F – J
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Fergus #28
$2 A7 64p 24g
DESCRIPTION COMING SOON!
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Fergus #24 + 25
$2 A7 + A8 80p + 32p 42g
As if your average edition of Fergus wasn’t cute enough, this time issue 24 actually comes tucked into the issue back cover of issue 25, which of course means that it’s even smaller (A8) than the already rather titchy A7 that Fergus is usually printed at. What would we do without these easily divisible paper sizes, hmm? Be fiddling around with foolscap, that’s what. Actually, I’m rather a fan of foolscap. Anyway. You know by now that Fergus is an excellent zine named after a duck, in which the pseudonymous ‘Fergus’ shares alphabetically themed stories from their life. This time the stories are of going to gigs, avoiding sex, avoiding menstruating, gardening, reading zines… I mean, it’s 80 pages long, and the font’s tiny, so we’re talking lots of stories. It’s very entertaining in a somewhat voyeuristic way, as usual.
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Fern Zine
$4 A5 36p 47g
In the proper tradition of fanzine writing, Vanessa brings us Fern Zine, which is all about her amateurish but genuine love for ferns. Vanessa runs through her fondness for ferns, giving an account of pteridomania, the fern mania which gripped our Victorian forebears, as well as her own discovery of ferns and some tips on how to keep them. And as if the title wasn’t enough, the whole zine is littered with fern related puns, which I will leave for you to discover. Of course, you needn’t harbour any affection for ferns at all in order to enjoy Vanessa’s writing.
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For Strentgh & Valour
$2.50 A6 16p 14g
This is a rather excellent, attractive and entertaining zine from Melbourne, and I hope the number ’0′ on the cover means that there will be future issues. My only complaint is that the handwritten text may have been reduced just a tiny bit too much to read comfortably. I could just put my glasses on I guess, but I am lazy. Anyway. This zine is great, and I must extol its physical beauty. Tiny font aside, it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing zines I’ve seen in a while, very simple but very nice. It’s bound with a zig zag sewing machine stitch and has a little tag sewn into the top, like a little book mark, for no other reason, apparently, than that it looks damn cute. The writing is diaristic – indeed, looks to be copied straight from a diary/notepad – and is a three-part narrative that touches on the price of zines, Survivor, the point of artist in residence programs, appropriation of diy culture and more. And it comes with some stickers that say ‘humbled to be on Aboriginal ground’ so that you can alter your surroundings in small but positive ways. A long description for a small zines that has an awful lot packed into it.
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Fly Away Bird #8
$4 A7 20p 9g
Miss Helen’s been making zines since the 1990s. Her Riot Grrl flavoured Astro Grrrl was one of the first zines I ever read. So of course I’m very excited that Take Care is now stocking some issues of Fly Away Bird, Helen’s not-so-regular zine of little sketches, comics, stories and philosophies, all done in her fiercely girly and curly style. This issue contains little pieces of writing about breaking up, loved one’s dying and trying to stay strong.
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Fly Away Bird #9
$5 A6 36p 28g
Another little zine by Helen about the small things in life which seem big and the big things that seem small – like forgetting to take antidepressants, thanking a friend, making a cup of tea with love, getting a cold and more. And a special note to all the hipsters who are getting into zines!
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Fly Away Bird #10
$5 A6 28p 23g
This issue reads from right to left and contains more sweet drawings of ice creams, puppy dogs and castles coupled with little snatches of writing that are about trying to be happy in the world and figure shit out. Helen’s zines make me happy – they make it feel like it is possible to hold onto your ideals, to defend them, and to support each other.
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Here. In My Head. #9
$2 A6 48p 31g
This is a great feminist perzine from the UK. At the time of writing it Cath had just finished her degree in theology, and this zine contains the sort of excited energy that you might expect from someone who has just been unleashed from university and is looking for a job, trying to figure out what to do and so on. Cath writes a piece about her self-described fear of technology and about the phallo-centricity of Western religions and the female gods that have existed in other times and cultures. There are also the obligatory (oh, but we love them so!) favourites lists and so forth, but my favourite piece in this zine is titled ‘Anti-Feminist Bingo!’ and is about a bingo game that Cath devised to help combat the ignorant and depressingly predictable comments you receive when you mention anything remotely to do with feminism. ‘The prize is a rage-headache and an evening of ranting on Twitter’. Brilliant. I mean, not brilliant, but funny.
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Horace Andy and the Spanish Owls
$1.50 A6 16p 18g
Another reprint of a zine I (Emma) made a while ago with my friend Anwyn. We made this zine together in one day, but it’s a collaborative zine rather than a split zine, with each taking turns to write something inspired by what the other has just written (if that makes sense). We write about trains, ghosts, fear of the dark, breaking up, the music of Horace Andy and Broadcast, buildings, and dear friends called Ned.
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House
$3 A5 27p 43g
‘This zine is about some houses I lived in as a kid and some of the people I lived with. It’s also about some of the cubby houses I found in them – the houses, I mean.’
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I am a Camera #14
$5 A5 44p 52g
The latest edition of Vanessa’s long running zine is, as always, wonderful. In this issue we find Vanessa ensconced in a new fibro house, surrounded by dandelions, train tracks, apartments and suburban quiet. I think that Vanessa’s own summary of her motivation for writing zines is best: ‘A way to cope with identity and its uncertainties is to pour it into some other container and see how it looks there’. This issue of I am a Camera continues Vanessa’s quest to record the moments of her life almost as it happens, as a way of finding the best path through this world. In doing so she also makes it easier for those of us who read and love her zines.
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I am a Camera #15
$4 A5 36p 47g
This is an excellent issue of I am a Camera. I know that Vanessa has developed something of a habit when it comes to making excellent zines, but let’s not get complacent about it. This issue is about taking a trip to New Zealand and visiting Dunedin, a little town on the east coast of South Island that a few decades ago was home to a thriving music scene that revolved around an independent record label called Flying Nun. The zine documents some of the adventures Vanessa (and companion, Simon) have in the town and her efforts to unearth information about Flying Nun and the bands associated with the Dunedin scene, with visits to the local library, bookshops and music related landmarks. One of my most prized possessions – a live recording of my favourite band, The Fall – was released on Flying Nun, so I personally found this zine very fascinating and entertaining, and you will, too, if you are remotely interested in indie music. But fear not if that is not the case: Vanessa’s writing is always very accessible and she has included a helpful index so that you can navigate your way through the zine if you’re not so familiar with the sounds and scenes she describes. One of my favourite zines this year, without a doubt.
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Indie Kids #1
$4 A5 20 p 28g
A look at the lives of some indie kids, in comic form. Our protagonists wake in the morning, eat children’s breakfast cereals, only just remember to fill in their Centrelink Participation Activity Record sheets, go to their friends gigs, try (unsuccessfully) to hit on said friends and buy mint condition Robert Crumb comics off eBay. It’s very tongue in cheek, but affectionate. This only contains the first section of the story, so fingers crossed the author gets his act together quickly to bring out issue #2.
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In the Flesh
$2.50 A5 24p 31g
‘This zine is a conversation I had to have with myself. It’s also part of an ongoing conversations that I’m having with Luce Irigaray, Jean Genet, and others. It might also be a conversation I can have with you.’ In The Flesh begins with the author participating in a voluntary research project about anal cancer, and goes on to very skillfully weave a meditative narrative that focuses on the arse – the author’s arse in particular – as a locus of pleasure, pain, anxiety, fear, politics and sex. The zine is really well written – his description of receiving an anal examination is visceral, the relationship he describes with the man who is not easily classified as lover/boyfriend/whatever is complex, the quotes from philosophers like Genet and Irigaray and the pornographic images that are scattered throughout the zine expand on the writing as well as complicate it. This is a fucking amazing zine – a sort of zine gesamtkunstwerk. Another for my top zines of the year list.
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I Sat in the Café de Banques
$2.50 15x15cm 24p 24g
Made from little collages and fragments of text stolen from children’s books and photocopied on the Rizzeria, this is a zine I made to accompany a small exhibition in Sydney in August 2009. Sticky tagged it ‘inexplicable’. For people who like good collage and the smell of soy ink.
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Juggling the Rainbow
$3.75 A5 36p 37g
The ‘rainbow’ in question here is the range of relationships that exist outside monogamy: non-monogamous, polyamorous, queer &c. Juggling the Rainbow contains a series of substantial interviews with and articles/stories by various folks in Aotearoa who identify as non-monogomous/polyamorous. Or, as it says on the cover ‘personal writings about non-monogomous relationships’.
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