Maggie Nelson opens her luminous work of prose-poetry Bluets with the following provocation: ‘Suppose I were to say I had fallen in love with a color’. Blue, for Nelson, is the colour that ravishes her senses, signifying the beginning of love and the end of life. Goethe writes: ‘We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances us, but because it draws us after it’.
Verge 2025 is looking for new writing that responds in some way to the colour blue.
Share with us poetry that alights the senses with blue; narratives infused with shades of cobalt, indigo and cerulean; any and all writing tinged with this most mysterious and evocative colour.
Guidelines:
We welcome submissions from all writers in Australia. We seek short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, experimental or hybrid works, and artworks. Artworks will be published in greyscale.
You may submit up to three works in one document. Fiction and non-fiction should be no more than 3,000 words in length. There is no line limit for poetry, and submission in A5 document size is encouraged. Please only submit previously unpublished work. Simultaneous submissions will be considered but please let us know if your work has been accepted elsewhere.
There will be prize money on offer for best overall and best student submission, with the amount to be confirmed closer to the submission closure date. All contributors will receive one copy of the print book. The book will also be published online.
Submissions close 9 February 2025,11:59 pm AEDT.
Please send your submission to verge.monash@gmail.com. In your email, please include your name, contact details, and a brief author bio (no more than 50 words).
If you are a student at Monash University, please indicate in your email whether you are undergraduate or postgraduate.
