ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

This anthology, which contains contributions from quite a few members of this website, should be available within the next two weeks. All contributors will receive a copy, and others can be ordered as of now via the Melbourne Books website: http://www.melbournebooks.com.au/awbv2013.html

It's 256 pages long and has a total of 50 stories and poems, the vast majority of them first-prize winners from a variety of competitions in 2012. As editor, I've written a general introduction plus introductions to two other specially-chosen sections, including one or two comments that might raise a few hackles here and there. If you want to see a full list of the contents, including who's in it and the competitions involved, go to: http://www.melbournebooks.com.au/upload ... ntents.pdf

The publisher, David Tenenbaum, is looking for publicity opportunities, and would be interested to hear about any key regional media contacts that anyone has...radio, newspapers, TV that might run a story, do an interview etc. with a contributor. Please send the info to David at: dten@melbournebooks.com.au

Given the range of material in this book, the majority of which is bush verse, it's a great opportunity to showcase the whole bush poetry scene.

Cheers
David

and what a great showcase of poets and poetry it is - well done David for putting it all together - I just bet it is fabulous

Congratulations and well done indeed David ...

Thanks, Maureen and Manfred. The book is an interesting snapshot of a year in the bush poetry world (as far as written competitions go, anyway). As such, it builds on the terrific archival work that Brenda has been doing for the ABPA.

It does highlight one difficulty I had, though. There is no organisation for bush stories, so there was no network I could tap into when sourcing material. There are many stories written "...about Australia, Australians and/or the Australian way of life" (some, including mine, have appeared in the book's sister publication Award Winning Australian Writing), but there doesn't appear to be any group or set of competitions dedicated to this area. Which seems odd given our great history of storytelling...the likes of Henry Lawson, Dal Stivens, Steele Rudd (Arthur Hoey Davis), Alan Marshall, Christina Stead, Hal Porter, Kylie Tennant, Patrick White, Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Richardson), Frank Dalby Davison...and many others more recent. Tim Winton's The Turning has just been made into a film, which is most unusual for a short story collection.

So there's a question worth pondering. Why have we never had (as far as I know...please correct me if I'm wrong) an ABPA equivalent for short stories?

Cheers
David

A very good question David. Perhaps it asks more about inertia than literature when you consider the large number of short story competitions across the nation.

Well done David.

I am waiting with eager anticipation.

Mal

Perhaps it's because the line between bush stories and contemporary stories is even more blurred than with poetry. With poetry it rhymes or it doesn't, although some contemporary poets are now writing poems that 'scan', which I interpret to mean rhyme. And of course we have the perennial debate on this forum about whether rhyming verse on modern themes qualifies as bush verse, but I think that's been well and truly thrashed as a topic and I don't mean to start another debate on that.
There are many writers' groups around, and there doesn't seem to be the 'you're in one camp, I'm in the other' attitude that we see at times in poetry. Many 'bush' short story writers would, I'm sure, belong to groups such as ACT Writers and its state equivalents (as I do).
I'm only guessing, of course. Happy to debate the point.