Editorial
In Overland’s 243rd issue, we’re proud to print the results of the inaugural Kuracca prize established honour of Aunty Kerry Reed-Gilbert.
Judges notes, 2021 Kuracca Prize
Judges notes from the 2021 Kuracca Prize for Australian Literature.
Kuracca Prize Winner | Great Grandmother Arrabrilya
I am waiting for another dreamer to come down from that Arrabrilya there. I don’t know who it is yet. I don’t know their skin or songs, or when they’ll be here, but I’ll wait just the same. They’ll bring stories and tokens from their dreaming days on that Arrabrilya. I will greet them with ritual.
Kuracca Prize Runner-Up | Me, the (failed) revolutionary
For a second, the tired-grey-suit-guy sees me. They stand up. Their body is tackled down into submission. Their body, crumpled on the ground, is yanked away by the arm of the policeman. Their eyes meet my eyes as they are…
Kuracca Prize Runner-up | The grief tourist
They called you nameless, but you are my many named where foreground, midground, background fold in on one another like black hole time, black time, bush time, way out back that way time
Coming through ceremony
The story goes that a writer, and wannabe singer, dancer and actor (who screamed like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and pivoted like James Brown), and a real actor and wannabe director (you might know her from such TV shows as Prisoner, The Flying Doctors, and the cult film Little Miss Wonder), met at the Black Playwright’s conference in 1989 in Canberra.
Feature | A teleology of folding, and of dying
For years, nobody called me by my name. In Brisbane, I was jen; in Melbourne people called me ana. It was a neat split, my name folded into a recognisable shape, the unnecessary syllables and foreign letters turned in against themselves and shushed. It is a recent thing to have claimed the full breadth of myself.
The bridge and the fire
I want to begin by acknowledging the enduring loss experienced by those whose family members, loved ones and workmates died in Australia’s worst industrial accident. I started on the West Gate Bridge well after the collapse, and I often wondered if only those there on the day could fully comprehend the human dimensions of its tragedy.
Torrey Peters Detransition, Baby
When, in late 2020, I first heard mention of a forthcoming novel called Detransition, Baby, I felt a jolt of alarm. A book with ‘detransition’ in the title? Surely this would be a TERF diatribe, companion to Abigail Shrier’s 2020…
Kuracca Prize Winner | Great Grandmother Arrabrilya
I am waiting for another dreamer to come down from that Arrabrilya there. I don’t know who it is yet. I don’t know their skin or songs, or when they’ll be here, but I’ll wait just the same. They’ll bring stories and tokens from their dreaming days on that Arrabrilya. I will greet them with ritual.
Green thumb
Out at the rubbish tip, she was first to spot the old caravan. It sat proud amid the twisted swing-sets, crushed white dishwashers, and dejected hot water systems. ‘If you fix it up maybe we can go up north next winter, Jase?’ Jason was always up for bringing new life where others had abandoned hope. ‘The world has gone mad with all this stuff,’ he’d often say. ‘Why we need all this shit is beyond me.’
Ritual
We live in a hotel now. Well, for the moment anyway. Until Thursday. Until the money runs out. Everything smells like mushrooms. People come and go, with their conferences and morning corporate functions. This morning, when we filled up on our complimentary breakfast in the small dining room for guests, I felt someone’s eyes on me and curled my lip. The animal in me rising.
see you later
Jess tossed and turned in her bed. Far away, she imagined thick sleeves of bull kelp sucking against limestone cliffs. The sea was restless, spreading itself over the crumbling city grid where vehicles dunked and flipped. Houses turned to flotsam as the Earth blinked, the eye of the storm turned away from the sun. There was no Moon—everything was churning liquid, rubbery darkness. She had sunk to the ocean floor, head firmly anchored to the pillow.
Among the quietening air
We slow down enough to grow a patch of moss on our legs where the shade lives longest. Do not look away. We are growing through the most alarming of days.
The dead sea
We went to the Dead Sea but I didn’t bring my bathers so I couldn’t go in. I had to watch on the shore, I didn’t know then I’d never be back. I was young. I thought rivers and seas and skies lasted forever.
what’s hobbling the beat (a soliloquy in three rhythms)
didn’t my mum and dad slave away through gritted teeth on hands and knees in the corner of some cooked plantation so their son could clean offices for $10 an hour — yo sit back — until their hands became a cocoa field of blisters so why you be surprised brother when we can’t take the weight when we can’t
Abattoir song
the shuffle hooves click head-to-hide cattle the press of mud shit billiard eyes shunt grunting low beams of steaming semis
Backseat driving
on the carpet at the rear of the family car juddering engine our throats to the night sky with mum green in the face from the dash light long roads thrum bodies still heads
until it was memory
i am grieving for this wolf hole where her heart should be my cloak dyed red from her blood regret washes off my hand who holds her now that the hole has become a stone so heavy
Out of time
You can’t ask a replica of a replica to get in the wrongness, to rise up. I’ve stuck my head in the algorithm unable to find an exit.
The coffee coffee drinks
‘Fortis ut mors dilectio’ — from the Song of Solomon, as inscribed on a necklace my grandfather gave my grandmother on their engagement.
Graphology restoration 20
I heard phrases I don’t recall having heard before when pied butcherbirds sang outside my sleep of a morning as indefinite article. Still troubled by the behaviours of a friend when we were catching reflections off a deep sacred lake
Graphology restoration 17: name rename name ... term
No claim in the name ‘Jam Tree Gully’ — rather, a personal and familial association of presence which is neither assertion nor acquiescence. There are jam trees. There is a gully. No names displayed on gates.
Cover art: Anne Barnetson
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