'The Graphology Poems are a ‘life-long’ poetry cycle of semiotics begun over a quarter of a century ago. This multiplicious and diverging cycle and sub-cycles of poems uses handwriting, textuality, orthography, and considerations of prosody, to consider issues of human rights, justice, ethics, politics, environment, animal rights, questions around the purpose of art, music, writing and creativity, forms of activism and the nature of knowledge. This is the second, expanded edition of Graphology Poems 1995-2015, and includes all the poems in the original Five Islands Press three-volume edition, plus some of the uncollected Graphology poems of the same period, a reproduction of the holograph Runes notebook, and a lengthy updated foreword by the author, an introduction by Nicholas Birns and ‘outroduction’ and interview with the author by Jonathan Dunk, edited into a single volume by Gareth Jenkins.'(Publication summary)
'John Kinsella’s three-volume Graphology Poems: 1995–2015 (2016) constitutes a major and shifting set of poetic statements. Partly a discontinuous poetic chronicle of life in Western Australia’s Avon Valley, they are also an investigation of ways in which an activist poetry may inscribe aspects of being, self and experience while protesting against environmental challenges and degradation. As these poems sprawl in many directions and express overlapping preoccupations, and as they emphasise the unsettled and unstable while affirming what has a continuing importance, so they constitute a series of ethical positions connected to living sustainably and responsibly. They also explore the porous nature of a poetic activism that steps out into the quotidian world while simultaneously refashioning the poetic, challenging and even subverting the language of the contemporary lyric and the contemporary pastoral. The Graphology poems prize incompleteness and the fragmentary, open out to reveal absences and imply other texts, value multiple meanings and represent many of the most important strands of Kinsella’s work.' (Publication abstract)
'There is a prevalent myth among academic poets that there is an ‘official verse culture’ in Australia. It could also go by the name of ‘conventional verse culture’ or ‘state verse culture’. The most cited gatekeeper for official verse culture is often Geoff Page (see Bonny Cassidy’s ‘Wild Ecology of Thought’ in Australian Poetry Journal) though one would suggest that others matter as well. And yet, official verse culture is hard to pin down when it comes both to publications and influence. The straw man of official verse culture in Australia is precisely that when we compare it transnationally. The presence of diversity in the Australian Book Review and the importance of Corditewould only seem to support this.' (Introduction)
'There is a prevalent myth among academic poets that there is an ‘official verse culture’ in Australia. It could also go by the name of ‘conventional verse culture’ or ‘state verse culture’. The most cited gatekeeper for official verse culture is often Geoff Page (see Bonny Cassidy’s ‘Wild Ecology of Thought’ in Australian Poetry Journal) though one would suggest that others matter as well. And yet, official verse culture is hard to pin down when it comes both to publications and influence. The straw man of official verse culture in Australia is precisely that when we compare it transnationally. The presence of diversity in the Australian Book Review and the importance of Corditewould only seem to support this.' (Introduction)
'John Kinsella’s three-volume Graphology Poems: 1995–2015 (2016) constitutes a major and shifting set of poetic statements. Partly a discontinuous poetic chronicle of life in Western Australia’s Avon Valley, they are also an investigation of ways in which an activist poetry may inscribe aspects of being, self and experience while protesting against environmental challenges and degradation. As these poems sprawl in many directions and express overlapping preoccupations, and as they emphasise the unsettled and unstable while affirming what has a continuing importance, so they constitute a series of ethical positions connected to living sustainably and responsibly. They also explore the porous nature of a poetic activism that steps out into the quotidian world while simultaneously refashioning the poetic, challenging and even subverting the language of the contemporary lyric and the contemporary pastoral. The Graphology poems prize incompleteness and the fragmentary, open out to reveal absences and imply other texts, value multiple meanings and represent many of the most important strands of Kinsella’s work.' (Publication abstract)
