y separately published work icon Overland periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2018... no. 230 Autumn 2018 of Overland est. 1954 Overland
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This edition is off to print at the same time as Indigenous activists are establishing Camp Freedom on the Gold Coast, a protest against the stolen wealth that props up yet another Australian Commonwealth Games spectacle. Camp Freedom has echoes of Melbourne’s 2006 Camp Sovereignty, a powerful demonstration against colonial authority, which Tony Birch documents within these pages. Such occupations, Birch writes, present ‘a spectre of repressed Indigenous histories’ that ‘stake a claim’ on past and present.' (Jacinda Woodhead : Editorial introduction)

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2018 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Rise from This Grave, Tony Birch , single work essay

'It’s now been over a decade since Indigenous activist group Black GST – Genocide Sovereignty Treaty – occupied Kings Domain, an ornamental parkland in the centre of Melbourne. The occupation, known as Camp Sovereignty, coincided with the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, which presented an opportunity to draw the international media’s attention to a range of Indigenous political struggles. What began as a two-week occupation soon morphed into a contest over place and memory, an act of resistance on a picturesque parcel of colonial land.' (Introduction)

(p. 3-10)
Swimming with Aliens, Jennifer Mills , single work prose

'I have been writing about the giant Australian cuttlefish, Sepia apama, for years, but this is my first time seeing them in the wild. I have watched countless videos, read numerous books and articles, and repeatedly visited the permanent display in the South Australian Museum’s biodiversity gallery. Sepia apama swims in and out of my novel Dyschronia in various shapes and sizes – even as metaphor, as literary image, they insisted on transforming, slipping out from all my nets of meaning. I have obsessed over these strange creatures until they felt like a part of my inner life. I thought I knew what I was going to be looking at.' (Introduction)

(p. 20-25)
Guarded by Birdsi"When you go", Evelyn Araluen , single work poetry (p. 27-28)
What Even R U?i"non-normative flags", Rae White , single work poetry (p. 29-30)
Dropbear Poeticsi"Tiddalik say", Evelyn Araluen , single work poetry (p. 31-32)
Unspooling, Laura Elvery , single work short story

'This is the letter the government department has sent Joe, advising him that he could be deported. Here is the number of days until he might go: 28. A number as small and square and bureaucratic as the postage stamp on the envelope. Here is the lawyer’s website. This is the figure the lawyer quoted to help save him and it’s astronomical, eye-watering, but also doable. Essential.'  (Introduction)

(p. 34-37)
On Water, Alison Croggon , single work essay

'Whenever I have moved closer to town, I have missed the cleaner air and the instant sweep of a cool change. Most of all, I like that heart-expanding sense of a horizon clean of buildings, which persists even when you can’t see the water.' (Introduction)

(p. 38-39)
An Endless Night, Farzaneh Pishro , single work short story

'It was a chilly evening in Tehran in 1983. Narges was sitting on the couch, listening to the radio, stroking her daughter’s hair. Asi lay asleep, her head on Narges’s thighs. The apartment was small and didn’t have much furniture. The war limited their luxury. Asi’s grandmother stood at the window, her small figure half-lit by the evening. She looked out through the steamed glass towards the autumn sky. No-one knew what lay behind those dense, livid clouds. A missile could hit their apartment this time, as it had next door.'  (Introduction)

(p. 48-52)
The Light of Things Long Buried, Liz Allan , single work short story

'‘Sophie, come and look,’ Mum calls. I sulk, go to the window. Pretend to give a shit about jewellery. The opals are arranged on velvet cloth, shimmering under the hot beam of an office lamp. Occurs in the fissures of almost any rock, the note card says, most commonly in limonite, marl, basalt, rhyolite. Before they’re mined, opals run deep underground, seamed through the earth like irregular veins. These stones look dead on the black cloth, as if prepared for reburial.' (Introduction)

(p. 53-56)
The Cricket Bat, Rebecca Slater , single work short story

'By the time he pulls into the driveway it’s almost midday. Mum’s got the turkey in the oven and the heat has steamed up all the windows, so I have to make a hole in the glass with my sleeve to see. But I know it’s him alright. I can tell by the way he walks up the path and the look on Mum’s face when she opens the door.'  (Introduction)

(p. 57-59)
Locked, Ashleigh Synnott , single work short story

'Karl had sharpened the knife exactly as I’d asked and he’d also brought home a bottle of Japanese whisky because he knew this was coming. He’d got started on the whisky in the car, out the front. I was drinking myself, watching him through the blinds, trying to decide if I would really do it or not. When he came inside I was sitting on the lounge. I had two clean glasses ready and he sat down beside me, stinking of beer, smoke and vegetable fat plus the cleaning products they use on the grill that take me way back to preschool.' (Introduction)

(p. 60-65)
Limbo, Nicole Curby , single work essay

'I look over at my friend Jafar and am filled with relief. I am thankful he is not one of the men languishing on Manus Island right now. A refugee from Iran, who tried to get to Australia by boat, he could easily have ended up there.'  (Introduction)

(p. 66-69)
On Altered States, Mel Campbell , single work essay

'I find the craft of writing drearily effortful, and both yearn for and resent the fluent, ecstatic altered states of consciousness that the ‘writering’ industry holds up as peak experiences. Leaps of imagination. Synaptic flashes of intellectual connection. The feeling that a story is ‘telling itself’, or that characters show up, fully formed, to narrate their own plots.' (Introduction)

(p. 70-71)
One Plot, at Most, Jane Rawson , single work essay

'The other day I was trying to write a short story. While procrastinating, I googled ‘How to write a short story?’ The search yielded 1.75 million results, the first being ‘How to write an amazing short story’. This article’s number-one tip was to ‘know what a short story is’, and the author even provided a helpful definition: a short story is just like a story, but short. It shouldn’t be a novel, the article advised, and it should have limited characters. (I assume numerically, but perhaps psychologically. Then I tried to think of a story that had unlimited characters. Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate came close, but not quite. I concluded that on this basis, all stories are short stories.) ‘Keep it to 3000 words’ was another suggestion.'  (Introduction)

(p. 72-77)
From Grenfell to Gulgong and Back, Brigid Magner , single work essay

'As a New Zealander, I have always been puzzled by the immense hold that journalist, poet and short-story writer Henry Lawson (1867–1922) has on the Australian imagination. Some of his writing is undeniably powerful, and his politics (anti-rural militant socialism alongside xenophobic nationalism) intriguing, yet his reification seems disproportionate. The more I read about his life, the more unappealing his character becomes. ‘The evidence for the claim that he was a great writer is easily accessible and incontrovertible,’ Brian Matthews observes. ‘That he was a great human being is another matter.’' (Introduction)

(p. 78-84)
Liptrapi"Sifting through shells I think of you—", Fiona Hile , single work poetry (p. 85)
Lights of Homei"Woke up stockinged blindfolded disarranged over Ashgabat –", Chris Brown , single work poetry (p. 86)
Mouth Form Floweri"Let fault flaw", Jill Jones , single work poetry (p. 87)
Hot Days, Joey Bui , single work short story

'In the summer days of 2010, Linh squatted in the back of the kitchen and pressed her bare back to the stone sink. Customers stopped coming in and even the ice melted in their tubs of sweet drinks in the fridge. At the end of the days, cubes of grass jelly shrivelled, growing wrinkled layers of film on their sides and Linh had to throw it all into the bushes at the back of the cafe.' (Introduction)

Psychosexual Thriller, Ursula Robinson-Shaw , single work short story

'The Mexican dream went something like this: Talia’s dad is dead, and what’s less like a dead dad than Pina Coladas on the beach, maybe some Mayan ruins, some of the less morbid ones. It was supposed to be just me and Maggie but we needed to get her out of it, her shredded family, the eulogies suggested by every park and school and supermarket. The whole city full of so sorry with Talia in the middle, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen bench among the funeral programs and the flowers, gorging herself on cheeses sent by the sympathetic.'  (Introduction)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 15 May 2018 11:13:32
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