Published in Overland Issue 240 Spring 2020 · Uncategorized 9.36am Ouyang Yu There’s a lot of things I don’t care any more Calling me ‘Yu Ouyang’, for example Putting me under ‘Y’ in a bibliography, for another Accusing me of writing in a ‘sloppy’ way Mildly reminding of the word ‘slopey’ Wondering whether I’m in China or in Australia Asking whether identity remains an issue Not buying a single copy of anything new that I’ve managed to publish Do they know that I tore two books of mine to pieces And I’m so happy that I’m picking up the pieces And turning them into art and poetry Read the rest of Overland 240 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu is an award-winning poet and novelist. His first novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle, won the 2004 South Australian Festival Award for Innovation in Writing. His third novel, The English Class, won the 2011 NSW Premier’s Award, and his fourteenth collection of poetry, Terminally Poetic (2020), won the Judith Wright Calanthe Award in the 2021 Queensland Literary Awards. He was shortlisted for the Writer’s Prize in the 2021 Melbourne Prize for Literature and he won the Fellowship from Creative Australia in 2021. His ninth novel, The Sun at Eight or Nine, was published in March 2025. More by Ouyang Yu › 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 17 April 2026 · Friday Fiction These old hands, they are still growing Sam Fisher It was an old house meshed in an unrelenting grid of brick and weatherboard. Its walls still stood stark, red brick. Paint like tender old sagging skin on the timber windows. A bastard of a garden surrounded it, ran up brick wall and concrete path. The lawn, dead that time of year, luminescent in the streetlight. In the center of that void, a sign, Auction. 15 April 202615 April 2026 · Climate politics The $67 billion climate betrayal: how Australia’s record fossil fuel subsidies fund global destruction Noa Wynn The contradictions aren't failures of implementation. They're the predictable result of a political system that has decided fossil fuel profits matter more than climate stability, more than the Great Barrier Reef, more than Pacific Islander lives, and more than the future habitability of the planet.
