It turned out that nobody really knew
what flash fiction was, but it was the resulting variety of lengths
and forms that made the evening so interesting. Some of the flashes,
tbh, were just short stories to my haiku-addled mind.
My own contribution, “The Bach
Prelude”, weighed in at a hefty seventy five words:
 |
| Featured on Paragraph Planet, April 20th |
It looked this little paragraph would
be the shortest short of the evening, but my parade was swiftly
pissed on by a bloke called Roddy Shippin who spat a three-word story
at the audience without a thought for my feelings.*
The third shortest short, if that’s
an accolade, was Gavin’s “Sex and Death” which costs twenty
five of your English words. If you are drinking a cup of tea, I
suggest you put it down before you open the link.
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| Gavin Inglis demonstrating the correct size of a flash ficlet. You can find piglicker's full Underword photo set on Flickr, including a pic of me blinking seductively. |
Other stories I particularly liked were
“The Last Supper” by Katy Hastie, “Letters” by Mark Harding,
“Metamorf” by Andrew C. Ferguson and “Kewpie” by Jane McKie,
but there were too many super contributions to mention
individually.** ***
It was exciting to see so many people
read in one evening. The fast turnarounds (not to mention the flashy
flash fictions) meant it was hard to be bored. Perhaps that sets a
bad precedent: encouraging the increasing standards and decreasing
attention spans of Edinburgh’s spoken word scene can only be a
dangerous proposition.
* I met him afterwards and he says he
didn’t do it on purpose.
** I did notice there is actually the
beginning of a black mould on the ceiling of my bathroom last night.
I let you guess what happened next.
*** My favourite audience member was
Charlotte’s flat mate. Apart from Charlotte that is. And mum.
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