 1 bomber we could
belong to, + there, in a continuum of being – from lamb,
to ginger our comrade navigator struck, dead – but of a
sudden, functionally reborn, ploughing the basic Nazi
state at night – a color book in flames. Ginger on the
tube back to Aldgate ways was his life, a remaining wall
– species changing”

Doug Jones was born in Romford and initially studied English at Warwick, he then completed an MPhil on the poet Bill Griffiths. He has published two poetry books with Veer, and his work has also appeared in datableed, VLAK, Junction Box, tears in the fence – as well as a few other places. 

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Coming next month …

Fiction from Isaac Zisman, Chris Kohler, Clare Fisher, Douglas Glover, and Ian Farnes; Matthew Kinlin interviews Misha Honcharenko; Cristina Politano on Egon Schiele; poetry from Roque Dalton, and more …