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Do you want myself or do you want my song? Poetry & truth

While I was pregnant with my (now four-month-old) daughter, I was performing a feature poetry set in Melbourne and during the break a woman came up to me and said: Congratulations! I’m so glad to see you’re expecting. That poem about your son dying is so sad, it makes my heart break.

gilscotth-677x1024My response was to stare at her blankly. I thought she’d probably confused me with someone else, and asked whether she had. She looked a little confused. You just performed that poem – the one about your son being shot. I looked at her again, blankly. The poem you JUST read, she insisted, it’s in your book! I wracked my brain and realised she meant the poem ‘mali’, which appears in my book Gil Scott Heron is on Parole (Picaro Press, 2010). The poem is about the anxiety of carrying a black child in the womb, with the mother (myself) imagining all of the things that could go wrong: ... read more

Written by Maxine Clarke on 2-02-2011, 9 user comments

Non-fiction review: The Best Australian Essays 2010

BestEssays2010The Best Australian Essays 2010
Robert Drewe (ed)
Black Inc.

The first task of an editor of a volume of essays is to arrive at a working definition of the form. Accepting that an essay is a ‘shortish piece of non fiction on a focused subject, often written from a personal point of view’, Robert Drewe then proceeds to declare his editorial objective:

I wanted to showcase those subjects which thoughtful and talented Australian writers were absorbed by in this particular year; indeed (I thought), wouldn't it be good to show what this country, and its culture, was about in 2010.

... read more

Written by Boris Kelly on 27-01-2011, 6 user comments

On a literary national myth

68907_goldsmithtrinity1A post from Ireland.

Ireland’s academic ranking has taken a dive in the most recent OECD study on international student performance. Since 2000, the country’s students have dropped from 15th to 25th place in the OECD world ranking for maths, and from 9th to 13th in science. Ireland has never seen itself as particularly strong in maths, and the government has invested significant money in science knowing that it’s an area that needs improving. But it’s the drop in English that has been the most shocking: Irish students have fallen from 5th to 17th place. ... read more

Written by Louise Pine on 23-12-2010, 4 user comments

The world according to Meanland: the top ten things we covered this year (in no particular order)

Do you recall when Meanjin quarterly and Overland magazine announced (see A joint communique from somewhere in Meanland) their 2010 collaboration, Meanland or ‘Reading in a time of change’? Back then they promised:

This joint project aims to create a constructive dialogue on how we, and future generations, will read. It will explore the challenges and opportunities facing literary culture in the twenty-first century—from digital publishing to copyright, from globalisation to the changing nature of reading. We will explore the new literary realities facing readers, writers and publishers, and reflect on and intervene into the changing nature of reading, writing and publishing—circumstances that, naturally, also implicate both Meanjin and Overland.

... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 21-12-2010, 2 user comments

Focus on young writers: Cassie Wood

The final author feature in Overland 201’s ‘Young Writers’ section is Cassie Wood. Her story is ‘Eddy’. Cassie is a second-year writing student living in Melbourne. She talks here with Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.

Why write?

Why not? I think if you ask yourself this question, that’s when things get messy and you start considering business degrees and nuclear families. That isn’t to say those with business degrees and/or nuclear families couldn’t write. But that’s just it, isn’t it! You write because you can. I do.

Writing is a catalyst for discussion. The author

Written by Editorial team on 6-12-2010, 1 user comment

Posting from Uganda

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Part 1: Life and death

I am writing this post from the shores of beautiful Lake Bunyonyi in the south of Uganda. I have just watched the dark clouds push through the emerald green valley where the lake is nestled, bringing a whipping wind and a burst of rain to clear the air. My cold Nile Special rests on a pile of stones that are serving as a table beside me, and I have a good book on my lap. Now that the rain has past, the vast array of birdlife has come out of hiding, busying itself with the daily work of diving for fish, fighting for space and bouncing across rushes. They really do talk a lot. ... read more

Written by Louise Pine on 3-12-2010, 1 user comment

Focus on young writers: Frank Boyce

Frank Boyce is the third author featured in the ‘Young Writers’ section of Overland 201 with his story ‘Minerals are not nomads’. Frank is a writer and student living in Melbourne. He’s interviewed here by Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.

Why write?

Terry Eagleton speaks about artistic or cultural production as different groups of people trying to make ‘symbolic sense of their situation’. It’s quite a plain quote but probably the most vital piece of reasoning when it comes to the questioning of writing. Feeling as though you are a part (small as it may be) of the collective process of shaping symbols, or uncovering them, or adding to them, or rejecting the old or commonly held ones, is something exciting and worthwhile. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 3-12-2010, 2 user comments

Focus on young writers: Sam Twyford-Moore

Today, we're featuring the second author in Overland 201’s ‘Young Writers’ section: Sam Twyford-Moore. Sam's story is ‘Library of Violence’. He is one of the founding editors of Cutwater. His non-fiction has appeared in Meanjin and the Reader. He is currently finishing his first novel.

He was interviewed by Kalinda Ashton and Samuel Cooney.

Why write?

There were two other writers on my street growing up. One was Frank Walker, a retired journalist for both the Sun and Sydney Morning Heralds, who wrote self-published maritime novels, which didn’t look very appealing on the shelf and even less so in hand. And then there was a wunderkid up the road who had staged a successful version of Romeo and Juliet by the time he was fifteen. Sort of a Max from Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Like Max, though, pretty much everyone hated him. He had scolded one of the mothers on the school’s P&C for calling him Shakespearean, when he much preferred the term Elizabethan. In writing, I am consciously trying not to be like the other two writers on my first street. They led the way, though. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 2-12-2010, 2 user comments

Focus on young writers: Rebecca Giggs

For her final edition as fiction editor, Kalinda Ashton wanted to showcase young writers. In Overland 201, she worked with Samuel Cooney to curate a special expanded fiction section, featuring four writers under thirty. Over the next days, we will be introducing  each of the writers in that section through interviews put together by Kalinda and Sam.

Today, we are featuring Rebecca Giggs. Rebecca is a Western Australia writer of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Her story in Overland 201 is 'Blow In'.

Why write?

Bertolt Brecht once wrote that ‘the word is the thing’s dead body’. I cannot agree. My ideas are never pre-formed, sub-surface things to be trawled up and given expression. In writing, I am always trying to solve something for myself, to push air into a feeling. Perhaps I have a sense of significance or an aesthetic interest first, and then I record one line or two in my journal, but it is often not until I sit down to work that I hit upon what I’m writing towards. I might do a whole piece in fiction before a line snags, and then I see that what I’m actually working on is an essay or a poem. That will be frustrating, of course, but usually I can bring myself to extract the line and start again – perhaps after two months, or six, of concentrating on something else. I work on a lot of different things at once, which means that I don’t work fast (much to the distress of the few editors who have been kind enough to read my writing). Here is one of the reasons that I write: to take something from inside and see what it becomes out there on the page, and how in turn the writing might function to further clarify my motivations. Often there is a grey and un-writerly explanation for whatever it is I’m worrying at but I don’t see that as a lost opportunity. And then occasionally the thing kicks a little on the page. One of the skills to develop as a ‘young writer,’ I think, is to be able to recognise when that kick is the writing taking its first breath, and when it is the shudder of an idea rattling to its demise. Either way, you have to be careful with what you’ve made then, and give it time and space enough to be able to discern the living parts from the withering ones. It is my hope that if I get that step right, what it is that I’ve been wondering about or fixated on will become something that resonates with readers. And that’s a sense that I try to develop, every day. ... read more

Written by Editorial team on 1-12-2010, 4 user comments

Vale Bobbi Sykes

Bobbi_SykesA fortnight ago Bobbi Sykes died.

When I read the news, I was stilled by sorrow for and about someone I have never met. I am not a practiced obituary writer, nor am I an ‘expert’ on Aboriginal poetry. I write this post because the girl of 18 who first read Sykes’ poems, as an introduction to the world of poetry, still lives inside me and is so thankful.

My sorrow was for what Sykes gave me as a poet and through her political activism, in particular her involvement in the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. I mourned for another wonderful woman dying, and for the many Aboriginal people who have died too young. As Sykes herself highlights in her poem ‘Final Count’: ... read more

Written by Elizabeth Humphrys on 30-11-2010, 6 user comments

Writing without fear or favour

A few years ago I was doing some analysis of blogging as part of a PhD examining different forms of alternative media amid claims that the internet would lead to a reinvigorated public sphere. In that analysis I was critical of blogs, arguing they were spaces where like people had like conversations that usually ended in furious agreement. But the Overland blog – where there is often furious disagreement – proved me wrong. Overland bloggers might identify as lefties but don’t assume this to mean they speak in one unified voice. In fact, I’ve been challenged by the many different perspectives of the community of writers and readers that make up Overland on topics ranging from politics to literature. ... read more

Written by Trish Bolton on 29-11-2010, 12 user comments

These are Fighting Words

Last week the London chapter of the international writing-school revolution began with the opening of the Ministry of Stories. A few months ago, I went to Dublin and paid a visit to the Irish centre, Fighting Words. Set up by author Roddy Doyle and former director of Amnesty International Ireland, Sean Love, the centre had been open for eighteen months. Unlike the Ministry or the original at 826 Valencia, Fighting Words doesn’t run a pirate or a monster shop. Which is not to say they haven’t been focused on bringing kids into a magical world.

Sean Love’s smile is infectious. The grin spreads as he introduces me to the inner entrances of Fighting Words: two bookshelves which rotate to reveal secret doors, one adult, one child-sized. ‘It’s very Man from UNCLE’ he says, with obvious delight. ... read more

Written by Jennifer Mills on 25-11-2010, 1 user comment

Writing: community and culture

NaNoWriMoFor my Overland Subscriberthon post this year, I wanted to raise and discuss the importance of writing community. Here at Overland, I have always felt a sense of community; a place where I can share my thoughts and engage in hearty political debate. A place where I can learn, make mistakes, reflect. We may be a small group, but there’s a community spirit, and we are all contributing to Melbourne’s political landscape and culture.

But what about novel writers? We are so isolated, in our little offices, typing away. I’ve been writing novels for six years now and I have to say, it does get pretty lonely. You procrastinate a lot. Surf the net. Watch the walls. That’s why I was ecstatic when my friend told me about National Novel Writing month. The basic principle is to start a new novel and update your word count progress throughout the month on the NaNo website. The total of each region, in my case, Melbourne, is ranked against other regions from around the world to determine the NaNo winner for 2010. You can work on your new novel anywhere you like, but for those writers craving a sense of community, organisations from cafés to corporate businesses have opened their doors and allowed writers to gather on their premises, network and write. Every day there is a NaNo gathering so it’s as simple as logging on and checking where to go to for the day and off you go. ... read more

Written by Koraly Dimitriadis on 24-11-2010, 3 user comments

Here’s the thing about political poetry

It was after convening my first twenty poetry readings and open microphone competitions that I figured out that political poetry has a really bad reputation in Australia.

As I hadn’t been on the Sydney poetry scene for long, it took another chunk of time to work out my definition of what political poetry is (and isn’t) and why it was where it was, which is not many places at all.

What I came up with shaped the way that I wrote my first book of poetry. Ruin is a sequence of 55 poems about the Iraq War told from four different points of view. Some of the poems have been previously published in this journal and others.

I’ll touch on my process later but first, I’ll lay out my definition of political poetry, as it relates to printed poetry and public readings in this country. (Unfortunately, I don’t have the space here to tackle issues facing poets in other countries but feel free to give your opinions.) ... read more

Written by Roberta Lowing on 23-11-2010, 9 user comments

Meanland: Abandoning print

Meanjin coversPeter Craven made a grave prognosis in his recent defence of the cultural worth of Meanjin: ‘If Meanjin is taken online, it will cease effectively to exist.’

On Thursday on Drum Tim Dunlop countered with: ‘The sooner magazines like Meanjin engage with the realities of online reading – and pray their financiers give them enough money to do it properly – the better.’ ... read more

Written by Jacinda Woodhead on 15-11-2010, 14 user comments