Activist Poetics
Anarchy in the Avon Valley

A collection of essays that claim that poetry can act as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills, in particular ecological damage and abuse. It includes explorations of anarchism, veganism, pacifism, and ecological poetics.

John Kinsella is known internationally as the acclaimed author of more than thirty books of poetry and prose, but in tandem with - and often directly through - his creative and critical work, Kinsella is also a prominent activist. In this important collection of essays the vegan anarchist pacifist poet claims that poetry can act as a vital form of resistance to a variety of social and ethical ills, in particular ecological damage and abuse. Kinsella builds on his earlier notion of 'linguistic disobedience' evolving out of civil disobedience, and critiques the figurative qualities of his poems in a context of resistance. The book includes explorations of anarchism, veganism, pacifism, and ecological poetics. For Kinsella all poetry is political and can be a call to action.

Acknowledgements
Map of Avon Valley Introduction: Blood &
Salt - Niall Lucy 1. Herewith the (Auto) Razo: Activism and the Poet
2. Standing Up to Aggressors
3. Why I Am a Pacifist
4. Plagues &
Bioethics
5. Refugees &
Australia
6. Wheatbelt Isohalines &
the Making of Isopleths:The 'Annihilation of Distance' &
Other Subtexts associated with the Creation of a Sequence of Poems
7. Half-Masts: A Prosody of Telecommunications 8. Geodysplasia: Geographical Abnormalities &
Anomalies of an Activist Poetics
9. Activist Readings of Three Australian Poems
10. Working with Coral Hull on Zoo (A Collaboration)
11. De-mapping &
Reconnoitring Notions of Boundaries -Mutually Said: Blogging &
Acting
12. Poetry, Justice &
the Court
13. The School of Environmental Poetics &
Creativity Coda: Visitors
Appendix 1. On Anarchism: Tracy Ryan Interviews John Kinsella
Appendix 2. Dialogue on Vegan Ethics: John Kinsella &
Tracy Ryan
Reference Index