Published in Overland Issue The Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize · Uncategorized Highly recommended: A poem about community John Graham The braille of our nation’s Soul Like someone putting their hand up Like someone digging deep The braille of our nation’s Soul You feel it across all communities And all communities feel it Feeling our way, young and old We’re all feeling our way, For a feeling called home The nature of our tears, is to find a home in each other’s eyes, find some reason, some way, between the tides The nature of our blood is to find, every other heart that’s not our own, and still recognise home Image: ‘Braille’ / flickr John Graham John Graham is of Aboriginal and European blood, namely Kombumerri, Waka Waka, Gamilaroi and Irish, Scottish, English blood. The affirmation ‘Stories make us and Stories keep us’ helps John navigate the interesting times we all live in. Everyone is free to touch the ground and start from there. More by John Graham › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
