Published in Overland Issue 220 Spring 2015 · Uncategorized Austerity Kate Lilley The person honourable, the crimes austere. In circumstances of woodland decay well suited to delinquency she got her youthful face for a song. Now she’s over it, fortune favours etc. Fortis non ferox. The mood’s hard driving and it’s dirty work. Paradiastole prevails, redescribing vices as virtues. Stoic, sceptic, epicurean: count the lessons and clean up as you go. Inculcate the sense of a person speaking to someone who cares. Kate Lilley Kate Lilley is a queer poet-scholar. Her three books of poetry are Versary, Ladylike and, most recently, Tilt, winner of the Victorian Premier’s Award. Recent poems have appeared in Griffith Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Rabbit and Plumwood Mountain. She is the editor of Margaret Cavendish: The Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) and Dorothy Hewett: Selected Poems (UWAP). More by Kate Lilley › 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.
