Poetry in Lockdown

Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma curate a special digital edition of poetry commissioned during the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns. Featuring new works from twelve incredible poets, such as Eunice Andrada, Tony Birch, and Emily Stewart.

Issue Contents

Poetry

Waiting for a train with Thelma Plum

Tony Birch

Cemeteries on google earth - a suite of poems

Panda Wong

The well

Neika Lehman

Leaves to the imagination

Michael Farrell

Poetry | Stillbirths wrapped in newsprint

Mark Cayanan

A spiral (or certain themes revisited)

Leah Muddle

The new place

Jazz Money

kulani

Eunice Andrada

Sky updates / blue platform

Emily Stewart

500 words towards feeling, or: all my poems become war poems

Dženana Vucic

Excerpt from 'salt'

Andrew Brooks

October monthly

Adalya Nash Hussein

Editorial

Poetry in Lockdown

Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma

Browse the issue:

Poetry

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

Waiting for a train with Thelma Plum

Tony Birch

Penrith Station sits broken as a grieving heart in pieces the platform the waystation for essentially low-paid vital workers in the dead-days of iso-lation

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

Cemeteries on google earth - a suite of poems

Panda Wong

like several edible birds inserted forcibly into a holiday turducken the city intrudes if you turn a cemetery upside down it looks like the middle of a city like a skyscraper

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

The well

Neika Lehman

just try and stop a mind rolling back from cooked fish and a clear horizon—fervor’s up along the pier, just quick food and all these bodies blow on hot bones in bitter wind

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

Leaves to the imagination

Michael Farrell

Standing in the shade of a lion statue or ode to the temporary Schoolchildren desultorily leaf through emails and posts Lunchtime on their collective mind presumably as it is mine When a person is a faun they’re expected to be highly sexed

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown ·

Poetry | Stillbirths wrapped in newsprint

Mark Cayanan

The weather was tomorrow’s collective sickness not poverty and its predictable longings poverty was tomorrow’s collective sickness not the predictable violence of weather what’s not on the map is the dust of the streets

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

A spiral (or certain themes revisited)

Leah Muddle

The largest square is for the sky. We have a great little room for seeing it, for watching storms come. Bending trees and oversized clouds emphatically going . . .

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

The new place

Jazz Money

now children, it’s time to begin the rotations I. yellow light step upon the timber floor you remember this place practice recite along the line you know this homely institution

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

kulani

Eunice Andrada

first water of morning the translation into English dries my grandmother’s mouth spoiled water she spits on the pads of her fingers dabs them on the crook of my neck

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

Sky updates / blue platform

Emily Stewart

chain of events against family cold snap foreign investment scratched up car heavy bass toothache serious motive any other secrets? willing or unwilling thumb print the public body breath common flex

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

500 words towards feeling, or: all my poems become war poems

Dženana Vucic

i write notes in my phone and hope to be profound. i have examples. you see, i am the kind of girl that makes love to the subjunctive. i am not proud of this per se but i like to wear my wounds. i have better wounds than this but i want to be mundane.

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

Excerpt from 'salt'

Andrew Brooks

We huddle under the eaves while it rains hard and you whisper something in my ear and it feels so good and I want to stay here a little longer but we have to make a run for it. The pavement is cracked and slippery so we take half steps in a bid not to lose control of our own bodies.

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Poetry

October monthly

Adalya Nash Hussein

my friend’s face is in a pile by the counter i compulsively reach out to touch it turn it over give her some privacy to observe that this is not what is usually meant by ‘covergirl’ is on the nose

Editorial

Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown ·

Poetry in Lockdown

Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma

In the first half of 2020, Overland received a small grant to help the magazine provide writing and publishing opportunities during the pandemic lockdown, part of a broader scheme by Creative Victoria to save the arts sector when so many jobs and gigs completely disappeared for so many artists. ‘Poetry in Lockdown’ is one outcome of this—

Previous Issue
239 Winter 2020 Next Issue
Reflections on Ngaga-dji: Listening for Change