2020 UTS Writers’ Anthology Empty Sky reviewed

 

This year has already cemented itself in history, with the bushfires in Australia, COVID-19 globally and, more recently, the wildfires across California. Then we get to huge social movements: climate activism in the face of global warming, and Black Lives Matter erupting in the middle of the year.

Despite all of these horrible natural catastrophes, these huge social upheavals and these long, unchanging days, the arts have been there to carry us through. 

The start of lockdown brought us a worldwide rumour mill on whether Carole Baskin killed her husband, chronicled by a seven-episode Netflix docuseries that exploded into parodies. Charli XCX wrote, produced and released a whole album in lockdown that captures loneliness, boredom, missing all of your friends and coming to terms with yourself as a person. And Empty Sky has captured the rich minutiae that makes up our everyday lives, from 30 different perspectives.

In Vino Accidento, Julius Partridge saves the day so poorly that the narrator, after breaking his leg, has to explain how to get to the nearest hospital. In An Update, scientists are testing the developmental limits of AI as two androids talk to each other about their lives. Tests are being run and parameters are being set, all the while quantifying what makes a person stand out: love, bravery, loyalty. 

Empty Sky has captured the rich minutiae that makes up our everyday lives, from 30 different perspectives.

A friend’s boyfriend’s bandmate quickly becomes That Guy Who Invited Me Over for Sex, and then ‘that guy who invited me over for sex and never invited me back for anything ever again’. Empty Bottles is a beautiful, sepia-toned picture of a lazy afternoon picnic. Drifting feels almost like a second act, with afternoon drunkenness turning into an evening hook-up and a momentary scare from a creepy taxi driver that makes you remember to walk home with your keys in your hand.

The Tofu Man, the winner of this year’s UTS Writer’s Prize, perfectly captures a tiny section of everyday life. Clare Shiu reminisces about a man who sometimes sold tofu from the back of his bike in Hong Kong. What follows is a saga that spans from childhood to teenage years to moving to Sydney and making her own steamed tofu. Like every piece of good writing, there’s a recipe if you want to make it yourself and, eventually, the secrets of this mysterious, enigmatic tofu man are revealed.

In a year where reality feels so strangely off, each story in Empty Sky is a vivid reprieve into the chaotic mundanity of everyday life. As a reader, it makes me miss the great unknown that lies beyond my house. It reminds me of Billy Collins writing about windows and walls in his poem Monday. Every piece in the anthology feels like I’m sitting down at the writers’ bed, looking out of their window and into whatever world they’ve crafted from the view beyond. 

Byline

Alec Le-Grand is a nonbinary writer and editor. They write reviews and think pieces on their blog, Bad Luck Clover Fields, and have had poetry published in the UTS Writers' Anthology. Away from the pen, paper and keyboard, they're also a drag performer known as Clover Fields, and they perform across Oxford Street and the Inner West. They have a Bachelor of Communication in Creative Writing (2020) from UTS.