John Kinsella, Consolations: After Boethius

‘This is a demanding, eloquent book, energised by rapid shuttling between satire, elegy, disquisition, long and close-up views of birds and plants.  Entertaining but deeply serious, refusing prefabrication, it adds a new level of achievement to the John Kinsella repertoire and it deserves to be widely read.’ JOHN KERRIGAN

Consolations is book-length sequence of poems that considers how we might find space for solace and relief amidst the trauma of a damaged and conflicted world. In essence, it is a search for a way of reconciling private and public worlds, combining Kinsella’s life-long focus on environmentalism and rights concerns with a contemplation of ‘interiority’. The poems range from the meditative and contemplative to the ironic and satiric. Spirituality, and what forms a personal philosophy of survival, are in dialogue with the human ‘made world’ as well as with the natural world, while opening a dialogue with the sixth century Latin work by Boethius, The Consolations of Philosophy. Written while awaiting execution, Boethius’s work dialogues over issues of happiness and what constitutes a life. Such considerations remain essential in the present moment of environmental degradation and political disintegration. 

John Kinsella is the author of over seventy books of poetry, fiction, criticism, plays, edited works (such as The Penguin Book of Australian Poetry), and collaborative works. His many awards include the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Victorian Premier’s Award for Poetry, the John Bray Award for Poetry, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry (twice) and the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry (three times). He has published Supervivid Depastoralism (2021) and The Argonautica Inlandica (2023) with Vagabond Press. John Kinsella is an extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University. A frequent collaborator with other poets, writers, artist, musicians, and thinkers, he lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian wheatbelt. In 2007 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry. He was inducted into the Western Australian Writing Hall of Fame in 2024.

John Kinsella, Consolations: After Boethius
Forthcoming April 2026. 148mm x 210mm. 70pp.
ISBN 978-1-925735-81-9

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.