On the Outskirts

John Kinsella

• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9780702260612
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

A stunning new collection by one of Australia's most celebrated poets. Inspired by the natural world, Kinsella's poems consider the protection and valuing of human and animal life, and the environment itself. Reflecting the constant flux of the global and the local, these poems consider the plight of refugees, the degradation of the environment, militarisation and violence. Contemplating the failure of public memory to memorialise, Kinsella reflects on the unresolved issues of history such as Nazism and colonisation. Influenced by William Blake's poetry and art, in particular his uncompleted series of illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, Kinsella evokes a strong relationship between the visual and textual. On the Outskirts is a work of strangeness and alienation, and one in which a light of redemption is sought - a rehabilitation in the human character and the healing power of nature.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Also by John Kinsella
• Title page
• Imprint page
• Dedication
• Contents
• The Bulldozer Poem
• House Lights and A Refusal to Let Space and Place Fall to Story Programming
• Psychogeography of a Temporary Locality: A Prelude – Tangential to Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 1
• The Big Picture: Via Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 2 (God Image: ‘The Mission of Virgil’)
• Into Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 3 (lines 1–10), ‘Leave every Hope you who in Enter’
• A Bat in the Conservatory: Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 4
• The VOC Gluttony of Spraycan Graffiti on the Outskirts of Tübingen and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 6
• Cerberus in the Highlands Overlooking the Sea: Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 6
• Crossing to Long Island and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 7
• Crossing the Irish Sea and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Cantos 7 and 8
• Seventh Circle: On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 12
• A Middle-Spotted Woodpecker Sounds Out a Warning As I Reflect Over Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 13
• Buzzards Over the Österberg: On Blake’s Vision of Dante’s Hell, Canto 18 (‘Ditch of Flatterers’)
• Fasnet and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 20
• Cybernetic Gestures from the Max Planck Institute, Tübingen: Skewiff to Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 21 (lines 46–56)
• It Says So Much More … Out of Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 21 (lines 118–124)
• Australia’s New White Paper on Defence and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 21: Devils Proffering Protection
• The Voice of Malacoda and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 23
• Resolve: ‘Stop the Boats’ and the ‘Misty-eyed’ and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 25
• How Can You Write a Love Poem When Reactors are Equivocal and Forests are Vanished? Contemplating Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 26
• Denkmal: Tübingen
• Cemetery X: In the Name of Medical Science their Bodies Were Rent: Through Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 28
• On Signing a Petition Against the French Nuclear Power Plant Teetering On a Faultline and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 29
• A Call for the Fragmentation of Language: On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 31 (Nimrod, Babel)
• A Psychogeography of Tübingen’s Swan Lake: In Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Hell, Canto 34
• Blackbirds and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 1
• Winged Storm Boat and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 2
• Sun Doesn’t Fully Illuminate the Harbour: Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 4
• We Hide in the Shadows as Surfaces Heat: On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Cantos 5 and 6
• Stumps and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 8
• On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 8: Kammmolch (Great Crested Newt)
• Graureiher as Lucia – and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 9 (lines 50–63)
• De-Nazification and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 9 (lines 64–101)
• The Road on the West Side of the Cnoc Osta Range and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 10
• Dunlough Pier and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 13
• The Quake Plates: Those Missing Illustrations of Blake’s for Cantos 19 and 20 of Dante’s Purgatory Have Turned Up Here in Tübingen
• Unravelling Hay, Furze and Flames: Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 27
• Kloster Bebenhausen and Blake’s Dual Illustrations to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 30
• The Dragon I Saw Rising Out of the Bog: On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 32
• Nature and Making Poems in West Cork: Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Purgatory, Canto 32
• A Spiral, After Blake’s ‘Roughly sketched figures ascend the stairways of Paradise’ in Paradise, Canto 10 (lines 72–87)
• Formal Conventions and Faith: After Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 24 (lines 32–110)
• Horologes and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 24 (‘Dante and Beatrice in the Constellation of Gemini and the Sphere of Flame’)
• Articulo mortis: Graffiti and Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 26
• Wunscherfüllung: On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 28 (We’d Prefer to Walk than Dine Out)
• On Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 30: ‘In the Empyrean Drinking at the River of Light’ and IMM C.D. Wright
• The White Rose: With a Glimmer of Blake’s Illustration to Dante’s Paradise, Canto 31
• Epilogue 1 – Why Blake’s Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy Are and Aren’t ‘Sites of Memory’ and/or ‘Real Environments of Memory’
• Epilogue 2 – Paths to the Wurmlinger Chapel
• Epilogue 3 – Caha Mountain Revelations
• World’s End
• Notes
• Acknowledgements