Flashing the Square,edited by Linda Godfrey and Bronwyn Mehan. Spineless Wonders 2014 and Writing to the Edge, edited by Linda Godfrey and Ali Jane Smith. Spineless Wonders 2014.

In the introduction to Flashing the square, the editors mention the “problem” of how to read short and micro-fiction and suggest various approaches, including “on the ceiling while you are sitting in the dentist chair.” Having been produced as a companion publication to Richard Holt’s video installation Flashing the square (Melbourne Writer’s Festival, 2014, in Federation Square), this idea isn’t necessarily absurd. This, however, is a book, and it presumes a more relaxed situation, a matter of choice about when to take time to read rather than be distracted from scraping, drilling and grasping tools.

Almost as a comment on how to read micro-fiction and prose poetry, the left hand pages are blank. This creates a visual space that is unusual but very helpful in a collection of very intense, occasionally difficult pieces which require both visual and intellectual space if they are to be assimilated.

On first reading, Flashing the Square did not pass my bookshop test—the first, quick reading and flick through the book usually given standing in a bookshop prior to a decision to purchase. Some of the pieces seemed almost squashed, with too much left out in pieces that would benefit from as little as a dozen more words. Others began with lists intended to set a scene, but which seem pointless and boring. But on second and third reading, the works fell into place within themselves, images, ideas and words fell into place and began to expose themselves. Daniel John Pilkington’s ‘Tram 96 to St Kilda’ is an example of this. It began badly, with a list that did not inspire me to read on:

Corners. Jolting. Shoulders, elbows, knees, bags and flat faces, various tablets with their soft illuminations, their persistent genii.

When Pilkington turned from this list to describe aspects of being on a tram, the piece lifts, and then he writes about two young brothers:

One simply refuses: to have a conversation. The other seethes: you wouldn’t know if you were having a conversation. And the first, triumphant in closing some esoteric syllogism, nods: a conversation is when someone hurts someone. Silence.

This marvellous observation is dropped into our awareness then taken away again as Pilkington returns to a description of being on a tram in the aftermath of the conversation.

The works in this particular book often require patience, and expect the reader to delve deeply into themselves and their lives, fleshing out the story with an understanding of the possibilities lying within the words on the page.

Of course, there is a sense in which all writing demands this type of engagement from the reader, but few books contain work which puts the reader on the line along with the work, and in this book the reader definitely is on the line, facing a space deep within themselves. This seems to be because the writers have challenged the reader with spaces within the work which can be filled only by imagining between and beyond the words. At least partially this was because many of the ideas were larger than the allocated space

In many respects, what I’ve said reflects my own difficulties with the book, and one of these difficulties was a particular surprise to me. I experienced on ongoing urge to revise and re-write many of the pieces. This is an urge to which I am not accustomed, except with my own work. Usually I just don’t like the piece I’m reading, and I move on, or put it down and don’t read it. But these pieces kept me reading even when I stumbled over an idea or word.

When we turn to Writing to the Edge, the situation is quite different. None of the pieces seem smaller than the ideas and story they are presenting, and I feel more at home reading this book.

Whilst both books have a large variety of subjects and story lines, the constraints on the size are looser in Writing to the Edge, and authors have been able to fit their ideas into pieces whose size is more in accord with the ideas and their treatment. Hence we find small one paragraph pieces such as Elizabeth Hodgson’s ‘Crone’s which presents us with the idea of a group of old women:

Not just old like your granny. But older. Older than anyone else you’ve ever known about. And they’re there at every funeral of an elderly person. No one calls them. They know when to appear.

These women, unknown by anyone, may even be dead themselves, Hodgson says. And there are even smaller pieces by the inevitable Philip Hammial, ‘Family Reunion’ for example:

Aunt Jane is in father’s bed. Uncle Jack is in mother’s bed. I’m in bed with seven cousins, male, female, trans. Who will do what to who is anyone’s guess.

For the most part the longer pieces are more akin to what we think of as “traditional” stories, a perfect example of this being Mark Smith’s Joanne Burns Award winning ‘10.42 to Sydenham’.

In this story a man, about whom we learn little, saves a young woman from being harassed by louts on a train. All we really know about him is that he had killed people when very young. Clearly not a normal activity for an Australian. Only at the end of the story do we discover that he is coloured when the following conversation occurs:

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Sydenham,” he replied politely.

She laughed, but caught herself. “I’m sorry. I… I mean, what country?”

He smiled, a brief flash of white teeth. “I know what you meant.”

The “problem” of how to read micro-fiction does not appear in this volume; nor did I feel the urge to revise or re-write any of the pieces. There are challenges and ideas needing to be experienced, and they left me feeling fulfilled and happier for the reading.

All in all, Writing to the Edge is a much more pleasant volume to read; it is the book you would give someone who doesn’t usually read micro-fiction. Flashing the Square is the book you give to someone who already reads and likes micro-fiction, someone who is up to the challenges it provides.

– Bruce Muirhead

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BJ Muirhead is a writer and photographer living in rural Queensland. He has published online and in print journals, and was included in an anthology of Queensland poetry (1986). He has published art criticism and was photographic reviewer for the Courier-Mail newspaper in the 1980s. His writing and recent exhibitions, Primary Evidence (2011) and Flesh (2014), continue his lifetime interest in the human body and its relation to the inevitability of age and death. He can be found at http://bjmuirhead.wordpress.com and http://inaforeigntown.wordpress.com

Straddling Prose Poetry and Microfiction: Shady Cosgrove launches Writing to the Edge: Prose Poems & Microfiction can be found here: https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2014/09/12/straddling-prose-poetry-and-microfiction-shady-cosgrove-launches-writing-to-the-edge-prose-poems-microfiction/

Flashing the Square is available from http://shortaustralianstories.com.au/products-page/microlit/flashing_the_square/#more-4074. Writing to the Edge is available from http://shortaustralianstories.com.au/products-page/microlit/writing_to_the_edge/#more-4097

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