Verge Creative Writing

New Australian writing from emerging and established writers The blue geometries of the seats of a departing train. Lightning striking twice out of the blue. The rhythm of faint blues. Blue is the most mysterious and evocative of colours. It can signify the beginning of love and the end of life. It can evoke tranquillity or tension. For Ted Hughes, blue is a 'kindly spirit', an 'electrified', 'thoughtful . guardian'; for Joni Mitchell, it is a sigh-filled song, a 'foggy lullaby'. For Henry David Thoreau, the 'blue ground' is the source of 'new truth'. And Goethe writes: 'We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances us, but because it draws us after it.' In the nineteenth edition of this creative anthology, writers from Monash University and beyond share fiction, nonfiction, poetry and experimental forms. They explore shades of blue that ravish the senses, narratives saturated in melancholic hues, and poetry that hums with an electric charge of blue.

New Australian writing from emerging and established writers The thirty-one stories and poems in this collection explore our defiant acts, from the small, everyday moments of revolt to life-changing actions in possible futures and imagined pasts. From the unbridled ambition of a scientist to the assassination of a king, and traversing themes including the anthropogenic impact on climate change and the intersectional nature of identity, this scintillating collection takes us into the moral quandaries, ambitions and desires of those in places near and far. Crackling with energy and originality, these pieces are united by a singular intent: to defy the expected, whether in form, subject or content. They reveal the best of Australian writing today. Featuring contributors including Carmel Bird, Sofia Chapman, Elena Disilvestro, Warwick Sprawson, Cameron Semmens, Arwen Verdnik, Ashleigh K. Rose, Paris Rosemont, Jane Downing and Koraly Dimitriadis.