John Kinsella (1901 works by) (a.k.a. John Vincent Kinsella )
Also writes as: John Heywood ; Ern Jr.' 'Malley
Born: Established: 2 Feb 1963 Perth Western Australia ;
Gender: Male

BiographyHistory

John Kinsella is the founding editor of the international poetry magazine Salt. He is co-editor of Stand (UK) and international editor of The Kenyon Review (USA). He is also a consultant editor to Westerly (CSAL, University of Western Australia) and the Cambridge correspondent for Overland (Melbourne, Australia).

Kinsella has been a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge since 1998. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. In 2001, he was appointed Richard L. Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College (Ohio, USA) for the spring semester. In 2005 Kinsella proposed a School of Environmental Poetics and Creativity.

Kinsella has been the recipient of numerous awards and has also received grants and fellowships from the Literature Fund of the Australia Council and a grant from the Western Australian Department of the Arts. His work has been translated into a number of languages.

John Kinsella grew up in the city but also spent much of his youth, including three years of schooling, in country towns and on farms around Mullewa, Geraldton and in the south-west of Western Australia. Following studies at the University of Western Australia, he travelled internationally for a number of years. Kinsella is a vegan, a pacifist, an anti-nationalist and a supporter of animal rights. As a cultural commentator, he has made statements in support of Indigenous rights, including land rights, and gender respect.

Notes

  • John Kinsella won an Australian Literature Board Grant for 1996, but forfeited it and took up his Young Artists Creative Fellowship instead.

Awards

Awards for Works

Jam Tree Gully : Poems , 2012 poetry selected work 'In this daring new collection, Australia's preeminent environmental poet confronts the legacy of Thoreau's Walden. With Walden as his inspiration, John Kinsella moved with his family back to rural Australia, where he wrote the poems in this original collection exploring the nature of our responsibility and connection to the land.' (Publisher's blurb)
2013 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Poetry
Bushfire Approaching "I am ready to evacuate if need be." , Australian Book Review , March no. 349 2013 poetry single work
2013 shortlisted Peter Porter Poetry Prize
Armour , 2011 poetry selected work

'With Armour, the great Australian poet John Kinsella has written his most spiritual work to date - and his most politically engaged. The world in which these poems unfold is strangely poised between the material and the immaterial, and everything which enters it - kestrel and fox, moth and almond - does so illuminated by its own vivid presence: the impression is less a poet honouring his subjects than uncannily inhabiting them. Elsewhere we find a poetry of lyric protest, as Kinsella scrutinizes the equivocal place of the human within this natural landscape, both as tenant and self-appointed steward.

'Armour is a beautifully various work, one of sharp ecological and social critique - but also one of meticulous invocation and quiet astonishment, whose atmosphere will haunt the reader long after they close the book.' (From the publisher's website.)
2012 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Poetry
2012 winner Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — The C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry
2011 shortlisted International Awards — T.S. Eliot Prize John Kinsella withdrew from the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize following his shortlisting. He issued a statement through his publisher saying: 'I regret that I must do this at a particularly difficult time for the Poetry Book Society but the business of Aurum [the prize sponsor] does not sit with my personal politics and ethics'.

Source: Guardian, 7 December 2011
Sighted: 05/01/2011
2011 shortlisted Western Australian Premier's Book Awards — Poetry
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