Published 26 January 200927 January 2009 · Main Posts white bred bun: an unaustralian poem Maxine Beneba Clarke oooooh check out that lifeguard he’s ripped hand me a vegemite sand stuck in my baby bonus ooooooh my baby bonus bits oi! mister / let’s breed gold haired & knock-kneed buttercup & coon cheese bandaid on a scratched knee judge me by a wet T call me love my god / i love this sunburnt cunt – calls me a slapper nother shrimp on the bar— be unaustralian i come from the land down under limp lettuce / tomato sauce burnt sausage & onion on a white bred bun i come from the land down under balangalow screams / do you speak my language well / f*ck off & go home hey sheila hitch hike your skirt up like a north shore school girl hey blackie yes you / beat it only kind we dig are rip curls oooooh check out that lifeguard he’s ripped hand me a vegemite sand stuck in my baby bonus ooooooh my baby bonus bits (c) Maxine Clarke 2008. Maxine Beneba Clarke Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian author and slam poet of Afro- Caribbean descent. Her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the 2015 ABIA Award for Best Literary Fiction and the 2015 Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her memoir, The Hate Race, her poetry collection Carrying the World, and her first children’s book, The Patchwork Bike, will be published by Hachette in late 2016. More by Maxine Beneba Clarke › 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 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
