Published in Overland Issue 216 Spring 2014 · Uncategorized Fading Pam Brown conjecture if I can’t come up with anything I’ll crawl over and tap out one note I’m trying hard to live a bourgeois life – taking double-strength cappuccinos tying coloured balloons to the fence Ladies & Gentlemen Please Stop at Security and put your mobile phone number on your child’s arm crepe paper streaked with cream darkness drops like a blind holy ghost keeps hanging on muffled steps relaxed like hands in pockets Block people moved to Housing Department flats clutching brown paper bagged bottles moping round on the bus route * fading beyond whatever you were a boatload of rats a-rowing down some slippery stream sitting on the carpet rug reading the long list of benefactors to the art magazine is anyone still ever born again? no phenomenon but in things like slim cyber tablets scissor sharpeners glass paperweights vinyl bucket seats brass padlocks a sundial you only get one jubilee and I’ve had mine no poem is meant for anyone literary magazine editor gets intoxicated we get drunk make an unintended poem a yahoo might like Pam Brown Pam Brown has published many chapbooks, pamphlets and full collections of poetry, most recently Stasis Shuffle (Hunter Publishers, 2021). She lives in a south Sydney suburb on reclaimed swampland on Gadigal Country. More by Pam Brown › 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 22 May 2026 · Friday Poetry Judas goats Caitlin Maling Because goats can climb / and cave, clamber to find cover / in the bushes of what they can’t eat / which isn’t much. 20 May 202620 May 2026 · Reviews Are you experienced? Louis Armand Pam Brown’s poetry has been described as both conversational and deeply layered, its historical consciousness seemingly belied by a fragmentary, diaristic style. An easy comparison might be drawn with the work of her long-time friend Ken Bolton, which often achieves a sense of over-arching unity of vision expressed in monologue form. Bolton’s work can appear exhaustive — long prose-like stanzas — where Brown’s seems to flicker down the page like dawn through the mangroves on the drive to Cronulla.
