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
