Published in Overland Issue 231 Winter 2018 · Uncategorized Runner-up, Nakata Brophy Prize: A dance of hands Kirli Saunders You and I were the lychees sucked from blistered shells, and navel to cheek park sleeps, the skating of fingers over cracked palms and the tempura kisses awaiting trains. We were the space held so that traumas could surface, speak and heal, and the rising of chest as spine lowered and breath slowed. You and I, were the footsteps through crowded bookshops on sacred Sundays our tales untold, we were the welding of wine to tongue in an unnamed pub. You and I were handmade cakes, window notes, pocket poems, and bodies coiled to rising sun or the calm of late night story. We were time-travellers with slow motion lips, eyes talking over ginger tea sips, and hearts euphoric on eurythmic beat skips. Read the rest of Overland 231 If you appreciate Overland’s support of new writers, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Kirli Saunders Kirli Saunders is a proud Gunai woman. She is the Manager of Poetic Learning and Cultural Liaison at Red Room Poetry. Kirli founded the Poetry in First Languages project. Her first children’s picture book The Incredible Freedom Machines has been selected for Bologna Book Fair 2018. More by Kirli Saunders › 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 31 January 202531 January 2025 · Racism The QUT Symposium: holding the line against rising racism Elizabeth Strakosch, Jordy Silverstein, Crystal McKinnon, Eugenia Flynn, Natalie Ironfield, Holly Charles, Priya Kunjan, Roj Amedi and Lina Koleilat Last weeks's QUT Symposium met in the staunch tradition of the Brisbane Blacks, who have fought for sovereignty, land rights, liberation and an end to racial violence for decades. It was a gathering of Elders, academics, organisers and frontline community workers who speak, theorise and embody the truth about race and racism in this place. It refused to clothe itself in multicultural platitudes about tolerance, or to speak about racism only in terms of individual prejudice. 29 January 202529 January 2025 · Palestine The demonisation of the Palestine movement fuels anti-Muslim racism Mariam Tohamy and Miroslav Sandev The spate of anti-Muslim racist attacks around the country are being fuelled by the anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian policies of mainstream politicians. Political attempts to undermine the Palestine movement and bipartisan support for Israel’s genocide are causing this.
