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SWAMP – Number 12

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Issue 12

Biannual Image

Kirsten McIlvenna

SWAMP is an online magazine that exists to feature the writing from postgraduate creative writing students. Edited by postgraduate writers, it is a great community for these students.

SWAMP is an online magazine that exists to feature the writing from postgraduate creative writing students. Edited by postgraduate writers, it is a great community for these students.

This issue starts with Laura Elizabeth Woollett’s “Plum Orchard,” which is saturated with brief, rich images: “If I were fruit, I would be long-fallen, like the plums that squelch underfoot. These are the fruit that the hornets like best. They haunt them like Ted Bundy at the dumpsite with his dead girls.”

Kezia Perry’s poem is a haunting image and apology to a whale:

Touching the grey brow, I spoke my sorrow at the task.
For after checking the shallows, I killed the whale with dynamite.
Afterwards, it was still, nothing but wind, and sawdust falling onto sand,
Amid tiny specks of red.

Briony Gylgayton’s “1920” has interesting and new images, ones I wish I were clever enough to write:

We swam in red brick pools
and spread ourselves like cream cheese.
She touched my arm
only to find that it was a parasol
while I dressed in pale purple
and imitated a flower,
opening my mouth to let the bees in.

Lynette Washington’s second-person narrative plays with the idea of how we all wear different hats, or in this case, shells. In this story, you have two jobs, one in retail, and one painting the shells for hermit crabs and selling them to the pet store owner. You realize that the shells can represent your personality or your feelings toward something.

You are different people, depending on who you are with. You know this and you even know when you are self-censoring; you have that awareness. It’s always with family and with work, never with friends. They are your three groups and your three personalities: family, friends and work.

Also featured in this issue are authors Mona Zahra Attamimi, Aleksandra Lane, Christine Piper, David Gilbert, Autumn Royal, Michalia Arathimos, Rochelle Hairman, Philip Porter, Helen Heath, Cassandra O’Loughlin, and Jannali Jones.
[www.swampwriting.com]

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