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 24 April 2025 · The university Why we need the National Code against gender-based violence in higher education Camille Schloeffel, Jessica Ison and Samantha Marshall As leaders in and advocates for the prevention of gender-based violence, we strongly support the National Code as a crucial step to push universities to act. Without enforcement of the National Code to ensure providers comply with its requirements, we are concerned that universities are still not doing enough, and students are bearing the consequences. 22 April 202522 April 2025 · The university Genocide showrooms: universities after Gaza Nick Riemer We should mostly be talking about the genocide in Palestine: the horrifying toll of bodies, the thousands or tens of thousands of amputees, the bereavement at a national scale, the gutting intergenerational trauma. In the face of all this, we should not have to talk about universities in the West. But nowhere in society has the breakdown of liberal institutions under Zionist pressure been faster or more obvious.
