Published in Overland Issue 221 Summer 2015 · Uncategorized Noosa Beach Philip Neilsen My first dead body is when I am ten. A buzz below the shimmer tells us someone has drowned. We kids stare at him lying there on the sand. His face is powder blue like the guesthouse cups and plates laid out by aproned women at breakfast. The hairs on his chest and belly seem too coarse for an escaping spirit. More like an animal on an accidental roadside. Out in the darker water surfboards prop against the swell opportunistic, waiting. People shoo seagulls and us away. We decide because his eyes are open, trying to drink the sky. Philip Neilsen Philip Neilsen’s sixth collection of poetry Wildlife of Berlin (UWAP) was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor prize in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards 2019. More by Philip Neilsen › 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 10 April 202610 April 2026 · open letter Open letter: RMIT staff and students oppose disciplinary action against Gemma Seymour over video opposing links to weapons ties RMIT University Staff and Students Freedom of speech and expression is absolutely vital in academic institutions. Students who engage in activism should not be punished for doing so, and discipline procedures are not there to be abused as a tool of intimidation. We call for the disciplinary process against Gemma to cease immediately. 9 April 202610 April 2026 · CoPower Against the will to engineer: Richard King’s Brave New Wild Ben Brooker The response demanded of us in the twenty-first century must operate at the level of metaphysics as well as the material, addressing our underlying assumptions about the instrumentalisation of nature and what constitutes a meaningful life in the face of technology’s relentless advance. To neglect that deeper terrain is to concede, in advance, the very ground on which our resistance to the machine must stand.
