Published in Overland Issue 230 Autumn 2018 · Uncategorized Dropbear poetics | Judith Wright Poetry Prize, third place Evelyn Araluen Tiddalik say I’m such great thirst I will drain the land and drag my big fat belly across the empty sea Bunyip say I’m gonna gobble you up if you step waters where I sleep and with wet claws I will snatch your spine and ankles to fill them with stain and stench what the Mopoke say don’t need saying if you grown up under his eyes now here’s the part you write Black Snake down for a dilly of national flair true god you don’t know how wild I’m gonna be to every fucking postmod blinky bill tryna crack open my country mining in metaphors for that place you felt felt you somewhere in the Royal National Waagan says use heart but I am rage and dreaming at the gloss green palm fronds of this gentry aesthetantique all this potplanting in our sovereignty a garden for you to swallow speak our blood if you’re taking that talk you gotta scrape it from my schoolhouse walls filter gollywog ashtray snugglepot kitsch into your pastoral deconstruct fill four’n twenty pies with artisan magpies if you sever their heads you can wear them to the doof I say rage and dreaming for making liar the lyrebird for making mimetic the power Baiami gave when Ribbon’s mischief swallowed first life ochre dust creation breath ancestor song we aren’t here to hear you poem you do wrong you get wrong you get gobbled up Image: illustration from Blinky Bill, written and illustrated by Dorothy Wall Read the rest of Overland 230 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Evelyn Araluen Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her Stella-prize winning poetry collection DROPBEAR was published by UQP in 2021. More by Evelyn Araluen › 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 15 April 202615 April 2026 · Climate politics The $67 billion climate betrayal: how Australia’s record fossil fuel subsidies fund global destruction Noa Wynn The contradictions aren't failures of implementation. They're the predictable result of a political system that has decided fossil fuel profits matter more than climate stability, more than the Great Barrier Reef, more than Pacific Islander lives, and more than the future habitability of the planet. 13 April 2026 · Disability The proletarianisation of disability support work: workers’ perspectives on the NDIS Nick Crowley Support workers, rather than creating objects, create a caring relationship. The scrupulous observance of organisational policies and ‘best practice’ codes is not sufficient to create such a relationship. This can only be created when workers take the time to understand their clients and build trusting, authentic, equal relationships with them.
