The Wound

By John Kinsella

The Wound is the latest collection from esteemed Australian poet John Kinsella, whose previous accolades include the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the John Bray Award for Poetry, the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award, and three-times winner of the Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry. Kinsella describes himself as a 'vegan anarchist pacifist', and The Wound was inspired by his anger towards the destruction being wrought on the West Australian coastal bushland by the controversial proposed construction of the Roe 8 Highway Extension, which environmentalists protested would endanger the area's wildlife, the biodiversity of which is equal to that of the whole of England. In this collection Kinsella mixes mythology with modernity, as this collection includes two books of poems, the first inspired by the character of Mad King Sweeney from Irish epic Buile Shuibhne, and the second comprised of works 'interacting' with poems written by German Romantic Friedrich Hölderlin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Release date: Apr 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781910345993

John Kinsella

John Kinsella is the author of over thirty books. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University. In 2007 he received the Fellowship of Australian Writers Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry.

Book preview

The Wound

Published by Arc Publications

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road,

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Copyright © John Kinsella, 2018

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications, 2018

Design by Tony Ward

Printed by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

978 1910345 97 9 (pbk)

978 1910345 98 6 (hbk)

978 1910345 99 3 (ebk)

Acknowledgements

Some of these poems have previously been published in Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Meanjin, Mutually Said (a blog John Kinsella shares with Tracy Ryan), Overland, Salzburg Review, Stop the War Coalition website, The Wolf and York Community Matters Newspaper.

Special thanks to Andrée Gerland and to the Literary Cultures of the Global South programme, University of Tübingen, Germany, where the author was in residence for some months during 2016. Special thanks too to all at Arc Publications – James Byrne, Jean Boase-Beier, Tony Ward and Angela Jarman. The author has had a special interaction with Arc for over two decades, and appreciates the rigorous attention they have always given his work as well as the personal support he has received from them. Further thanks to Curtin University and Churchill College, Cambridge University.

Cover image: © Stephen Kinsella, 2018, by kind permission of the artist.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

Editor for Arc’s International Poets series

James Byrne

TheWound

JOHN KINSELLA

Poems after Buile Suibhne

and Friedrich Hölderlin

Arc.TIF

2018

For Tracy, Tim, the ‘Save Beeliar Wetlands’ protesters, Andrée, and James Quinton

Contents

Introduction

BOOK ONE – AFTER SWEENEY

Sweeney Prototype (Outdoors, West Cork)

Sweeney the Vegan

Sweeney’s Lament

Sweeney’s Remedy for Bathos

Graphology Chronotype 3: Sweeney

Sweeney Deplores Nationalism in the Hazy Days of Summer

Sweeney in the Hawthorn Tree Confused by Hiberno-Australian-English

Sweeney Suffers at the Paws of the Otter

Sweeney’s Flight of Exile

A Charred Sweeney Arises, Brainwashed by the State, to Imprint Himself on the Locals Taking up Their Racist Desires

Is it Hubris with which Sweeney Awaits the Approach of a Double Front?

Sweeney – ‘Little Birdie Flying High’ – Shits on a Gathering of Crypto-Fascists but Means Nothing Aggressive by It

The Tenets or Tenants of Sweeney

Sweeney – Bird Brain Dissembler

Sweeney the Thesaurus Bird

Sweeney Encounters a Russian Adventurer in the Avon Valley

Sweeney Deplores the Rise of the Fascists

Sweeney Tries to Warn Locals of the Danger of a Radioactive Waste Dump

Sweeney Goes to Sing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ but No Sound Issues Forth

Sweeney Contemplates a Display of Force by the Police State

Sweeney Inside the Wound, the Graveyard, the Deathzone

Sweeney the Barn Owl Opens His Eyes Wide in Broad Daylight

Sweeney’s Last Will and Testament

Sweeney Witnesses the Attack on the Coolbellup Bush by the Forces of a Corrupt Police State

Having Given Up the Ghost, Sweeney Flies in with Seedlings to Help Stitch the Wound

Sweeney Dreams He’s Having a Nightmare of Clearing

INTERLUDE

The Old Professors Try to Knock Sweeney Off His Perch in the Hölderlinturm

BOOK TWO – AFTER HÖLDERLIN

After ‘Friedensfeier’

Flames after Hölderlin: Wenn über dem Weinberg

Barely Hölderlin’s ‘Vom Abgrund nemlich’

Subtexting ‘Der Spaziergang’

Searching ‘Der Spaziergang’

Winter: Artificial Lake Heading Towards Meltdown

Inverting ‘Geh unter, schöne Sonne’

Hölderlin’s ‘Abendphantasie’ and the Unwelcomings of Here

Reaching into ‘Des Morgens’

In lieblicher Bläue?

Oedipus Speaks: after Hölderlin’s Sophocles’ Oedipus Second Act Scene One Opening Speech

Messenger: after the Fifth Speech of the Messenger, Act 1, Scene 3 of Hölderlin’s Sophocles’ Antigone

After Hölderlin’s ‘Der Winkel vont Hahrdt’

Fantasia on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’

Fantasia (2) on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’

Fantasia (3) on Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’

Listening to Nirvana and Working With Andree Gerland’s ‘Literal’ Version of Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens’

After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Das Unendliche’ (‘The Infinite’)

After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Vom Delphin’

After Hölderlin’s Pindar Extravaganza When He Was Supposedly Past It: ‘Das Belebende’

After ‘Der Sommer’ – ‘Wenn dann vorbei’ des Frühlings Blüthe schwindet

Hymn of Beyond Hölderlin’s ‘Wie Meeresküsten…’?

We, Too – after Hölderlin’s ‘Wenn aus dem Himmel

Distance is How We (dis)Orientate: After ‘Wenn aus