Published 10 July 202011 August 2020 · Poetry Poetry | In my fortieth year, I realise I am not them Eileen Chong The moon rises above clouds— in the cold light, all is grey, and white. Night sky turns on a paper wheel. Stars are silvered, immutable. The only sound: a deer scarer filling, emptying, and filling again. Reflection The evening I realised that Verity La was not going to take my feedback about Stuart Cooke’s ‘creative non-fiction’ piece — which has been widely criticised for its sexist and racist representations of Filipinx women — seriously, I turned to poetry, as I usually do when I am troubled. I don’t consider my writing ‘therapy’ as such, but I often think of what my poetry teacher, Judith Beveridge, once shared with me about her best friend, the late Dorothy Porter. Dot would say to her that her poems told her what she needed to know before she knew it herself. I sat at my desk in the early hours of that sleepless morning, and the words came. I could not find many of them—my emotions around the situation were so new to me, and so raw. And the moon—yes, poets and the moon—hung there, in the sky. I then thought of the Izuki Shikibu poem, ‘Although the wind…’, translated by my friend, the poet Jane Hirshfield. And my poem emerged on the page in response, a clean blade of hurt. I offer this poem to you, here in this shared space: in solace, in solidarity, and in my hope that we will, as a literary community, not only heal from this great rupture, but grow together, and commit to and enact change, for the better. Eileen Chong Eileen Chong is an Australian poet. She is the author of eight books. Her next collection of poetry, A Thousand Crimson Blooms is forthcoming from UQP in April 2021. She lives and works on unceded Gadigal land of the Eora Nation. www.eileenchong.com.au More by Eileen Chong 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 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.