Poems 1980-1994

"I first met John Kinsella when he was interviewing me. He’s terrifyingly sharp and astute and poetically eloquent. He doesn’t miss anything, in his poetry or anyone else’s, and it was a rather terrifying interview on stage. I say terrifying as it was early on in my poetry-writing; I was reading some of my poetry, and he was interviewing me in front of an audience. I am always interested in how he writes about his past experiences, seeing them now in the context of his current life. When you read one of his poems, it’s like following a stream and you’re unavoidably swept along by the current. He takes you through his life in another country in a very accessible way, because even though Australia can be quite alien compared to us in wet, windy England, his Australia isn’t, because it’s his and he brings it to life for us. Of course, his poetry isn’t all about Australia; sometimes it’s about a bee or a ferret. Yes, it is, but he’s also quite eclectic and he has a very open attitude to humans and humanity and our faults and failings. I look at poems like ‘Apprehension’ and want to read bits: ‘And how did you feel? The surface too close, the flutters fizzing at your tender and vulnerable feet loaded with misgiving’, and you already get a feeling of being naked and vulnerable, and then you want to know why, and on it goes… His poems are a little like roller-coaster rides. Yes, he deals with some unsettling subjects, but then you have poems like the chilli poems. I have to mention the titles of some of the chilli poems because I find them very funny: ‘Archetypal Chillies’, ‘Chilli Catharsis’, ‘Hereditary Chillies’, ‘Transcendental Chillies’. He was growing chillies at the time. It’s taking reality and refining it, presenting it back at you and then making you laugh. I have a lot of admiration for this book, and also his sheer energy and output is quite extraordinary. He’s probably one of the most energetic people I have ever met. Everything in his life is material – even some things that other people might leave buried. He faces pretty much everything, it seems. Even chillies."