Published in Overland Issue 202 Autumn 2011 · Main Posts / Writing the purpling Kevin Gillam out, running to stand still, waiting for Venus – first up, letting the purpling do its work, sunshine seeping into pillow, dreams translating the warmth, slinking down, eyes along the surface, drowning in cuts of blue and silver and sunshine, bled of urgents, the purpling, keeping the words from the damp, brittle as kindling, stacked neat and ready ‘neath the galvanised tin of hope, doing the work, licking silence, drowning in horizon and soft focus, rolling meaning in the absence of a tongue, the purpling, left-hand fingers up and down the neck, mantra of memory, right hand drawing out breves for now, letting, cool torso of Salmon Gum, holding this tree, brailling its oneness, its purpling, in the park, rusted songs of swings just vacated, memories of play and flight, letting the purpling do its work Kevin Gillam Kevin Gillam is a Western Australian writer with poems published in numerous journals in Australia and overseas. More by Kevin Gillam 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 25 May 202326 May 2023 · Main Posts The ‘Chinese question’ and colonial capitalism in New Gold Mountain Christy Tan SBS’s New Gold Mountain sets out to recover the history of the Gold Rush from the marginalised perspective of Chinese settlers but instead reinforces the erasure of Indigenous sovereignty. Although celebrated for its multilingual script and diverse representation, the mini-TV series ignores how the settlement of Chinese migrants and their recruitment into colonial capitalism consolidates the ongoing displacement of First Nations peoples. First published in Overland Issue 228 23 February 202324 February 2023 · Writing From work to text, and back again: ChatGPT and the (new) death of the author Rob Horning Generative models extinguish the dream that Barthes’s Death of the Author articulates by fulfilling it. Their ‘tissue of signs’ seems less like revolution and more like the fear that AI will create a recursive postmodern nightmare world of perpetual sameness that we will all accept because we no longer remember otherwise or how to create an alternative.