Australian poet John Kinsella’s collection of poetry, Ghost of Myself, traces the ghosts of this country’s violent and destructive history through the marks left on the land, in language and in ourselves.
John selected a poem from the book for you to enjoy.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Ghost of Myself explores who we are when we write, how we embody what has come before us and what we will leave behind.
These poems consider the ghostliness of colonial legacy and the impact of pastoralism and conventional farming on the land, and are concerned with the ‘pith’ of language – the way the new might come out of the compressions and controls of formal syntax and vocabulary.
Deeply imbued with observations of the ‘natural world’, these poems contemplate how we witness, record and leave marks. Each poem is a ghost of itself, too, and offers an opportunity for addressing the wrongs committed to country, environment and history.
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Anticipating, Zebra Finches
Just below, a roo doe digs into the softest
soil it can find – avoiding rocks – to make
a hollow for itself and the joey heavy in its pouch;
it lifts, digs, turns drops lifts digs turns drops.
Up the valley, a pair of zebra finches have skittered
into residence, for we don’t know how long, at the base
of the small mountain (or large hill) – Walwalinj –
almost certainly displaced by recent fire, that semi-local migration.
I can place myself in both zones without much effort,
but it’s a dubious skill with undefined political complications –
this seeing that’s messed with my setting, this tendency
to align with what I can only know within limits, and conversely.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Kinsella is the author of over forty books.
His many awards include the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Poetry (three times). His latest books are the three volumes of his collected poems, The Ascension of Sheep (UWAP, 2022), Harsh Hakea (UWAP, 2023) and Spirals (UWAP, 2024), and the story collection Beam of Light (Transit Lounge, 2024). He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University, Western Australia.
He lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. In 2007 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry and in 2024 he was inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame.
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