Est. 2019 | Ideas Hub | Gathering Place(s) | Curation and Producing | Futures Thinking | Creative Experiments | Weird and Wonderful | Riverland and Beyond, Regional South Australia
Time to share something you’ve been working on again! We want to hear from each and every one of you.
You don’t have to share much — a snippet of dialogue or a piece of prose that you’re proud of or struggling with. We’d love to meet our writers out there and see what you’ve all been working on!
Kirste is a writer from regional South Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Writing in 2016 and since has developed projects like Letters to Blue (2020), co-facilitated the workshops Mono Club (2020) and I Feel Like Writing (2020-21) to support young writers and artists. She is writing a young adult novel series about sad teens with psychic powers. She lives for all things magical and if fairy wings don't sprout from her back, or if fire doesn't spark from her palms, one day, she'll head down the path of a villain.
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Fluttering by on autopilot, not usually my style but temporarily I like it , I’ve built a gate the river wide to seperate my heart and mind, to
Let each just be their own, when the time
Is right and known I’ll build a bridge and let them home, for even soul mates need time alone to grow, a chance to see the two way street and cherish the open road, not to hurry infact go slow, both will flourish with the scent of rose, every thought shapes the next and no love ever goes, my only task is not to stress trust that by now they know what’s best, let the weight fall from my chest, enjoy what’s now for all it is, bliss, realise I am blessed, be prepared and get excited for whatever’s coming next.
Such a stunning piece! ‘I’ll build a bridge and let them home’ is a striking visual. I really love it. Thank you so much for sharing this! What (if you have any) are your plans with this?
“Watch your words, Noah,” his father had always scolded. He could recite the next sentence in his sleep, he’d heard it that many times. “The beasts are more intelligent than they appear.”
Beasts. Not people. Not animals. It was a heavy word, filled with connotation. Something monstrous, something other. Noah had internalised that awed terror, that one word influencing him his whole life, making him watch them out the corner of his eyes, feeling them looking back, aware, intelligent.
Some days he almost managed to convince himself he was just being paranoid. But most days that voice in the back of his head had known better, had known there was something not quite right happening here.
124 was spiteful. A spiteful, hateful, perfect number. A number to rattle me, to clang and holler and reverberate in my lungs. The number was not lost on me. It wouldn’t have been lost on them either. It was deliberate. Of course, of course, it was deliberate.
*
Before the Garla came into my life I was relatively happy. Plump, warm and well-fed in a family of border-watchers, my life was spent mostly at the consoles or wandering the simple but clean corridors of our family-ship with songs spinning in my mouth. No need for shoes, or weapons, or the twisty words that have since become so familiar to my tongue.
I grew up in an ordinary kind of family, two zithers and a mother caring for my brood of siblings and I. I was one of ten, which is much the average for a family of three adults on the border. I was not the eldest, or the youngest, or square in the middle, just unremarkably third eldest. I came into adulthood just as my three parents decided that little Zalie would be their last.
Our family-ship was nothing special. Not the latest or the greatest. None of the shiny bling that inner-lifers favour, but not dowdy or plain either. Zither-Rae had always loved the pink and purple hues made famous in old paintings of Earth sunsets, and these were the colours most familiar to me growing up. Our walls painted and repainted in Rae’s attempts to capture a painting she remembered from her time in an academy. We would all crouch around and pick up a brush as the fancy took us, sometimes one or two of us, and sometimes the entire family. It was Rae’s passion project but it came to belong to all of us in a way I can only fully appreciate now. Rae was ever generous with their passions.
Perhaps we might all learn to be more generous with ours yet.
Part of Things 
Fluttering by on autopilot, not usually my style but temporarily I like it , I’ve built a gate the river wide to seperate my heart and mind, to
Let each just be their own, when the time
Is right and known I’ll build a bridge and let them home, for even soul mates need time alone to grow, a chance to see the two way street and cherish the open road, not to hurry infact go slow, both will flourish with the scent of rose, every thought shapes the next and no love ever goes, my only task is not to stress trust that by now they know what’s best, let the weight fall from my chest, enjoy what’s now for all it is, bliss, realise I am blessed, be prepared and get excited for whatever’s coming next.
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Such a stunning piece! ‘I’ll build a bridge and let them home’ is a striking visual. I really love it. Thank you so much for sharing this! What (if you have any) are your plans with this?
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“Watch your words, Noah,” his father had always scolded. He could recite the next sentence in his sleep, he’d heard it that many times. “The beasts are more intelligent than they appear.”
Beasts. Not people. Not animals. It was a heavy word, filled with connotation. Something monstrous, something other. Noah had internalised that awed terror, that one word influencing him his whole life, making him watch them out the corner of his eyes, feeling them looking back, aware, intelligent.
Some days he almost managed to convince himself he was just being paranoid. But most days that voice in the back of his head had known better, had known there was something not quite right happening here.
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Oooh! How intriguing! You’ve hooked me, well done! I’d love to hear a little more about this.
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Start of a new short story (science-fiction):
124 was spiteful. A spiteful, hateful, perfect number. A number to rattle me, to clang and holler and reverberate in my lungs. The number was not lost on me. It wouldn’t have been lost on them either. It was deliberate. Of course, of course, it was deliberate.
*
Before the Garla came into my life I was relatively happy. Plump, warm and well-fed in a family of border-watchers, my life was spent mostly at the consoles or wandering the simple but clean corridors of our family-ship with songs spinning in my mouth. No need for shoes, or weapons, or the twisty words that have since become so familiar to my tongue.
I grew up in an ordinary kind of family, two zithers and a mother caring for my brood of siblings and I. I was one of ten, which is much the average for a family of three adults on the border. I was not the eldest, or the youngest, or square in the middle, just unremarkably third eldest. I came into adulthood just as my three parents decided that little Zalie would be their last.
Our family-ship was nothing special. Not the latest or the greatest. None of the shiny bling that inner-lifers favour, but not dowdy or plain either. Zither-Rae had always loved the pink and purple hues made famous in old paintings of Earth sunsets, and these were the colours most familiar to me growing up. Our walls painted and repainted in Rae’s attempts to capture a painting she remembered from her time in an academy. We would all crouch around and pick up a brush as the fancy took us, sometimes one or two of us, and sometimes the entire family. It was Rae’s passion project but it came to belong to all of us in a way I can only fully appreciate now. Rae was ever generous with their passions.
Perhaps we might all learn to be more generous with ours yet.
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Your writing is so incredible and I’m always left wanting more!! You’ve already built such a captivating little world!
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