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Coda: Visitors

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents some final thoughts. Kinsella talks about his increasing focus on the block of stony ground on a hillside he has always considered his home place — the land of the Ballardong ... More

This chapter presents some final thoughts. Kinsella talks about his increasing focus on the block of stony ground on a hillside he has always considered his home place — the land of the Ballardong Nyungar people. He also considers considers Walden and the politics of visitations, which comes from the chapter entitled ‘Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors’.Less

De-mapping & Reconnoitring Notions of Boundaries – Mutually Said: Blogging & Acting

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter discusses several topics including veganic garden poetics; a poem by Norman Cameron entitled ‘The Invader’; the origins of Kinsella's Wheatbelt Gothics; the poetic dynamics of local ... More

This chapter discusses several topics including veganic garden poetics; a poem by Norman Cameron entitled ‘The Invader’; the origins of Kinsella's Wheatbelt Gothics; the poetic dynamics of local namings for plants and animals; the poetics of gradients; and GPS and forest destruction.Less

Working with Coral Hull on Zoo (A Collaboration)

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter describes Kinsella's collaborative book with Coral Hull entitled Zoo. The title does not refer purely to their visit to Taronga Park Zoo, but to human interaction with animals in ... More

This chapter describes Kinsella's collaborative book with Coral Hull entitled Zoo. The title does not refer purely to their visit to Taronga Park Zoo, but to human interaction with animals in general. The chapter discusses the process of collaboration, and the ethical issues confronted by this work, especially as they reflect on Hull's work as a whole.Less

Standing Up to Aggressors

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter describes how Kinsella uses Henry David Thoreau's Walden as a framework to make points about ecological issues. Having lived in America, England and Australia, Walden allows Kinsella a ... More

This chapter describes how Kinsella uses Henry David Thoreau's Walden as a framework to make points about ecological issues. Having lived in America, England and Australia, Walden allows Kinsella a full canvas to explore local and international issues of place, belonging and environment, and the cultural politics such an investigation conveys. The chapter also includes Kinsella's account on corellas and foxes.Less

Herewith the (Auto) Razó: Activism and the Poet

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter is an (auto) razó for an activist poetics. Here, Kinsella shares that before he takes a public action — write a letter of complaint, give a public lecture, attend a protest — he ... More

This chapter is an (auto) razó for an activist poetics. Here, Kinsella shares that before he takes a public action — write a letter of complaint, give a public lecture, attend a protest — he inevitably writes a poem on the subject. Poems usually follow the action too. And might continue to do so long after the event or issue has passed. The writing of poems becomes part of a mantra of witness and empowerment. Often, poems form a visceral and literal part of a protest. The chapter explores two recent activist issues and then charts their appearance and digressions in poetry. The issues are: visiting a forest protest site in the Arcadia jarrah forest in the southwest of Western Australia to lend support to activists; and involvement in a recent Indymedia discussion/protest against the use of violence by activists at the G20 conference held recently (November 2006) in Melbourne. Each of these ‘actions’ involved the writing of prose and poetry.Less

Half-Masts: A Prosody of Telecommunications

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter explains Kinsella's objection to mobile phone base stations. More recently, this aversion has been extended to wireless Internet technology with its colonisation of public and private ... More

This chapter explains Kinsella's objection to mobile phone base stations. More recently, this aversion has been extended to wireless Internet technology with its colonisation of public and private spaces, with so-called ‘hot spots’. He says that he is constantly confronted with the visual aspect of these telecommunications masts, and the knowledge that their language, their poison, is written all around him unseen.Less

Refugees & Australia

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about the Australia's campaign against refugee ‘incursion’. He believes that most Australians, including himself, are complicit in this outrage — maybe even ... More

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about the Australia's campaign against refugee ‘incursion’. He believes that most Australians, including himself, are complicit in this outrage — maybe even those campaigning for or advocating refugee rights. He argues that, as in other Western democracies, the rights of the majority are used to deny or minimise the rights of minorities, and that this is a false democracy, in which rights are displaced and disguised under euphemistic terminologies.Less

The School of Environmental Poetics & Creativity

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents Kinsella's manifesto for a school of environmental poetics and creativity. The school aims to create an alternative place of tertiary study concentrating on the arts and ... More

This chapter presents Kinsella's manifesto for a school of environmental poetics and creativity. The school aims to create an alternative place of tertiary study concentrating on the arts and environmental/ethical issues. The school itself would be spread around the world, but the particular environmental, ‘social’, and ‘cultural’ issues of each specific place of teaching would be integral to the ‘language’ of that teaching.Less

Plagues & Bioethics

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about genetically modified foods. He argues that the modification of genes, the infiltrations of animal, human and plant DNA, open whole new territories for ... More

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about genetically modified foods. He argues that the modification of genes, the infiltrations of animal, human and plant DNA, open whole new territories for occupation and exploitation — creating new dimensions for contamination in the organism. To tamper with food sources in regards to living organisms is to deprive not only the organisms themselves of their rights, but also to colonise and control people on the most basic and fundamental level — in terms of what they eat and how they eat it.Less

Geodysplasia: Geographical Abnormalities & Anomalies of an Activist Poetics

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter describes how Kinsella turns to poetry, with its expectations of anomaly and ambiguity, in attempting to deal with conflicting conditions of presence and interaction with land. It ... More

This chapter describes how Kinsella turns to poetry, with its expectations of anomaly and ambiguity, in attempting to deal with conflicting conditions of presence and interaction with land. It details his work on a de-dramatised version of Thomas Lovell Beddoes' verse play Death's Jest-Book. In his version, characters have lost definition, and many actual phrases and the odd complete line of Beddoes have been incorporated into the text. This process of appropriation is reflective of the appropriation, carried out in Australia for over 200 years, of indigenous cultures.Less

Activist Readings of Three Australian Poems

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents readings of three poems: A. D. Hope's ‘The Death of the Bird’ (1948); C. J. Brennan's ‘The Wanderer’ (1914); and John Boyle O'Reilly's ‘The Dukite Snake’ (c. 1873).

Poetry, Justice & the Court

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about courts and poetry. He believes that rather than functioning as vehicles for depriving individuals and groups of freedom and liberty for their ... More

This chapter presents Kinsella's views about courts and poetry. He believes that rather than functioning as vehicles for depriving individuals and groups of freedom and liberty for their transgressions, courts might serve as places of dialogue on the nature of these transgressions, and the appropriate way of dealing with them. He also argues for a ‘metaphoric’ or ‘figurative’ dialogue, rather than a legal, logical, ‘realistic’ or specific one. The language of courts, seeking to be the most precise form of language, is in fact one of the most poetic.Less

Why I Am a Pacifist

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

This chapter explains Kinsella's views about pacificism. He believes that pacifism extends to all living creatures: he does not eat them, does not consciously exploit them, and does not make ... More

This chapter explains Kinsella's views about pacificism. He believes that pacifism extends to all living creatures: he does not eat them, does not consciously exploit them, and does not make tangential use of them through by-products. His pacifism is synonymous with his veganism and anarchism.Less

Wheatbelt Isohalines & the Making of Isopleths: The ‘Annihilation of Distance’ & Other Subtexts Associated with the Creation of a Sequence of Poems

in Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

The Dictionary of Geography defines an isopleth as ‘A line on a map drawn through places having the same value of a certain element. Such lines show the geographical distribution of the elements’. ... More

The Dictionary of Geography defines an isopleth as ‘A line on a map drawn through places having the same value of a certain element. Such lines show the geographical distribution of the elements’. For Kinsella, isopleths are lines on a conceptual and literal map connecting places of environmental degradation (massings of lines in all directions) and those of environmental ‘preservation’. This chapter, which follows the construction of a sequence of poems, follows telegraph lines: present, removed and/or lost. They are the sub-narrative of the poem.Less