bath bomb

bath bomb

    by Carly Waller   This piece was awarded first place in the second 2022 Swinburne Sudden Writing Competition.   The bathroom bench is dirty; no one has cleaned it for months. There are splatters of white from my broken dry-shampoo bottle, bits...

deere in the headlights

deere in the headlights

by Cael Gorozidis   Content warning: This piece contains descriptions of injuries and a motorbike accident.   A name. It’s who we are. Even if we don’t know who that is. No matter how you wear it, it’s how we define one another. Like paint showering mundane...

witness

witness

  by Matilda Bolt    This piece was awarded third place (tied) in the 2022 Swinburne Sudden Writing Competition. The rain fell steady as my friends were married. The manicured lawn was mud; the gutters overflowed; droplets balanced on suit shoulders and strands...

skirts

skirts

    by Matt Richardson   This piece was highly commended in the 2022 Swinburne Sudden Writing Competition.   I tell my sibling not to wear their skirts in our refuge’s communal areas. There were boys the night before making awful jokes, saying things I never...

lemon tree

lemon tree

  by Sarah Cirillo   This piece was awarded first place in the 2022 Swinburne Sudden Writing Competition.   The lemon tree stretches its arms out wide, boughs heaving with fruit. Underneath, there is a graveyard of rotting lemons, sickly sweet and...

i still haven’t got my breath back

i still haven’t got my breath back

A prose poem of “found fragments”, compiled by Julia Prendergast in homage to Swinburne student readings: ‘Tell me’ / Sudden Writing Spoken Word Event, 13 April 2022.   I don’t understand you and I don’t wish to She wanted to paint him… her brush swelled with...

journey to the end of the line

journey to the end of the line

  by Jarryd Worland    Studying at uni has afforded me the luxury of working-class travel on Melbourne's suburban rail network. Growing up within arm’s reach of both school and the shops (thanks to access to a personal taxi service: my parents), I’ve never...

a blipped education

a blipped education

  by Charlene Behal   There is something that all students have in common upon returning to campus this semester: the past two years of our lives have been stripped from us. The closest thing I can equate the experience to is feeling like we’ve been...

language

language

  by Aisha Noorani    Language, perhaps, is not merely the endless attachment of letters to letters, and words to words. Perhaps, it is all and everything that can evoke something in you and me, or I and we. Perhaps, words allow the enslaved to be free, the...

a force to be reckoned with

a force to be reckoned with

  by Jessica Norris   Almost a year ago, I wrote an article that highlighted the necessity of validating women’s voices in the public sphere. A line from this article read: “How we react to the testimonies of women, and their voices in society, will be the...

remembering Richard Mercer’s ‘Love Song Dedications’

remembering Richard Mercer’s ‘Love Song Dedications’

by Yvonne Aoll   Can you believe it’s been eight years since Richard Mercer last hosted Love Song Dedications? For well over a decade, Australia’s ‘Love God’, Richard Mercer, dominated late-night radio with his honey-toned voice, endearing personality, and...

dear sister

dear sister

  by Zoe Sorenson   Your plants are still here. I guess that’s kinda obvious since you couldn’t really fit multiple potted plants (or stupid kid-brothers) in the one duffel bag you packed when you decided to leave forever.   Still, you loved them so...