KINSELLA, John

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Has written as John Heywood. Nationality: Australian. Born: Perth, Western Australia, 1963. Education: University of Western Australia. Career: Writer-in-residence, Churchill College, Cambridge, 1997. Founding editor, Salt.Awards: Creative Artists fellowship, Australia Council, 1989; Western Australian Premier's prize for poetry, 1993; Harri Jones Memorial award, University of Newcastle, 1994; Furphy award, Fellowship of Australian Writers, 1995; John Bray Poetry prize, Adelaide Festival, 1996. Address: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, PO Box 320, South Fremantle 6160, Australia.

Publications

Poetry

The Frozen Sea (as John Heywood). N.p., Zeppelin Press, 1983.

Night Parrots. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989.

The Book of Two Faces. Perth, Western Australia, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 1989.

Eschatologies. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991.

Full Fathom Five. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993.

Syzygy. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993.

The Silo: A Pastoral Symphony. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995.

Erratum/Frame(d). South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1995.

The Radnoti Poems. N.p., Equipage, 1996.

The Undertow: New and Selected Poems. Todmorden, Arc, 1996.

Lightning Tree. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996.

Poems 1980–1994. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997; Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe, 1998.

Graphology. N.p., Equipage, 1997.

Authenticities. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998.

The Hunt. Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe, 1998.

Kangaroo Virus: Poetry. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998.

Visitants. Newcastle upon Tyne, Bloodaxe, 1999.

Novels

Genre. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997.

Grappling Eros. South Fremantle, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1998.

Other

Editor, The Bird Catcher's Song. Apple cross, Western Australia, Salt, 1992.

Editor, A Salt Reader. Applecross, Western Australia, Salt, 1995.

Editor, The May Anthologies 1999: Poetry. Cambridge, Varsity, 1999.

Editor, Landbridge: Contemporary Australian Poetry. Todmorden, Arc, 1999.

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Critical Studies: In Overland, 128, 1992; by Fay Zwicky, in Westerly, 38(3), spring 1993; "John Kinsella's Poetry—Some Reflections" by Xavier Pons, in Antipodes (Austin, Texas), 12(2), December 1998.

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John Kinsella was awarded a major Creative Artists fellowship from the Australia Council in 1989, which enabled him to go to Cambridge, where he has lived much of the time since. He has continued, however, to be an energetic and enthusiastic spokesman for his own poetry and for Australian poetry generally, and he has been amazing prolific.

As editor of the Western Australian journal Salt, Kinsella has expanded both his editorial and publishing activities, but it is as a poet that he has most importantly demonstrated a striking consistency and talent. Although he has published more than a dozen books since his first volume, The Frozen Sea (as John Heywood) in 1983, including two collections of selected poems (in 1996 and 1997), it is probably his award-winning The Silo (1995) and The Hunt (1998) that demonstrate most tellingly his remarkable affinity for the Western Australian environment as a spiritual and metaphorical landscape. This is something he shares with Anthony Lawrence, though perhaps with the greater authority of someone who was born there. These books also show Kinsella's lively awareness of international currents in poetry, something his Cambridge residency has afforded him, although earlier collections such as Eschatologies (1991) and Syzygy (1993) indicate a strong cosmopolitan awareness. He writes within a distinctive Australian tradition, however, and is in many ways a direct link with earlier Western Australia poets such as Kenneth Mackenzie, Randolph Stow, and Dorothy Hewett. (Kinsella has coedited a regional anthology with Hewett.).

Something of Kinsella's delicate manipulation of regional overtones and universal resonances can be observed in "Courtship and Country Towns," from his collection Visitants:

   Without really knowing why
   they found themselves
   getting away to the city
   or neighbouring towns
 
 
   whenever the opportunity
   arose. It wasn't that they
   disliked the girls they'd
   grown up with, rather
 
 
   that they were almost sisters …
   Their mums all said it's a pity
   it would be nice to see our
   families wed, but the wind
   disperses the seeds of a dandelion

   so that they spread and find room
   to prosper in fertile earth.
   This town has a constant
 
 
   thirst for new blood,
   despite the papers, claiming
   it's slowly dying, and, in any case,
   dandelions were introduced.

—Thomas W. Shapcott