Published in Overland Issue 240 Spring 2020 · Uncategorized 'Coda' for my Smoke Incrypted Whispers Samuel Wagan Watson I am a vexed engineer: my ‘smoke encrypted whispers’ faded toward the obscurity of spectral encrypted echoes … Ghost-editing over old ground … Discovering that my words previously published were morphing into crawly-little arachnoids and flies, attacking one-another … All the shiny sentences I had orchestrated were like buttons on a favourite shirt that were gradually popping off and lost; one after the other … If only I could rearrange the mottles of spiderwebs that tarnish and choke inspiration … To regain love that has not been usurped … To look at the abyss of night again and only see something terrific and omit the terrifying … To walk away from the scarlet glare of a blood moon and catch the lost tail of a random comet, as it reveals the path for gently losing oneself in an infinite cleansing … A mind de-misted in the wake of a clear night, shooting star kisses … Read the rest of Overland 240 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Samuel Wagan Watson Samuel Wagan Watson is a Brisbane-based writer of Germanic and Wunjaburra ancestry. In 2018 his body of work was granted the Patrick White Literary Award. More by Samuel Wagan Watson › 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 21 February 202521 February 2025 · The university Closing the noose: a dispatch from the front line of decasualisation Matthew Taft Across the board, universities have responded to legislation aimed at rectifying this already grim situation by halting casual hiring, cutting courses, expanding class sizes, and increasing the workloads of permanent staff. This is an unintended consequence of the legislation, yes, but given the nefarious history of the university, from systemic wage theft to bad-faith bargaining, hardly a surprising one. 19 February 2025 · Disability The devaluing of disability support Áine Kelly-Costello and Jonathan Craig Over the past couple of decades, disabled people in much of the Western world have often sought, or agreed to, more individualised funding schemes in order to gain greater “choice and control” over the support we receive. But the autonomy, dignity and flexibility we were promised seems constantly under threat or out of reach, largely because of the perception that allowing us such “luxuries” is too expensive.
