Overland, the judges and the Malcolm Robertson Foundation are thrilled to announce the final results of the 2024 Judith Wright Poetry Prize.

Even now / its black waters / are tanked ’nd / safely intact. Pour / seeds or syllables / back down that throat / and all you’ll hear / are scattered ping-pings / on an iron roof.

begins with languor, / the past tense of caress / which, besides flies & heat haze / post stress, / the intense air supplies — no ostrich feather fans / or punkahs needed — just to be at rest.

volunteer to clown / undermine an award / construct to heave / interfere in class / dismantle if civil / disregard no cause / freelance at ennui

I try out for Can Can after school / knowing I’m not cut out for the high kicks / Ballads chansons show tunes ok / I can belt out Judy Garland and all the songs from Oliver / “Who Will Buy”/”As Long as He Needs Me” / Wher-e-e-e-ere is love

we have a horse in our shed dad look dad me and gabe are feeding him grass he likes grass he eats grass and chaff dad gabe said his name is phar lap dad come on phar lap! i got some grass for yooooou!

Sponsored by Trinity College at the University of Melbourne and supporters, the Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers, established in 2014 and now in its ninth year, recognises the talent of young Indigenous writers across Australia. First prize includes $5000, an optional writing residency at Trinity College, and publication of the successful piece in […]

Because after autumn there are / other autumns, / we learn to eat the wind. / This is what we shall do / with all our anger.

Repaying the debts of robots, / I see me in your screen fatally, which is / to say oozed certainty across a whistle of craft.

but an alive pig / roots in the soil /turning it over / with its snout / softening the ground / is this a hymn

A new poem by πO

A painting I used to like a lot once & thought about / I haven’t thought about / for some time. It showed / Walter Benjamin at a table in Paris. / The artist’s name I can’t recall. Not Patrick. Not Paul?

pacific gulls carry tightly closed shells to a height then drop them to the rocks below I say I don’t not mind isolation I am introverted

as if a poem were a person, me, i get up in the morning / i buy coffee in a can, and wait / you have to keep calm, “don't get upset” / or it fucks everything up. the bosses who tell me this / are wise but stupid troopers. this is a political poem

But think about the children, super cute children, mute children, with uncommonly big eyes, children with hard eyes, eyes that have seen what no child’s eyes should see, children naked as the day wearing big smiles and no smiles, preternaturally wise, with mooned-out tummies and cleft palates and cataracts, deformities and birth defects ...

All the angels in the world are heading to Gaza / They were alerted by the urgent increases on social media / Yes angels know every message posted on the world wide web / And all the angels in the world know genocide can be avoided / And all the angels are confused why the world is ignoring the fact Yes angels know every message posted on the world wide web And all the angels in the world know genocide can be avoided And all the angels are confused why the world is ignoring the fact - What can be avoided must not be allowed