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Fish Anthology 2021

Fish Anthology 2021

ISBN: 978-0-9956200-4-9

SELECTED BY:

Emily Ruskovich ~ Short Story

Kathy Fish ~ Flash Fiction

Blake Morrison ~ Short Memoir

Billy Collins ~ Poetry

Read an excerpt from winning short storyA Correspondence  by Mark Martin

Read winning flash story Both On and Off  by Jack Barker-Clark

Read an excerpt from winning memoir – Blood and Roses  by Mary E Black

Read winning poem Letter to Dowsie, from Roethke in Ireland  by Greg Rappleye

 

Introductory Note

by Clem Cairns

Well, another strange year goes by; one more like that and it won’t seem so strange anymore. Whatever hardships and grief the pandemic has visited upon us, it has also bestowed on some a certain amount of opportunity. Writers everywhere have used the time freed up by the lack of normal activity to write, and we are gratified that so many have sent their work to Fish.

Emily Ruskovich, Blake Morrison, Kathy Fish and Billy Collins judged the Short Story, Short Memoir, Flash Fiction and Poetry Prizes respectively. It is not an easy task, so my deep gratitude to them for their time, for their interest in supporting aspiring writers, and for their wisdom.

To the 40 writers and poets in the following pages – congratulations! The quality of the work in this Anthology is astonishing. 

And to those many talented writers who almost made it in, I hope that your work will find the light of day in another publication or a future Fish one.

 And to the readers of this Anthology, I hope you are transported by story, memoir and poem. That you might, in the words of Billy Collins,

………  water-ski

across the surface (of a poem)

waving at the author’s name on the shore


 

Contents

 
SHORT STORIES

 

A Correspondence

Mark Martin

Methane

Pavle Miha

The Fisherman

Chris Weldon

Aleksandr

Amanda Huggins

The Etymology of a Sword Swallower

K Lockwood Jefford

How to Accept the Lunar Landing

Nicole Olweean

Duck Egg Blue

Fiona Ennis

OMG Winn Handler Moved Next Door!

Lesley Bannatyne

Connemara Salmon

Kathy MacGloin

Rick and Molly Drink

Giles Newington

 

FLASH FICTION

 

Both On and Off

Jack Barker-Clark

Cataracts and Dogberries

Shey Marque

Ouija

Alexandra Blogier

Lion

Kirsty Seymour-Ure

Desert

Roland Leach

Top Ten Reasons Why Pied-Noirs are

Good at Packing Suitcases

Laurence Gea

The Day Amy Kinona Became Invisible

Sharma Taylor

Skeleton in the Cupboard

Katherine Powlett

What My Parents Were Wearing

When She Decided Not to Keep Me

Shoshauna Shy

Ursula Sits

Karenlee Thompson

 

 

SHORT MEMOIRS

 

Blood and Roses

Mary E Black

Becoming

Hannah Persaud

Dreams of Foreign Cities

Martha G Wiseman

Schmaltz

Francesca Humphreys

Broken Lines

Mary Brown

Fissure

Ellyn Gelman

Before the Dark Hour of Reason

Kevin Acott

Borderline Insanity

Anthony Dew

Dancing with Parkinson’s

Leslie Mapp

I have my suspicions about that

Dachshund

Alice Jolly

 

POETRY

 

Letter to Dowsie,

from Roethke in Ireland

Greg Rappleye

Chemo

Matt Hohner

Don’t rush to clean her room

Pippa Gough

The Rowan Berries of Winter

Phillip Crymble

Ode to Ignorance

Michael Lavers

Swift Departure

Will Ingrams

December Sunlight

by Harry Nisbet, 1919, Oil on Canvas

Alice Twemlow

First Time

Maureen Boyle

Story of a Sister whose

Brother lost his Hand to the Buzz Saw

Victoria Walvis

The Breakup

 

Partridge Boswell

 


 

A Correspondence

by  Mark Martin

Morgan looked down as something slipped from the hardback in her hand, distracting her from Andrew. The bookshop where the two of them worked had closed for the day, and she was unpacking boxes of second-hand stock. A handsome young man, radiating impatience, Andrew held open the front door, a peach sunset framing his face.

‘Come on!’ he said. ‘There’s not much of summer left, let’s go have a drink on the green.’

The ranked spines on the bookshelves, Andrew himself — gorgeous in semi-profile, one foot out the door — and the mysterious boxes conspired to bring about in Morgan an unexpected sense of being intensely present. It was a realization, physical as much as intellectual, that she, approaching her last year of university, having chosen to remain in her college town over the holiday, was a young woman of potential in a world of possibilities. She was surrounded by mundane objects that, if caught at the right angle by a receptive intelligence, were full of charm. Outside, beyond the shop window, the setting sun was reinventing abstract impressionism. And in pleasant counterpoint to all this, here was a young man, smarter and better-looking than was reasonable to expect, practically begging her to join him for a drink.

‘There’s no time-and-a-half if you stay late,’ continued Andrew, frustration scoring his voice. ‘There’s more to life than you’ll find in books, you know.’

‘I’m going to work a bit longer,’ she said, abruptly making up her mind.

‘Suit yourself. Text me if you come to your senses.’


 

Both On and Off

 by Jack Barker-Clark

On the phone to your daughter all winter. On the power of attorney. On cloud cuckoo land. On the canal boat you once owned. On bravery. On ignominy. On trial. On fresh grapes. On the occasion of your birthday. On call if you need us. On amplification. On overreaction. On hold with the doctors. On display for one month only. On our best-case scenario. Onwards and upwards. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On modern medicine. On the contrary. On the one hand not so bad. On the other hand terminal. On assisted living. On your head be it. On the bedside table, there, next to your reading glasses. On increasing medication. On a tour of hospitals, West Yorkshire, the surrounding Humber. On the formal bed, writing down what the doctor had said. On dyschronometriaand cerebellar lesions. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On the ward. On the pillows inmates rest on. On-demand westerns. On John Wayne. On horseback. On purpose. On the bathroom floor with the shower gel. On the bathroom floor with the shower gel following a stroke. On disturbing volcanic dreams now. On canal boats choked with weeds. On holiday in 1972. On ghost trains. On beach towels. On lovely shiny wet new grapes.

On average twenty beats per minute. On life support. On your own. On top of the breadbin. On all sides surrounded. On the way. On the beach with Eleanor. On the borderlands. On the grass slopes. On and on. On Wednesday the 20thMarch. On and on, and then suddenly off.

On behalf of those who knew him. On behalf of those who knew him best. On behalf of his grandson, unable to attend. On the TransPennine Express writing letters to his grandad who had died.


 

Blood and Roses

by Mary E Black

I was eleven years old when the Troubles started in 1969, a civil conflict fuelled by bad blood between two ethno-nationalist tribes. A book I will keep until the end of my days is ‘Lost Lives’ which tells the individual stories of the 3,637 who died over three decades. I know some of those names – Northern Ireland is a small place. Another 100,000 were wounded: shot, blasted by bombs, knee-capped in punishment shootings and beatings. As a doctor, from a family of doctors, I count the Troubles in blood. Yet, of the countless units of blood transfused during those years, we have kept no ledger.

I grew up in Lambeg, a staunchly Protestant village south of Belfast. My Catholic family comes from Antrim on my father’s side, with a three-generation excursion to Scotland; Cork on my mother’s side, with a family myth of no intermarriage with others for the last 400 years. Moving Hearts, an Irish Folk rock band from my youth, sang:

‘Once upon a time there was, Irish ways and Irish laws

Villages of Irish Blood, awaking to the morning, awaking to the morning.’

Ulster Protestant journalist Newton Emerson described his Ulster family as ‘resolutely English for 300 years until our noble bloodline was polluted by my mother.’ See? The purity of bloodlines. When the sectarian slogan ‘Taigs Out’ (an anglicisation of the Gaelic male given name of Tadhg; when applied to walls a derogatory name for Catholics) was painted on our garden fence and the neighbours said nothing, we sold up and moved to one of the few mixed housing estates. Our new home stood above and, in a way, apart from the mired enclaves that encompassed our schools, churches, and workplaces.

 

Letter to Dowsie, from Roethke in Ireland

  by Greg Rappleye

 

Driven mad by channel wrack and fresh sprats in bad oil,

sobbing on the oyster dock, at lowest tide I was

rowed to the mail boat by a barefoot Carmelite,

then lugged ashore at Cleggan and poured into the back

of a Singer sedan. I swore I’d suppress my “affect”

for a splash on our way to the bughouse,

and the good padre, having tippled with me

in those dicey island days, found nothing against the faith

in that. He meted out Kilbeggan’s every ten miles

or-so, toasting each chosen apostle, excluding the Iscariot,

but counting Matthias and Paul.  As single-pot prodigal,

I’ve found an easier, softer way: drinking cold buttermilk,

noshing stewed apples and mealy fishcakes

with the daft nuns and my attending physician,

a kindly man who is the spitball image of Barry Fitzgerald. 

Walrus-like, I’ve wallowed in the hydro baths

as in our famous days at Mercywood, and thanks

to my trans-Atlantic laurels, my benzo-calm

and affable demeanor, I’m driven to a public house

on seisiún nights aboard the moron-bus, and allowed

two stiff drinks and the recitation of a poem.

It’s grand to hush the fiddles and part a cloud of pipe smoke,

led through the tavern door by four orderlies in white,

as if I’m blind O’Carolan, stumbled home at last,

escorted by that squadroon of virtuous angels

by which minor deities are ushered into the world.

On the wall chart of temperaments, mine approaches a shaker

of dry martinis—sanguine with ice and three drops of melancholic.

Dowsie, when did you last climb a honeysuckle trellis?

When did you last scurry through an asylum greenhouse,

tripping over clay pots and hashing your knees?

I imagine you now as sea-lioness, sleek and black,

your most clever pup dropped carelessly,

left to gorge on red dulse in a midnight sea

and you, shrieking all those long tumultuous hours

atop a granite rock, eelgrass wilding beyond you in the surf.

 



 

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News & Articles

Fish Anthology 2024

Fish Anthology 2024 LAUNCH

11th June 2024
Monday 15th July at 6:30 Marino (Old Methodist) Church Bantry, West Cork, Ireland The Launch of the Fish Anthology 2024 was held in this charming old methodist church. Many of the authors published in the Anthology read from their work, to showcase sample of  the talent in this book.  We had a get together of […]

Poetry Prize 2024: Results

15th May 2024
  Winners Short-list Long-list     Here are the winners of the Fish Poetry Prize 2024, selected by Billy Collins, to be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. Below you will find short biographies of the winners and the Long and Short Lists. From all of us at Fish we congratulate the poets whose poems […]

Short Story Prize 2023/24: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, congratulations to all of you who made the long and the short-lists.  Apologies for the delay in this announcement. The 10 winners will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland – […]

Flash Fiction Prize 2024: RESULTS

10th April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   From all of us at Fish, thank you for entering your flashes. Congratulations to the writers who  were short or long-listed, and in particular to the 11 winners whose flash stories will be published in the Fish Anthology 2024. The launch will be during the West Cork Literary Festival, Bantry, Ireland […]

Short Memoir Prize 2024: RESULTS

1st April 2024
Winners Short-list Long-list   On behalf of all of us at Fish, we congratulate the 10 winners who’s memoir made it into the Fish Anthology 2024 (due to be launched in July ’24 at the West Cork Literary Festival), and to those writers who made the long and short-lists, well done too.  Thank you to Sean […]

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