John Kinsella

John Kinsella's 'Star Shavings'

Al Filreis
Photo by John Kinsella from the 'Star Shavings' series.

I’m pleased here to present a brief excerpt from John Kinsella’s series titled “Star Shavings,” a cycle of photo-poems. Jacket2 and PennSound are making the cycle available HERE. Here is a link to Kinsella’s PennSound page, and here are some links to several of his previous appearances in Jacket: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

'Graphology' drawing poems, by John Kinsella

Al Filreis

Concurrent with writing Graphology Poems by hand and in type (typewriter and computer fonts), I have “concretized” poems by photographing them “in situ” — i.e. as printed or written out pages set in trees, against flowers, or as scratchings in dirt, as sticks arranged on a firebreak, or photographed by a third party while holding sheets of poems as “protest placards” — and as textual interjections, overlays, and “culture jamming” of preexisting images/texts. I have also, more prevalently, maybe, made “drawings” and “paintings” … in other words, writing as illustration.

I am pleased to present a selection of Graphology drawing poems by John Kinsella. You can view the selection HERE and HERE. Below is a commentary provided by John. — A.F.

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On Graphology Drawing Poems

by John Kinsella

Multicultural sleep

A review of 'Fainting with Freedom' by Ouyang Yu

Bonny Cassidy

Insouciance may be an undervalued poetic quality. In this latest collection by the Chinese Australian poet, novelist, editor, and translator Ouyang Yu, the attitude of insouciance is also a cultural strategy. It reflects Yu’s own movements as a writer and citizen, that is, situated “in Oz or China / Or both.”[1]

Kinsella & Milne collaborate on 'Reactor Red Shoes'

Not the building of a megaphone for bardic harmonics, nor the people’s microphone, but a dance of many feet...

Al Filreis
John Kinsella (left) and Drew Milne

I'm pleased to present here a statement by John Kinsella and Drew Milne on their forthcoming book-length poem-project, Reactor Red Shoes. The work is being published September, 2013 by Veer: bbk.ac.uk/cprc/publications/veer-books . Below the statement is an excerpt from the poem, reproduced from the typescript.

John Kinsella & Drew Milne, Reactor Red Shoes: A Statement

Here, where two writers sidle up into becoming a third party — a third-party poetics in play and with shared accountability — there is not so much a duet of voices, as a textile of give and take, warp and weft.

John Kinsella

Al Filreis
Australian poet John Kinsella. Photo by Andrew De La Rue.

PennSound’s new John Kinsella page features three recordings. One is a reading he gave at Buffalo in September of 1996, introduced by Susan Schultz (5:11): MP3 .

Here are poems Kinsella read:

Warhol at Wheatlands (2:53): MP3
Bluff Knoll Sublimity (2:54): MP3
Aspects of the Pagan (4:43): MP3
Editing (0:51): MP3
Disclaimers (2:19): MP3
Echidna (2:45): MP3
from “Syzygy” (4:57): MP3
Skeleton weed / generative grammar (3:35): MP3

He also took a moment to comment on the tradition of classical poetry in Australia and the slaughter of aboriginal peoples (1:05): MP3. The complete reading (26:19): MP3 is of course available also, but note that  the recording cuts off at 26:19.

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