Month: November 2024

The Duchess

November 23, 2024

The Duchess, starring Jodie Whittaker, is an updated version of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. As in the original, the widowed young Duchess secretly marries her steward and has children by him, leading to violent intervention from her brothers, one of whom is a cardinal. A bloody second act leaves pretty much everyone horribly dead (this is John Webster, after all).

Good performances and a suitably stark setting, but the update doesn’t work well. The Duchess’s seduction of her steward is played for laughs, which makes it hard to accept later on that this is a passion people will die for. The characters are given a sweary, casual, 21st century manner, which makes their Jacobean behaviour puzzling, and undercuts the horror of the later scenes. Are they just mucking about? The audience laughs at lines they are meant to take seriously, as if the whole thing were a parody or a historical sitcom.

It may be that the intended message is that our patriarchal attitudes are still all too much like those of the seventeenth century: but the play sort of demonstrates the opposite. These people actually seem pretty weird and keep doing things for no reason a modern, egalitarian mind can grasp. I think Webster needs a kind of claustrophobia and deep passion to achieve his impact, and neither is present here, unfortunately.

Drawing the Italian Renaissance

November 22, 2024

A remarkable exhibition of Renaissance drawings at the King’s Gallery. It features stunning works by Leonardo, Michaelangelo and Raphael as well as many other artists – in fact I thought the most memorable drawing of all was an amazingly vivid head of St Thomas by Caravaggio (not that one, the less well-known Polidori da Caravaggio, no relation).

It is astonishing what fine shading with chalk, ink and charcoal is achieved in some of these drawings, up to a smooth, perfect modulation that verges on photographic: but others are bold sketches which were only working drawings. Quite a few have the pinpricks which were used to guide copies: a few have the tiny black dots which resulted from blowing fine black powder through these holes.

The gallery provides paper and pencils for you to have a go yourself if you’re brave and/or talented enough. Not me!

December 2024 Competitions

November 20, 2024

Another list of competitions I might consider entering – so no flash, poetry or competitions I’m ineligible for.

  • The Breakwater Review contest has a deadline of 1 December, costs $10 to enter and offers a $1000 prize. Stories up to 4,000 words.
  • The Black Fox looks for up to 5,000 words on the topic ‘Fragments of Time. It costs $12 to enter and the prize is $325. Submit by 1 December.
  • The Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration, from L’Esprit magazine, wants up to 5,000 words of ‘risk adept narration’ by 2 December. You can pay $10 or $15 for a quick response (within three days)
  • The Witness Literary Awards want you to ‘contextualize the American experience, highlight issues of global concern, grapple with the relationship between the personal and the political (however defined), and/or keenly observe interior/exterior landscapes.’ You’ve got a maximum of 7,000 words to do it in, and it will cost you $8, for a possible $600 prize. You’ve got until 5 December.
  • JuxtaProse will also take up to 7,000 words, and though they charge $18 their prize is $1,000. The deadline is 6 December.
  • You could be recognised as an Anthony Veasna So Scholar in Fiction if your submission, by 11 December, pleases Adroit Journal. You can submit up to three pieces which should total no more than 9,000 words. It costs $15 and the prize is only $200, but still…
  • The Columbia Journal Winter Print looks for stories up to 7,000 words – $15 entry, $500 prize, deadline 12 December.
  • The Masters Review Chapbook contest wants 25-45 pages. It costs $25 to enter and you could win a decent $3000 plus 50 copies of your chapbook. Last year it was 75 copies, but perhaps they have realised that giving away that many is a bit of a challenge, even around Christmas. Enter by 15 December.
  • Fabuly’s competition is refreshingly free. They want 2,000 words on ‘An Unexpected Encounter’, and you could win $500 with online publication of illustrated and audio versions of your work.
  • Globe Soup, that splendidly supportive Facebook community for writers, is running its big competition again – 8,000 words max and £8 to enter (once you’ve paid to enter one of their contests you can join the esoteric community where there are regular free competitions and other good stuff) for a prize of £2,000. Get your entry in by 16 December.

The rest all have deadlines of 31 December, possibly so you can use that nice pen/notebook you got for Christmas.

  • The Lascaux Review will take up to 10,000 words: entry is $15, top prize $1,000
  • Boulevard magazine will take up to 8,000 and charge $18, offering a prize of $1,500.
  • The Danahy Fiction Prize from the Tampa Review costs $20 to enter with a prize of $1,000. Stories up to 5,000 words.
  • Write Time is for the over-sixties only. Only 1,500 words, in recognition of our tired old fingers, and it’s £5 for one story or £10 for three, winning £100 so you can get a little gift for your grandchildren.
  • If you write horror, Killer Shorts want a story up to 6,000 words. It’s $30 to enter and you could win a package of benefits including publication and a mentoring call: but the real draw is a trophy in the form of a skull typewriter – whatever that is.

I hope you find something useful in the list, but please choose your competitions carefully and don’t just enter randomly, as I’m constantly doing. This year I submitted to about half as many as in previous years, but it still amounted to about one entry a week (I don’t write that fast – some stories were entered for multiple contests). Seven of those entries achieved some kind of recognition – one longlisting, four shortlists, one third place and one win. That’s a hit rate of 15%, marginally up on the surprisingly consistent 13% I’ve had in past years.

But the year’s not over yet! Merry Christmas!