y separately published work icon Auto single work   autobiography  
  • Author:agent John Kinsella http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/kinsella-john
Issue Details: First known date: 2001... 2001 Auto
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Applecross, Melville area, South West Perth, Perth, Western Australia,: Salt Publishing , 2001 .
      Extent: 134p.
      Note/s:
      • Dedication: For Tracy.
      ISBN: 1876857374

Works about this Work

John Kinsella as Life Writer the Poetics of Dirt David McCooey , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Angelaki , vol. 26 no. 2 2021; (p. 92-103)

'Life writing is ubiquitous in John Kinsella’s vast oeuvre. Kinsella’s employment of the diversity of modes collected under the rubric of “life writing” is underpinned by a “poetics of dirt.” Such a poetics is visible in the central role that material dirt (as both pollution and terrain) plays in Kinsella’s work, as well as the more general concept of impurity, as seen in Kinsella’s poetic trafficking in ideas concerning transgression, liminality, hybridity, and danger. In Purity and Danger (1966), the anthropologist Mary Douglas famously defined dirt as “matter out of place.” In the poem “Dirt” (from Kinsella’s 2014 collection Sack), dirt remains understandable as matter out of place, but it also becomes radically mobile, its material and symbolic weight subject to unexpected transformations. The eponymous dirt in Kinsella’s poem is being carted from one place to another by the poet’s near neighbour for “purposes unknown.” This “shitload of dirt,” dumped onto the dirt of the valley’s floor, makes its way into the disturbingly porous bodies – both human and non-human – around it. It is “something you sense in arteries” and “the haze / that lights and encompasses us all.” This poem can be taken as a metonym for Kinsella’s entire literary oeuvre. Employing his “poetics of dirt,” Kinsella attends to the dispossessed dirt of a post/colonial nation; the dirt of contemporary farming practices; the dirt of official and vernacular languages; and the dirt of personal secrets. This essay argues that Kinsella’s “poetics of dirt” cannot be disambiguated from his activist poetics, and the profoundly auto/biographical nature of his writing. Attending to postcolonial theory and life-writing studies, this essay analyses how Kinsella thematises dirt as central to both life writing (in prose and poetry) and a life of writing. In doing so, it considers dirt as something not simply “out of place,” but – in a postcolonial, post-sacred, and late-capitalist world – endlessly mobile, unstable, and transformative, moving between material and discursive realities in newly complex ways. By attending to dirt (both as matter and as pollutant) within the context of his various auto/biographical projects, Kinsella conspicuously draws attention to the relationship between the human and the material, profoundly questioning – in a way akin to a “new materialist” perspective – the consequences of a human-centred ontology. At its most radical, the “poetics of dirt” found in Kinsella’s life writing posits a world in which human subjectivity is not the only agental force in the material world.' (Publication abstract)

Untitled Mark Mahemoff , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , June no. 16 2003;

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Smashed Richard King , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 171 2003; (p. 96-97)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Real Illusions David McCooey , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 62 no. 3 2002; (p. 188-190)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Atonement and Raw Physical Sensation Barbara L. Gracious , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 16 no. 1 2002; (p. 87-88)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Atonement and Raw Physical Sensation Barbara L. Gracious , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 16 no. 1 2002; (p. 87-88)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Real Illusions David McCooey , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 62 no. 3 2002; (p. 188-190)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Smashed Richard King , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Overland , Winter no. 171 2003; (p. 96-97)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Untitled Mark Mahemoff , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: JAS Review of Books , June no. 16 2003;

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
Lived to Tell a Tantalising Tale Rosanna McGlone-Healey , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 9-10 March 2002; (p. 13)

— Review of Auto John Kinsella , 2001 single work autobiography
John Kinsella as Life Writer the Poetics of Dirt David McCooey , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Angelaki , vol. 26 no. 2 2021; (p. 92-103)

'Life writing is ubiquitous in John Kinsella’s vast oeuvre. Kinsella’s employment of the diversity of modes collected under the rubric of “life writing” is underpinned by a “poetics of dirt.” Such a poetics is visible in the central role that material dirt (as both pollution and terrain) plays in Kinsella’s work, as well as the more general concept of impurity, as seen in Kinsella’s poetic trafficking in ideas concerning transgression, liminality, hybridity, and danger. In Purity and Danger (1966), the anthropologist Mary Douglas famously defined dirt as “matter out of place.” In the poem “Dirt” (from Kinsella’s 2014 collection Sack), dirt remains understandable as matter out of place, but it also becomes radically mobile, its material and symbolic weight subject to unexpected transformations. The eponymous dirt in Kinsella’s poem is being carted from one place to another by the poet’s near neighbour for “purposes unknown.” This “shitload of dirt,” dumped onto the dirt of the valley’s floor, makes its way into the disturbingly porous bodies – both human and non-human – around it. It is “something you sense in arteries” and “the haze / that lights and encompasses us all.” This poem can be taken as a metonym for Kinsella’s entire literary oeuvre. Employing his “poetics of dirt,” Kinsella attends to the dispossessed dirt of a post/colonial nation; the dirt of contemporary farming practices; the dirt of official and vernacular languages; and the dirt of personal secrets. This essay argues that Kinsella’s “poetics of dirt” cannot be disambiguated from his activist poetics, and the profoundly auto/biographical nature of his writing. Attending to postcolonial theory and life-writing studies, this essay analyses how Kinsella thematises dirt as central to both life writing (in prose and poetry) and a life of writing. In doing so, it considers dirt as something not simply “out of place,” but – in a postcolonial, post-sacred, and late-capitalist world – endlessly mobile, unstable, and transformative, moving between material and discursive realities in newly complex ways. By attending to dirt (both as matter and as pollutant) within the context of his various auto/biographical projects, Kinsella conspicuously draws attention to the relationship between the human and the material, profoundly questioning – in a way akin to a “new materialist” perspective – the consequences of a human-centred ontology. At its most radical, the “poetics of dirt” found in Kinsella’s life writing posits a world in which human subjectivity is not the only agental force in the material world.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 13 May 2005 10:44:44
X