Activist Poetics: Anarchy in the Avon Valley

John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with - and often directly through - his creative and critical work, Kinsella is also a prominent activist. In this important collection of essays the vegan anarchist pacifist poet claims that poetry can act as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills, in particular ecological damage and abuse. Kinsella builds on his earlier notion of ’linguistic disobedience’ evolving out of civil disobedience, and critiques the figurative qualities of his poems in a context of resistance. The book includes explorations of anarchism, veganism, pacifism, and ecological poetics. For Kinsella all poetry is political and can be a call to action.

Niall Lucy is a Research Fellow with the Australia Research Institute. He is a former Head of the School of Arts at Murdoch University, where he taught for many years in the Literature, Philosophy and Communication Studies programs. John Kinsella is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, Professor of English at Kenyon College in the United States and Adjunct Professor to Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, where he is a Principal of the Landscape and Language Centre. He is a poetry critic for the Observer and was founding editor of the literary journal Salt.