WIEN IX, BERGASSE 19
By Ruby Eastwood
‘The wall with the exit door is behind my head, and seated against that wall, tucked into the corner, is the Professor.’
H.D. Tribute to Freud
The way the light falls across the shelves,
the mounted gods, their slanted shadows.
Above her, a steel engraving of the Temple at Karnak.
He is always out of view,
his presence projected on the walls.
He hides himself, or so he says,
to aid the flow of free association.
She would like to tell him what she has discovered
about her brain and womb,
one connected flesh,
milk white and translucent like a jellyfish.
But he wouldn't understand something as amorphous,
as ill-defined, as ecstasy or music, only
the self folded along symmetrical creases,
the world structured by symbols.
He is like her father
whose eyes focused on nothing
nearer than the moon.
Like her father, he has hidden himself behind her.
He says, the problem is
I am an old man
You do not think it worth your while
To love me.
You are taller than me, he says.
No, she says, I have come to have my dreams
returned to me as revelation,
I have journeyed unimaginable distances
to reach you.
Outside these four walls destruction plays like an adagio,
and she knows that soon he will be leaving.
The gods will be wrapped in newspaper, boxed up and sent away,
and in the future in which they arrive unbroken,
she will greet their return with gardenias.
He gives nothing away.
She thinks this is just as much for his sake
as for hers,
fear of seeing, fear of being seen.
Ruby Eastwood is a writer and filmmaker living in Dublin.
It’s 2009 and summer is encroaching on the town of Bellingen when Rhiannon is forced to move from her local high school to one in Coffs Harbour. Initially reluctant to leave behind her best friend Ellie, she quickly finds herself infatuated with the enigmatic Vanora. It’s only on befriending her, does she discover that like her, Vanora is a girl whose home life is shrouded in a web of secrets. Secrets that relate to her mother.
Set in the verdant Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, Thora deals with family dysfunction, emancipation through friendship, and how girlhood is affected by the isolation of the country and the solace of nature.
Tilly Lawless is a queer, Sydney-based sex worker and writer. Her debut title Nothing But My Body was published in 2021.
Cover art by Rufus Shakespeare
Publication date: 15th February 2024 (Australia) / 1st June 2024 (UK)
Published in Australia and the UK by Worms Publishing
Fiction | Paperback with hand drawn dust jacket with fold-out map by Rufus Shakespeare
ISBN: 978-1-3999-7341-0
228 × 150 mm | 164 pages
£14.99 | $30.00
The ‘Artists who Write and Writers who Art’ Issue. For Worms 7 we’ve looked to our visual counterparts for some soil nutrients. We’ve wormed our way into the psyche of the artist, to bring you the ‘Artists That Write, and Writers That Art’ issue. Many of our subjects in the past have come into writing via non-traditional routes (filmmaking, curation, art, performance, podcasting, and so on), so it only felt right to cast a spotlight over those who have inspired our experimental literary practices so far. Not only those that use words within their visual practice, but those who use images to inform their writing. The reader, the writer, the artist, the activist, the poet and performer; they’re all here and they’re all worms.
In this mega worm (which is fittingly pink, for the first time somehow) you are in for a feast. Clem interview Helen Marten, Martine Syms and Diamond Stingily, Caitlin interviews actual art-writing icon Olivia Laing, Pierce talks to the profound Dr. Joy James, Philippa Snow gives us her thoughts on the act of writing art criticism (spoiler: it’s out her ass), and we have enough Derek Jarman content to keep you going for the rest of the year. We have some hilarious/insightful/weird/wonderful contributions from some of your favourite regulars too; including Jess Cole, Isabelle Bucklow, Sam Moore, Haydée Touitou, Estelle Hoy and many others.
Featuring
DIAMOND STINGILY, HELEN MARTEN, NICOLE RUDICK, NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, MARTINE SYMS, OLIVIA LAING, DR. JOY JAMES, JORDAN WEITZMAN, WU TSANG, DEREK JARMAN, SABINE MIRLESSE, MISHA HONCHARENKO, CHANTAL AKERMAN, JOANNA NOVAK, ANNIE ERNAUX, DAISY SANCHEZ, JENNA SUTELA, ANICKA YI, TUOMAS A. LAITINEN, STEPHANIE COMILANG & SIMON SPEISER, VALERIE SOLANAS
Contributors
HAYDEÉ TOUITOU, L SCULLY & LUCAS RESTIVO, LEE RAE WALSH, JESS COLE, ESTELLE HOY, PHILIPPA SNOW, SAMANTHA ROSENWALD, ISABELLE BUCKLOW, MONA GLASSFIELD, CLEM MACLEOD, SARAH WHITE, CAITLIN MCLOUGHLIN, PAVIELLE GARCIA, IONE SAIZAR, CHANTAL JOFFE, SOPHIE DAVIDSON, PIERCE ELDRIDGE, VIOLET CONROY, ELLE PÉREZ, PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA, JACQUELINE ENNIS-COLE, MARY ADETURINMO, STEPH FRANCIS-SHANAHAN, SAM MOORE, BUG SHEPHERD-BARRON, DONNA MARCUS DUKE, SAM HOLTON BRADLEY, KITTY GRADY, FELIX PILGRIM, CICI PENG, HOLLY MILLS, THEA MCLACHLAN, ERICA GOULD, PAULA DUCAY AND INÉS GARCÍA, ELVIRA GARCIA, INÊS GERALDES CARDOSO, JODIE HILL, JEMIMA SKALA, MAURA SAPPILO, DELIA RAINEY
Founder & Editor in Chief: CLEM MACLEOD
Managing Editor: CAITLIN MCLOUGHLIN
Art direction and design: CAITLIN MCLOUGHLIN
Features Editors: PIERCE ELDRIDGE, ARCADIA MOLINAS
Contributing Editor: VIOLET CONROY
Printed by PAGEMASTERS
Publication date: July 2023
Published in the UK by Worms World C.I.C.
Magazine | Paperback
240 × 170 mm | 176 pages
