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.

"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."-Professor John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge

Niall Lucy is a Research Fellow in the Humanities at Curtin University. His books include Debating Derrida, Postmodern Literary Theory: An Introduction, A Derrida Dictionary and (with Steve Mickley) The War on Democracy; Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. His latest book is Pomo Oz: Fear and Loathing Downunder.

John Kinsella is an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. He was Professor of English at Kenyon College, Ohio, and a founding Principal of the Landscape and Language Centre at Edith Cowan University. Kinsella has written poetry criticism for many journals and newspapers around the world, including The Observer, Scotland on Sunday, The Sydney Morning Herald and The West Australian, and is founding editor of the literary journal Salt. In addition to more than thirty books of poetry he has written novels and works of literary and cultural criticism, and edited several poetry anthologies.