Published 14 September 200914 September 2009 · Main Posts subliminal poegramming Overland Overloaded …white feathers suffocating… …my heart is a breath only… Throughout the 2009 Overload Poetry Festival, poems have been broadcast at Federation Square as scrolling text. The ticker wall on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets became a giant poetry board with a selection of poetry edited by Matt Hetherington and Luis Gonzalez Serrano. The big screens in the main square and atrium also displayed a selection of concrete/visual/animated poems curated by Sjaak de Jong. To be perfectly honest, I’d completely forgotton about this Overload project. On Saturday, as I sat on the paved steps of Federation Square sipping strong coffee and psyching myself up for the last few events of Overload 09, I stared at the neon orange word-train scrolling vertically down the fragmented wall and did a double take. …fallen from the sky together… …dumb minuteness can shake the earth… The poems were alternated with the general announcements scrolling horizontally, vertically and diagonally across the enormous, triangular-fragmented wall. My eyes flew everywhere, never staying on one text-scroll enough to get a whole poem, but darting from fanta green text to G.I. green text, to neon blue and then on to words in bright split-lip red. Sometimes the announcements: about parking, events on at the square, ticketing enquiries, seemed almost to be part of the moving poetic installation. Several people around me stared at me gawking up at the scrolling text, and turned to find my puzzled frown’s protagonist. …two Bonnies / no clyde… …i love you to bits / she said / gathering the pieces together…The poems: short in the first instance then fragmented in their delivery, seemed not meant to be pondered and examined, but to form part of the consciousness of the everyman on the street. The poems intruded upon the minds of members of the public unaware of the poetic rumblings that have been raging in Melbourne’s bars, pubs and streets over the past ten days. They slyly climbed into the eyeballs of women not on their way to two hours of head-to-head-haiku at Dante`s, appealed to people not hoarse from too much slamming, or tripped out from seeing the Bristol Poetry Festival’s hairy and aggressive slam Badger at ACMI on Saturday night during the Skype slam. The Federation Square scrolling text poetry was what Overload, in it’s original and current conception, was all about. It brought poetry to the people – unavoidably, publicly, proudly, but somehow also cheekily and on the sly: planting poem-seeds in the cracks between closed-minded concrete slabs. …do bananas taste better in summer?… …when he left he said goodbye to them politely / in the proper English way… – Maxine Clarke Overland Overloaded More by Overland Overloaded › 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 8 September 202326 September 2023 · Main Posts Announcing the 2023 Judith Wright Poetry Prize ($9000) Editorial Team Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets seeks poetry by writers who have published no more than one collection of poems under their own name (that is writers who’ve had zero collections published, or one solo collection published). It remains one of the richest prizes for emerging poets, and is open to poets anywhere in the world. In 2023, the major prize is $6000, with a second prize of $2000 and a third prize of $1000. All three winners will be published in Overland. First published in Overland Issue 228 8 September 202315 September 2023 · Main Posts Announcing the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize ($6500) Editorial Team Supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, and named after the late Neilma Gantner, this prize seeks excellent short fiction of up to 3000 words themed around the notion of ‘travel’; imaginative, creative and literary interpretations are strongly encouraged. This competition is open to all writers, nationally and internationally, at any stage of their writing career.
