Published in Overland Issue 208 Spring 2012 · Main Posts Bellbird Gully Shari Kocher (after Eugene’s Falls, by A Frances Johnson) inside the invisible atlas of a wave possessor of savage kindness two-tenths of the way the rock wall of self splits the unbound gaze into a spume of wonder the terror and fascination a pencilled hand stencilling in lead the intricacy of water that immutable breadth and depth approaching the very whatness of things grown obdurate skin-cells stretched in vague permutations of sky the sideways lurch of the mind that can never know itself that beguiling illusion of cognition that atomised density of world who can breathe grown thin and stretched on the breath of forgetting what once you will never scale that rock face of wall the nature of nature grown impossibly immense no scale can map the implausible plosives of a future city scant as cloth fungal-flowered mildewed mosquito-mangy progressively receding the impression of distance a mirage a horizon managed best when drawn with dynamite that alluvial blast of time reductive as recompense the doubting earth denied Shari Kocher Bio: Shari Kocher is the author of Foxstruck and Other Collisions (Puncher & Wattmann, 2021) which was Highly Commended for the NSW Premier’s Literature Awards (Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize 2022), and The Non-Sequitur of Snow (Puncher & Wattmann 2015), which was Highly Commended in the 2015 Anne Elder Awards (Australia). Recent accolades include The Blue Knot Foundation Award (2021), The Peter Steele Poetry Prize (2019), The Venie Holmgren Environmental Poetry Award (2018) and The University of Canberra Health Poetry Prize (2016). Shari holds a PhD. from Melbourne University, where she sometimes teaches, but more often than not persists as an independent thinker, writer and poet. www.sharikocher.com More by Shari Kocher › 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.
