29 April 20111 June 2012 Main Posts / Reading / Culture Alison Croggon, columnist Editorial team Beginning with issue 202, Alison Croggon is writing a regular column for Overland, one dedicated to books – our ideas of them and our relationships to them. Here’s the first. Enjoy. ‘Some people will tell you that none of these things happened. They’ll say they were just a dream that the three of us shared. But they did happen.’ – Heaven Eyes, David Almond I have two vivid childhood memories of things that can’t be true. They both date from before I was four years old. The first is of seeing a witch fly out of my ear. I was lying in bed listening to the thump of blood in my head. I remember that I was irritated by the noise, which was keeping me awake, and that I became convinced that it was the sound of footsteps in my ear canal. Then a tiny witch flew out of my ear on a broomstick and circled above my head. The second memory is of being up late enough to see the stars. What I saw was miraculous – huge orbs of blue and red and yellow and green, blazing in a black expanse. The next time I saw the night sky, maybe a couple of years later, I nearly cried with disappointment: the pale blue points of light I saw then were wan travesties of the glories I remembered. Obviously, neither of these things can have actually occurred: they belong in the world of dreams, and might indeed be memories of dreams. Nevertheless, they were real to me. They have the concrete quality of other memories – playing with the family dog, the taste of sour milk I drank once by accident, the resistance and release of a rusty nail piercing my foot as I trod on it – that family lore confirms actually did happen. Read the whole column. Subscribe. Editorial team More by Editorial team 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 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 16 March 202317 March 2023 Culture Lydia Tár is dead Fred Pryce To paraphrase a quote, I am less interested in Lydia Tár’s dreams than in the near certainty that the Társ of the real world don’t make it out of Staten Island. Art is the opposite of rent. Artists need money to live and time to create, as do audiences in order to attend. First published in Overland Issue 228 24 February 202317 March 2023 Main Posts Final Results of the 2022 Judith Wright Poetry Prize Editorial Team Overland, the judges and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the final results of the 2022 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.