Transliterations: Musical Maps Results

Apr 17, 20118 min read

Deviation Actions

Published: Apr 17, 2011

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transliterations' Musical Maps Contest: Results!

It's time to announce the results of transliterations' inaugural contest, which called on entrants to create literature out of music via a visual map, neatly employing three mediums to make life overly difficult for even the most dedicated writers. Despite this, we received a staggering twenty-four submissions, all of which are wonderful and all of which can and should be read here. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be much of a contest without prizes and prizewinners and so on and, indeed, so forth, and so I hereby present to you:

Prose, First Place

illuminate my heartSeptember falls outside his window and the two-story house feels June. Time tilts here, the days canted to the left like the apple tree their grandchildren planted sometime last winter. It hasn't grown much since then, a few leaves on dry branches but no blooming flowers when spring arrived.
Today his fifty years seem like thirty. Sitting up in bed is easier. He doesn't feel as weak as before. The Pacific breeze touches his hair, chills his pale face and he thinks, Maybe Anna and I could drive down to the beachfront today.
He rolls to his side. She's burrowed under the covers, a blue blanketed lump, white hair poking out over dark blue pillows.
"Anna?"
John reaches his hand out and presses down.
The lump rolls over. The lump doesn't breathe.
The lump deflates like a balloon.
The lump is blankets and no flesh.
"Mmm, good morning," Anna murmurs in his ear.
Cold lips kiss his cold cheek. John frowns.
There's nothing there--
Anna squeezes his hand, drags him out of bed. "Breakfast?"
John t

Based on a map of Illuminate My Heart, My Darling

The expression in rushingtide's piece is beautifully wrought and its sparse literature leads us into that unknown place...anyone who has ever been in love and known what it is to lose it, I suspect, couldn't help but be moved to tears.

rushingtide wins:

One (1) 3 month premium membership from Halatia
One (1) really big favour from zebrazebrazebra
One (1) critique from Halatia
One hundred (100) points from fyoot
One hundred (100) points from zebrazebrazebra
News and journal features from everybody!

Prose, Second Place

Tatenda's WingsThe thrum of the Songspinner's web signals the coming of the umuvi. They will shriek from the sky and take us, one at a time. Their fangs will drip with the stilling-poison. Their bellies will be fat with eggs. The Songspinner says that the umuvi will take any bucabu they find back to their nests, paralyze us, and lay eggs in our stomachs. We will still be alive when the starving little umuvi hatchling makes its first meal of us.
From the days before my first web, I remember these stories. As all young bucabu, I thought they were told only to frighten us. So I thought, until the Songspinner's thrum one night many star-turns ago. The next morning, three of my sisters were gone.
I hear the thrum now. It is steady, resonant. I hear it over the night-breeze, gently rocking my web around me. I long to climb into the shadows of the giant lupanjatha tree, to fold myself into my favorite knothole, and wait until the dawn. But that is not our way. If I

Based on a map of Adiemus

This piece is like a Jungle Book in miniature, with a powerful sense of place and all the hallmarks of a really good fable...a traditional feeling narrative which Memnalar has spun ever so delicately, drawing in not only the characters but its readers.

Memnalar wins:

One (1) really big favour from zebrazebrazebra
One (1) critique from ikazon
One hundred (100) points from fyoot
News and journal features from everybody!

Poetry, First Place

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Based on a map of Dark Was The Night

This piece by cogongrass is intensely musical, raw and defiantly emotional in places, with a simplicity of imagery that takes a lot of work...the narrative tinge of the poem is just brilliant. I'm not familiar with the accent, but I could hear it aloud in my head.

cogongrass wins:

One (1) 3 month premium membership from Halatia
One (1) really big favour from zebrazebrazebra
One (1) critique from Amberlouie
One hundred (100) points from fyoot
One hundred (100) points from zebrazebrazebra
News and journal features from everybody!

Poetry, Second Place

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Based on a map of Black Pear Tree

I like the jump of thoughts from the narrator's perspective, it has that sense of what the mind goes through when going places...in this piece, dimerization has captured exactly how conflicting thoughts can twine in and out of each other.

dimerization wins:

One (1) really big favour from zebrazebrazebra
One (1) critique from Quemaqua
One hundred (100) points from fyoot
News and journal features from everybody!

Congratulations to our winners! We started off with only first place in each category, but the submissions were all so good that we had to add second place at the very least or die trying. Please contact myself or transliterations to arrange the handover of loot.

My most sincere thanks to our judges Amberlouie, fyoot, ikazon and Quemaqua, to Halatia and the above for contributing prizes and to all the wonderful people who read and commented and critiqued and encouraged the contest entries. But the greatest thanks of must of course go to the people who wrote them. You are the lifeblood of this group, and we couldn't do what we do without you.

Well, we could. But it'd be a heck of a lot less fun.

_{by =zebrazebrazebra on behalf of #transliterations}