Published in Overland Issue 220 Spring 2015 · Uncategorized Paradise losing Georgina Woods Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but melting and fermenting, it seems. The panting, perishing white lemuroid possum can’t get enough water, can’t cool her febrile body, drops from the canopy of a thousand-year-old tree, in a white whoosh of rushing light. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but unpredictable, these days. Short-tailed shearwaters cruise southward, but their fruitless fishing for squid during this too-hot November, leaves them knackered, and the shore-break delivers them to us, as they give up the ghost. Le paradis n’est pas artificiel, but becoming simpler, no doubt. The great blue homeland acidifies and corrodes its little calcite prawns, absorbs them, with a sigh, into the same soup that sloshes over the coral beds, turning them a general algal brown. Georgina Woods is an activist and poet working and living on Awabakal and Worimi land in Newcastle, Australia. An earlier version of this essay was shortlisted for the 2016 Nature Writing Prize. More by Georgina Woods 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 1 June 20231 June 2023 · Politics Turning peaceful protesters into criminals—again Evan Smith So the Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Bill 2023 has been passed by South Australia’s Legislative Assembly and will become law. Fifteen hours of debate in the upper house, led by the Greens and SA Best, could not overturn the bill that was reportedly rushed through the lower house in just twenty-two minutes a fortnight ago. First published in Overland Issue 228 31 May 202331 May 2023 · Film In Memoriam: Kenneth Anger’s cinematic incantations Eloise Ross ‘Making a movie is casting a spell,’ said Kenneth Anger about his lifelong profession, his unique and spectacular talent, his very own dark magic. That certainly describes how I was lured into his realm. There was a time in my life where I would watch Anger’s seven-minute film Rabbit’s Moon basically on repeat, infatuated by its blue-tinted images of a sprightly harlequin dancing around a clearing and calling silently to the moon. It was poetry.
