Poets Corner with John Kinsella

Poets' Corner is WestWords' monthly encounter with celebrated Australian poets, curated by David Ades. Each month a poet is invited to read and talk about their poetry on a theme of the poet's choice. This month David talks to John Kinsella.

John Kinsella lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian wheatbelt and went to high school on Yamaji land in Geraldton, and has also live in the USA, UK, Ireland, and other zones. His recent publications include the poetry volumes Supervivid Depastoralism (Vagabond, 2021) and The Ascension of Sheep, Collected Poems Volume One (1980 – 2005) (UWAP 2021). Story collections include Pushing Back (Transit Lounge 2021) and Old Growth (Transit Lounge, 2017), and recent novels are Lucida Intervalla (UWAP, 2018) and Hollow Earth (Transit Lounge, 2019). His memoir Displaced: A rural life was published by Transit Lounge in 2020, and his Legibility: an antifascist poetics was published by Palgrave in 2022. His trilogy of activist poetic books with Manchester University Press saw completion in 2021 with the appearance of Beyond Ambiguity: tracing literary sites of activism. He is Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University, and the recipient of many literary awards. He is a frequent collaborator with other writers, musicians, artists, and activists, and frequently and recently with Kwame Dawes and Charmaine Papertalk-Green.