Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Conversation with John Kinsella -- questions by Roberto Mussapi
This interview recently appeared in an Italian newspaper, in the Italian language.
Why is poetry necessary?
I believe all poetry is political at one level or another, and as such, poetry for me is a form of activism. As an environmentalist, when I write of the natural world I hope that my insights and ‘ways of seeing’ will contribute to the respect for and protection of ecologies. I am not interested in creating poems that hang as artefacts in museums, but in a living, breathing poetry that engages with the environmental crisis that the world faces. As a poet of landscape who is interested in exploring ‘up close’ the particular characteristics and qualities of a place, I hope to act as witness, to prevent damage being done, to preserve. So poetry is entirely necessary as a means of resisting, for example, the horrors of capitalist exploitation of land, of the pollution and exploitation of industrialisation, and other such examples of greed. My poems see the damage being done, and bring it to the attention of readers. Yet it’s not a case of propaganda, but of letting the images and language of the poems stimulate awareness, curiosity, and investigation. As a vegan-anarchist-pacifist, I have very strong feelings and ideas about how we might respect, conserve and experience the world we live in, especially the natural world, and I find poetry a more effective means of articulating these positions than the process of constantly being arrested and locked up, as I was when I was a young activist. Peaceful resistance still has an important place in my life, but I find poetry has been a truly effective means of communication.
Is there a relation between poetry and hope?
For me, poetry is entirely about hope. I actually once contributed poems to an anthology published by an Icelandic poet, which I think was called something like The Book of Hope. When I draw attention to what I have called ‘the damage done’ — to the exploitations, cruelties, and greed of humanity — it is because I believe that there’s another way, that people don’t have to be those things, and are very often not. Poetry becomes a superb ‘lens’, a way of focussing concern for positive change. I am strongly supportive of indigenous land rights around the world, and I come from a place where the indigenous people have had their land stolen with little if any compensation. Indigenous and non-indigenous poets who draw attention to this wrong (doing so in a variety of ways), have formed an essential part of broader community discourses that raise awareness about these wrongs. All nations want a literary ‘tradition’, and want literature they can show the world: if that literature (and for me, especially poetry), constantly speaks of the wrongs of theft of land, dispossession, inequality and exploitation, as well as speaking of the strength and cultural richness of dispossessed and disempowered communities, then external pressure can bring positive change. No country likes to feel embarrassed by what its writers are saying to the rest of the world. Poetry is all about hope to me. I have seen it stop bulldozers (I wrote an article about this once), and I have used it to help stop developments that would have put rare species of plants at risk. Poetry, for me, is an extension of how we live, and projects into how we might live better.
Can poetry contribute to a renaissance of humankind?
Of course — it always has. In doing my ‘distractions’ of Dante’s Divine Comedy, I tried to connect with one kind of eruption of insight into the torments and delights of the human soul with a need for another such eruption of awareness about the impacts humans have had on the planet. There are criticisms in there, of course, but also celebrations. For me, a new renaissance is an environmental one: if we do not act now to lessen the damage being done, there will be no planet, and no people to renew. Really, we are on the verge of needing a New Classicism which is about a more harmonic relationship with the natural world, and taking as models for art and existence, those from ‘nature’ that have persisted so effectively for so long. Which is not to deny there should be change or ‘development’, but rather, that this change might be more organic and less damaging, more in keeping with the ‘natural’ progress and changes of the biosphere, rather than those being forced at a rapid pace by humans. In this New Classicism is an acceptance that the rapid climate change we are now experiencing is in large part because of human industry and behaviour, and that less industrialisation, less reliance on energy for fuelling devices and other commercial fetishes, will mean a better life for all living things.
Do you think there is a relation between the poetic and the sacred spheres?
For me, poetry always contains a spiritual aspect. I write about spirituality, but I do not belong to any religion. I believe in all religions, and in no religions. I do not think a religious administration can conduct the workings of the human soul — if anything, I think it can take away and diminish the spirit. I have known many good people in various positions of religious authority — people whom I respect — but I cannot respect any edifices of power. As a non-violent anarchist, I am against centralisation and concentrations of power, and too often religion becomes these. Interestingly, many of my favourite poets, from Dante to Milton, have had ‘religion’ as a core concern, so it’s something about which I think and write, but I am always arguing that the human (or animal) spirit needs to find its own direction and its own freedom. Enlightenment can come about in many ways, and most often outside doctrine. Observing the natural world, listening to an old local farmer tell his life, watching the sun rise or set, are for me far more informative than rituals which have become hollow through being enforced and being offered as the ‘right’ way. Sometimes the ‘wrong’ way is more enriching! Poems are rarely perfect, and their ‘wrongs’ are sometimes as informative and spiritual as their ‘rights’. An imperfection in rhythm or prosody in general, something ‘misdescribed’, something misheard or misunderstood, can come across in a poem as a revelation, a new insight. The errors are as important as the ‘correct’ ways of doing things. No structure is perfect; all are worth pulling to bits and rebuilding as long as no living thing is hurt in the process. Vive la différence!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
What’s in a Name?
by John, posted by Tracy
In the net world, one’s name is an empty signifier. I share my name with public figures who are butchers, composers, computing experts, swimmers, hurlers, you name it. It’s an uncommon name in Australia, but a common name in Ireland. We don’t own our names, and a name is only useful in what it represents. That’s fine, though it is always distressing when one’s politics are confused with the politics of another who is signified by the same name, because of a reader associating a statement made by another with ‘you’, because they have assumed... I guess that other John Kinsellas might not like the thought of their name being associated with my politics. I don’t want their words in my mouth, so to speak, and I imagine it would be the case in reverse. But maybe that’s just another victory for the cause of western subjectivity!
So when you hear or read a piece of, say, race hatred or cultural bigotry, and it has ‘your’ name attached to it, it is particularly hard to bear. In the mass of trackable ephemera that constitutes the net, it dilutes ultimately into a meaninglessness that can suddenly be activated as a ‘truth’. Horrific events inevitably evoke insensitive and brutal responses. The uncited reference, or the reference that creates its own citation: it was said, it is findable through a search, therefore is its own truth.
For my namesake out there who is looking to blame the Islamic world for all violence and hatred, I suggest he takes a look at his own motivations in posting such rubbish. The Grand Defence of Western values, and the fear of the ‘other’, are sadly alive and well. I am appalled to see ‘my name’ attached to a right-wing race-hate rant in the context of an horrific event (whose perpetrator, ironically in this regard, looks likely to be a Christian fundamentalist... but hate knows no boundaries, and the identification of the perpetrator’s belief-system/creed is not a marker of the nature of his hate).
I guess, heritage-wise, he and I connect somewhere way back. But I believe individual choices can be made regardless of genetics, cultural heritage or social context.
I have heard of people trying to take legal action to prevent another of the same name (that is, from birth) using it in public debates where they are well-known and it might rightly be assumed that they themselves are the source of certain comments, even if the comments seem out of character. A ’defence’ of who they are, how they perceive their public quiddity? Often, a middle initial or some other marker is introduced to differentiate. Appeasement?
And so many writers work under assumed names, even while writing under their birth name as well.
So, what’s in a name? Very little. But all the same, in those liminal and threshold spaces where the name floats like a buoy in the swill of comments that tail newspaper articles, I want to say clearly that I in no way blame Muslims for the ills of the world, that I am in no way anti-Muslim, that I celebrate cultural diversity, and fully accept that one’s own cultural backyard has as many issues and complexities as anyone else’s. I shouldn’t even feel the need to make these points when my life work has so clearly been dedicated to resisting bigotry in all its forms. But someone out there who has the ‘same’ name does have these abhorrent values/views, and thus I feel the need to claim my identity ‘back’ in the light of this.
So maybe I am defending the right to difference of opinion among all John Kinsellas, whether we can separate them off and identify the component parts or not!
John Kinsella, poet of the Western Australian wheatbelt, anarchist, vegan and pacifist. He refuses to use his middle initial as differentiator.
In the net world, one’s name is an empty signifier. I share my name with public figures who are butchers, composers, computing experts, swimmers, hurlers, you name it. It’s an uncommon name in Australia, but a common name in Ireland. We don’t own our names, and a name is only useful in what it represents. That’s fine, though it is always distressing when one’s politics are confused with the politics of another who is signified by the same name, because of a reader associating a statement made by another with ‘you’, because they have assumed... I guess that other John Kinsellas might not like the thought of their name being associated with my politics. I don’t want their words in my mouth, so to speak, and I imagine it would be the case in reverse. But maybe that’s just another victory for the cause of western subjectivity!
So when you hear or read a piece of, say, race hatred or cultural bigotry, and it has ‘your’ name attached to it, it is particularly hard to bear. In the mass of trackable ephemera that constitutes the net, it dilutes ultimately into a meaninglessness that can suddenly be activated as a ‘truth’. Horrific events inevitably evoke insensitive and brutal responses. The uncited reference, or the reference that creates its own citation: it was said, it is findable through a search, therefore is its own truth.
For my namesake out there who is looking to blame the Islamic world for all violence and hatred, I suggest he takes a look at his own motivations in posting such rubbish. The Grand Defence of Western values, and the fear of the ‘other’, are sadly alive and well. I am appalled to see ‘my name’ attached to a right-wing race-hate rant in the context of an horrific event (whose perpetrator, ironically in this regard, looks likely to be a Christian fundamentalist... but hate knows no boundaries, and the identification of the perpetrator’s belief-system/creed is not a marker of the nature of his hate).
I guess, heritage-wise, he and I connect somewhere way back. But I believe individual choices can be made regardless of genetics, cultural heritage or social context.
I have heard of people trying to take legal action to prevent another of the same name (that is, from birth) using it in public debates where they are well-known and it might rightly be assumed that they themselves are the source of certain comments, even if the comments seem out of character. A ’defence’ of who they are, how they perceive their public quiddity? Often, a middle initial or some other marker is introduced to differentiate. Appeasement?
And so many writers work under assumed names, even while writing under their birth name as well.
So, what’s in a name? Very little. But all the same, in those liminal and threshold spaces where the name floats like a buoy in the swill of comments that tail newspaper articles, I want to say clearly that I in no way blame Muslims for the ills of the world, that I am in no way anti-Muslim, that I celebrate cultural diversity, and fully accept that one’s own cultural backyard has as many issues and complexities as anyone else’s. I shouldn’t even feel the need to make these points when my life work has so clearly been dedicated to resisting bigotry in all its forms. But someone out there who has the ‘same’ name does have these abhorrent values/views, and thus I feel the need to claim my identity ‘back’ in the light of this.
So maybe I am defending the right to difference of opinion among all John Kinsellas, whether we can separate them off and identify the component parts or not!
John Kinsella, poet of the Western Australian wheatbelt, anarchist, vegan and pacifist. He refuses to use his middle initial as differentiator.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Macro & micro, politics & poetics
By Tracy
I’m finding as I read through material on Stendhal now at the start of my PhD that I can’t help constantly feeding it back into my own mental landscape as a writer.
Of course, “scholarly objectivity” doesn’t really exist, and anyone brings to their studies what they do elsewhere in life (a builder reading Stendhal, or criticism on Stendhal, would bring a builder’s knowledge and issues to the material, likewise a dancer, a tailor, a musician, an architect – whatever!).
Even though the material is necessarily looking at the nineteenth century and at realism, a contemporary writer inevitably measures ideas against his or her own practice.
So Lukács* in “Balzac and Stendhal” leads me to ponder how we do or don’t incorporate the “bigger” political and social world in our fiction. He’s talking about Balzac’s praise-and-criticism for Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma...
Lukács says:
In Balzac’s view Stendhal’s novel achieves its comprehensive typicality precisely because its scene is laid in Parma, on a stage of trivial interests and petty intrigues... Balzac reveals an essential structural quality of the great realistic bourgeois novel. The writer, the “historian of private life” as Fielding put it, must describe the hidden fluctuations of society, the intrinsic laws governing its movements, its incipient trends, its invisible growth and its revolutionary upheavals. But great historical events, and the great figures of history can very rarely be adapted to the demonstration of society in the form of concrete types... Balzac considers that a writer does not know his craft if he chooses for his subject the external glitter of great historical events instead of the internal riches found in the characteristic development of social elements. (pp 35-6)
Okay, so we’re no longer in the heyday of the great Realists anymore, but as a writer (getting distracted from my PhD work, or maybe not!) I think there’s still something to be absorbed from this.
Often if you deal with the “trivial” and “up-close” and “personal” you may be accused of ignoring or even deliberately excluding the larger-scale (as if human life were not lived on both scales – and even others), despite the fact that, as feminisms have stressed, the personal is political...
Balzac was not promoting what Lukacs calls “petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local colour” (that might for instance be purely sentimental) but praises for example Walter Scott by writing:
Scott never chose great events as subjects for his pen, but he always carefully develops the causes which led to them, by depicting the spirit and morals of the age, and presenting a whole social milieu instead of moving in the rarified atmosphere of great political events. (p. 36)
For me this is a valuable way of thinking about the approach to the “political” in a novel, and it’s something I’ll be trying to take on board both in my reading and in my writing.
*Georg Lukács, “Balzac and Stendhal,” trans. H. M. Parshley, in Harold Bloom, ed. Stendhal: Modern Critical Views, New York, Chelsea House, 1989, pp31-49
I’m finding as I read through material on Stendhal now at the start of my PhD that I can’t help constantly feeding it back into my own mental landscape as a writer.
Of course, “scholarly objectivity” doesn’t really exist, and anyone brings to their studies what they do elsewhere in life (a builder reading Stendhal, or criticism on Stendhal, would bring a builder’s knowledge and issues to the material, likewise a dancer, a tailor, a musician, an architect – whatever!).
Even though the material is necessarily looking at the nineteenth century and at realism, a contemporary writer inevitably measures ideas against his or her own practice.
So Lukács* in “Balzac and Stendhal” leads me to ponder how we do or don’t incorporate the “bigger” political and social world in our fiction. He’s talking about Balzac’s praise-and-criticism for Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma...
Lukács says:
In Balzac’s view Stendhal’s novel achieves its comprehensive typicality precisely because its scene is laid in Parma, on a stage of trivial interests and petty intrigues... Balzac reveals an essential structural quality of the great realistic bourgeois novel. The writer, the “historian of private life” as Fielding put it, must describe the hidden fluctuations of society, the intrinsic laws governing its movements, its incipient trends, its invisible growth and its revolutionary upheavals. But great historical events, and the great figures of history can very rarely be adapted to the demonstration of society in the form of concrete types... Balzac considers that a writer does not know his craft if he chooses for his subject the external glitter of great historical events instead of the internal riches found in the characteristic development of social elements. (pp 35-6)
Okay, so we’re no longer in the heyday of the great Realists anymore, but as a writer (getting distracted from my PhD work, or maybe not!) I think there’s still something to be absorbed from this.
Often if you deal with the “trivial” and “up-close” and “personal” you may be accused of ignoring or even deliberately excluding the larger-scale (as if human life were not lived on both scales – and even others), despite the fact that, as feminisms have stressed, the personal is political...
Balzac was not promoting what Lukacs calls “petty realism, the trivially detailed painting of local colour” (that might for instance be purely sentimental) but praises for example Walter Scott by writing:
Scott never chose great events as subjects for his pen, but he always carefully develops the causes which led to them, by depicting the spirit and morals of the age, and presenting a whole social milieu instead of moving in the rarified atmosphere of great political events. (p. 36)
For me this is a valuable way of thinking about the approach to the “political” in a novel, and it’s something I’ll be trying to take on board both in my reading and in my writing.
*Georg Lukács, “Balzac and Stendhal,” trans. H. M. Parshley, in Harold Bloom, ed. Stendhal: Modern Critical Views, New York, Chelsea House, 1989, pp31-49
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Alive and well despite hiatus in posting
By Tracy
It's ages since we've posted. Work, travel, family commitments... I need to start making shorter, more regular entries.
Electrical storms permitting, since we've had a few of those, including today.
Speaking of electrical storms, and the man once referred to as the "magnetic hurricane" -- last month we went to see a local production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. It was done by Yellow Glass Theatre Company at the Subiaco Arts Centre, and was much better than I expected, given that some of the English translations are weak, or if not weak, just not Brel.
The cast were terrific, though -- just the right kind of energy, and a dynamic contrast in voices. Well staged, and with a piano accompaniment that really let the material stand out.
The political thrust of some of the songs did not, however, stand out -- the anti-military or anti-war stance -- which was a shame. It was almost as if their import had not been absorbed by those involved.
But it was a good night out, and an appropriate way to mark 30 years since Brel's death.
Speaking of which, the city of Cannes is making him Man of the Year 2008 and having a special celebration over a few days this (northern) summer, with all sorts of things going on, including a writing competition (in French) and a quiz.
Our preschooler and I have been watching lots of old Brel footage on DVD, and it's quite addictive. A little Brel gets me through the day -- disturbing when you think he once dismissed what he did as more or less "aspirin" for the public, three minutes at a time.
(But not forgotten by all of us...)
I recently wrote a poem about watching these Brel performances, which is being published in Jacket. My way of marking those 30 years...
It's ages since we've posted. Work, travel, family commitments... I need to start making shorter, more regular entries.
Electrical storms permitting, since we've had a few of those, including today.
Speaking of electrical storms, and the man once referred to as the "magnetic hurricane" -- last month we went to see a local production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. It was done by Yellow Glass Theatre Company at the Subiaco Arts Centre, and was much better than I expected, given that some of the English translations are weak, or if not weak, just not Brel.
The cast were terrific, though -- just the right kind of energy, and a dynamic contrast in voices. Well staged, and with a piano accompaniment that really let the material stand out.
The political thrust of some of the songs did not, however, stand out -- the anti-military or anti-war stance -- which was a shame. It was almost as if their import had not been absorbed by those involved.
But it was a good night out, and an appropriate way to mark 30 years since Brel's death.
Speaking of which, the city of Cannes is making him Man of the Year 2008 and having a special celebration over a few days this (northern) summer, with all sorts of things going on, including a writing competition (in French) and a quiz.
Our preschooler and I have been watching lots of old Brel footage on DVD, and it's quite addictive. A little Brel gets me through the day -- disturbing when you think he once dismissed what he did as more or less "aspirin" for the public, three minutes at a time.
(But not forgotten by all of us...)
I recently wrote a poem about watching these Brel performances, which is being published in Jacket. My way of marking those 30 years...
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Introduction
Welcome, all. This is a dual blog by poets John Kinsella and Tracy Ryan. We intend to talk here about many diverse issues from poetry through to politics and anything else that takes our interest from day to day.
We are both committed, long-term vegans and pacifists, and John has called himself an anarchist since his teenage years. He is a strong believer in community living, decentralisation and living without the intrusion of the State. He has developed a term or a theory he calls "umbrella anarchism", which he uses to denote coexistence with the State while not condoning the activities of the State, with a view that eventually the State will dissolve through its own inadequacies, injustices and oppressions. He feels that consensus is the basis of any just community.
Further to this, he considers himself an international regionalist (his term), which in essence means he proposes international conversations between places, while respecting regional integrity. He is a deeply committed environmentalist and activist who aims to decrease human intrusion into the "natural world".
He believes strongly in indigenous land rights around the world.
Tracy writes fiction as well as poetry, and shares John's environmental and political concerns. She has a background in language studies and is keenly interested in all things related to language-learning, translation and linguistics in general. Consciously feminist since reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in her twenties, she continues to be interested (though often with disillusionment and frustration) in feminist writings and ideas. As a mother of two, she is also preoccupied with how we might equip children to survive in an increasingly damaged and disordered world. She has a passion for vegan cooking, especially baking, and for understanding vegan nutrition.
We are both committed, long-term vegans and pacifists, and John has called himself an anarchist since his teenage years. He is a strong believer in community living, decentralisation and living without the intrusion of the State. He has developed a term or a theory he calls "umbrella anarchism", which he uses to denote coexistence with the State while not condoning the activities of the State, with a view that eventually the State will dissolve through its own inadequacies, injustices and oppressions. He feels that consensus is the basis of any just community.
Further to this, he considers himself an international regionalist (his term), which in essence means he proposes international conversations between places, while respecting regional integrity. He is a deeply committed environmentalist and activist who aims to decrease human intrusion into the "natural world".
He believes strongly in indigenous land rights around the world.
Tracy writes fiction as well as poetry, and shares John's environmental and political concerns. She has a background in language studies and is keenly interested in all things related to language-learning, translation and linguistics in general. Consciously feminist since reading Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex in her twenties, she continues to be interested (though often with disillusionment and frustration) in feminist writings and ideas. As a mother of two, she is also preoccupied with how we might equip children to survive in an increasingly damaged and disordered world. She has a passion for vegan cooking, especially baking, and for understanding vegan nutrition.
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