Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 · Uncategorized Editorial Evelyn Araluen and Jonathan Dunk Overland was founded with dual commitments to literary quality, and to publishing and fostering diverse writers. At the widest extremes of certain kinds of argument these priorities can be placed into a false dichotomy, and made to seem mutually antagonistic, but during our first year’s tenure as editors we’ve had the pleasure of working with brilliant writers informed by a wealth of diverging experiences. This issue proudly continues that commitment with a panoply of incisive essays of widely varying styles and subjects, the results of 2020’s Judith Wright and Neilma Sidney prizes, and a selection of fiction and poetry bringing established and leading artists into conversation with emerging voices. In ‘The invisible sea’ Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn meditates on the politics of water-bodies seen and unseen. In a literary market suddenly crowded with novels and essays clamouring to be ‘about’ the existential horizons of climate change, this essay is a masterclass in subtlety and self-awareness. Overland’s history as a radical literary journal is further illuminated by an essay from Aidan Coleman’s forthcoming biography of John Forbes, the brilliant ironist of Australian poetry in the 1990s. Cherry Zheng’s essay ‘Libations’ is a lyrical and poignant dramatisation of translation-loss and the complexities of immigration. Robert Poposki’s auto-theoretic work ‘Reclaiming space’ shares this theme, but pursues it through a fragmented analysis of how space intersects with porous identity. Finally, and as the current government crowns decades of disastrous rent-seeking with further vandalism of the tertiary education sector Giles Fielke’s ‘Hopeless labour’ is a bitter-sweet reflection on some of the ideas and travails that brought the Australian university to its current pass. It’s a privilege to work with these writers, and the entire Overland family. Solidarity, Evelyn Araluen & Jonathan Dunk Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Evelyn Araluen Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, researcher and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal. Her Stella-prize winning poetry collection DROPBEAR was published by UQP in 2021. She lectures in Literature and Creative Writing at Deakin University. More by Evelyn Araluen › Jonathan Dunk Jonathan Dunk is the co-editor of Overland, a widely published poet and scholar. He lives on Wurundjeri country. More by Jonathan Dunk › 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 March 202524 March 2025 · Gaming Life in the valley: in praise of three video games James Tregonning All of these games are interventions situated inside cultures of death. They very much depend on the master’s tools. For some, that might not be radical enough. To me, it feels honest. These games take as their starting point the places where we find ourselves, both in terms of video game culture and our wider biopolitical environment, and they look for ways to challenge it, to develop or change. They believe in our capacity to grow and evolve. They recognise that there is no gap between today and tomorrow. We must build to where we want to be from where we are. 21 March 2025 · Friday Fiction Wearables Jake Dean Heidi drops slowly to her knees in a move she hopes looks seductive but, judging by the click in her netball-ravaged patellas, probably looks anything but. She grabs him, Joe’s whole body tensing for an instant, and puts him in her mouth. His eyes roll back.
