Published in Overland Issue 204 Spring 2011 · Main Posts At Heatherlie Quarry Ann Vickery by the track, everlastings in bloom; paper-fine heads that vandals cut for vased reverie. no heather here, only wildflowers white, yellow, pinks. everywhere. today there is no stonemason only stonemusing, all in a day’s labour. I find myself gariwording a kind of “I woz ’ere 2011” graffiti as old-fashioned texting marking one’s own parking the national poetics in sleight colonial fashion. what other histories striate here everlongingly? land removal & razed ken notwithstanding. how to read dys-scriptively, query the quarry as industrial site or tourist point, the perfunctory consume & abuse of sublimity ungirded. this poem as Babel enfant reconstructs a monument, stories the stone once transported to Melbourne to support State Library sophistries. surplus slabs left scarred & abandoned. forms of the past handed on treasured extract (speaks volumes). around stark mining huts, three children hide & seek, a different game (foxes now baited here) (try to) pull the chain of the old trolley rusted on broken lines. futuring hands find only toy forms & will not remember this day. except for three take-home everlastings: forever keepsakes? Ann Vickery is the author of Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing and Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry. She is contributing editor of the online journal, Jacket2, and a past editor-in-chief of the online journal, HOW2. © Ann Vickery Overland 204-spring 2011, p. 114 Like this piece? Subscribe! Ann Vickery Anny Vickery teaches at Deakin University. She is the author of Leaving Lines of Gender: A Feminist Genealogy of Language Writing and Stressing the Modern: Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry. She is also co-author of The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers and co-editor of Manifesting Australian Literary Feminisms: Nexus and Faultlines. She has published poetry in a range of national and international journals. More by Ann Vickery › 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 8 September 202315 September 2023 · Main Posts Announcing the 2023 Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize ($6500) Editorial Team Supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, and named after the late Neilma Gantner, this prize seeks excellent short fiction of up to 3000 words themed around the notion of ‘travel’; imaginative, creative and literary interpretations are strongly encouraged. This competition is open to all writers, nationally and internationally, at any stage of their writing career. First published in Overland Issue 228 8 September 202312 September 2023 · Main Posts Announcing the 2023 Judith Wright Poetry Prize ($9000) Editorial Team Established in 2007 and supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, the Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets seeks poetry by writers who have published no more than one collection of poems under their own name (that is writers who’ve had zero collections published, or one solo collection published). It remains one of the richest prizes for emerging poets, and is open to poets anywhere in the world. In 2023, the major prize is $6000, with a second prize of $2000 and a third prize of $1000. All three winners will be published in Overland.