Voiceworks is now open for submissions to issue 126 'Portrait'
Theme: Portrait
Flash fades, edges soften; a blade of light sits beneath the curtain. Brush strokes sharpen, context unfurls as frames are carefully shattered and re-hung, windows slide open to the worlds behind your eyes. Corners suddenly rendered oblique. Familiar angles bend and break.
Hold or avert the dominant gaze, carve out space to become, to craft. The world canvasses you. Gallery view slides into a hall of mirrors, splintering portals that you reflect infinitely, intimately. How do you represent the self?
Now what we do is: we paint and paint in order to ascertain anything. For example, in my wallet I keep a picture of your future daughter, around her a cornucopia of riches, in the old style: pears mid-fall from her lap, coins mid-fall from her mouth, love mid-fall from her eyes. Do I love or fear her? All we know is that she falls from herself eternally yet witnesses us coldly and forever now, from beneath that curtain-lidded gaze.
Now this, this is a portrait of a man with a plan. Look; see how his hand is caught mid-rise in the act of pushing his glasses further up his nose, a side-eye from Horus. Look, he says: this is a portrait of hell. (in hell there are mirrors everywhere. in hell you may never function unseen). He pulls from his blazer pocket a flash card. His hat says: Q! (the numbers gyrate always slightly beyond your comprehension. someone refuses to stop painting you, yet your future wife refuses to pose for a photo. she dips, sways, and dodges, and you are thrown into this terrible forever sadness)
Now Dorian Gray was a special case; he went out of his way to sell his soul. A portrait to live, a life to fade, light morphs, water eddies, shadows pall in Mona Lisa oils. Images glisten on whale blubber film, photographs shot from the hip in an urge to record, to save face, to capture. Sontag: ‘A grammar and even more importantly, an ethics of seeing ... we can hold the whole world in our heads.’
Then the world turns and the sun swims over to the dark side. Q: What is behind a mirror? A: it turns out it resembles the sea, bodily and fluid. (and the mirror-form is tempestuous; it reaches out, out of the silver canvas and moves your floppy bangs aside to get a better look at you. These two-way streets stalk among us, the ungovernable image, as sensitive as opinion)
Now take a picture, for you never know, you may need it later.
~Thanks to EdCommers Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn and Ruby Constance for the blurb~
Remember, you don’t have to stick to the theme! Our themes are a prompt more than anything else—a springboard to get the creative ideas flowing. Most of all, we just want good work.
Print Guidelines
Voiceworks accepts fiction, poetry, nonfiction, art and comics, but before you send your work our way, here are some rules:
We are only able to publish writers and artists who are under the age of 25 (that is, 24 and under) at the time of submission.
We only accept work by people living in Australia (including international students) or by Australians living overseas.
We only consider previously unpublished work.
Each category has its own submission page with specific guidelines, but here are the basics:
Fiction: send no more than two stories, each no more than 3,000 words.
Poetry: send no more than three poems, each no more than 100 lines. We recommend reading our poetry guide here before sending us your work.
Nonfiction: we recommend that you pitch your nonfiction work before sending it to us. Head here for advice on how to construct your pitch and write good nonfiction. For completed work, send no more than two pieces, each no more than 3,000 words.
Art and comics: please keep in mind, we print in duotone (only two colours of ink) and our page dimensions are 170 x 245 mm. We recommend you pitch your comics before sending them to us. For advice on how to pitch your comics, check out our handy guide here. Please send no more than three artworks or comics.
We encourage you to submit across genres, but please send us no more than four submissions in total (excluding comics and art).
Deadlines
Nonfiction pitches—Sunday 9 January, 11:59PM AEDT
Fiction, completed nonfiction and poetry—Sunday 23 January, 11:59PM AEDT
Art, comics and comic pitches—Sunday 6 February, 11:59PM AEDT
Rates of pay
$100 for written work and art
$150 for multi-page comics or suites of art
You’ll find further details and submission guidelines here. Please read the information carefully and contact Voiceworks Editor Adalya Nash Hussein if you have any questions or concerns.