Published in Overland Issue 222 Autumn 2016 · Uncategorized First place: alkaway Ella OKeefe a punchline flies business class towards vague archipelagos in the deepening Pacific I find glassy petrol spots the size of 5-cent pieces refracting intervals of the day thrushy embers in mornings overturn woken by shapeless violence your body returned from sleep’s legal trip quilling into the afternoon discovering ‘the therapeutic power of water’ while wasp-shaped helicopters spotlight the oval – but when? (in violet enamel when bees were discovered) after filtering the whole house cohabited refuse goes archaeological turncoat, Georgic pink bread bag (garment) elastic calendar as in day-shaped moments between yawns time-check: pearling three o’clock clicks to night without dusk floating floor live improv set in the big suburb replica village reality effect the bodice sits over the body know this well already, cf. ‘it mimics nature to filter’ old-sponge chunks of wattle slumping on your cheek gathering a full body testimonial The Overland Judith Wright Poetry Prize is supported by the Malcolm Robertson Foundation Ella OKeefe Ella O’keefe is a poet and researcher who lives in Melbourne. Her poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, Text Journal, Steamer and Best Australian Poems. Her chapbook Rhinestone was published by Stale Objects dePress in 2015. She has made radio pieces for national and community broadcasters and is Audio Producer for Cordite Poetry Review. More by Ella OKeefe › 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 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.
