Published in Overland Issue 216 Spring 2014 · Uncategorized Goodbye to all that Keri Glastonbury ‘You’re the reason why I’ll move to the city, you’re why I’ll need to leave’ — Sharon Van Etten Driving over Styx Creek, appropriately laden with heavy metal, the TAFE maintaining a cold shoulder, where transgender trainee librarians from Kurri, meet Penny Wong’s ex-speech writer, meet all the dropkicks. Like watching Orange is the New Black thinking there but for the grace of god (& now whenever I think it’s in Pennsatuckey’s accent). The city’s lazily retooled past lives of a near future as I simply reach my nose around the back of my head, the slurry of toxic carcinogens leach from the gasworks, hidden in full public view. Outside parents are waddling their kids to school, and, for a minute there, we could be in the East Village. Seeking neither the uniform distancelessness of the network nor the uniform nearness of suburbia – all the disavowed derelict land, the perfect setting for an eat dirtzian doctorate. Mojo may have long left town but there’s still a few Los Chucos Suaves hiding in the native grasses, the world inside Clyde Street. Keri Glastonbury Keri Glastonbury is a poet, essayist and senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. She is also former poetry editor of Overland. More by Keri Glastonbury › 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 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
