'This is an edited extract of Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth ’s introduction to The Ascension of Sheep, first in a new, three-volume collection of John Kinsella’s luminous poetry It is not easy to still John Kinsella. He is a poet defined by constant motion, by compulsive kinesis. Kinsella, who writes so often of birds, is a poet who is really only understood in flight. Opening The Collected Poems of John Kinsella: The Ascension of Sheep (1983-2005) (UWA Publishing), the very earliest poem is about a cormorant, the next talks of a cockatoo; in fact, there are at least 123 bird species mentioned in this book.'