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Special N.01 – Martin Harrison Special Issue

Graphology Endgame 23: art and nature and art

by John Kinsella

Is there a lack of beauty in what I write?

Doesn’t the curve of the sky

behave in an appropriate way

in the lines I pin it to?

 

This fantastical imitation

of a tree falling to its grave,

insects clinging to bark, birds

trapped with fledglings in a hollows

 

These are declarations, and beauty

has to find its way out. Those sculptures

of our habitation, our shelter

under that virulent sun.

 

Standing before a masterpiece

that has hung on walls for too long,

I can declare beauty touched and retouched,

fading colours retuning the senses.

Published: May 2017
John Kinsella

John Kinsella‘s most recent volumes of poetry are Drowning in Wheat: Selected Poems (Picador, 2016) and Firebreaks (WW Norton, 2016). His most recent collection of short stories is Old Growth (Transit Lounge, 2017). His investigation of “place”, Polysituatedness: A Poetics of Displacement, was published by Manchester University Press in late 2016. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University and Professor of Literature and Sustainability at Curtin University.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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