Displaced: A Rural Life

$29.99

ISBN: 978-1-925760-47-7 Format: ISBN: Trade Paperback 336pp Rights: World Release / Publication Date: 01 /03 /2020
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Description

John Kinsella’s memoir of his rural life takes us deep into the heart of what it means to belong and unbelong. The joys and travails of childhood, adult addictions, missteps and changing directions are acutely captured in poignant and poetic detail. While centred on Jam Tree Gully in rural Western Australia, the memoir also moves between Ohio, Schull and Cambridge, mixing regionalism with an international sense of responsibility. What will strike the reader are the detailed observations of daily life, the engagement with topography and flora and fauna that embody the author’s conviction that ‘all is in everything and that every leaf of grass is vital’.
In his most intimate prose work to date, Kinsella never shies from writing about the violence and intolerance of those scared of difference, and the ways in which his ethics have sometimes been met with disdain or outright hostility. But with nuance and humour he also celebrates rural community and its willingness to lend a hand.
At once tender, urgent and intelligent, Displaced is ultimately a call to personal action. ‘We all have choices to make.’ It argues through it vivid accounts of small acts of living for the values of pacifism, veganism, environmentalism and justice for First Nations peoples – the principles we just might need to heal our world.

Praise for John Kinsella’s writing
‘Kinsella’s work is magnificent, raw; the words coming together in form and shape to evoke the essence of the moment in time he is creating.’ Blue Wolf Reviews

John Kinsella lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian wheatbelt and has also lived in USA, UK, Ireland and other zones. His recent publications include the poetry volumes The Argonautica Inlandica (Vagabond, 2023) and Spirals: Collected Poems Volume Three (2014-2023) (UWAP 2024). Previous story collections include the awards-listed Pushing Back (Transit Lounge 2021) and Old Growth (Transit Lounge, 2017). His verse novel Cellnight was published by Transit Lounge in 2023.