Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016 · Uncategorized Greenslopes in March Liam Ferney for H alternate versions of tom thumb’s blues you’re done up like somebody’s dream and that band next door makes young marble giants of triple m evergreens a weekend blanking the present while the salt water creek breathes under the highway snorkellers fetch oysters and outboard cowboys flirt with the vagaries of the bar the beautiful traces of a lie taking a tennis court oath a third date encounter of the suburban kind the blades topple the addicks en route to wembley a destiny to delight the marketing department it winds the month’s spring the way you unravel a story with more moving parts than the automaton barnuming the gossip shifting all the tickets to the miraculous medicine show i feel like a lucky country like a bloke who’s figured that if you dial up the moon and stare down the barrels any great adventure can be tapped Liam Ferney Liam Ferney’s most recent collection, is Hot Take His previous collection, Content, was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Award and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. His other books include Boom (Grande Parade Poets), Career (Vagabond Press) and Popular Mechanics (Interactive Press). He is a media manager, holder of the all-time games record for the New Farm Traktor Collective and convener of the Saturdays readings in Brisbane. More by Liam Ferney 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 9 June 2023 · Aotearoa / New Zealand Ko wai mātou—we are water Hana Pera Aoake Dr Huhana Smith has spent the last twenty years focussing on the restoration of her ancestral coastal land and waterways at Kuku Beach, near Levin, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, using biochar—the carbon-rich remains of slow-burned wood. Smith and her collaborators use biochar not only as a tool for land restoration, but also as an artistic medium. Their work is critical for thinking about what is possible when Māori communities have control of their cultural and spiritual bases. First published in Overland Issue 228 8 June 2023 · Technology ‘AI’ and the quest to redefine workers’ autonomy Rob Horning The phrase artificial intelligence is a profoundly ideological way to characterise automation technologies. It is an expression of the general tendency to discuss technologies as though they were ‘powerful’ in and of themselves—as if power weren’t a relative measure of the different capacities and prerogatives of social classes.
