More on Parrots

Below are answers I gave to a series of questions sent to me (mid 2015, I answered January, 2016) but never presented or used in any specific way:

*parrots have always been 'central' to what i do for three reasons:

(1) they were always around me at wheatlands farm - i loved them and yet i shot them as a child and that contradiction was one of the driving forces that led me to animal-rights activism and veganism (see a recent animal-rights poem just up at [this blog].
(2) as a child i also trapped them out on the big farm my father managed near mullewa, and then incarcerated them in cages down south. watching their tragedy unfold awakened me to what i was doing. i was saturated in the suffering i had caused.
(3) they have become more than symbol to me, more than 'transitional objects', they are real accompaniments to my life in the wheatbelt and i to theirs. i feel an advocate for their rights, and try to create space for their nesting and lives.

*i spent many years of my childhood living in mount pleasant by the river, though we spent as much time as possible on wheatlands farm. we then later moved to geraldton. and i spent time, with my brother, up north with my father on access visits and holidays, and also on the farm near mullewa he managed. i have lived in fremantle and south perth (twice), i have also lived in northbridge and for a time in the globe hotel (gone now) in perth. i wrote a series of city-dwelling poems which were published as a chapbook by vallum. they are entitled 'inner city poems'. more of my suburban poems - always about space - are to be found in the book i did with robert drewe entitled sand (fremantle press). the wheatbelt has been the main focus and living place of my 'australian' life, but i have (long ago) spent periods in the city. i lived on the streets for a considerable time when i was alcoholic/addicted for those many years. twenty years sober now. i associate the city with lostness, confusion and confinement re space because of the cycle of self-abuse.

*i think birds are a spatial release for suburbs - they are hope and transcendence. when i wandered the dark lonely places of suburban enclosure (consider john clare and enclosure), i literally communed with birds by way of sharing. i sought to protect them and they gave back. 'introduced species' of birds make their place where native birds have been destroyed, and they in turn enrich the ecology and allow for other birds to co-exist. people who shoot pigeons and rainbow lorikeets etc in the suburbs are an outrage - in the context of 'invasive species'. what a cheek! aviary escapees, native species (especially the wonderful carnaby's) and other species that have gained traction, should be protected and nurtured. for themselves, primarily, but also because they offer understanding of the world at large, realign and free the spatial constraints of the city, and show that there is more to the world than 'owning' animals and owning space. suburbs are about control - birds break down that control in non-violent liberating ways, they can share, why don't we?

a poetics of bird-spatiality in the city.


john kinsella

The Wild Colonial Boy

The wild colonial boy is a loner

The wild colonial boy has guilt over his plunder

The wild colonial boy plunders his guilt

The wild colonial boy doesn’t know

            what to do with the plunder

The wild colonial boy offloads the plunder

            at the trash and treasure

The wild colonial boy can’t tune into the Eureka Stockade

The wild colonial boy tries to fly in and fly out but is caught out,

            amphetamines in his urine

The wild colonial boy shares a cell with a Noongar bloke

            who shares law and knowledge from country

The wild colonial boy rather be inside than out

            because the chains and slavery of the languages

            of occupation leave him confused and angry,  

            but inside is murder and he knows it

The wild colonial boy doesn't know what to do

            with his skill set — he thinks of going bush

The wild colonial boy watches the numbats

            near the huts in the visitors’ part of Dryandra Forest

The wild colonial boy listens to the crested pigeon flying, to the bush stone-

            curlew stalking, the western gerygone singing along with the

            elegant parrot in the canopy and the golden whistler

            and even the nest-hunting shining bronze-cuckoo

The wild colonial boy couldn’t be said to be distracted as the cops

            close in around him, but listening to the cross-talk

            of community, the close-knit interferences of belonging,      

            the distress of songs broken up by songs of repair and reparation

The wild colonial boy is taken and cuffed and has the shit

            kicked out of him — now he is tattooed with a constellation

            that shines over no part of the earth but is permanent

The wild colonial boy watches a young Noongar bloke being beaten

            to death in the lock-up

The wild colonial boy has been extradited as witness

            to be laughed at by the judge, to be warned to say nothing more

            if he ever wants to wander the plains again

The wild colonial boy promises himself he will shout the truth

            at every footy match, in front of every television,

            to the writers of reports who will go home to love and calm

The wild colonial boy wanders the port streets on his release,

            not understanding he’s in a decolonising world,

            the shops bristling with worldly goods, with opportunities,

            and all good things coming to those standing and waiting

The wild colonial boy stops in front of a travel agency window

            and sees a jet will take him anywhere in the world

            and that he can unlearn the codes of his failings —

            he can become he can become he can become

The wild colonial boy has worn dresses and wandered naked

            and has never been stuck on the codes of the pub

            and wonders if his time has come, but the urbane laugh

            at him — his phonelessness — head-in-hands on the kerb

The wild colonial boy looks out for his mate the actor

            but knows in his heart that his friend is gone,

            a friend who had been eaten by Australia,

            a friend whose name he won’t use in a song

            out of respect for the dead

The wild colonial boy looks out from near the walls

            of the Roundhouse and finds solace

            in the sea, the dolphins, the gulls

The wild colonial boy hears the many conversations

            and all languages make sense to him

            though he claims none — he is homeless

            and stateless and his family can't reach him

The wild colonial boy can't ‘call Australia home’, though he has never

            really left its shores; but he has travelled outside its jurisdictions,

            and he has travelled far beyond its metaphors

            John Kinsella