John Kinsella Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 09:28:44
From: Douglas Barbour (dbarbour@maildrop.srv.ualberta.ca)
Subject: Re: John Kinsella
As The Australian Council for the Arts has asked me to be the 'official' coordinator of John Kinsella's upcoming tour of the US & Canada, I thought it would be a good idea to let people on this list know about it. John sometimes posts here, so you will know the name. He is one of the finest younger Australian poets, with a startlingly wide range, & able to do the job in all the kinds of poetry he writes. Lyn Hejinian wrote quite correctly of his recent _Erratum/Frame(d)_ (in her Preface):
It has often been remarked that John Kinsella has two bodies of work. His very recent volume, _The Silo: A Pastoral Symphony_ (one notes that its title foregrounds a musical analogy) can be cited as exemplary of a meditative, narrative mode of poetry, while the work collected here could be said to represent his interests in the 'experimental'. But the difference between the books is, in fact, an epistemological one -- a question of where what's known lies. And this, in turn, is a temporal question. _The Silo_ is a book of memory -- and inevitably, a book of landscapes, since it is in landscapes that the past is most clearly embodied in present forms. _Erratum/Frame(d)_ is a book of the present 'denying its geography, blurring genre.'
I dont have the venues, except for the University of Calgary, University of Alberta, and University of Northern British Columbia, but Kinsella will be in Buffalo Nov 7; Burlington Nov 8-9; Boston Nov 13; Portland Nov 15; Newark Nov 21; San Francisco Nov 23; Newark (New York?) Nov 24; Edmonton Nov 26; Prince George Nov 28; Calgary Nov 29 (I got these dates & places from his itinerary, so the readings in some places may be a bit tentative). Look for announcements, & catch this fine young poet from Australia, made possible by a grant from The Australian Council for the Arts and the various host institutions.


Douglas Barbour