Published in Overland Issue 238 Autumn 2020 · Judges' report / Poetry / Judith Wright Poetry Prize No language for white man Lou Garcia-Dolnik The young sit eir fresia in bottom yard where it bloom best. Feline in mangifera where e move best. So much living in pastime, riverbank where kindred set it down best. That no language for white man. Sitting coat up on stick for scare way bird-pulse not for white man. Holy city rice terrace stretch green into no white land. Hanglow breadfruit beckon for tell e truth to my problem. All country say solution to my problem. Living in it rhythm, burn fruit of coconut tree for brown hand. But that no language for white man. Sand stretch sensory above eyefrontier. Tinikling tap history on coconut floorboard. Visayas break bread with xeir departures. All that, Country, sing no language of white man. Country, tell with durian tree what your problem. Country point with thick lip to beachbank for my problem. Kid sing loud leron sinta for my problem. All country, say your solution for my problem. Tita with pearl earring fasten to rubberskin for my problem. Lolo listen softly to bandila for my problem. Lola make pansit with calamansi, all lemon and kikkoman for my problem. No whiteword salt enough for my problem. No white language pumice enough for my problem. No white language poorandbrown enough for my problem. No white language brown for country enough. No country blacknbrown without white enough. No country have language for white man enough. No country for white man ever enough. Read the rest of Overland 238 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Lou Garcia-Dolnik Lou Garcia-Dolnik is a mixed-race Filipinx writer and editor working on unceded Gadigal land. A poetry editor for Voiceworks and alumnus of the Banff Centre’s Emerging Writers Intensive, they have been awarded third place in PRISM International’s Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and second place in Overland’s Judith Wright Poetry Prize. They have work published in or forthcoming with Overland, PRISM International, Rabbit Poetry Journal, Scum Mag and Voiceworks, among others. More by Lou Garcia-Dolnik 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 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.
