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  • Author:agent John Kinsella http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/kinsella-john
Issue Details: First known date: 2012... 2012 The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In this volume of "cover" poems, John Kinsella takes the work of poets from across the centuries writing in languages other than English, including French, Russian, German, Greek, Latin and Chinese, and recreates the original works as translations, adaptations and versions. In the case of nineteenth-century French poets, including Leconte de Lisle, Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Cros, there is close consideration of the traditional conventions of translation; Kinsella produces versions designed to capture the intent and design of the originals. However, with medieval poet Francois Villon, Kinsella has taken his 'criminal jargon' poems and made radical departures into a play on contemporary criminal' language. Using a vast array of interpretative techniques, Kinsella takes the reader from the intense and chthonic animal poems of the Parnassian Leconte de Lisle, who spent much of his younger life on his birth island of Bourbon (La Reunion), through linguistically innovative remakings of Tristan Tzara's Dadaist poetry, to enigmatic investigations of the brilliant twentieth-century poet of witness, fragmentation and reconstitution of language, Paul Celan' (Libraries Australia).

Notes

  • Dedication: For Tract

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Richmond, Surrey,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Alma Books ,
      2012 .
      image of person or book cover 6449831855714287503.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 251p.
      ISBN: 9781846881879

Works about this Work

John Kinsella as Life Writer the Poetics of Dirt David McCooey , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Angelaki , vol. 26 no. 2 2021; (p. 92-103)

'Life writing is ubiquitous in John Kinsella’s vast oeuvre. Kinsella’s employment of the diversity of modes collected under the rubric of “life writing” is underpinned by a “poetics of dirt.” Such a poetics is visible in the central role that material dirt (as both pollution and terrain) plays in Kinsella’s work, as well as the more general concept of impurity, as seen in Kinsella’s poetic trafficking in ideas concerning transgression, liminality, hybridity, and danger. In Purity and Danger (1966), the anthropologist Mary Douglas famously defined dirt as “matter out of place.” In the poem “Dirt” (from Kinsella’s 2014 collection Sack), dirt remains understandable as matter out of place, but it also becomes radically mobile, its material and symbolic weight subject to unexpected transformations. The eponymous dirt in Kinsella’s poem is being carted from one place to another by the poet’s near neighbour for “purposes unknown.” This “shitload of dirt,” dumped onto the dirt of the valley’s floor, makes its way into the disturbingly porous bodies – both human and non-human – around it. It is “something you sense in arteries” and “the haze / that lights and encompasses us all.” This poem can be taken as a metonym for Kinsella’s entire literary oeuvre. Employing his “poetics of dirt,” Kinsella attends to the dispossessed dirt of a post/colonial nation; the dirt of contemporary farming practices; the dirt of official and vernacular languages; and the dirt of personal secrets. This essay argues that Kinsella’s “poetics of dirt” cannot be disambiguated from his activist poetics, and the profoundly auto/biographical nature of his writing. Attending to postcolonial theory and life-writing studies, this essay analyses how Kinsella thematises dirt as central to both life writing (in prose and poetry) and a life of writing. In doing so, it considers dirt as something not simply “out of place,” but – in a postcolonial, post-sacred, and late-capitalist world – endlessly mobile, unstable, and transformative, moving between material and discursive realities in newly complex ways. By attending to dirt (both as matter and as pollutant) within the context of his various auto/biographical projects, Kinsella conspicuously draws attention to the relationship between the human and the material, profoundly questioning – in a way akin to a “new materialist” perspective – the consequences of a human-centred ontology. At its most radical, the “poetics of dirt” found in Kinsella’s life writing posits a world in which human subjectivity is not the only agental force in the material world.' (Publication abstract)

Review Short : John Kinsella’s ‘The Jaguar’s Dream’ Aaron Mannion , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , no. 41 2013;

— Review of The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
Fragmentary Introspective Observations : Animals, Emotions and Location in John Kinsella’s Poetry Tom Bristow , 2013 single work essay
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 6 no. 1 2013;

— Review of Jam Tree Gully : Poems John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry ; The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
John Kinsella : The Jaguar's Dream Martin Duwell , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 8 no. 2013;

— Review of The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

Crossing Over Lachlan Mackinnon , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 27 July no. 5704 2012; (p. 23)

— Review of Armour John Kinsella , 2011 selected work poetry ; The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry ; In the Shade of the Shady Tree : Stories of Wheatbelt Australia John Kinsella , 2012 selected work short story
Review Short : John Kinsella’s ‘The Jaguar’s Dream’ Aaron Mannion , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , no. 41 2013;

— Review of The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
Best of 2012 : The Top 10 Poetic Works Ali Alizadeh , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: Overland [Online] , December 2012;

— Review of The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry ; Ash Is Here, So are Stars Jill Jones , 2012 selected work poetry ; The Family Idiot Fiona Hile , 2012 selected work poetry ; Autoethnographic Michael Brennan , 2012 selected work poetry ; 2012 and Other Poems Amanda Anastasi , 2012 selected work poetry ; Water Mirrors Nick Powell , 2012 selected work poetry ; Ruby Moonlight Ali Cobby Eckermann , 2012 single work novel ; Mogwie-Idan : Stories of the Land Lionel Fogarty , 2012 selected work poetry ; Marionette : Notes Toward the Life and Times of Miss Marion Davies Jessica Wilkinson , 2012 selected work poetry
John Kinsella : The Jaguar's Dream Martin Duwell , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Poetry Review , vol. 8 no. 2013;

— Review of The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
Fragmentary Introspective Observations : Animals, Emotions and Location in John Kinsella’s Poetry Tom Bristow , 2013 single work essay
— Appears in: Transnational Literature , November vol. 6 no. 1 2013;

— Review of Jam Tree Gully : Poems John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry ; The Jaguar's Dream : Translations, Adaptations, Versions, Extrapolations, Interpolations, Afters, Takes and Departures John Kinsella , 2012 selected work poetry
Aspects of Australian Poetry in 2012 Michelle Cahill , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: Westerly , June vol. 58 no. 1 2013; (p. 68-91)

'T he act of reading for appraisal rather than pleasure is a privilege that brings me to a deepened understanding of the contemporary in Australian poetry, the way the past is being framed, its traditions, celebrities and enigmas washed up in new and hybrid appearances or redressed in more conventional, sometimes nimbus forms. Judith Wright wrote that the ‘place to find clues is not in the present, it lies in the past: a shallow past, as all immigrants to Australia know, and all of us are immigrants.’ The discipline of reading to filter such a range of voices underlines my foreignness, making reading akin to translation, whilst reciprocally inviting the reader of this essay to become a foreigner to my assumptions and conclusions.' (Introduction)

John Kinsella as Life Writer the Poetics of Dirt David McCooey , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Angelaki , vol. 26 no. 2 2021; (p. 92-103)

'Life writing is ubiquitous in John Kinsella’s vast oeuvre. Kinsella’s employment of the diversity of modes collected under the rubric of “life writing” is underpinned by a “poetics of dirt.” Such a poetics is visible in the central role that material dirt (as both pollution and terrain) plays in Kinsella’s work, as well as the more general concept of impurity, as seen in Kinsella’s poetic trafficking in ideas concerning transgression, liminality, hybridity, and danger. In Purity and Danger (1966), the anthropologist Mary Douglas famously defined dirt as “matter out of place.” In the poem “Dirt” (from Kinsella’s 2014 collection Sack), dirt remains understandable as matter out of place, but it also becomes radically mobile, its material and symbolic weight subject to unexpected transformations. The eponymous dirt in Kinsella’s poem is being carted from one place to another by the poet’s near neighbour for “purposes unknown.” This “shitload of dirt,” dumped onto the dirt of the valley’s floor, makes its way into the disturbingly porous bodies – both human and non-human – around it. It is “something you sense in arteries” and “the haze / that lights and encompasses us all.” This poem can be taken as a metonym for Kinsella’s entire literary oeuvre. Employing his “poetics of dirt,” Kinsella attends to the dispossessed dirt of a post/colonial nation; the dirt of contemporary farming practices; the dirt of official and vernacular languages; and the dirt of personal secrets. This essay argues that Kinsella’s “poetics of dirt” cannot be disambiguated from his activist poetics, and the profoundly auto/biographical nature of his writing. Attending to postcolonial theory and life-writing studies, this essay analyses how Kinsella thematises dirt as central to both life writing (in prose and poetry) and a life of writing. In doing so, it considers dirt as something not simply “out of place,” but – in a postcolonial, post-sacred, and late-capitalist world – endlessly mobile, unstable, and transformative, moving between material and discursive realities in newly complex ways. By attending to dirt (both as matter and as pollutant) within the context of his various auto/biographical projects, Kinsella conspicuously draws attention to the relationship between the human and the material, profoundly questioning – in a way akin to a “new materialist” perspective – the consequences of a human-centred ontology. At its most radical, the “poetics of dirt” found in Kinsella’s life writing posits a world in which human subjectivity is not the only agental force in the material world.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 9 May 2017 09:46:09
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