A smile for the labour ©JK.Leahy
A smile for labour
Her hands once tender
Cultivated hardened soil
Hardening her soft hands
In labour she offered you
Tired, dried, and withered
Kept in safe, warmth and fed
In her heart’s tender glow
She watched you grow
Watching growth take you
Blossomed and robust you
Moist, fed and comforted you
Then a gift arrived, packaged
In reward, for a hand tendered
You surprised her
Your first smile, a glorious bloom
For the hardened hand
Her heart lifted
And smiled
Fantastic Christoph! Great post.
The wait is over:
“You’re Not Alone” an anthology in aid of MacMillan Cancer Care has been released. A paperback version is also available! Get your copy now!
Twenty-seven writers from around the world, including myself have entered an assortment of short stories for your pleasure, show your support by liking the new page on Facebook and expressing an interest in buying the book.
100% of the royalties earned or accrued in the purchase of this book, in all formats, will go to the Pamela Winton tribute fund, which is in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.
An anthology, themed on relationships, of more than 20 authors
from around the world – from urban fantasy to stories that bring tears to the…
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A section from a free verse I have submitted for The Crocodile Prize: Papua New Guinea National Literary Awards
Tribes ©JK.Leahy
Tribes
Innocent children
New generation manufactured
Wear insanity clots in their brains
Pride and hate chokes their virtue
Tall, brave, strong the powerful warriors
Weak, tiny, gentle, still vow quiet achievers
Education’s location teaches disparity
Traditions and rituals are fading colours
Ancestors cringe and weep in graves
Chanting laments, many rhythms
Echoing songs 300 tongues
Traditions decomposed
Decrees derail
Lost
Click here to see other entries: The Crocodile Prize
Are Australian short story writers an endangered species?
I found this review by Geoffrey Dean, an accomplished Tasmanian (Australian) writer quite interesting especially while editing some of my short stories for competitions recently.
I enjoy writing short stories, ranging from “Mondays Finish the Story” (Barbara W. Beacham) flash fiction challenge of 100-150 words to stories I have written in 1500 to 3000 words in our Creative Writing Workshop with Isabel D’Avila Winter. In short story competitions, the limit to the number of words you are required to write can really change a story, as I have found recently while reducing one of my 1500 word short stories to 1000 words for a competition. I have felt in the past week that I probably could have spent less time and written a better story, if I wrote a completely new story. On the other hand, I found it much easier to increase the number of words of another short story from 800 words to the required number, 1000 words. The additional 00 words may have slowed the phase of the story, but it is work-in-progress.
Submitting to literary magazines also calls for a fit. You have to write to specific requirements with type and paragraphing or head-lining, but the main challenge is the number of words to fit a page or a column. So how can you fit into the system? Can you be less descriptive or reduce the number of characters without taking from your plot or could you do without long passages of back-stories without killing the story?
In the following review, “Are Australian short story writers an endangered species?”, see how author Geoff Dean writes about his process of creating a short story and his discussions on the steps that took him to the end where the answer about short stories and their lengths are quite clear. As Dean writes, one must always aim to write a good short story first and foremost before trying to fit the story “into the system”, i.e., the magazine page size or competition requirements…in other words, to hell with the system, I am going to write my story my way and eventually find a place for it.
“Are Australian short story writers an endangered species?”
Geoffrey Dean has published 80 short stories. The Tasmanian Writers’ Centre (TWC) in conjunction with Island Magazine and the Geoff and Elizabeth Dean Foundation have just launched the Geoffrey Dean Short Story Competition which is now open to Australian writers.
Born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1928, Geoffrey Dean (Geoff) had his first short story published in the mid-1950s. Scores of his stories have appeared in eight collections of his work (Mysteries, myths, and miracles; Under the Mountain; The Literary Lunch; Strangers Country and other stories; Cold Dean Monday and other Australian stories; Summerbird and other stories; Over the Fence; and the Hadlee Stories), as well as magazines, anthologies and collections in Australia, the UK, USA, Norway and China. He won many literary prizes and awards, including the State of Victoria Short Story Award and the Arafura Literary award. His story, The Town that Died was made into a TV drama and broadcast by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1986. Geoff died in August, 2011.
RRP AUD22.95, or via this site for AUD$20.
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Roaring Forties Press,
PO Box 368 North Hobart, Tasmania 7002 Australia
Night Travels © JLeahy
In the black of the night
Mind’s curtain drops
A screen unfolds
Scenes after scenes
Words travel in echoes
Enemies captured
Friends laugh
A child cries
Someone screams
Emotions grip you
You are afraid
Someone holds you
In places only dreamers go
Shapes blend into pictures
And fades into nothing
Spirit walks, runs and flies
In just one night, a lifetime,
can become one story
Until dawn brings the ending
It’s not news that the world of printed text on paper is challenged in the 21st century by digital media and the reorganization of how information is created, distributed and accessed. Knowledge saving and sharing continues to be reinvented – 5000 years ago the Incans used a device called a quipu made of string and knots for communication, 3000 years ago the Sumerians had libraries containing clay tablets while the Egyptians used papyrus and parchment scrolls.
During the Han Dynasty the Chinese invented paper to write on and in the 15th century Europeans began printing with movable type to create a codex. In the 1970s computers were incorporated into the printing process.Social and environmental conditions along with technological developments influence the structure of books that are produced. These objects evolve to fit the needs of the cultures that use them. Today there are e-readers with names like kindle, nook and ibook. For nearly a decade my response to the current transformation has been to use discarded encyclopedias as a material to create art works and large scaled installations as an expression of the significance and potency of the printed word on paper. Read More
Life Has Left Me © JKLeahy 2015
A proud, strong and phenomenal woman
The time awaits me for what I am to become
Across the dark lake the fog has hung
To shield my journey I obeyed to take
Like many a journeys I have taken
I push the boat into the lake
Paddle cuts thick in life’s oblique
Each stride reaching for the end
I break the fog as it consumes me
Heart not willing to let go, I know I must
Upon reaching the other side, body shivers in cold
Darkness encloses, waters still
Life pushes back against the will
The shadow arrives and becomes me
My life has come to decease for now
In a fleeting glance I see my daughters and son
The grand children and friends
My heart swells in love and happiness
What a legacy I have constructed
Living on, the beauty of life and its greatness
Unto him I will see – the final release lifts me
I drift to the heavens, where my final resting place
Written in loving memory of Mum Kathy by Joycelin K Leahy. (copyright)
Sunday March 29th 2015.
For a woman who was beautiful in and out. My friend Belinda’s mother Kathy Moeder who died peacefully after illness. We buried her today in Brisbane after a wonderful funeral where there was sadness and pain, but many stories of Kathy’s life with happiness, humour and celebration. Kathy Moeder believed in love, family, rights and safety of others. She was a Peace and Women’s advocate and a dedicated Christian. She was truly loved.
In 1990, Wassoulou singer Sangare became a superstar in West Africa with Moussolou, which sold an astonishing 250,000 copies (many more were likely pirated). She received much of her attention for writing and singing lyrics that specifically addressed concerns of women in modern West African society, such as the conflict between marriage and personal freedom; not a shocking subject in the Western world, perhaps, but a pioneering one for the popular music of the region. Western listeners who can’t understand the lyrics will be drawn in by her mellifluous vocals and smooth, circular compositions, which use full arrangements without sounding over-produced. Both traditional instruments and electric guitars/basses are prominently used (without getting in each other’s way) on her 1993 release Ko Sira, her most widely available recording in the U.S.
The universe has her own way. You never know when she will strike next – and whether it be for better or worse. Every day of living is a routine of heading for the ending. We must continue to believe in living for the moment. I believe we must also question each action we take and its consequences. In my culture, my grandma has taught me, after a soul leaves the body it moves to the resting place, but a restless spirit will always wander. Peace and forgiveness has to prevail before a dead man’s spirit can find the resting place.
In the past few days I heard of three deaths. Of the three deaths, two I knew and respected. Their news was very sad for me. One left me feeling winded, overwhelmed, surprised and it tugged at deeply buried emotions from cruelty and pain. unresolved living can change life. It was a timely beginning of the ending for me. I feel a new phase in my life. It was time to let go. In the hours after I received the news last night, strange things happened. It should not but the Universe has her own ways.
For what I know and believe in, I question, when those that are cruel to you die, where do their spirits go? Are the wandering spirits seeking forgiveness or are they playing on your mind. I pray for the former and I hope for a peaceful resolution – one of forgiveness, healing and moving on. I know one day this feeling shall pass.
( JLeahy Copyright)
Farewell Monster
He died, leaving behind
privately and securely,
a legacy few desire
Markings made by his hands
Unbeknownst to audiences
Secret exhibitions
Wounded, bruised and broken
A heap in doll repair shop
A thread shall patch
Gauze will cover
A wig shall alter
Like salt, familiar
each time memory stings
And, like animals, cowards,
we will cower as shadows lurk
It happened in the mind,
his father’s trade
That was how he started,
his father’s legacy.
Admittedly, one
he never admired
Only hope shall turn fate
I pray for his sons
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a renowned Nigerian novelist was born in Nigeria in 1977. She grew up in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State where she attended primary and secondary schools, and briefly studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a major in Communication and a minor in Political Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale University. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught introductory fiction. Chimamanda is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun, which won the 2007 Orange Prize For Fiction; and Purple Hibiscus, which won the 2005 Best First Book Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the 2004 Debut Fiction Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2009, her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck was published. She was named one of the twenty most important fiction writers today under 40 years old by The New Yorker and was recently the guest speaker at the 2012 annual commonwealth lecture. She featured in the April 2012 edition of Time Magazine, celebrated as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. She currently divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Tribalmystic Stories 