With an Introduction by Rod Mengham.
In The Silo, John Kinsella's fifth book of poems (and the second published by Arc), the poet examines the role of the artist in the landscape and the unique character of rural life.
Using Beethoven's 6th ('Pastoral') Symphony as the framework for the collection, he explores the music of an Australian rural landscape and the European impact on a tenacious yet fragile environment.
"Many of the poems are vintage Kinsella, suffused in the beautifully audacious language of his later pastorals -- the metonymical manipulations of time and place that set you down firmly in the Australian landscape-history, yet by the end of the poem leave you wondering how he ever arrived at such seamless transformations and transportations."
Andy Brown, PQR
"The Silo is a fine sequence of poems, giving us a tough, focused, loving picture of Kinsella's heartland."
Peter Bland, The London Magazine
"John Kinsella, in The Silo, shows himself to be an authentic poet, astonishingly individuated. There are only a handful (or fewer) English-language poets of his generation whose work is already so original, so fully formed, and so clearly destined to become part of the central tradition."
Harold Bloom
John Kinsella was born in Perth, Australia in 1963. He studied at the University of Western Australia and travelled extensively through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He is a prolific writer and author of over 25 books, and has published poems in literary journals internationally and has received a number of literary awards. Since 1998, he has been International Editor for Arc Publications, with whom he has published four collections, the first of which, The Undertow: New and Selected Poems, was his first UK edition. His second collection for Arc, The Silo: A Pastoral Symphony (1997) was followed in 1999 by Landbridge: An Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry, which he edited. Lightning Tree was published in 2003, and America in 2006. His most recent collections include The Hunt, Peripheral Light: Selected and New Poems, The New Arcadia and Shades of the Sublime & Beautiful. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.
Author Biography:
John Kinsella was born in Perth, Western Australia. His mother was a poet and he began writing poetry as a child. He cites Judith Wright among his early influences. Before becoming a full-time writer, teacher and editor he worked in a variety of places, including laboratories, a fertiliser factory and on farms.He has published over thirty books and his many awards include The Grace Leven Poetry Prize and the John Bray Award for Poetry. His poems have appeared in journals such as Stand, The Times Literary Supplement, The Kenyon Review, and Antipodes. His poetry collections include: Poems 1980-1994; The Silo; The Undertow: New & Selected Poems; Visitants (1999); Wheatlands (with Dorothy Hewett, 2000); and The Hierarchy of Sheep (2001). His most recent book, Peripheral Light: New & Selected Poems, includes an introduction by Harold Bloom and his next poetry collection, The New Arcadia, was published in June 2005.Kinsella is a vegan and has written about the ethics of vegetarianism. IN 2001, he published a book of autobiographical writing called Auto. He has also written plays, short stories and the novel Genre. Kinsella has taught a Cambridge University where he is a Fellow Churchill College and was formerly Professor of English at Kenyon College, Ohio, where he was the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing in 2001.Kinsella is a founding editory of the literary journal Salt and international editor of The Kenhyon Review. He co-edited a special issue on Australian poetry for the American journal Poetry and various other issues of international journals. He is a poetry critic for The Observer.
