{"product_id":"john-kinsella-argonautica-inlandica","title":"John Kinsella, The Argonautica Inlandica","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e is primarily based on the ancient Greek text\/translation of Apollonius of Rhodes’s \u003cem\u003eArgonautica\u003c\/em\u003e, with other ancient texts including Pindar’s Pythian Odes and Valerius Flaccus’s Latin work, \u003cem\u003eArgonautica\u003c\/em\u003e. In loosely following the journey of Jason and the Argonauts. \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e re-envisions a key story of Western literature in terms of environmental poetics and an examination of colonial impacts. Integrally connected with Kinsella's ongoing examination of south-western Australian ‘nature reserves’, \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e takes the sea journey inland via rivers and creeks, into spaces of ‘nature’ that have managed to persist despite the ecological destruction of vast areas of southern Western Australia. The journeys are many, however, a set of voyages of de-exploration and de-colonising activism. \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e is fundamentally an ecological work that examines the settler impact on country, and industrial impacts on world environments, and laments the rapacity and greed of a consumer world that has left so much of the natural environment in a vulnerable or in fact devastated condition. However, the tone is ultimately affirming insofar as action to halt the damage — including through the writing of poetry — is seen as a partial way of correction, healing and redress. \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e is a masterwork from one of contemporary poetry's major voices.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e‘In searching for the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts experienced harrowing trips through the uncharted rivers of central Europe and the desert wastes of North Africa. Now, in his brilliantly conceived and dazzlingly erudite ecological epic, John Kinsella turns Apollonius of Rhodes’s great water journey inland and inside-out, revealing how in Australia “the quest for metals to service the greenwash \/ of energy, the lap against the balance of power hull, \/ is the death of a forest and its inhabitants. And that’s real \/-politic, sports funding, local investment, and PR.” Indeed, “The clash—rigor\/ mortis of empire craving, and the media’s \/ feeding frenzy” leave both poet and reader to witness “insect and reptile sheltering places \/ removed, echidna hollows disturbed,\/ ground exposed raw as some properties \/surrounding the enclave, hemming \/ it in.  And the phantom travellers, \/ antithetical Argonauts, look on with despair . . .” \u003cbr\u003e     What can even Medea do for Jason in such circumstances? Kinsella’s is a unique, an unforgettable story.’\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMARJORIE PERLOFF\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: left;\"\u003e‘Shadowed by and shadowing the text of Apollonius’s epic, Kinsella’s \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e transposes the ancient myth of Jason and the Argonauts, a tale of theft and betrayal, into his twenty-first century account of what we plunder—from the natural world, from each other—in the name of profit and progress. In a time of climate collapse, the terms ‘coastal’ and ‘inland’ become unmoored, suffer from tidal drift—as does time itself. This is a book of journeying, crossing continents, seas and centuries, but always grounded in and returning to the inimitability and wonder of the local—the vivid colours of a ring-necked parrot, the intricate networks of a Moora spider orchid. Kinsella’s activist poetics—set against colonialism, against capitalism, and against the epic—is engaged in a project of “unmapping, de-exploring”, enacting the ethical imperative to observe and listen, without cataloguing or collecting. Skilfully ranging over poetic forms, searingly direct, and intensely lyrical and moving, \u003cem\u003eThe Argonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e is a reckoning as much with personal history, replete with inherited and alien ancestral ghosts, as with national and global histories of possession and dispossession. And haunting every step is the recognition that if ‘[h]istory is ecology’, the extra-human narrative will outlast the human one, that in the “surrounding \/ lands being eaten by sea \/ sea will eat down to remake \/ what we unmake”.’\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBELLA LI\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJohn Kinsella\u003c\/strong\u003e is the author of over seventy books of poetry, fiction, criticism, plays, edited works (such as \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe Penguin Book of Australian Poetry\u003c\/em\u003e), 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). Among his recent books published in Australia are \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eSupervivid Depastoralism \u003c\/em\u003e(poetry: Vagabond Press, 2021);\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eHollow Earth\u003c\/em\u003e (a novel: Transit Lounge, 2019), \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLucida Intervalla\u003c\/em\u003e (a novel: UWA Publishing, 2018); \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOn the Outskirts\u003c\/em\u003e (poetry: UQP, 2017), \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eOld Growth\u003c\/em\u003e (stories: Transit Lounge, 2017), \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDrowning in Wheat: Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e (Picador, 2016), \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eCrow’s Breath\u003c\/em\u003e (stories: Transit Lounge, 2015) and \u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eDisplaced: a rural memoir\u003c\/em\u003e (Transit Lounge, 2020). He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and was 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 (north of Toodyay). In 2007 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Kinsella, \u003cem\u003eThe\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cem\u003eArgonautica Inlandica\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAugust 2023. 148mm x 210mm. 208pp. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eISBN 978-1-925735-49-9\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0182\/8349\/files\/aca_logo_horizontal_small_rgb-54322b14eed17_480x480.png?v=1600310698\" alt=\"\"\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Vagabond Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42830523433117,"sku":"","price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0182\/8349\/files\/Kinsella_Argonautica_cover.jpg?v=1687819452","url":"https:\/\/vagabondpress.net\/es\/products\/john-kinsella-argonautica-inlandica","provider":"Vagabond Press","version":"1.0","type":"link"}