Welcome to Giant Dog, the new Overland poetry podcast! This inaugural edition focuses on the special seventeen-poet collaboration edited by Corey Wakeling that Overland recently published, ‘On the Occasion of Gig Ryan’s Sixtieth Birthday’, and the work of Gig Ryan more generally.

This poem, compiling seventeen poets’ contributions, celebrates the occasion of Australian poet Gig Ryan’s sixtieth birthday.

Perhaps the popularity of poetry – beautiful, empathetic, exact – is a reaction to the ugliness, slipperiness and dishonesty of conservatism. When we use poetic language, we are trying to articulate what has otherwise gone unsaid, or what others refuse to say.

Vagabond Double Launch (Sydney) 3.30pm, Saturday 30 April, Gleebooks Come celebrate the Sydney Vagabond Double Launch of The Bloomin' Notions of Other & Beau by Overland poetry editor Toby Fitch and O Sonata by Chris Edwards.