Activist Poetics
Anarchy in the Avon Valley
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with—and often through—those creative works, Kinsella is also a prominent political activist. In this collection of essays, he explores anarchism, veganism, pacifism, and ecological poetics and makes a compelling argument for poetry as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills. Building on his own earlier notion of "linguistic disobedience," he analyzes his poetry and prose in the context of resistance. For Kinsella, all poetry is a call to action, and Activist Poetics reads like a lively manifesto for it to escape the aesthetic vacuum and enter the real world.
“John Kinsella is a major poet for whom poetry is never enough. Pacifist, vegan, ecological campaigner, he argues passionately for the writer to engage with the world. Not since Shelley has there been such radical, ethically driven criticism. The verbal intelligence at work is as acute as the scope is large. An exhilarating constellation of interview, essay, polemic, lecture, memoir, apologia, and verse, Activist Poetics will be eagerly read by anyone interested in what writing can do.”
Acknowledgements
Map of Avon Valley
Introduction by Niall Lucy
1. Herewith the (Auto) Razó: Activism and the Poet
2. Standing Up to Aggressors
3. Why I Am a Pacifist
4. Plagues & Bioethics
5. Refugees & Australia
6. Wheatbelt Isohalines & the Making of Isopleths: The ‘Annihilation of Distance’ & Other Subtexts Associated with the Creation of a Sequence of Poems
7. Half-Masts: A Prosody of Telecommunications
8. Geodysplasia: Geographical Abnormalities & Anomalies of an Activist Poetics
9. Activist Readings of Three Australian Poems
10. Working with Coral Hull on Zoo (A Collaboration)
11. De-mapping & Reconnoitring Notions of Boundaries—Mutually Said: Blogging & Acting
12. Poetry, Justice & the Court
13. The School of Environmental Poetics & Creativity
Coda: Visitors
Appendix 1: On Anarchism: Tracy Ryan Interviews John Kinsella
Appendix 2: Dialogue on Vegan Ethics: John Kinsella & Tracy Ryan
References
Index
Literature and Literary Criticism: Poetry
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