Writing on Stolen Noongar Boodjar

 Graphology Materialism 42: against the trends of opinion polls

 

Each loss means fewer palindromes

as fresh ‘observations’ stall before

            reaching midway through the sentence,

            collapsing back to where they came from.

 

And though we were closer to the rawness

of that ‘first wave’ of dispossession,

            those striated curves in sandstone,

            we still leave a more damaged land

 

than when we arrived. A loadstone,

the colonial gathers and accrues

            habits of various terrains and skies,

            nuances its modes of dismembering —

 

museums collecting then apologising,

compressing time into different manners

            of presentation. Some ‘artefacts’

            and body parts are returned, others

 

sit in archives waiting to be rescued.

Out of the flower-press an extinction

            shows vivid colours... if only... it might

            have been tapped as a panacea...

 

It seems so brutal laying it all down

without disclaimers, remediation —

            simply underpinning

            with footnotes,

 

reinforcing with bibliographies

            and appendices.

 

 

            John Kinsella

Supervivid Depastoralism

 A new book for those interested — Supervivid Depastoralism.

Cover Painting by Stephen Kinsella

Book description: I don't sleep much or very well (I have a recent book of poetry entitled Insomnia!), but, when I do, I often have supervivid dreams. It is said that in the time of Covid-19, many people are speaking of having more vivid dreams than usual, and though the poems in this manuscript are not-specifically 'Covid-19 poems', at certain points of the manuscript they certainly make contact with this overwhelming reality and condition of crisis. But this is essentially a book in a lifecycle of trying to confront and consider the impacts of colonial agribusiness mono agricultural practices on Australia, and how it is or isn't possible to write about these issues within the conventions of the pastoral tradition of literature. Can 'pastoralism' and environmentalism intersect in meaningful ways or is it all a colonial ruse? As a committed environmentalist and human rights landrights justice campaigner, my poetry necessarily considers the place I work out of (largely wheatbelt Western Australia), and the problems of writing poetry 'about' rurality and ecology, as well as addressing the ongoing colonialism. This new book is an attempt to push my anti, post, counter, and radical pastoral to the point where it also becomes a means of considering where agricultural culpabilities intersect with personal histories and behaviours, where creativity that comes out of a critique of invasive and damaging wrongs is in itself up for question. So this is a work of self-critique, questioning, and also aspiration to vividly confront and find ways through this crisis of presence. The 'Australian Pastoral' is a construct, a propaganda device that suits all sorts of oppressive modes, and is easily a place to retreat into even when it is being questioned: I am trying to bring all this into eclogic discussion, to contest it further as part of a long and linguistically diverse process of contestation. This book 'connects' with other books on 'pastoral' I have written over the decades, including other recent work (in progress) on odes and eclogues (longer pieces largely) - but this is a collection of shorter poems. The book could be subtitled: Eclogix.

    John Kinsella