Published in Overland Issue 240 Spring 2020 · Uncategorized I woke up this morning Omar Sakr and asked the bird if it feels trapped by its song, by its language being known only as melody. Its eloquent speech ‘my home is endless and dying’ reduced to piping notes, a shrill ringtone. I am talking to myself. The birds are gone. This is the problem of poetry. We siren our warnings and the world drowns to the sound of our beautiful voices. I would not want it any other way. I love a good dirge. And I am tired of being told to claim my joy. What am I to do with happiness? Where on earth can happiness reside? An astonishing number of my family are dead. An astonishing number of my family are alive. I woke up for this morning song. Read the rest of Overland 240 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Omar Sakr Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses (Cordite, 2017) and The Lost Arabs (UQP, 2019) which won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. His debut novel, Son of Sin (2022) is out now. More by Omar Sakr › 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.
