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John Kinsella

John Kinsella

John Kinsella is the author of over forty books. His most recent publications include the novel Lucida Intervalla (UWA Publishing 2018), Open Door (UWA Publishing, 2018); On the Outskirts (UQP, 2017), and Drowning in Wheat: Selected poems (Picador, 2016). His poetry collections have won a variety of awards, including the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry and the Christopher Brennan Award for Poetry. His volumes of stories include In the Shade of the Shady Tree (Ohio University Press, 2012), Crow’s Breath (Transit Lounge, 2015), and Old Growth (Transit Lounge, 2017). His volumes of criticism include Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley (Liverpool University Press, 2010) and Polysituatedness (Manchester University Press, 2017). He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University. With Tracy Ryan he is the co-editor of The Fremantle Press Anthology of The Western Australian Poetry (2017). He lives with his family in the Western Australian wheatbelt.

John Kinsella reviews 'Better Than God' by Peter Porter

May 2009, no. 311 01 May 2009
When Petrus Borel led Victor Hugo’s private ‘claque’ into the theatre of the Comédie-Française in 1830 for the opening performance of Hugo’s play Hernani, he and the others of the Romantic ‘push’ fully intended their actions to precipitate the death of classicism in French theatre. They succeeded. Had Peter Porter been in the audience, one wonders where he would have positioned himse ... (read more)

'Parrotology: On the necessity of parrots in poetry' by John Kinsella

October 2005, no. 275 01 October 2005
A couple of months ago, driving with my daughter just outside the wheat-belt town of York, Western Australia, we came across a ‘28’ parrot that had just been struck by a car. I scooped it up in a cloth, and my daughter held it on the back seat until we could get home. Having been bitten numerous times by those ‘strong and hooked’ beaks, I warned her to be wary. But the parrot – a sp ... (read more)

‘Lyrical Unification in Gambier’ a poem by John Kinsella

December 2001–January 2002, no. 237 18 November 2022
(i) What remains barely the weather report: sentencing labours of history against all beginnings, the maples leafless, the houses barely porous.   (ii) I ride roads I am not familiar with, a figure of speech, chrome strips between windows. To the south, burial mounds. Resolution deep and simpatico. Northwards:  the lake effect, the snow plough.   (iii) Deer go down to ... (read more)

'Imitating Rural Imitation: After Robert Browning’s "Two in the Campagna"', a new poem by John Kinsella

October 2022, no. 447 27 September 2022
IThis place we live is termed ‘rural’or ‘countryside’ by arrangementwith or of the planters of grains,the breeders of animals forslaughter, by conservative vote. IIBut we’re entangled among stalksof wild oats, amidst firebreaks,trying to coax that native bushback to have its say, to undothe rural we are entrenched in. IIII always think of you when I’mtroubled by my presence – the r ... (read more)

'Zoo Visits', a poem by John Kinsella

February 2010, no. 318 01 February 2010
He polished his car to a shine, he kepta ‘clean machine’ inside and out, but downfrom ‘up north’, the red dirt would stayin the seams of doors, around the fittings.A detailing of distance. A truth unto itself. What to do with us, having travelledso far – the access-visit ontology, a divorcedbloke’s existential crisis. Kids aren’t goingto live on feelings alone for an afternoon,they ... (read more)

'Pastiche Eclogue with Randolph Stow’s "Ishmael"', a poem by John Kinsella

August 2021, no. 434 26 July 2021
When Ishmael escaped from the closed Bibleon the dresser with family names that were only tangentially yours, you looked to the emergencysite for inclemency and found fire was rapidly approaching via dire easterlies that actually start from the southand over the stretch of time just inside a zone sharply bend west to gather inner heat, saying, I love as muchas your weight of extracted moisture, ... (read more)

'Hailstone Villanelle', a new poem by John Kinsella

October 2019, no. 415 25 September 2019
Hailstones in misshapen formation pound on roof corrugations,distorted in scrying before reaching their target,feathers and leaves stripped, birds and trees in transition. To taste the fracture when air pressure is shaken and unshaken,and lightning brings its personalised thunder close to a house in retreat,hailstones misshapen in formation pound on the roof’s corrugations. What can you porten ... (read more)
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