Published in Overland Issue The Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize · Uncategorized Co-winner: Cut up song Andrew Booth Run it for me Bub. Run the song. That song I cut up, the one the ladies sing. Yes Gran. Again? You sure? You OK? Yes Bub. Sure. I’m a bit cold. Light the fire? Cup of tea? Thanks Bub. Crockery clatters. Why’d you cut it up Gran, the song? It was wrong. They got it all wrong. It was the wrong song. You could then, it was going around. Nineteen seventy seven. You could just cut things up. Rearrange the pieces. Writers were doing it, like collage. Line up the bits any way you like. Juxtapose. Use judgement. So I cut it up. Put it back together again. You see things weren’t there before. Get something new. Were you a scientist then Gran, an inventor? Ha! No. They thought I was mad. But they gave me a grant. One hundred and eight pieces. I just threw them up in the air again and again until I got it right. We won a prize. I was avant-garde. Play it for me now Bub? OK Gran. You comfortable? Yeah Bub. Kindling takes. Fire brightens. A choir of spectral voices ululates an incantation from beyond. us sing advance us sing advance let us rich and rare strains then let us sing free golden soil and wealth then us sing advance in joyful strains with courage let us combine joyful strains then let us history’s page then let us with hearts and hands then boundless plains our land abounds strains then let us rich and rare us sing advance us sing advance free with courage let us gifts of beauty in history’s page let us golden soil and wealth of ours renowned of all boundless plains to share then let us combine all combine in joyful strains in nature’s gifts in history’s page us sing advance every stage advance then let us (voices rise) let us sing us all combine then us sing advance us sing advance us sing advance all combine with courage let us Choir stops. Fire cracks. Sparks fly. Gran? Softer, Gran? Gran sleeps. Gran dreams? Us sing advance? Cut up song. Image: ‘Collage-062’ / flickr Andrew Booth Born in Sydney, Indigenous writer Andrew Booth has had a diverse senior executive career in the public sector. Subsequently he freelanced as a government adviser in Australia and then in the South Pacific where, in a case of mistaken identity, he was once shot at. He took up writing full time in 2012 and won the Queensland Literary Awards 2015 David Unaipon Award for an Unpublished Indigenous Writer with his first book, an experimental novel, The First Octoroon or Report of an Experimental Child which will be published by University of Queensland Press in 2017. Andrew spends his time reading, writing and fishing. More by Andrew Booth › 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 10 April 202610 April 2026 · open letter Open letter: RMIT staff and students oppose disciplinary action against Gemma Seymour over video opposing links to weapons ties RMIT University Staff and Students Freedom of speech and expression is absolutely vital in academic institutions. Students who engage in activism should not be punished for doing so, and discipline procedures are not there to be abused as a tool of intimidation. We call for the disciplinary process against Gemma to cease immediately. 9 April 202610 April 2026 · CoPower Against the will to engineer: Richard King’s Brave New Wild Ben Brooker The response demanded of us in the twenty-first century must operate at the level of metaphysics as well as the material, addressing our underlying assumptions about the instrumentalisation of nature and what constitutes a meaningful life in the face of technology’s relentless advance. To neglect that deeper terrain is to concede, in advance, the very ground on which our resistance to the machine must stand.
