Published 12 September 200913 September 2009 · Main Posts we make no apologies. we’re poets Overland Overloaded Okay, so it was bound to happen. For the first five days of the Overload festival, the Overland Overloaded team has been right on the money. But now the festival’s two days away from being over, we’re all tired, we’ve spent a little too much time wining and poetry-ing rather than typing, reviewing and posting. So this vox pop is one of a series we’re left holding, thinking ‘Mmm, yeah…probably should have gone up about Tuesday.’ We make no apologies. We’re poets. And those of us that aren’t probably soon will be. But this here is an incredibly important vox pop with Teresa Bell, the amazing and very forgiving director of the Australian Poetry Centre. During the Overload Poetry Festival, the APC launched three new books by Australian poets Ali Cobby Eckermann (SA), Helen Hagemann (WA) and Kimberley Mann (NT). Really, a centre for poetry? They gave you money for that? About time I say! So, poets write poetry…what do you do for them? Listen. And what else? Tour them o/s, publish their first book in our new poets series, give them reading opportunities, workshops, masterclasses, publish them in Blue Dog (or not), make films of their work, put them in cafes, in tragic poet houses, on postcards…. And what else? Get their works and make a lovely australian poetry collection that will be available for browsing and reading and writing in in the new CBWI from November. Are poets really as organised, sane, even tempered and punctual as they seem? No COMMENT. What’s the best thing about working with poets? They don’t flinch at mad, creative, left brained flexible things, like employing a pregnant woman who lives miles away. And of course their words. The worst thing? Sometimes they bite. That all? Hard! Come one, whisper it. We won’t tell…<br /> Words can hurt, but I am getting tougher. Actually, that’s not quite right, that ‘working with poets question’. You kind of work for them, don’t you? We work together is how I see it, because we love poetry and believe in the artform. So how does it feel to be employed by a bunch of, well, poets? We are funded by wonderful, generous Arts Victoria and Copyright Agency Limited so I have to pay tribute to them and believe that the poets and the staff/Board at the APC work as hard as they can to promote poetry and the poetic spirit. Where will the Australian Poetry Centre be in five years time? …. In ten years time? …. In a hundred years time? “How now, spirit! whither wander you?” During Overload Poetry Festival? Launching 4 great new poets. You can check out the refreshingly new and long-awaited poetry voices of in the APC New Poets series here. 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 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.