Death of the Parrot, Anti-Pastoral and the Anthropocene: Towards a Topopoetic Reading of John Kinsella

Abstract

ABSTRACT John Kinsella is a prolific writer from Western Australia. This article takes a topopoetic approach to considering his poetry and poetics by connecting studies of Yi-Fu Tuan’s topophilia and the paradoxical views of Zhuangzi and Thoreau in illustrating some tensions between language and place, connection and disconnection, and placement and displacement in Kinsella’s writings. In particular, I discuss Kinsella’s affective ties to the land and his anti-pastoral stance by parodying the European settlement on Country traditionally owned by Indigenous peoples. His poetry presents a dystopian world that challenges the old European sense of a pastoral society. By making connections between a Chinese sense of the earth and Kinsella’s poetics, I argue that as paradoxical as Kinsella's poetics may be, his writings, imbued with influences from different sources, demonstrate an effort to save the worsening earth.