Published in Overland Issue 247 Winter 2022 · Poetry Poetry | Column irrelevant Yeena Kirkbright Words collected from ‘It’s so hip to be black’ by Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 15 April 2009. Meet now Wiradjuri Country. Auburn and charmingly freckled Country. Fair open air and Swallow Country. Take-me-as-I-am naked Country. Law Country. Creator sprit Country. Chosen Country. Colour awakening fullblood Country. Hailed and harping proud to be Country. Heartfelt firebrand beyond black and white Country. Ancestors deepest old Country. Mother Father Great-Grandfather Country. Australia. Yeena Kirkbright Yeena Kirkbright is a Wiradjuri woman living on Gadigal Land, who grew up on Country in Central West NSW. She uses poetry to document her personal journey, exploring gender, identity, place, cultural displacement, and decolonisation. More by Yeena Kirkbright 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 First published in Overland Issue 228 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.
