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. She lectures in Literature and Creative Writing at Deakin University. More by Evelyn Araluen › Jonathan Dunk Jonathan Dunk is the co-editor of Overland and 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 6 September 20246 September 2024 · Poetry Debts of the robots Corey Wakeling Repaying the debts of robots, / I see me in your screen fatally, which is / to say oozed certainty across a whistle of craft. 4 September 20244 September 2024 · neoliberalism In the public interest: Rex and essential services after neoliberalism John van der Velden and Alastair Greig There are widespread calls from regional communities and unions for a government bailout of Rex Airlines. The public interest is central to any such essential services question. It warrants a broader discussion of nationalisation, especially in the face of yet another "market failure" of commercialised essential services.