Published 31 August 2009 · Main Posts ha! the blog of my enemy is failing. Maxine Beneba Clarke What better way to introduce you to Overland Overloaded blogger Karen Andrews than with her poem gloating (hypothetically, she assures me) over the failure of an enemy’s blog. The poem was first published on her parenting blogsite and nods to Clive James’ “The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered” and to the literary jealousy lurking in us all. The Blog of My Enemy is Failing The blog of my enemy is failing and I celebrate. Gone is the fizz and dapper swagger of awards won and rankings claimed. Your Fitzgeraldean party is over. What good is precocious verve, or the generosity of ‘linky-loving’ be when even the trolls, sniffing the wounds, have left you alone for gamer prey, for other bombs, the Gigli’s of Moveable Type, whose writers’ no amount of self-promotion could surpass their own self-interest. My enemy’s blog, its clean lines and symmetry, now reposes uncomfortably in the reflective rays of Perez’s pink. His undeniable precocity is to be found among ‘Project 365 of cow udders’. His bravery, declared by others when first known himself, his devotion to community, is there amongst “Celebrating Monkfish — They can’t help being ugly”. And (oh, yes) his talent, his talent no amount of photoshopping could ever hope to boost is now a nice match to @Fake_Seth_Godin who promises, “You (only wish you) can be as successful as me.” Now, soon my own blog could fail, though not to the catastrophic extent the failure of my enemy’s blog has managed to achieve, since in my blog’s particular case it will be due to an alexa glitch, or borked Technorati – – merely a temporary error. The quality is irrefutable. But in case such an anomaly were to occur and spoil my mirth, it will be countered nicely by the documentation of this occasion. Open the box and pass me a cigar! For the blog of my enemy is failing and I am dancing. 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 25 May 202326 May 2023 · Television The ‘Chinese question’ and colonial capitalism in New Gold Mountain Christy Tan SBS’s New Gold Mountain sets out to recover the history of the Gold Rush from the marginalised perspective of Chinese settlers but instead reinforces the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. Although celebrated for its multilingual script and diverse representation, the mini-TV series ignores how the settlement of Chinese migrants and their recruitment into colonial capitalism consolidates the ongoing displacement of First Nations peoples. First published in Overland Issue 228 15 February 202322 February 2023 · Main Posts Self-translation and bilingual writing as a transnational writer in the age of machine translation Ouyang Yu To cut a long story short, it all boils down to the need to go as far away from oneself as possible before one realizes another need to come back to reclaim what has been lost in the process while tying the knot of the opposite ends and merging them into a new transformation.
