Arc International Poets Series - Böcker

With an Introduction by Rod Mengham.In The Silo, John Kinsella's fifth book of poems (and the second published by Arc), the poet examines the role of the artist in the landscape and the unique character of rural life. Using Beethoven's 6th ('Pastoral') Symphony as the framework for the collection, he explores the music of an Australian rural landscape and the European impact on a tenacious yet fragile environment."Many of the poems are vintage Kinsella, suffused in the beautifully audacious language of his later pastorals — the metonymical manipulations of time and place that set you down firmly in the Australian landscape-history, yet by the end of the poem leave you wondering how he ever arrived at such seamless transformations and transportations."Andy Brown, PQR"The Silo is a fine sequence of poems, giving us a tough, focused, loving picture of Kinsella's heartland."Peter Bland, The London Magazine"John Kinsella, in The Silo, shows himself to be an authentic poet, astonishingly individuated. There are only a handful (or fewer) English-language poets of his generation whose work is already so original, so fully formed, and so clearly destined to become part of the central tradition."Harold BloomJohn Kinsella was born in Perth, Australia in 1963. He studied at the University of Western Australia and travelled extensively through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He is a prolific writer and author of over 25 books, and has published poems in literary journals internationally and has received a number of literary awards. Since 1998, he has been International Editor for Arc Publications, with whom he has published four collections, the first of which, The Undertow: New and Selected Poems, was his first UK edition. His second collection for Arc, The Silo: A Pastoral Symphony (1997) was followed in 1999 by Landbridge: An Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry, which he edited. Lightning Tree was published in 2003, and America in 2006. His most recent collections include The Hunt, Peripheral Light: Selected and New Poems, The New Arcadia and Shades of the Sublime & Beautiful. He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and a Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia.

I throw out a life line / but no one's read it (from 'Cardboard Crowns')A Pacific Islander (PI) of Samoan, Tuvaluan, English, Scottish and French descent, Selina Tusitala Marsh reflects on the issues affecting the Pacific communities of New Zealand, as well as indigenous peoples around the world – including the challenges and triumphs of being afakasi (mixed race).The book is made up of three sections: 'Tusitala' (personal poems), 'Talkback' (political and historical poems) and 'Fast Talking PIs' (sequences of dialogue). Together the poems smash stereotypes, and challenge historic injustices the world over.Selina Tusitala Marsh was the first Pacific Islander to graduate from the University of Auckland with a PhD in English, where she now lectures in Māori and Pacific literary studies. In 2010 she won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry for the Auckland University Press edition of this collection (2009), which made the top five bestsellers list in New Zealand.

This book is also available as an ebook: buy it from Amazon here.When the Barbarians Arrive is a selected works from Singaporean poet Alvin Pang's five previous collections, including Testing the Silence (1997) and City of Rain (2003). Wry, sensitive and intelligent throughout, the selection ranges from unsentimental love poems to sharply satirical writing. They mock, celebrate and unsettle, at once recognisably national and international in reach, offering a fresh edge and energy to the wave of urban poetry emerging from Singapore.Alvin Pang was born in Singapore in 1972. A Fellow of Iowa University's International Writing program, his poetry has been translated into more than fifteen languages, and he has appeared at major festivals and in anthologies worldwide. He has edited the anthologies No Other City (2000); Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia (with John Kinsella, 2008), and Tumasik: Contemporary Writing from Singapore (2009). Pang was named the 2005 Young Artist of the Year for Literature by Singapore's National Arts Council, and was received the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) in 2007.

The Wound is the latest collection from esteemed Australian poet John Kinsella, whose previous accolades include the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the John Bray Award for Poetry, the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award, and three-times winner of the Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry. Kinsella describes himself as a 'vegan anarchist pacifist', and The Wound was inspired by his anger towards the destruction being wrought on the West Australian coastal bushland by the controversial proposed construction of the Roe 8 Highway Extension, which environmentalists protested would endanger the area's wildlife, the biodiversity of which is equal to that of the whole of England. In this collection Kinsella mixes mythology with modernity, as this collection includes two books of poems, the first inspired by the character of Mad King Sweeney from Irish epic Buile Shuibhne, and the second comprised of works 'interacting' with poems written by German Romantic Friedrich Hölderlin.