Published in Overland Issue 206 Autumn 2012 · Uncategorized california Mathew Abbott the field out there is that expanse hazed in glary tired light the field gone to yellow at the endings birds are out in it and too much with us the passing of our train indistinct to them they know in the upwash finding shapes to split the flow fields the towns have the sense of being paraded the life in them stripped back to glint the turbines turn the head anemotropic hum the skull to juice the mind the field out there meets the field of the mind at the horizontal the faked water of the heat the turbines cut Mathew Abbott Mathew Abbott lives in Queanbeyan with his wife Emilie and his dog Champion Ruby. Australian Poetry will publish his first collection, wild inaudible, in April. He maintains a blog at beetleinabox.tumblr.com, and plays in Life and Limb, a punk band named after a Fugazi song. More by Mathew Abbott › 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 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. Nice people, good at their job. But why are we doing this, we kept asking. Management kept telling us we have a funding crisis (which often turned to a surplus in the end), so why are we also on a hiring spree? All along it looked like it could end badly, for all of us. First published in Overland Issue 228 15 September 202326 September 2023 · Friday Features Activating the poetic spirit as friendship John Kinsella I’ve always had the aching feeling that—as a text to be shared among friends and maybe eventually ‘enemies’—the soul-body dialogue poem is a way of arguing towards spiritual certainty in the face of earthly corruption and doubt.