edited by Kate Harris, Leah Gardiner and Hop Dac
Sunday Drivers Press
From Intro:
“Writing about family—particularly real family—can be an intensely personal, far from easy thing to do. We are both honoured and grateful to have the opportunity to share these stories and poems with you.
To take this book back to the seed of its creation is to go back to a summer night in 2006. The three of us were lolling about a lounge room floor, allowing the conversation to be driven by whim and wine. At some point a particularly hilarious family story was told and from there they continued to flow, with the conversation eventually turning to the seemingly bottomless well of quality narrative material families provide. At this point, the idea for Blood was formed.
Our approach was very simple. We contacted individuals from a range of backgrounds who we thought could tell a good story and we asked them to write about family (and where possible provide an image to accompany their piece). They were free to choose the form their writing would take and the specific subject matter within the broader theme of family. The only real condition we placed on them was that whatever they wrote, it must be non fiction. Our feeling was that when it comes to family, the truth is not only stranger than fiction but often more moving, funny and engaging.
As the one unavoidable commonality of all humanity, family has long provided writers and artists with a direct doorway to the universal. Over the months that the submissions came in, we sat reading lumpy-throated at desks and laughing out loud on trams, and we hope that Blood has its own resonance for you.”
Contributors:
Sally Blenheim
Jason Cavanagh
Liam Cochrane
Hop Dac
Kristy Davidson
Martin Downey
Corrina Dichiera
Gregory A. Erdstein
Leah Gardiner
Marieke Hardy
Kate Harris
Joshua Jennings
Kami
Darren Levin
Lucy Selleck
Jon Tjhia
Rodney Todd
Daniel Watson
Robert Williams
Available from:
Melbourne – Collected Works Book Shop, Polyester Books and Readings – Carlton
Adelaide – Dymocks – Rundle Mall, Mary Martin and Imprints
Perth – Planet Books
Hop Dac
,
5 months ago
Sample:
My Dad is so Shit
by Lucy Selleck
My Dad had polio as a kid so only one of his arms worked and the other one just dangled by his side like a skinny wet pillow.
When I was seven, he got me to help him on the farm and do his right arm jobs. He made me hold down a chicken’s neck while he swung the axe down and chopped its head off. The decapitated chicken ran right toward me and sprayed blood all over my face. I cried and cried and my tears mixed with its warm blood and trickled into my mouth.
My Dad and I were in a parking lot looking for a car park. He drove up to a park that a woman was backing into and swerved in just before her, pushing her out of the way. She turned around in her seat with her big arms moving around to signal that she was there first and we had wronged her. From the movement of her hands and awkward arch of her neck she clearly had cerebral palsy. He yelled and pointed to the disabled parking spots up further, ‘GO USE YER OWN CAR PARKS!’
My Dad came around for my engagement party, grunted ‘Here,’ and dumped a huge bag of stale peanuts that he got for free from his pub on the table. That was what he gave us for our engagement present. Then he asked my friend at the party if she liked cock.
My Dad and I would get into huge arguments and I finally told him I was gay just to shut him up. He told me, ‘You’re not gay, you just want something to whinge about. You could be FUCKEN elephants for all I care, just get a FUCKEN job!’
My parents were always dropping me off to school late. One day I got there and I cried that I couldn’t go in because my hair wasn’t tied back and I’d get in trouble again. So Dad got some electrical tape and wound it around my hair a few times. Big chunks of my hair had to be cut out to get it off and I looked like shit.
bellmusker, 5 months ago
Quite a confronting story just before I head off to bed! But very capably delivered….will keep an eye out for the book next time I’m in Collected Works. Congratulations on yet another publishing success!
Hop Dac
in reply to bellmusker’s comment,
5 months ago
this was launched last year, bell, during the Melbourne Writers Festival. just took my sweet time about adding it to here.