Overland literary journal

The madness of Bradley Manning

On the weekend the Guardian headlined an investigative report on the personal history of Bradley Manning. The question the Guardian raises as the imperative behind its ‘investigation’ is: ‘Why did the US army ignore warnings from officers that Manning was unstable?’ ‘Unstable’ apparently refers to Manning’s mental state before he was sent to Iraq and plugged himself into SIPRNet. The implication of the Guardian’s question seems to be that if the US military had weeded out this nutjob early enough, they would have saved themselves a whole lot of trouble. The Guardian’s reporting is frankly shoddy, poorly written, sensationalised and generally very strange, and for all its claims to be investigative, seems to contain a lot of information already publicly available. ... read more

Written by Stephen Wright on 30-05-2011, 25 user comments

The great carbon hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is embedded in the DNA of the Liberal Party, particularly since the turn from patrician conservatism to a right-wing populism that, by its nature, upholds well-salaried blowhards as the ordained representatives of the common folk. In response to Barnaby Joyce’s attack upon Cate Blanchett as rich and out of touch, it’s easy to point to Abbott’s enthusiasm for billionaire mining magnates, whose anti-carbon tax rally surely represented one of the more grotesque mobilisations in Australian political history: a cabal of wealthy parasites wrapping themselves in the banners of the oppressed, just to lower their tax threshold. ... read more

Written by Jeff Sparrow on 30-05-2011, 9 user comments

Why War?

I’ve asked some daft questions over the years, naive, childish questions, luckily some of them when I was a child. Recently, however, I was with a friend when his daughter (aged 11) asked him why there were wars in the world. I was fascinated, not only because I had asked this exact question myself at that age, but because it became apparent just how difficult it was for him to satisfy her with an answer. ‘Sometimes it’s about taking another person’s land,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it’s because of money and power.’ She nodded, ‘I guess some people are greedy…’ although she didn’t finish there, saying, ‘except how can a whole country be greedy? That’s different... That’s...’ ‘Despicable,’ he finished her sentence for her. ... read more

Written by SJ Finn on 27-05-2011, 1 user comment

Still Waters (part 2)

Some time ago I introduced you to the women of Still Waters. So much has happened for this storytelling group for women of African descent since I last spoke of them properly on this blog. There was that second meeting, where the group consolidated themselves into a core collective of six, including myself as mentor.

Girl, do us black women know how to talk, and that second meeting, though we’d moved from the lounge space of the Institute for Postcolonial Studies to the conference room, the serious work of knuckling down to write a collective manifesto under founder Fadzai Jaravaza’s able guidance didn’t always come easy. Conversation veered off into black women’s business – Tariro spoke of the unbearable whiteness of Australian beauty, of working within the local housing commissions and being asked by young African women ‘Why do you shave your head? Why do you wear headwraps like that? Don’t you want to look pretty?’ Teurai chimed in with her experiences as one of the few black faces in the Australian modelling industry. ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 26-05-2011, 2 user comments

The Bacopa saga

On 30 August 2010 I submitted a selection of poems to the Bacopa Literary Review, produced by the Writers Alliance of Gainesville. An obscure journal to say the least (I think Gainesville is somewhere in Florida).

I subscribe to the Duotrope’s Digest RSS feed which advises me of all manner of journals open for submissions. There are lots of journals around the world, some electronic, some print based. I sift through the upcoming deadlines and read the submission guidelines to see if any of my work will fit. It’s not that I’m obsessed with publication, I write for myself, but I use the submissions to give me an idea of whether I’m ‘improving’ with my writing, so I submit to many journals, from the local to the far reaches of the globe (like Gainesville). ... read more

Written by Mark William Jackson on 24-05-2011, 13 user comments

The end of the affair

poetry and i / we broke up last week
we just kinda grew apart
it wasn’t her / it wz me

well / ok just quietly / between me and you
it wz wild while it lasted
bt poetry / she got all single white female
for the last part there on me
it’s true

she wanted to be my everything
i wasn’t sure i still loved her like that
& needed some time to think
bt poetry / she said
i am not gonna buy that let’s have a break shit
poetry knew i wanted out
& started following me / everywhere
i couldn’t work / or leak / or eat or sleep
walk without her calling on me

you know poetry
at times / she can be so fucking needy

after we split/ i’d be out somewhere
& poetry wd just happen to turn up
she’d pull that fancy meeting you here crap
as if she hadn’t been hiding outside the house
to see where i went / all that time

i never thought it wd end like this /
i cd see poetry and i / old
in rocking chairs together
hands wrapped around steaming mugs
reminiscing about the good times

when we first met i wz always thinking
now poetry / she is beautiful
you know what i mean
i mean it wz like poetry
cd have anyone she wanted
& poetry chose me
(not/you understand/ tht I have low self esteem)

people were always saying
man / you & poetry
were just meant to be together
you are so lucky to have found each other
& poetry wd smile my way / as if to say
i will never leave you / maxine
we will be together always
you & me

& now
i am starting to get
just what that might mean

First published at slam up.

Written by Maxine Clarke on 23-05-2011, 7 user comments

No loyalty, no presentership

Limmud Oz, for those who don’t know, describes itself as:

Limmud-Oz is a major Australian Jewish community-wide conference and festival celebrating Jewish learning and creativity.

Limmud-Oz is a unique, volunteer-led, cross-communal and multi-generational event, catering for the broad diversity of opinions within the wider Jewish community.

Limmud-Oz is just one of over 50 similar events under the umbrella of Limmud International , which is at the forefront of a revolution in global Jewish education and thinking, and is creating a learned, open, dynamic and respectful community.

[emphasis added]

A couple of years ago, my friend and former lecturer Peter Slezak presented a talk there. Last year, when it was held in Melbourne, I heard Samah Sabawi gave a talk. I don’t know her personally, but understand she’s a Palestinian advocate of BDS (and generally supports Palestinian rights). ... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 20-05-2011, 7 user comments

On rejection and the comfort of Nietzsche

Described as 'real life opera', a beautiful young woman is jilted and throws herself off a balcony in her wedding dress. Blessedly, she is saved. I find myself hoping she doesn’t become a writer and betroth herself to art, because in this culture, cruel (or polite) rejection is all part of the courting process and jilting par for the course.

What doesn’t kills us, makes us stronger.

Perhaps Nietzsche meant it, but sometimes what doesn’t kill us grinds us down until we wish we were dead. Sometimes every inspirational story of the painfully large numbers of rejections traditionally received by well-loved authors/

Written by Clare Strahan on 19-05-2011, 13 user comments

Women, what’s your labour worth?

The federal industrial relations tribunal, Fair Work Australia, has passed down an exciting and historical Decision on women’s wages.

More than a year ago, the Australian Services Union brought an application for an equal remuneration order to the tribunal. If granted, the order would apply to employees of non-government employers in the social, community and disability services industry (the SACS industry) throughout the country. The issue, said the ASU, is not that any given male SACS worker is being paid more for the same work than any given female SACS worker. The issue is around ‘equal remuneration for men and women workers for work of equal value'. ... read more

Written by Isy Burns on 19-05-2011, 10 user comments

Strutting the slut

Most women have at one time in their lives being called a slut for the way they dress or for not conforming to some saintly code of conduct that applies only to women.

Dictionaries are filled with words used to insult women: whore, tart and tramp, for starters. But no word equals slut for its power to degrade and wound one half of the population. Interestingly, there’s no male equivalent of the word slut.

A quick glance at the history books shows that the slut-word has been part of patriarchal societies for centuries. The great patriarchal fear of women not knowing their place found expression in the word slattern, used to abuse women who didn’t keep a clean house, and later, slut, to describe women of loose morals. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 17-05-2011, 30 user comments

Don’t muck-up Muckaty

On Wednesday 11 May, over 1000 people showed their opposition to the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station. One hundred protestors stood around a huge blow-up nuclear waste bin outside Parliament House in Darwin, with a variety of banners, and a petition signed by 1000 people over a two-day period.

To say opposition to the waste dump is strong is an understatement. You’d be hard-pressed to find many people in the NT, aside from those with a vested financial or political interest in its existence, who support it. Not that this matters to the ALP, especially Martin Ferguson, who’s made it his personal mission to ensure nuclear waste is dumped in The Territory. No matter that the legality of the Ngapa claim to exclusive ownership is in dispute. Such frivolous concerns carry no truck with the ALP, or the Northern Land Council for that matter. ... read more

Written by Rohan Wightman on 16-05-2011, 7 user comments

The art of the book launch

I was recently at the woefully attended launch of a highly successful Australian author. He has published an impressive number of books, won a stack of highly prestigious national awards, and has a dedicated readership. Yet this (reasonably well publicised) launch attracted only a handful of people, and of those only one or two were not colleagues and friends. I don’t know how the author felt about this turnout, but I found it heartily depressing.

I once read that the average number of people at a book launch is three. A dismal figure indeed. Though I must say that during my years of attending book launches I have never been part of such a miniscule gathering (and consequently doubt the veracity of this statistic – perhaps it was floated to make authors feel better). ... read more

Written by Irma Gold on 13-05-2011, 13 user comments

The death of Osama bin Laden

In October 1998, Eqbal Ahmad, a brave Pakistani secularist reminisced:

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men...They were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, I’m sure some of you will recall that moment, and said, “These are the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers”. These were the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers!

In August 1998, another American President ordered missile strikes from the American navy based in the Indian Ocean to kill Osama Bin Laden and his men in the camps in Afghanistan. I do not wish to embarrass you with the reminder that Mr. Bin Laden, whom fifteen American missiles were fired to hit in Afghanistan, was only a few years ago the moral equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson!

... read more

Written by Michael Brull on 12-05-2011, 4 user comments