This week has been a long week. Lots of meetings, and a new month means new project being released. Space Wars is my first physical zine – and a real challenge of handwriting my poetry. The WORLD is an old set of poems that I first pulled together in 2018 and are now finally all the way through the pipeline. And the final project for this month, walking places, is a photography collection I’ve been slowly accumulating shots for over the last five months.
I also went to a very interesting lecture by Maggie Ma (an architect from Hong Kong) put on by UQ School of Architecture and the State Library. Many things were mentioned but I think one of the most interesting, and most transferrable, was the sense of not trying to be the solution to the problem. Ma works with low income clients, often as a small part of a much wider systemic problem, and the reflection that their work was importantly a small piece of a much bigger picture was thought provoking. It reflects the sentiment that I’ve seen in a few places recently – to focus on smaller initiatives and to back up existing programs rather than trying to conceptualism a big and shiny ‘solution’, particularly people are coming from outside the group they’re trying to help.
This week, find following: a dark prose short called Chill; a poetic short; and an illustration to accompany a poem featured here previously called History.
Thought provoking reading,
Alexei
Chill
A stiff breeze. A rattling thunk. An insidious hiss. It’s so cold that even under the blanket my bones feel like they’ve been turned to ice. My blood can no longer warm me, instead it transports a lifeless chill around my body. I wonder, when the train stops will they find me alive. Or will my corpse have stiffened and paled, preserved like a marble statue by the cold winter night. Another breath forces ice shards into my lungs. The train chugs on.
A brisk walk
A full platform
A packed out auditorium
Alexei Vimpani 