Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017 · Uncategorized Crossing Galata, Istanbul John Upton Flying fish on Galata Bridge, rods bowing and bobbing like suppliants at a vizier’s audience. Each fisher has his own space program, launch pad, elbow room, bait bucket, like this sleeve-tugging city. I’m for the fish, somehow. Down there there’s piscine stitching of continents: Europe – Asia, ferries and fish restaurants. Crossing their sunshine I pass between poles of then and now, a fish caught in a rip of time, the zip of bait, the howl of hook in mouth, it flips me onto this bridge and off, too scrappy a catch, victim of cheap jet fuel and wanderlust. Image: Fly fishing tackle box next to stream / Chesapeake Bay Program Read the rest of Overland 227 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year John Upton John Upton was well known for his writing of poetry, plays and TV dramas. His poetry includes the collection Embracing the Razor (Puncher & Wattmann). He had five stage plays produced, and his prizes include the Australian Writers Guild’s award for Best New Play. He died in early 2017. More by John Upton › 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 4 December 20234 December 2023 · Climate politics Where is the Australian climate movement’s solidarity with Palestine? Alex Kelly Let this be a line in the sand. Let us learn our history. Let us listen to liberation movements around the world. Conflicts for land and water will shape the decades to come. Showing up for each other and building power to demand justice is our only hope for a humane future. First published in Overland Issue 228 1 December 20231 December 2023 · History ‘We’re doing everything but treaty’: Law reform and sovereign refusal in the colonial debtscape Maria Giannacopoulos I coined the concept of the colonial debtscape while working to understand the relation between debt and sovereignty in the wake of the 2007 Global Financial crisis. Despite the referendum held in Greece in 2015 where the people voted against austerity, austerity as punishment, was imposed anyway. As this was a colonising move, that is, the imposition of an external and foreign law on local populations against their will, it was to Aboriginal scholars here that I turned to begin to put the pieces together.
