By John, posted by Tracy
JTG Poems of eco-exile:
a response for those who grovel to the brutalists at TargaWest
1.
Properties of home, of sparse trees,
rare blooms, friable air –
evocation, vocation, scarred senses;
recall being there –
but not for pleasure,
not for dog days
or social
get-togethers
with loving neighbours.
Community: idée fixe
the way we all hope,
so set in our ways.
2.
Skin-sloughing heat
and racing heart; night-sweats;
roos on frost mornings
lifting eyes to examine
the house windows –
unlike any other –
repartee in co-existence.
From one extreme to another,
even in red fear, even in thirst,
it is the space occupied
as we walk anywhere, anytime.
3.
No point dredging
up detail, though detail
delineates: every strand
of wire in tension & lapse,
every dead tree of the great
drying, every dead tree
we hear revived.
4.
Wrote a book
every moment there –
here, every moment
not there is written.
Walden was always
assignation, a sign.
For demolition,
a clearance sale.
Profiteers are better
read than you think.
It’s all good advertising
for them. That’s Real Estate,
despite flora and fauna,
in spite of locals.
Some are more equal than others.
Almost read that at school.
5.
Indelible: school bus terror:
Boy experiencing parents speaking through children
snarling at him: ‘Your father must be a drunk
opposing the car rally! Is he mad?’
That and the gunfire, the noose of the loop
closing around us. Carrion. Rifles. Fireworks.
6.
Another on the loop
opposes the waste,
the sport of cars.
The Shire calls hills ‘Highlands’
and makes its own rules. The Sell.
The mining magnate ate asbestos on his cereal
to prove how efficacious it was.
Leaf out of the book. Time trial.
John Kinsella
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
Radio National Airplay -- Kinsella feature
By Tracy
This Sunday 8 July, Australia's ABC Radio National (Airplay programme) will be broadcasting three works by John Kinsella: see here for details.
The featured works are Signature at Ludlow, Kangaroo Virus, and The Well.
The Airplay programme is on at 3pm Sunday and will be repeated at 9pm Thursday.
This Sunday 8 July, Australia's ABC Radio National (Airplay programme) will be broadcasting three works by John Kinsella: see here for details.
The featured works are Signature at Ludlow, Kangaroo Virus, and The Well.
The Airplay programme is on at 3pm Sunday and will be repeated at 9pm Thursday.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
The Infinite Abyss... and Science
By John (posted by Tracy)
The Higgs boson won't fill that God-shaped hole.
(that is, Pascal's "infinite abyss".)
The Higgs boson won't fill that God-shaped hole.
(that is, Pascal's "infinite abyss".)
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Correcting the record: a statement from inside Parnassus
Posted by Tracy, for John
I want to make clear that the idea of a "bombardment" of poems is offensive to my mind, and unsustainable as an anti-war gesture. The use of helicopters, and even the notion of a bombardment, relies on the very language and materials of wars themselves.
Second, having been misedited on the ABC's PM programme to sound as if I am in favour of Twitter: I was being ironic when I said it was a revolution in poetry -- it's only a revolution in electromagnetic invasiveness and damage. It was a long interview reduced to a decontextualised sound-bite.
I want to make clear that the idea of a "bombardment" of poems is offensive to my mind, and unsustainable as an anti-war gesture. The use of helicopters, and even the notion of a bombardment, relies on the very language and materials of wars themselves.
Second, having been misedited on the ABC's PM programme to sound as if I am in favour of Twitter: I was being ironic when I said it was a revolution in poetry -- it's only a revolution in electromagnetic invasiveness and damage. It was a long interview reduced to a decontextualised sound-bite.
Monday, June 25, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The National(ist) and Regional Routes to Nuclear Catastrophe and Annihilation
Written by John, posted by Tracy
As India boasts of its joining the ICBM club, we read of half the world being in range and even the cry of Gandhi reconstituted. See this article...
This is aggressive posturing. A deterrent? Of what? Of doubts about the sustainability of a nationalising narcissism? If certain other countries gloated in such a way, they’d be annihilated by the ‘established’ imperial powers. But India has become a capitalist powerhouse, feeding the West what the West likes best (to rephrase poet John Forbes), and its new means of exploitation and aggression are buzzing at its fingertips.
As one who has spent time in India (or ‘Indias’ – despite the militaristic posturing of the central government, their actions do not represent the many spaces that make up ‘India’) on various occasions, who feels a strong empathy and respect for the many Indian cultures with which he has come into contact, and whose veganism twenty-seven years ago was triggered by a (non-religious) exposure to Jainism, I am appalled at the materialism and militarism that has been identified as ‘progress’. The ‘Brand India’ compliance with aggressive militaristic market capitalism reinforces the bigotries of caste and class, and does not alleviate them. The notion of joining an ‘elite club’ by having the ability to destroy (entirely) a vast distance from launch-site is truly a separation of cause and effect, an ability not to be held accountable for one’s actions. There is no post-colonialism, only co-opted and reinvested colonialisms. At the basis of all such endeavours is genocide. And those in India who have the lust for atomic weapons and ways of delivering them have joined the ranks of those wishing to inflict genociding colonialism. The word ‘deterrent’ is lost in the manufacture, launch, delivery and detonation of these weapons. It’s called ‘mass destruction’, a term we associate with Western propaganda but with a root cause that escapes the semantics, and it is cultural as much as anything else. Face up to it, people of the world. Face up to it, ‘India’. You are better than your military-capitalist State allows.
And once again I reiterate that Australia’s repulsive feeding of nuclear powers (military and non-military – not that there are ever many degrees of separation between these), is as culpable as the users of uranium (and one should note Australia’s own Lucas Heights research reactor here). It’s part of the cycle, and part of the planet’s doom. Nuclear is a one-way journey to catastrophe. The Barnett government in Western Australia has ‘given the green light’ (what an expression!) to uranium mining in that state, and the first mine is not far off starting. This should be resisted in every peaceful way possible. Add to the lead contamination and general destruction of ecologies that have ruined the lives of children and adults in Western Australia (while being sold as their salvation), and we have another nail in our coffin. A very big nail, very hard to pull back out once it is driven in. But never give in, never accept. Refuse!
John Kinsella
As India boasts of its joining the ICBM club, we read of half the world being in range and even the cry of Gandhi reconstituted. See this article...
This is aggressive posturing. A deterrent? Of what? Of doubts about the sustainability of a nationalising narcissism? If certain other countries gloated in such a way, they’d be annihilated by the ‘established’ imperial powers. But India has become a capitalist powerhouse, feeding the West what the West likes best (to rephrase poet John Forbes), and its new means of exploitation and aggression are buzzing at its fingertips.
As one who has spent time in India (or ‘Indias’ – despite the militaristic posturing of the central government, their actions do not represent the many spaces that make up ‘India’) on various occasions, who feels a strong empathy and respect for the many Indian cultures with which he has come into contact, and whose veganism twenty-seven years ago was triggered by a (non-religious) exposure to Jainism, I am appalled at the materialism and militarism that has been identified as ‘progress’. The ‘Brand India’ compliance with aggressive militaristic market capitalism reinforces the bigotries of caste and class, and does not alleviate them. The notion of joining an ‘elite club’ by having the ability to destroy (entirely) a vast distance from launch-site is truly a separation of cause and effect, an ability not to be held accountable for one’s actions. There is no post-colonialism, only co-opted and reinvested colonialisms. At the basis of all such endeavours is genocide. And those in India who have the lust for atomic weapons and ways of delivering them have joined the ranks of those wishing to inflict genociding colonialism. The word ‘deterrent’ is lost in the manufacture, launch, delivery and detonation of these weapons. It’s called ‘mass destruction’, a term we associate with Western propaganda but with a root cause that escapes the semantics, and it is cultural as much as anything else. Face up to it, people of the world. Face up to it, ‘India’. You are better than your military-capitalist State allows.
And once again I reiterate that Australia’s repulsive feeding of nuclear powers (military and non-military – not that there are ever many degrees of separation between these), is as culpable as the users of uranium (and one should note Australia’s own Lucas Heights research reactor here). It’s part of the cycle, and part of the planet’s doom. Nuclear is a one-way journey to catastrophe. The Barnett government in Western Australia has ‘given the green light’ (what an expression!) to uranium mining in that state, and the first mine is not far off starting. This should be resisted in every peaceful way possible. Add to the lead contamination and general destruction of ecologies that have ruined the lives of children and adults in Western Australia (while being sold as their salvation), and we have another nail in our coffin. A very big nail, very hard to pull back out once it is driven in. But never give in, never accept. Refuse!
John Kinsella
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Note on Dust and Stow
Written by John, posted by Tracy
The edition of Stow’s poems I have edited -- The Land’s Meaning -- is due from Fremantle Press in a few weeks. I briefly discuss Stow’s poem 'Dust' in the intro, and am writing an essay on that poem in particular at the moment. The key really is found in Arthur Waley's note to his translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, in which he says: 'Dust is the Taoist symbol for noise and fuss of everyday life.’ This is one starting point, as is the dust that lifts of the paddocks around Geraldton with the relentless driving winds so characteristic of that place.
John Kinsella
The edition of Stow’s poems I have edited -- The Land’s Meaning -- is due from Fremantle Press in a few weeks. I briefly discuss Stow’s poem 'Dust' in the intro, and am writing an essay on that poem in particular at the moment. The key really is found in Arthur Waley's note to his translation of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, in which he says: 'Dust is the Taoist symbol for noise and fuss of everyday life.’ This is one starting point, as is the dust that lifts of the paddocks around Geraldton with the relentless driving winds so characteristic of that place.
John Kinsella
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