AustLit

'John Kinsella, at an online event at the University of Warwick (November 2020), spoke of his hands-on work creating and maintaining firebreaks, and planting trees. [...]it was the fire that caught my imagination. What interests me is the rupture in a dialogue that changes, in a professional or public context, from an equal exchange of words to the forced, shared witness of personal discomfort elevated to spectacular pain; and which bodies are turned by grief into a thing for a pedestal, not a thing to be tidied away. Suddenly I had a swooping vision of many years' and two hemispheres' worth of incarcerated people: migrants trapped on small islands in Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, the Pacific; detention centres in the neighbourhood of business-and-holiday British airports; crippled poor relations languishing in small rooms in the Caribbean and Latin America, where the state assumes 'the family' looks after its own.' (Publication abstract)

'The planet was waiting for whatever life form inhabited tall buildings and ultra-wide boulevards. At night the temperature fell to minus six, dryly; by day it touched thirty, in this neighbourhood of lakes. I walked half an hour and met one other soul walking in the opposite direction. I say the planet because the city felt round, like an embrace. Perhaps that warmth was from the welcome at IPSI, the International Poetry Studies Institute at the University of Canberra. Seventy-five poets had gathered for the ‘Poetry on the Move’ festival, which ran from 14 through 21 September. The theme of the festival’s third iteration was ‘Boundary Crossings’. There were emphases on migration, ekphrasis and multilingualism. A number of significant prizes were awarded, including the Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. All events were free. The full listing remains online.' (Introduction)