Published in Overland Issue Poetry in Lockdown · Uncategorized Poetry in Lockdown Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma In the first half of 2020, Overland received a small grant to help the magazine provide writing and publishing opportunities during the pandemic lockdown, part of a broader scheme by Creative Victoria to save the arts sector when so many jobs and gigs completely disappeared for so many artists. ‘Poetry in Lockdown’ is one outcome of this—a standalone poetry special issue containing new work by twelve poets from across Australia. In commissioning these new works we imposed no theme on the poets. However, with the pandemic as background to all our lives, it is impossible not to read the poems in that context. Collating these poems has been a salve for us. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we have. Eunice Andrada — kulani Tony Birch — Waiting for a train with Thelma Plum Andrew Brooks — Excerpt from ‘salt’ Mark Cayanan — Stillbirths wrapped in newsprint Michael Farrell — Leaves to the imagination Adalya Nash Hussein — October monthly Neika Lehman — The well Jazz Money — The new place Leah Muddle — A spiral (or certain themes revisited) Emily Stewart — Sky updates / blue platform Dženana Vucic — 500 words towards feeling: or, all my poems become war poems Panda Wong — Cemeteries on google earth: a suite of poems Read the rest of Poetry in Lockdown, edited by Toby Fitch and Melody Paloma If you enjoyed this special edition, subscribe and receive a year’s worth of print issues, the online magazine, special editions and discounted entry to our literary competitions Toby Fitch Toby Fitch, living on unceded Gadigal land, is poetry editor of Overland, a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Sydney, and the author of eight books of poetry, including Sydney Spleen and Where Only the Sky had Hung Before. More by Toby Fitch › Melody Paloma Melody Paloma is a poet and researcher based in Naarm. She is a MFA candidate at UNSW and the author of Some Days (SOd, 2018) and In Some Ways Dingo (Rabbit, 2017). More by Melody Paloma › 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 20 December 202420 December 2024 · Reviews Slippery totalities: appendices on oil and politics in Australia and beyond Scott Robinson Kurmelovs writes at this level of confusion and contradiction for an audience whose unspoken but vaguely progressive politics he takes for granted and yet whose assumed knowledge resembles that of an outraged teenager. There should be a young adult genre of political journalism to accommodate books like this. 19 December 202419 December 2024 · Reviews Reading JH Prynne aloud: Poems 2016-2024 John Kinsella Poems 2016-2024 is a massive, vibrant and immersive collation of JH Prynne’s small press publication across this period. Some would call it a late life creative flourish, a glorious coda, but I don’t see it this way. Rather, this is an accumulation of concerns across a lifetime that have both relied on earlier form work and newly "discovered" expressions of genre that require recasting, resaying, and varying.
