From the internationally revered Australian poet John Kinsella comes this exceptional new collection that traces the ghosts of this country’s violent and destructive history through the marks left on the land, in language and in ourselves.

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.