Published in Overland Issue 242 Autumn 2021 · Poetry Conspiracy theory is contemporary genre literature Louis Armand 1. the task isn’t to tell the truth / but to induce in the reader / the belief that they’ve discovered it 2. only the poet finds Abyssinia inside the toe of their shoe 3. there are / worlds / where the sea / never / makes landfall 4. they dream of a sentence that can be pursued to the end with absolute certainty; of a word as definitive as a tombstone; of a book after which nothing more can be said 5. silence / finally / also unheard Read the rest of Overland 242 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four brilliant issues for a year Louis Armand Louis Armand’s books include, most recently, The Garden (11:11 Press), Monument (with John Kinsella; Hesterglock Press) and Vampyr: A Chronicle of Revenge (Alienist). He lives in Prague. More by Louis Armand 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 15 May 202326 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry | Two poems by Ouyang Yu Ouyang Yu You have to do it badly. If it is poetry, even more so, because there is no because. If you write like you were the best in the world, you are the worst because you pretend too hard. Too harsh, too. Why do you want to be the best? Is that because you are a lack or there is a lack in you that you feel like filling up all the time? Even when you are named the best, does that mean anything? 1 First published in Overland Issue 228 21 April 20232 May 2023 · Poetry Poetry can already be free Ender Başkan There’s a regime of logic that we can call Australia, that we can say on many fronts is also a fiction. Any poem that meets Australia within its logic, taking it at face value, will be boring and it might be competent. If you use an AI app, it will definitely be competent AND boring materially, but conceptually it’ll be amazing, in that it met evil (management speak/the invisible hand/terra nullius) with cunning, with another kind evil—amoral, not immoral.
