i was flying over sydney

in a giant dog

 

Things looked bad

– Michael Dransfield

 

Welcome to Giant Dog, the new Overland poetry podcast!

In this podcast, Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch will speak with poets published in the journal, who are invited to delve into the archives and read a poem from any prior issue of Overland, whether that be a poem from the early days of the 1950s and 1960s or something more recent. In each edition, the guest poet will read and discuss the archival poem with Toby, and then read and discuss their new work.

This inaugural edition focuses on the special seventeen-poet collaboration edited by Corey Wakeling that Overland recently published, ‘On the Occasion of Gig Ryan’s Sixtieth Birthday’, and the work of Gig Ryan more generally.

The historical poem Corey Wakeling and the other special guest, Overland editor Jacinda Woodhead, discuss with Toby is ‘All the dates are set’, first published in Overland in 1978, when Stephen Murray-Smith was still editor.

 

The podcast

 

 

The poem from the archives

 

‘The dates are all set’

Gig Ryan, 1978

 

The distinguished overseas guests are bashful, lonely as hell

being fingered by flabby compliments and invitations

Drinking, but not too much

he’s wrapped in his fluffy Christianity, that coddles now

like unprocessed wool, his sheep’s jaw screws up

into an insular smile, then it’s lax in an odd country

for a time desolate, unaware

 

There seemed no harm, less risk. The heart’s

in the right place, but something’s sagging crudely

He shifts his glass from hand to hand, an occupation

like baldness, a perimeter. The loudness measures him critically

deluded, in an egalitarian approach. He misses the point, wondering

if he should look that way, or if he needs to

 

The Pope’s word is inflammable

that is, not likely to catch on

fire (my brother said that), and the guests are coated

with throw away satisfaction that doesn’t quite cover

but the crowd’s thoughtless enough. The exit door rises up

like the Harbour Bridge

 

Read the newly published collaboration discussed here, ‘On the Occasion of Gig Ryan’s Sixtieth Birthday’.

 

Image: ‘Giant, Stalking Dog, Wasteland’ / flickr