At thi wurd, we are currently working on an anthology. It’s a continuation of a journey that has taken us from Issue 1 of our magazine (2012), through the publication of other magazines, anthologies, books, events, classes right up to our recent Issue 4 (2021). Readers who’ve followed us on this journey will have noticed the degree to which we shifted gears in Issue 4, reaching out into new fictional, poetic and visual forms. The anthology we’re putting together now will continue this journey and move us further along that road. I’d like to see submissions of fiction that ‘reach out’ and tell us great stories. Allow me to put down some thoughts here that might guide you a little …
… THINK Revolver as an evolution from Rubber Soul, Tomorrow Never Knows, For No One, THINK Brian Wilson making Pet Sounds, & Frank Zappa freaking out to a do-wop melody, The Velvet Underground and Nico – Heroin playing in your headphones, Ulysses as a page-turner, Miles Davis pushing forward into the 1970s, Live Evil, & Keith Jarrett improvising on a rehearsal piano somewhere in Germany, play some Joni & Leonard, Jean Rhys is genius, while you just smile & pick up a copy of Finnegans Wake & read any page, but don’t forget melody, oh get me to the story, make it important, pure essence, root it in beautiful tellability, is this important? urgent? tension & electricity? give me experimentation but make it experimentation that works, don’t bore with style for the sake of style, no postmodern shit required, give us art with soul, verbal inconsistency is a plus, MBV – get inside the music, live inside it for a thousand years, Bjork is here, Revolution 9 is sublime, would this story captivate me if you were simply to tell me it in a pub conversation? me listening? what are you telling me? does this story actually matter? should I care?, by the way what’s the greatest story you’ve ever narrated in your life? what is the greatest single conversation you’ve ever had? what is the most captivating thing anyone has ever told you? and what was the very greatest night of your life? you HATE Jean-Luc Godard, big deal, you LOVE Jean-Luc Godard, big deal, tell me a story that gives me a rush, NO GIMMICKS PLEASE, no tricks, NO OVERWRITING, please don’t over-explain, don’t over-describe, here comes everybody, here comes your man, here comes side two of Bowie’s Low & you used to hate it, but now you love it, it’s Tago Mago, it’s Radio-Activity, what’s your favourite Smiths’ b-side? Really? Mines too, & if you liked Alan Bates in A Kind of Loving, I bet you also watched a season of films starring Rod Steiger & felt changed afterwards, how were you changed? You have no idea, but you feel it, sensations beyond words, images remain through the years & decades, can you WRITE stories that ALLOW PEOPLE TO FEEL THEIR OWN EMOTIONS?, stories suffused with emotion, contradictions are fine, lack of resolution = life & death, is that Mieko Kawakami, or is it Ingmar Bergman? Roberto Bolaño is here, Keri Hulme, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Laura Hird, SHADOW KINGDOM, what’s your favourite t-shirt you’ve ever owned? Do you still have it? It’s good when you hear a cello on Nirvana songs, eh?, outdoor drinking, walking on beaches, happy/sad moments, nights when you felt eternal, fear of death, art that scared you before you loved it, a game of darts turns nasty, & are you really that fucking good at snooker?, c’mon, what’s your highest break?, I just watched Druk by Thomas Vinterberg & I’ve been thinking a lot about Mads Mikkelsen’s face, what are the thoughts you have that you shouldn’t have?, no self-indulgence please – you think this is self-indulgent?, I think so too, but THINK instead about Benny, Björn, Agnetha & Frida, some micro-fictions – yes please, the form & style come from the story, tells the story –: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s beautiful novel Naomi … stories that you CAN’T predict, full of artful possibility, NO MELODRAMA, don’t tell me, just show me, & that will tell me everything – room for the reader, don’t you know the reader writes 82% of the story?, no issue-based stuff, but issues that emerge organically can be thrilling … give me RCA paper single sleeves, Helen Frankenthaler, Agnes Martin’s pale paintings, early movies of Claudia Weill, & poems by James Schuyler & his letters to Frank O’Hara, Love You More by Sam Taylor-Johnson, depictions of weather in the films of Mia Hansen-Løve, afternoon drinking with records spinning – as you ask, my god is that side two of Hotel California? seriously? is it just the whisky making it sound so sublime? Glenn Fry in The Arlington, people drinking beverages in the films of Éric Rohmer, Kim Gordon talking about things she likes, things she dislikes, & Paul Weller in a vintage Mac: sudden heavy rain: Girlhood, noticing things quietly, light through windows, & soft, fragile line drawings by Tracey Emin, Lick the Star by Sofia Coppola, the photographs of Dominique Issermann, Sophie Calle – art about intimacy, Adrianne Lenker singing on Big Thief albums, Summer Babe (Winter Version), a young Daniel Johnston trying to get people to listen to his handwritten tape, someone suddenly pours you a drink … , a Gerhard Richter painting as a Sonic Youth album cover, Cynthia Powell at art school, Lydia Davis, there is Ismat Chughtai, & here is Thomas Healy, let Federico García Lorca translate Valley of the Dolls into Spanish, ambiguity is hoped for but so is skilful orientation, & you need to read Rebeka Njau: Joseph Cornell boxes, Debbie and Andy, photographs by Nan Goldin. Words by Denis Johnson, Amy Hempel, Emma Cline, John Fante, Lu Xun, Kathy Acker, Eve Babitz, Beckett’s Murphy, no desperados or scenesters or …
So hopefully the above is a nice little ABC as to what types of short fiction we’d like you to submit for thi wurd’s forthcoming anthology. Read our Issue 4 for more guidance. And don’t forget that brevity is god (pieces 2,000 words max, but 500 words can be perfect) and please send your fiction to: editor@thi-wurd.com by August 16th, 2021 (the 44th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley in Memphis Tennessee). If you haven’t heard back by August 31st, 2021 it means (sadly) we can’t use your work this time. But you can submit again in the future. THANKS.
