Published 15 December 200915 December 2009 · Main Posts Picaro Press has posted bail for Gil Scott Heron Maxine Beneba Clarke On this blog we always seem to be so down on publishers (perhaps, and let’s be honest about this, it’s because we’re mostly emerging writers struggling to get things published), that I thought I’d give a shout out to the publisher of my forthcoming poetry collection Gil Scott Heron is on Parole. When I asked Rob ‘ Is this madness?’ after he’d read the first draft of the book (which was at the time intended to be launched as part of a Caribbean Immigration Exhibition being held at the Melbourne Immigration Museum), his answer was: ‘Of course it is. But publishing poetry is madness. So let’s do it.’ It’s not just that an imprint which has published the likes of Judith Rodriguez, Dorothy Porter and David Brooks took a young (can I still claim that now that I have a 3 in front of my numbering?) black she-poet on. It’s the fact that my poetry is directly political, that all the patois and the mother fucks remain in the text, that he sent me the first proof bound into a blood red cover, then a few weeks later the second proof arrived with a closed raised fist smack bang in the middle of the red. Rob didn’t balk when I asked him to wonkify the title lettering to make the whole thing look like an underground pamphlet. Despite the potential of not even breaking even (let’s face it, the book is not exactly likely to be on the pressie list for Mum), Picaro Press is risking it. So you see, some publishers are good guys after all. the first proof the first proof arrived red / like a heart splayed open the note said i don’t know i thought maybe this wz revolutionary i thought damn / here is a man who gets / what the fuck i am even doing Gil Scott Heron is on Parole will be launched at Readings, Carlton in February 2010. You can catch me performing poems from the book this evening at The Spinning Room, which will also feature the work of Benjamin Theolonius Sanders. Tuesday December 15 8pm – 11pm The Spinning Room ET’s Bar, 211 High Street Prahran 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.