Hands Like Mirrors 2012

Last year about this time Stacey and I put together a little poetry anthology that we called "Hands Like Mirrors". At the time we wanted to support a lot of our Aus/NZ blogger poet friends and anybody else who was unsure about what they would call themselves or their writing, but knew they couldn't keep their words to themselves. 


We've been blogging here for nearly three years and for probably about half of that time have been reading poetry online that we adore. If you look at our blog you can see a giant list of the poetry sites, blogs and journals we love reading and honestly the list could be a lot longer. We felt there were some qualities we liked in the poetry we read online that was missing in local print poetry journals. These qualities we summarised in the blurb for last year's HLM:

The best things about the poetry that has flourished online are that it is honest, accessible, funny, unsure, changeable, sad, sexy, easy, lame, says everything, says nothing, says exactly what you want to say but can't work out how to, seems bleak, feels right, feels wrong, feels a bit rough, just makes you feel. 


I don't think anything has changed since we wrote that blurb. Over the last twelve months the "internet lit scene" has frankly boomed. An enormous boon. And understandably, we want to support those antipodean poets again with our lil ole journal. So we are really excited to tell you we've decided to make a second issue!


What you need to know:

First: You must be a resident of either Australia or New Zealand to submit (sorry! we do actually love everyone though)

Poetry submissions:
Please send up to 3 poems, with a maximum of 100 lines for each. Any kind of poem, any subject.

Fiction submissions:
Short fiction rather than long, think under 1000 words. No more than 2 stories. You can send poems as well, but be kind.

Drawings/illustrations:
We'd love to have drawings in this issue. If you do comics or graphic art or generally make strange shapes, we want it. Send us 2-3 things and potentially we may ask you to draw for a particular piece.

Everyone:
- Max 5 submissions per person please, we are only two people!
- Attach submissions in a word doc with 'Hands Like Mirrors' and your
name in the title
- In the document include a bio of no more than 50 words, in third person
- We will try to respond to you in the month after the submission deadline
- Email to hlmpoetry@gmail.com
- Deadline Sunday 2nd September 2012


If you are an Australian/NZer and you write things you should send us a lil something. If you know anyone who would be interested you should tell them about it too. Excerpts, videos, pictures and other 2011 HLM stuff is available here. You can probably buy one still if you like. 

Finally, if you've got any questions, send an email or leave us a comment. And if you know anyone whose writing sounds like something we would like, leave a comment with a link or an example.


Be yourself. Be brave. Submit.

yesterday i went to see best coast

getting there made 2 mistakes: thought it Shepherd's Bush was on the district line. it is not, so I stood like a dingus staring at the tube map at Victoria and then just asked the guard how to get to there

wore my "flatform" shoes because they are a) comfy and b) make me real tall so I knew I would be able to see over tallies good

was concerned about getting home from the gig midweek, had to check last trains home and at the station some Americans asked me how to get to the Picadilly line, suckas

got there, bought a "gaymers" cider (really?)

wanted to buy a best coast tshirt with a bear on it. I like to buy merch at concerts because I download most of the music I listen to and one time I heard that bands make most of their money from concerts anyway (y/n?), the girl at the merch desk was nice and interacted with me in a friendly way which i appreciated

dithered trying to work out where to sit, just ended up pushing halfway into the crowd. going to gigs alone is good because you can just smoosh yourself in anywhere. i got pretty close to the front, had a legit view, was standing near some sort of eastern european lot

i missed the opening acts because i had stayed at home watching the hairy biker's 'mum knows best'

best coast came on and they were really flat for about 15 minutes i thought, it seemed like the sound was pretty crap and i felt upset and i could see people enjoying it more than me and i thought "why am i not enjoying this" and then thought about what i would write when i could write about it

bethany's hair was less red than i thought it was irl

the encore was probably the best part, they came back on and played "i want to" and i sang really loudly like the biggest dingus in the park, just really got into it. they did a cover of fleetwood mac's song "storms" which was utterly stunning and it was like omg, this is why i love this band

the band that supported them came out and they did a cover of blink 182's song "damages" and that was also pretty enjoyable

they finished, lights came on, i waited for the crowd to disperse and rolled a cig to the left side of the stage where i could see two teenage girls fighting for the set list. one of the girls ripped off a corner and scurried back to her friend, they probably both posted about it on tumblr (just had that thought, impulsively, should i look up a picture of the set list on tumblr? feel intrigued about this)

walked home feeling pretty good about everything, just wanted to sing "summer mood" at the top of my lungs. realised how tired i was getting train to clapham junction and the overground was being shit and some trains just didn't appear and it really sucked,,,,,, i wrote emo things in my notebook on the stairs at clapham junction ,,,,,, my flatmate was high when i got home, her eyes were red and she said "i'm watching a really good darren aronofsky film"

20/06/12

sitting in a dim room with you opposite me, we are both on our computers and eating from the same bag of chips which is in between us

you just started gchatting me, we are talking on gchat now and not acknowledging that we are doing this irl

today on the bus you were trying to explain something to me about this band you liked and i was looking up at you and i saw an older lady looking at me and smiling really big and i realised it's because of the way i was looking at you

you favorite all of my tweets

you just tweeted something and i said no you should change it to this, and you changed it

you just put on iron and wine, we looked at each other and smiled then looked back at our computers, seemed good

just asked you if you wanted the rest of my plain ass roll

sometimes when you are speaking i think 'omg you are american' in an american accent

you are wearing a beanie, i am wearing a beanie

caught you looking at me, i say "what" and you say "nothing", feel like this has happened a lot

both moving our heads slightly while we listen to 'unfoolish remix' by ashanti

there is no music playing now, all i can hear is the sound of us typing and the heavy rain outside

People are just podcasts 7

Hey friends. It is time for another people are just podcasts. This is how we looked while we were reading them. The whole time.

It features poems/writing by Kerry Giangrande, Michael Inscoe, Gregory Sherl, Laurie Sauborn Young, Wendy Xu, Nate Pritts, Natalie Chin, Hilary Gardiner, Courtney King Kampa, Willis Plummer, Molly Kat, Mira Gonzalez, Elisabeth Murray and both Susie and I, guest readings by Alice May Connolly, Omar de Col and selected tweets from various babin' babes.

notes re: i am my own betrayal by guillaume morissette

 (playing a game called 'i zip this kitten up in my jacket')

- i like the weight of this paper
- like this: "on Facebook, people don't feel like people, they feel like smaller versions of themselves. kind of like standing on a rooftop and looking down and seeing people from afar as small and insignificant and ant-like and then thinking, 'i could crush them like party cups'. (this textedit doc always capitalizes the 'f' in Facebook and i don't understand why and please stop)
- liked the bit about 'the beginning of my inner life' - before i started reading i was thinking about 'inner lives' and i even wrote this on my blog: 'something about what it means to let a person into your inner life and them letting you into theirs, seems insane that that ever happens'
- 'this morning i have downsized my life to a cup of tea and a rectangle that allows me to click on things or people that i'll never have or be'
- seems accurate: "self love is a mental state
i can only reach through severe confusion"
- i like how he writes stories and that i can relate to things in his stories, i feel interested
- "you don't need love. it's extraneous, just a sad and desperate attempt at human relevance. it doesn't help" (the things we tell ourselves)
- lots of things about relationships and missing people
- he says that intimacy is addictive, yes, i feel like intimacy is different than sex and i'm not sure which one i'm less afraid of
- reading this the next day, i like the texture of the pages, i rubbed it on my face and it felt good, i went into the lounge and rubbed it on one of my flatmate's faces too
- feel like this book has made me think about things, and inspired me to write, the last book that made me feel this way was 'don't die alone' by michael inscoe
- i liked the story about the gaming, i like the 'introverted programmer' character
- i read all of this book whilst sitting in bed in my room alone, at some points i ate ice-cream
- really liked the story 'karpman drama triangle', i liked how he wrote it from each character's point of view
- "she liked mark, esteemed him even, liked his inner life, especially in comparison to joel, whose dialogue with himself was probably the sound outer space makes" - people's inner lives seem important to me, if i am seeing someone who is like the 'joel' character, i close myself off in a way, because i know that our inner lives could never meet
- just rubbed the book on my face again, i recommend this
- other things that i did whilst reading this book: binge ate corn chips, petted a cat, talked to people on gchat, cleaned my hard drive
- finished the book, felt good, told willis on gchat that i liked it a lot
- i closed the book, stared at the cover for a while, then inserted it into the poetry section of my bookshelf, sat back down on my bed, resumed staring at computer

03/06/12

today my flat mate was frying meat in a pan and i thought the sizzling sounded like a waterfall so i told my friends to close their eyes and imagine that

i keep thinking about inner lives and about sex and about how you fell off your chair and we laughed for so long

1) something about what it means to let a person into your inner life and them letting you into theirs, seems insane that that ever happens

2) sex is weird but okay/good i guess

3) i don't think i felt interested in you until after you did that

i spent my day hungover spooning my friends on a mattress on our deck
seemed life affirming

i feel very aware of the moon always

the moon is a constant reminder that human life is sad and beautiful and temporary, i like this feeling very much

my friend said something to me about 'pda' but she accidentally called it 'pdf' and i think we need to spend less time on our computers

i look forward to fitting my whole life in a suitcase

people always say to me 'you must be excited' and i say 'yeah'
but it's just another thing
new things to be worried about to replace old things

who cares