Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 · Uncategorized Editorial Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Overland was founded with dual commitments to literary quality, and to publishing and fostering diverse writers. At the widest extremes of certain kinds of argument these priorities can be placed into a false dichotomy, and made to seem mutually antagonistic, but during our first year’s tenure as editors we’ve had the pleasure of working with brilliant writers informed by a wealth of diverging experiences. This issue proudly continues that commitment with a panoply of incisive essays of widely varying styles and subjects, the results of 2020’s Judith Wright and Neilma Sidney prizes, and a selection of fiction and poetry bringing established and leading artists into conversation with emerging voices. In ‘The invisible sea’ Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn meditates on the politics of water-bodies seen and unseen. In a literary market suddenly crowded with novels and essays clamouring to be ‘about’ the existential horizons of climate change, this essay is a masterclass in subtlety and self-awareness. Overland’s history as a radical literary journal is further illuminated by an essay from Aidan Coleman’s forthcoming biography of John Forbes, the brilliant ironist of Australian poetry in the 1990s. Cherry Zheng’s essay ‘Libations’ is a lyrical and poignant dramatisation of translation-loss and the complexities of immigration. Robert Poposki’s auto-theoretic work ‘Reclaiming space’ shares this theme, but pursues it through a fragmented analysis of how space intersects with porous identity. Finally, and as the current government crowns decades of disastrous rent-seeking with further vandalism of the tertiary education sector Giles Fielke’s ‘Hopeless labour’ is a bitter-sweet reflection on some of the ideas and travails that brought the Australian university to its current pass. It’s a privilege to work with these writers, and the entire Overland family. Solidarity, Evelyn Araluen & Jonathan Dunk Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Evelyn Araluen Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her Stella-prize winning poetry collection DROPBEAR was published by UQP in 2021. More by Evelyn Araluen › Jonathan Dunk Jonathan Dunk is the co-editor of Overland, a widely published poet and scholar. He lives on Wurundjeri country. More by Jonathan Dunk › 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.
