Published 13 June 201126 March 2012 · Writing / Main Posts / Politics Osama lives Maxine Beneba Clarke you cn feel him now: a small boy on the riyadh streets shifting arabia’s bare / cracked childhood feet in volatile unease as US army tanks roll by the bullet blew the flesh bt he is written in the wind: osama osama bin osama bin laden osama bin laden lives 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 1 April 20262 April 2026 · Politics United in grief, divided in strategy: the limits of Australian Muslim political engagement Sara Cheikh Husain The invitation by the Lebanese Muslim Association, and the intense criticism it received, reveal that, despite a shared sense of collective grief, the Australian Muslim community currently lacks a unified strategy for interacting with a political system that continues to marginalises it. 20 March 20262 April 2026 · Main Posts Final results of the 2025 Judith Wright Poetry Prize Editorial team Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize seeks outstanding poetry from new and emerging writers. This year’s judges, Shastra Deo, Harry Reid and […]
