Published 12 September 200912 September 2009 · Main Posts pre-nostalgic photo-gazing Maxine Beneba Clarke Photographer and Melbourne poet Michael Reynolds has been following the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival around, camera in hand, for nine days. With two days left of the festival, we’re taking a look back at the launch of Overload 2009. That’s right folks: the festival hasn’t even ended yet and the nostalgia’s already setting in. At the Overload 2009 launch, Reynolds snapped Jack Charles’ spirited Welcome to Country, Overload President Jon Garrett’s speech, The Heart Chamber’s Matt Hetherington, Lia Hills, Tom Joyce, Michelle Leber and Marian Spires, MC Myron Lysenko, poet Jennifer Harrison, and Santo Cazzati declaring the start of the 2009 Overload Poetry Crawl. Michael has been there, eagle-eyed despite the torturous schedule, at most Overload Poetry Festival events, crouched low on musty carpets, adjusting his camera lense from the back of the room, creeping up toward the podium for that rare close-up. Here are just a few examples of the moments Reynolds captured at the Overload Poetry Festival launch: (anti-clockwise from right: Jack Charles’ welcome to country, Overload President Jon Garrett, MC and poet Myron Mysenko & poet Matt Hetherington of The Heart Chamber.) (Above: The Heart Chamber, and poet Jennifer Harrison delivering her heartfelt Dorothy Porter tribute). Poetry crawl MC, poet Santo Cazzati, declares the launch officially over and points the way to the first poetry crawl venue, emphasising the point with, well, what looked like some kind of mountain-goat herding horn. Overload photographer and poet Michael Reynolds will be appearing tonight in the Skype Slam between Overload at Bristol Poetry Festival at ACMI. 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 28 March 202428 March 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. First published in Overland Issue 228 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.