The
Weary Blues
ISSUE
VI
AUGUST 2014
The
About
the
weary blues
Journal
The Weary Blues is about facilitating the free dissemination of literary
and artistic culture. Production costs present significant barriers to
publication, particularly when it comes to those disciplines represented
in this journal. New and established authors and artists are finding
it increasingly difficult to spread their work to a wide audience. It is
hoped that The Weary Blues will contribute to the alleviation of this
pressing issue.
Submissions are welcome at thewearyblues.org
The Weary Blues is published in Cork city by New Binary Press
ISSN: 2009-521X
New Binary Press wishes to acknowledge its Advisory Board
Graham Allen
Noel King
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Anne Fitzgerald
Dave Lordan
John Keating
Medbh McGuckian
Sandy Baldwin
Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Michael J. Maguire
Billy Ramsell
Órla Murphy
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Editorial
Cal Doyle
Editor, Poe t ry
Cal Doyle was born in 1983. His poetry has appeared
in many journals and anthologies including Southword,
The Burning Bush II, and The Galway Review. His short
story “Marcus” appeared in the anthology 30 under 30,
an Irish Times ‘Book of the Year’. He has read as part of
Poetry Ireland's Introductions Series and at poetry events
and literary festivals around the country. He is working
separately on a first collection and a debut chapbook of
poems. He lives in Cork.
Nora Duggan
Editor, Visual Art & Photo g raphy
Perceptions of time and place inform the predominantly
site specific nature of Nora Duggan's art practice.
Using digital still and moving images, she frequently
makes reference to the 19th century development
of their analogue equivalents, and the potential they
promised as quintessential agents for the representation
of place and time. Her work can be described as digital
interventions, seeking to infiltrate the narrative structure
of a photograph or film, particularly in relation to the
construction of memory.
Nora is currently a PhD student at The Huston School of
Film and Digital Media, NUI Galway. She holds an MA
in Fine Art (Art in the Digital World) NCAD, Dublin
(2011), and a BA in Fine Art, DIT (2009).
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Lenora Murphy
Cop y -editor and Pr o of-r eader
Lenora is currently completing an MA in Texts and
Contexts: Medieval to Renaissance, in UCC. She
also holds a HDip in English and a BSc (Hons) in
Chemistry with Forensic Science.
J a m e s O ’S u l l i va n
Fo unding Editor
James O'Sullivan founded The Weary Blues in September
2011 in an effort to increase the dissemination of creative
literature and art. He writes a bit himself, though not very
well. Further information on James’ work can be found at
http://josullivan.org
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Poetry
A n to n y Ow e n
ANTONY OWEN is from Coventry. His first collection of
poetry My Father’s Eyes Were Blue was published in May 2009 by
Heaventree Press.
Candy Cane
The things they did at number twelve
were shrink wrapped in pallets
and sold in the flea market.
They pixelate womanhood,
download her pseudonym,
groping bodies with a cursor.
Dreams boil in baked spoons,
beaks of her arms opened,
slumped in alleyways of pierced veins.
Gannets of needles resurfaced,
from blue skin to spume,
wave after wave crashed a spent shell.
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Daniel Ryan
DANIEL RYAN was born in London to Irish parents and grew
up in Tipperary. After publishing poems in a number of journals
and magazines, both in print and online, he is at work on a debut
collection.
Blue
I wanted to make a mosaic of the soul
out of the glints of your smile,
so that something would fuse tightly
and stick me together for once.
Out of the glints of your smile,
I would construct a whole yardsale
of religious icons and much loved
family heirlooms that we'd keep.
I would construct a whole yardsale,
where we'd sell shiny bits
of wholeness and exotic fruit
to passers-by who'd look in
At where we'd sell shiny bits
of the garden of childhood, they'd marvel
at the prettiness of Joni Mitchell's Blue,
wellness, suntan, Vitamin C.
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The garden of childhood and marvel,
I'm ripening with new meaning,
sitting on a balcony overlooking
fruit trees and open ground.
I'm ripening with new meaning,
inside or out or any way round,
whether it's apple pips in the stomach
or reflective surfaces in the sun.
Inside or out or any way round,
the metaphysical blue glow
is not to be denied as I pretend
to look at razors in the chemist aisle.
The metaphysical blue glow
is a pregnancy test you hold.
I'll accept a grown-up life of 33,
I wanted to make a mosaic of the soul.
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Graham Allen
Graham Allen is the author of the autobiographical digital poem
holesbygrahamallen.org published by New Binary Press in 2012.
His poetry has been published in numerous journals, including
Cultural Politics, Revival,Cyphers, Theory & Event, Irish Poetry
Review, Southword, The Shop, Other Poetry, The Rialto, The
Stinging Fly. He was the winner of The Listowel Single Poem
Prize 2010 and has been short-listed in The Crashaw Poetry Prize
2013. Graham is a Professor of English Literature at University
College Cork. Among his academic publications are influential
books on Mary Shelley, and Intertextuality. His debut volume of
poems The One that Got Away was published by New Binary
Press earlier this year.
The Purpose of Love Poetry in Twenty-First
Century Ireland
In the driveway of the 357th house
on the 599th abandoned ghost estate,
where no car has ever driven
and no human eye will ever say goodbye,
where no photographs will ever be snapped
or surprise birthday party spill outside,
where no birds sit on drying hydrangeas
and no postmen anticipate waiting dogs,
where no meter readings will ever be taken
or quick illicit kisses ever be snatched,
where rain splashes thick on unwashed concrete
and urban wolves search in vain for food,
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where rats scurry out from mud clogged drains
and hungry crows peck between drab-coloured slabs,
where snails inch out from sodden gutters
and nothing disturbs the keening of the wind
the welcoming shade of the Japanese knotweed.
No Name in a Junior Disco
Bright lustrous eyes
straight white teeth
a recognizable style of haircut
remarkably tall and craning
clothes from somewhere upward of Next
shy enough in the scrum
and yet popular
as if all the girls already know
one wants to say scent
and could almost say sense
that there is something not quite right
something taboo
something vaguely dangerous
Byronesque one might venture
vampyre romantic one might add
sublime if even not just take him home gorgeous
and all of the boys
well they are more than eager
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tripping over their own shadows
and their own cool
to shake a leg back
at his more than nimble shoes
and his more than subtle smile
and his more than graceful moves
and his presence of somewhere else
and thoughts in another brighter head
and home in a truer country scene
as if the creature came out of a lake
and could speak of fresher worlds
having heard much better news
having seen much better people
knowing exactly and without reserve
what's coming around the corner
the new terminator toy
the new heat seeking missile
the new kid on the block
the new boy in this old town
cutting a dash a dash for his name
grinning away like a pent up tiger.
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F e at u r e d P o e t
J o h n W. S e x t o n
John W. Sexton’s fifth full collection of poetry, The Offspring of
the Moon, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. Under the
ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album
with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons
Of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is also
the blog poet Jack Brae Curtingstall. He is a past nominee for The
Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the
Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. Also in 2007 he was awarded a Patrick
and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
Transcending the Mortal Universe: Scifaiku as
Compressed Signal
About seven years ago I began experimenting with scifaiku, a verseform that was widely considered to be no more than a poetic ghetto.
This supposed ghetto was disdained, vilified, shunned by many selfrespecting haiku poets; and I entered it for that very reason. It was,
in short, the perfect place for experimentation and development;
potentially anything could be done with scifaiku because it was
considered something of a verse rodent; a vermin glimpsed scurrying
in the literary shadows. It was the perfect lab rat; very few loved
it, cared for it or even cared about it. If poems die in the ghetto,
nobody mourns them; if they are maimed, no one is particularly
bothered. Here was a verse-form ripe for hybridisation, suitable for
any mutations a poet might wish to impose. No one was overseeing
any imposition of responsibility upon scifaiku, and responsibility
is the enemy of literary experimentation; in the assumed ghetto of
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scifaiku I was free to be irresponsible; I was at liberty to be wild.
Scifaiku interests me because it has all the prophetic and satirical
elements inherent in science fiction. It is also a perfect seed-bed for
metaphor. As my minimalist influences I looked beyond traditional
haiku: two important voices from the past were both from the
Central and South Americas; one a poet and one a fictioneer. The
poet was the Mexican metaphoricist haiku poet José Juan Tablada
(1871-1945), and the fictioneer was the Guatemalan Augusto
Monterroso (1921-2003). Tablada was the first poet to introduce
the haiku into Spanish poetry, but his own verse was fluid in the
freedom of its imagery:
Pavo real, largo fulgor,
Peacock, long glare,
por el gallinero demócrata
you pass through the democratic
pasas como una Procesión … chicken-coop like a procession
Augusto Monterroso worked mainly in short fiction and was
recognised for bringing innovation into the form; one of his more
famous, and possibly notorious, contributions, was his use of the
single-sentence short story. It was my idea with scifaiku to utilize
Tablada’s fluidity of image; to let metaphor infect everything. To
my mind, the themes and subject matter of scifaiku should be all
those elements common to the literature of science fantasy; from
alternate history to alternate worlds, to future visions, to sociological
satire, all of them encompassing the general impingement of the
fantastic into the logical universe. It is also my contention that a
single scifaiku should contain a discernible narrative or fantastic
“situation”. No less than its cousin, the fictional story, its scientific
concept or premise should be encapsulated in a compressed “plot”.
The aim here should be to approximate what Augusto Monterroso
was attempting in his celebrated minimalist fictions.
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Disdain from the mainstream notwithstanding, scifaiku is
undoubtedly a rarefied Muse. In five years of scifaiku composition
the form has somewhat melded my poetic perception. Scifaiku
is ultimately like a compressed message from another universe; is
spastic through Space and Time. It is the voice of the oracle; the
crossword puzzle clue of the Ouija Board. It does not need to be
surrounded by white space as haiku usually demands; it is best
left in the vicinity of chaos, vying closely with more of its kind, so
that many scifaiku together can thus operate as a form of cryptic,
seeping dream from the dense, garbled universe of the subconscious.
Individual scifaiku move at velocity; they should thus be relentlessly
hurled at the reader, one after the other in sequences like chemical
code. Scifaiku is the Dark Matter of Poetry; penetrating everything,
passing through all other Matter and Mind. It is the ultimate license
for the poet, granting the liberty to be unstable.
Soul of a Thrush
her invisible friend
reveals the noose-door ...
Heaven through the ceiling
everything at once ...
Keats-a-Gone
enters the Nothing
a novel in solid
black ink ... Finnegan's Ache
still on my fingers
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pines dense under
starlight ... the concept
of weight
x-ray vision ...
he sees the tumours he
spawns with a look
a pearl at the centre
of the moon
pointlessly invaluable
the soul of a thrush
trapped in the rosewood desk
... the poet's room is grey
lottery picket
a cough arrives
from the future
... A Sense of No
afterglow from the lampshade ...
a stairway opens
deep in the wardrobe
crystal meth ...
the moon presses its forehead
deep into mine
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blackbirds ate
her every thought ... a sense of no
in the meadow
the silk folk
drift through us …
invasion a sighing
weaving a thought-gate
the spiders spin moonlight ...
Tao unburdens Tao
leached auras from the
newly dead ... London a tower
of compressed shadow
shiny red liar-engines ...
they douse the black spot
on the pontiff ’s tongue
without a weapon
or even a thought ... grass
takes back the world
stepping from the rath
her fungal suit
blossoms blue
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The Jellyfish Lens
forest enclosure ...
he folds origami stairs
from sunlight
Pa Radox's
cunning inside-out-box
spills what it keeps
is-not of is ...
he rides upon the space left
by his stolen horse
a love like star clusters ...
everything further apart
than it seems
krill big as whales
the sea looks right
in the jellyfish lens
tipped ...
the chair falls to a state
of perfect balance
an itch for the goddess ...
cuckoo intones itself
in the hawthorn cleft
can-opener ...
turning anti-clockwise
Miss Gnole severs a can't
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Tea Time is O
porcelain rocket ship …
ladies, prepare to press
the shatter button
travelled by shuttlecock
to another Dimension
... returned forthwith
horses without skin
gallop their guts loose …
how pure the burnished sky
holes in his pockets
money was nothing
to the nillionaire
nightshade muffins
tea time is o
ver in no time
let's eat the navigator ...
no singing and dancing
in Angri-La
at the Tree of Knowledge
... there was an old woman
who swallowed a why
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peruse the professor's
collection of shouts?
he wouldn't hear of it!
in memory of
our invisible friends ... when childhood died
they died
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R a c h e l Wa r r i n e r
RACHEL WARRINER lives in Cork with her young family. She is
completing a PhD in the School of Art History, UCC. Her most
recent book Fine Lament was published by Critical Documents.
Rachel is a founding editor at RunAmok press and organises the
Soundeye and Avant festivals in Cork.
My own private snide-a-ho
wellwishing our monsters
mountains of clothes
those noises immense and sinister
we made the baby for modernism, now he's all grids and
planes
banished downstairs
louder but defeated
thinpatience exposure
come play our super-deluxe-flagship game
****MISOGYNIST OR SNOB??****
time for smiles and snarks
your gurgles
advocating gussets
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their concerns: formal; ours: political
(do we win?)
children named for poets and poems
but what a meeting
filial bores
my god
stand up you ranters
'this doesn't stop anywhere'
male certitude?
destroy your rectitude?
am I here?
duckrabbit
whitewhine
professor without portfolio
up tripping
through mirrors
our scraping
at hallmarks
we're standing
in relation
but I
can't for
the life
of me
work out
why.
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contort this angle girl go casting
'dose of prunes'
bird storm
a cappella
rubbish for vestige
our separation
we'll run with
bar[r]e[n]ness
in code
colonised
my cells
my sells
hive exception
webswarming
that touchstrengthstability
crackle at sea
that glimmer
pale & paler
gumsmile
slumped
strength fail
strive empty
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remaking our homes
in pretty
witty patterns
verve revelation
those shiny buttons
and bootshine
boutiques
splatter blood
on the walls
(40s style)
doodlebug chic
just lovely
holding you for gravity
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R i c h a r d H aw t r e e
RICHARD HAWTREE completed a doctorate on Anglo-Saxon
poetic manuscripts at UCC in 2009. He now lives in Hindhead,
Surrey where he writes articles concerning early medieval texts.
Translations from German and Icelandic have appeared in
The Penny Dreadful. His poem Matinée Idol was shortlisted
in the 2013/14 inaugural Ó Bhéal International Five Words
Competition.
Three Cork Haiku
Repositioned Fireplace, 1597
Down North Main Street, high
Above us a fireplace floats –
Excavated hearth.
Inverted Ship’s Cannon, 1800
On the Grand Parade
A cannon sinks its muzzle
Deep into lost streams.
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Modern Sheela-na-Gig, No Date
Way up Lavitt’s quay
Her swift parting of stone thighs
Stuns the passing feet.
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Short Fiction
D av e
Lordan
Dave Lordan is the first writer to win
Ireland’s three national prizes for young
poets. He is a former holder of the Ireland
Chair of Poetry Bursary Award, the
Kavanagh Award, and the Strong Award.
He is a renowned performer of his own
work, which the Irish Times called ‘as
brilliant on the page as is in performance’,
and has read his work by invitation at
festivals and venues across Europe and
North America.
www.davelordanwriter.com.
@vadenadrol
Dark Madonna
She decided to stop washing herself. She decided to stop grooming
herself in any way whatsoever. I don’t know if she continued wiping herself
after going to the toilet. I don’t know how she dealt with menstruation, or
if she avoided it altogether by taking the pill. If she made any exceptions to
her filth regime, they were not obvious.The stink was obvious. It was dense,
and complex. It had tones and layers and unexpected interactions; sweat,
dirt, feces, urine - fresh, maturing, fully matured - all mingling, all churning
one into the other. Whether the stink came at you intermittently in waves,
or whether it settled unbudgingly around you, there was no getting used to
it. It was best not to eat or drink anything for a few hours before you went
to visit her. When somebody retched, or fled out of her presence to go vomit
somewhere, she just clicked her tongue and continued to smoke. Everyone
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who visited her brought something to smoke - it just about covered up
enough of the stink to make being there bearable.
At first some of her concerned and anxious friends tried to talk her out
of her decision, but there was no talking her out of it. Her laid-back friends
just said let her at it, she’s stubborn and contrary and that is why we like her,
that is why we started hanging out with her in the first place. Rebels forever,
remember? In a month or so her filthy condition became both familiar and
unmentionable, like a mother-in-law’s alcoholism.
She grew an actual beard.
Many Irish people believe, or say they believe, that you can drink
yourself sober. Similarly, some who heard about her in the pubs and groves
rumoured that she counted on achieving a perfect, edenic cleanliness through
letting nature take its course all over her, from head to toe, from foot-sole
to follicle. She was convinced her body would learn, or remember, how to
clean itself using it’s own natural, gaia-like, self-regulating processes, which
had been smothered under the relentlessly promoted chemical treatments
of industrial modernity, especially those treatments aimed at modifying the
female body in a romantic way. She could have easily picked up such a
notion, they said, during one of her penniless hitches around lesser-crossed
europe, perhaps from the crusties she reputedly lived among in a settlement
of tepees and treehouses somewhere in the foothills of the Slovak Tatras.
On her return to Ireland - when the only immediate sign of what was
to come were matted dreadlocks and unseemly feet inside rotting old clogs she had ended up in an emergency hostel sharing crowded space with alcies
and junkies, who never leave off moaning and scrounging and rowing, not
for one minute of the day or night. The real reason she turned herself into
a ball of stink and dirt, into a germ hive, into a bearded lady, was because
it stopped her undead ‘housemates’ from hassling her all the time. The way
she was, the way she had made herself, the addicts wouldn’t go near her.
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She disgusted them and they were afraid of her. They thought she was some
kind of witch who could curse them to death if she wished*. She was a dark
Madonna I suppose, a Madonna of the worms, the beetles, and the bugs.
Eventually, her HSE assigned social worker, who had long taken to
wearing a mask and surrounding herself with a cloud of air freshener while
visiting her, found her a place to live and she moved in to it. She started
washing herself again shortly afterwards. She shaved off her beard. If you
were to meet her now you would never in a million years guess what went on
with her before. She looks amazing and smells of rosy soap, lemon balm and
mild perfumes, subtle intoxicants evoking airy formal gardens and gently
raining summer days.
*Irish street addicts are by and large informal syncretists, holding
passionate admixtures of christian and paranormal beliefs.
The Book
She longed for the book to escape her; an ecstatic ringing out in several
languages at once that would be going on for days, after which she'd be
surrounded by a glowing nimbus of never-before-scented perfumes. Surely
the perfumes would survive her for a while and might even be enjoyed in
distant and unprophesied times by creatures with unknown minds and
purposes. The book would be made of secrets she had held inside for
decades. These secrets were from her childhood and her teenage years.
They concerned certain unforgettable, almost unspeakable things she had
witnessed or overheard, which she had done or which had been done to
her. At first the secrets had been unruly and nomadic. They mingled and
meandered in her brain and her blood, crying and shouting and racing
around dangerously like a mob of toddlers in a playground. They had no
proper order or tellable pattern of motion. Occasionally one would bubble
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up from her throat unpredictably and she would bite down hard to swallow
it, whether or not she was in company. As of yet, she wasn’t ready to give
voice to any of the secrets and she felt sure that they were not ready to be
given voice to either. The kind of secrets she had needed at least twenty years
of cooling down and losing radioactivity, losing viciousness and virulence
before being let out into the world. They must be released at the optimum
time and only for the right reasons.
Her lover said she spoke nonsense while she slept, so she set up her
laptop with an audio programme that could record her sleeping all night.
For a couple of weeks she exhausted herself by spending most of the day
listening back to the noises she made in her sleep. There were many, all
of which were of interest in some way, but none related to her secrets. She
concluded that her secrets kept the same hours as she did and slept when she
slept. This made her feel happy, confident, and exonerated.
As the years went by the secrets quietened down a little even during the
day, yet continued circulating energetically inside her, interbreeding with
her organs, her dreams, her impressions, her lusts. The secrets made her
inner life unpredictable and vivid, a rambunctious carnival as opposed to
the passionless stage-play of her outside existence. Even so, no behaviour of
hers did not somehow bear the trace of one or other of the secrets.
In her forties her aging secrets and their no longer youthful offspring
gave up their separate lives and, dying off, congealed into a book. She
felt the book's hard, pressurizing mass fill out her stomach, her bowels,
eventually her lungs and her throat, her pancreas. She did not have the
time (children, husband, parents, work, illness), nor perhaps anymore the
drive or the intelligence (she was smarter, more driven when young and
under-burdened), to figure how to release it. It was not solely a question of
method or orifice, of finding the right coach or right oils to ease passage. It
was a matter of hunting, relentlessly, the key question, the inevitable riddle
in response to which the book would spin out of her and appear before
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her in material form as the only possible solution. Over the long and then
suddenly vanishing years, she asked herself endless questions relating to the
book. Unfortunately, although the process was at times educational and
engaging, the book itself was the answer to none of these probings and
interrogations. Slowly, mercilessly, the book turned from solid to gas, heated
up, and expanded. Everything solid and not solid inside her was in turn
dissolved into the encroaching gas of the book, which knew no limits and
trespassed into everything without concern.
Time dripped on and on until the day she was nothing but an inflatable
with a barely working tongue. The book evacuated her simultaneusly through
all her pores and exits; a long, agonising exorcism that went on for weeks,
punctuated by screams and ululations, after which she had been absorbed by
a fog of her own unoriginal stink. Briefly, the stinkmist floated around and
above closest friends and relatives. Soon it had completely dissipated, and
will eventually participate, along with all the rest of her, and all the other
written/unwritten books, in the heat-death of the universe.
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Art
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Art
Mark Doherty
D ubl in, Ir el and
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Mark Doherty
Artist Statement
"My work seeks to create alternate worlds in which to satirize
our own, allowing us to look at our foibles exaggerated and thus
challenge them by laughing at ourselves. Through this framework I
build narratives which address such diverse issues as body image, our
view of the ‘other’ in society, urban social isolation, mans conflicted
relationship with nature, and society's newfound adoration of science,
celebrity and material wealth, among other things..."
About this work
These images are selected from his series The Desired Realm
(2012). The Desire Realm is one of the three realms (or worlds)
in traditional Buddhist cosmology into which a being within the
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cycle of death and rebirth can be born. According to Indo-Tibetan
Mahayana Buddhism, The desire realm is divided into six domains,
sometimes also called the six paths of suffering, among other names.
They are the Deva Realm, the Asura realm, the Human realm, the
Animal realm, the Preta realm and the Naraka Realm.
Although each of the pieces in this series of images is named
after one of the Desire Realms in Buddhism, they do not relate to
Buddhism on a conceptual level. Rather, the names simply serve as
an initial inspiration for the images.
To view more work by the artist, check out the following
websites:
http://www.oliviercornetgallery.com/#/markdoherty/4562132026
https://www.facebook.com/MarkDohertyArtist
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M i c h a e l H i gg i n s
D ubl in, Ir el and
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M i c h a e l H i gg i n s
Michael Higgins is an experimental filmmaker/artist based in
Dublin, Ireland. He has exhibited widely throughout Ireland and
the US, most recently screening his short film Funnel Web Family
at The Picture Show, Greenpoint, NY, USA. Michael’s 2013 feature
film SMOLT won an Award of Merit at The Indie Fest, La Jolla,
California, USA earlier this year.
Michael Higgins website
http://www.mgmh.me/
SMOLT
http://f6-preview.awardspace.net/mgmh.me/SMOLT/about.html
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R u b y Wa l l i s
D ubl in, Ir el and
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R u b y Wa l l i s
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R u b y Wa l l i s
Ruby Wallis is a lens-based artist and PhD researcher at
NCAD (Dublin) who is concerned with the multiple issues in
representation of landscape, portrait and place. She has been
developing a phenomenological approach to exploring space and the
fragmentation of self through photography and the moving image,
and the particular genre of ‘slow cinema’. She is currently working
intensively to bring her practice to conclusion through image and
text.
Ruby is presently on residency at CCAM Galway (2014).
http://www.rubywallis.com/
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S u b m i ss i o n s
The Weary Blues welcomes submissions of poetry, short fiction,
visual art and photography. Please follow all submission guidelines
precisely as they are listed on this page – scroll down to ensure that
you have read these in their entirety. Submissions that do not adhere
to these guidelines will be rejected.
Poetry submissions should be sent to:
[email protected]
All other submissions should be sent to:
[email protected]
Submissions Guidelines
The Weary Blues does not accept simultaneous submissions. Please
submit to only one category per edition.
Literary Submissions
All submissions of literature, poetry and short fiction are to be
accompanied by a third-person biographical note, as well as a
suitable colour profile photograph.
The work of literature, biographical note and profile photo are all
to be contained in one single file ( .pdf, .doc, .docx or .rtf ), which
should also include your full name, e-mail address and contact
details at the beginning. Please ensure that the formatting of your
work is print ready and will appear as intended across differing
productivity suites.
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Name this file using the following convention:
[Poetry/Short Fiction] – [Author] – [Title, Title]
Example:
Poetry – Joe Bloggs – Title of Poem
Please submit no more than 5 poems, with a page break between
each piece. Short fiction should be limited to approximately 3,000
words. Please submit no more than two stories.
Visual Art & Photography
Please submit no more than two images, and please ensure that these
are named. In addition, include some brief biographical details, and
some details on the origins of the submitted work (background,
inspiration, influence, methods etc). If available, please also submit
a suitable profile photograph. Please include your full name and
e-mail address with your biographical details. Include all photos and
details within one single file.
Name this file using the following convention:
Art – [Author] – [Title, Title]
Example:
Art – Joe Bloggs – Title of Artwork
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Response & Copyright
Please allow sufficient time for a response. The copyright for work
that has been submitted remains with the author, though we would
ask that you credit The Weary Blues and New Binary Press in any
subsequent publications. All issues pertaining to existing copyright
and licensing agreements are the responsibility of the individual
making the submission. By submitting your work to The Weary Blues,
you are giving permission for that work to be freely reproduced by the
journal in any particular mode or form that they see fit. Your work
will be offered freely online and via other means of distribution, to as
wide an audience as possible.
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