Wet Ink review – uncompromising from the very first page
Wet Ink issue 15
This Australian literary magazine is uncompromising from the very first page. Issue 15 begins with a gentle diatribe from co-editors Dominque Wilson and Phillip Edmonds on the growing popularity of e-books and online publications, concluding, wisely, that it’s the content that counts, rather than the medium.
And content is something they know all about, as Wet Ink is full of intelligent, thought-provoking writing. The most powerful of the stories paint vivid images of Australia that resonate even if, like me, you’ve never been there.
Dust, mangrove swamps and brighter than bright blue skies team up with raw dialogue and action to portray a country that’s young and wild: unabashed. No unnecessary adjectives cast their elongated shadows over these passages. Instead we’re treated to rare glimpses of the richness of everyday life.
Natural History by Emma Silverthorn is an extraordinarily tender yet brutal description of a teenage lad missing his mum. We begin to understand the complexity of his feelings as we learn that his mum abandoned him a year earlier, choosing to take his brother with her yet leaving him behind with his dad. Emma’s clarity of voice shows how writing what you know doesn’t always have to mean writing what you’ve lived.
There’s a gorgeous unpretentiousness throughout these thick pages, sporting bold graphics and typography that reveals a hunger for experimentation that’s shared by many of its writers.
A literary cavalcade
Sunblind by Geoff Lemon is a literary cavalcade with verse after verse of treasures - I particularly liked: “She says that the sky is dusty/that they should take it down and run it/through a slow-rinse cycle./It must be slow:/she’s worried the stars will fade.”
There’s a yearning note to Geoff’s imagery that makes me read it more than once, relishing each of the verses as separate mini-poems as well as part of a delicious whole.
I could happily rhapsodise about each of the works published in this edition, from the chilling Girl in a Fishbowl by Yasemin Sumner to Emily Fleming’s beautiful yet horrific Keisha, while Evan Guilford-Blake’s Porn Star reminded me that sometimes truth is more compelling than the most imaginative fiction.
For information on how to submit or subscribe please visit www.wetink.com.au
To submit a review of a book, course, film, magazine or website, please email judy@EssentialWriters.com
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