Published in Overland Issue · Uncategorized Poem | The oysters roar Ben Walter Rounds of unshucked applause bursting from the silt; for the festival heat, as though the sun has scraped back this tide; for the cast-away tyres and steps in a dark, treeless wood; for the fluttering white hedges shifting borders by the hour; for the tier of salty green fingers licked by the breeze; for the baskets of grass gathering shy feathers; for my footsteps like crunching jaws; for slim bones splintering the air; for the wide banks of twilight as evening flows between my feet and deepens; for the birds that have left us to brick up their bodies with rushes and leaves. so much still, silent applause. or so many unruly teeth snarling Read the rest of Overland 240 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Ben Walter Ben Walter’s stories, essays and poems have appeared in Lithub, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and many other publications. He is the fiction editor of Island. More by Ben Walter › 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 27 September 2023 · Sport When the sport circus comes on Country Jenny Fraser The next huckster in the carnival of sport is the upcoming 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. If we want aspects of it to be in line with Aboriginal protocol, we need action from across the four winds of the world. If it’s not done right we need solidarity and protest just the same. We are each other’s safety net in this theatre of sport. As a senior Aboriginal woman activist once told me, ‘we are all only as good as we negotiate’. First published in Overland Issue 228 25 September 202326 September 2023 · The university Solidarity but only among managers, or the future of the university sector Hannah Forsyth The process continued during Covid. Jobs were being cut due to the threats posed by the pandemic, yet more scholars were being recruited. Nice people, good at their job. But why are we doing this, we kept asking. Management kept telling us we have a funding crisis (which often turned to a surplus in the end), so why are we also on a hiring spree? All along it looked like it could end badly, for all of us.