Today, injustice goes with a certain stride, The oppressors move in for ten thousand years. Force sounds certain: it will stay the way it is. No voice resounds except the voice of the rulers And on the markets, exploitation says…
‘Some people will tell you that none of these things happened. They’ll say they were just a dream that the three of us shared. But they did happen.’
– Heaven Eyes, David Almond
I have two vivid childhood memories of things that can’t be true. They both date from before I was four years old.
Forty years ago, Simone de Beauvoir wrote controversially about the ‘conspiracy of silence’ that afflicts old age. In her view, the old were ‘outcasts’, nursing homes were ‘houses of death’ and ageing a ‘disagreeable’ subject. Today, not much has changed – despite new technology, complex knowledge and a growing population base to consult, many elders are still viewed (and treated with) contempt.
‘Are you interested in being involved with a courageous project to reform every political system on earth – and through that reform move the world to a more humane state?’ Sometime in December 2006, a former Melbourne University maths student, still hanging around the common room, posted the question to the students’ society network. His rather alarming message explained that the organisers proposed to launch their campaign in two months but were being overwhelmed by a media cascade with more than 51 000 (!) page hits on Google and stories in the Washington Post and so on.
Ever shall my fame increase,
renewed by the praises of posterity.
– Horace
According to Bob Dylan, ‘death is not the end’. Although the line comes from a terrible song, there’s no better summation of the age-old gamble of art – that you can survive your own death.
Minch didn’t want Over in his head but she rattled on. Last-Night’s eyes were closed in concentration.
What’s the story? No, really. Here we are, eating pizza, drinking Heineken, watching The Matrix. Adam with that look on his face. That look is the reason I don’t bother to talk much any more.
I can’t drink coffee. Thomas is drinking his black, taking small swallows and then breathing out suddenly as if imbibing shots of something much stronger.
We ran as fast and far as we could without stopping for rest or water.
you begin here: part of a distant beach
missing its home, a doll’s saucerful
And I said to him as he opened the front door –
Do you remember what day it is tomorrow?
out, running to stand still,
Where they once ate camel grease (and before
It’s been too hot during the day to survey
stripping by the river’s old-
gum language we lick the ash
of brie from abysses
What is the use of poetry? One of its most crucial and historically valued functions has been the revitalisation of language, the renovation, at times even the resuscitation, of the imagination’s linguistic engagement with the social and material cosmos.
When she saw Top Camp
(humpies made of corrugated iron/slabs of bark
people and dogs living together
Overland 202 contains Justin Clemens’ sparkling essay on Dorothy Porter, Peter Porter and Dorothy Hewett. It’s now online for your reading pleasure.
Continue reading 'Justin Clemens on two Dorothies, two Porters' 0
Beginning with issue 202, Alison Croggon is writing a regular column for Overland, one dedicated to books – our ideas of them and our relationships to them. Here’s the first. Enjoy. ‘Some people will tell you that none of these…
Adelaide writer Helen Dinmore takes time from her PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide to chat with Overland about her short story ‘Unplugged’. How did you come to write the story – was there a catalyst? As a…
Hopefully, many people will have already seen information relating to Overland’s Connections initiative, an attempt to foster greater cultural diversity in the journal through a series of essays by emerging writers from marginalised backgrounds. With support from CAL’s Cultural fund,…
Continue reading 'CAL Connections: homophobia and the law' 1
Clare Strahan is an emerging Melbourne writer who has banged out a novel on a manual typewriter by candlelight and is sure that must count for something. She has published a few poems and a couple of short stories, is…
Caroline Hamilton is a research fellow in the Department of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne and has also worked as a freelance writer. Her latest book One Man Zeitgeist: Dave Eggers, Publishing and Publicity is published by…
Bob Gosford is a writer, lawyer and ethnoornithologist who lives and writes in the Northern Territory. He lived for three years in the small township of Yuendumu, 300 kilometres from Alice Springs, and has recently moved from Alice itself up…
Patricia Gillespie is a writer and editor who has put her career on hold to care full-time for her mother, Marie. Below, Gillespie, a PhD student at the University of Melbourne focusing on aged care and elder rights, gives us…
Walkley Award-winning writer and professor Wendy Bacon is the acting director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism in Sydney, an investigative journalist and non-practising media lawyer, a long-time political activist, and has worked and taught around the world. Wendy…
For Overland 202, we thought we’d try something different – author interviews and other supplementaries to accompany our published pieces, so you can get more of an insight into how these pieces came to be. Here, Rjurik Davidson, associate editor…
Our new edition – featuring the exquisite illustrations of Shaun Tan, an open letter from Alexis Wright, and essays from Wendy Bacon and Bob Gosford – is out and we’ll be publishing articles from it online over the next few…