Contestatory and Creative Poetics for a Time of Climate Catastrophe

John Kinsella is the author of over seventy books of poetry, fiction, criticism, plays, edited works and collaborative works. He is an extraordinary fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and emeritus professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University. He has recently been a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Tübingen (2021-2024).Russell West-Pavlov is a professor of Anglophone Literature and co-convenor of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany. His recent book publications include Eastern African Literatures (2018), German as Contact Zone (2019), AfrikAffekt (2020) and, as editor, The Global South and Literature (2018).

• List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Preface: Kelp Forest; Space Arc Space Ark; Pirogue Per Se…; Graphology Proximity 5: Gnarly; Snakes; Scales; Graphology Proximity 15; Wordsworth and Campbell – Mirrinatwa and Hesse ; Zurich Eclogue Im Urs Jaeggi; Collaborators; Per Se Approximations of Collaboration; Investor Notes for Chalice Mining’s Persecution of land at Julimar; The Local ‘Polycrisis’; The Glasshouse – Research, Ethics, Writing; and the Failure of Metaphor; Spheres; Platanenallee Rooks, Neckar Island, Tübingen; Riverrun (1); Riverrun (2); A Pacifist Against Defence: For the Demilitarization of the Humanities; Resistant Writing; The Argument from Samson Agonistes: A Re-dramatization After Milton; Sensorship; Black-Headed Monitor Ontic – A Wheatbelt Post-Phenomenology; and the Spontaneous Eruption of Hope and New Humano-Animalism!; And Then We Go Back to Another Reptile-Human Interface: Oblong Turtle ... Out of Synch and Not to be Syched; A Rose Is a Rose; All Those Attempts to Define ‘Place’, Per Se?; Jacarandas; From Down in the City I Critique My Own Spatializing; Around and About Jam Tree Gully ; Writing; The Square Root of –1: The Performative Per Se; Quoted Out of Context Per Se, Then Recontextualized!; On Evelyn Araluen’s Dropbear; Per Se and Coleridge’s ‘The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem,; Written in April 1798’ from the First Edition of Lyrical Ballads; What is a Posthumanist Practice?; Mowing Reality; The Occult; Sacred Kingfishers and Oblong Turtles; Awaiting Words; Ode to Underlying ‘Values’; Aesthetics Note Written on the Side of a Rural Road,; Western Australia; Ineffable; Building a Language with Nature: More Graphologizing; Graphology Ratio 26; Again, Anthologizing Against Nations and Nationalism:; Political, Ethical, Moral…?; Self-Sufficiency; Questions for John Kinsella on Old Growth; On the Abolition of Writing; Emily Is Here with Me Again and ‘Silent is the House’; Ex-Duction; `Humanities’ Means Peace, Doesn’t It? A Plea for; Non-violence at All Costs…; Why We Chose It – On Ali Alizadeh’s Poem ‘Animals’; Christmas 2021; Tree-Felling; The Argonautica I Am Re-Envisaging and Will Eventually; Try To Forget, As I Should?; Life After Nature: An Aesthetic Project; Villanelle of Fire; Fire Letter; Forests as Space; Fallatious Futurities; The Problem of the ‘Future Library’ (Blog of 19 August 2020); Correspondence between Italo Lanfredini and John Kinsella; Help Protect Helms Forest; Snakes, Again; A Conclusion that Is Really a Preface; Coda to a Conclusion that Is Really a Preface; Two Sonnets; Endnotes; Bibliography; Index

“Similar to Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus or Berlant and Stewart’s The Hundreds, this book multiplies the ways to reanimate the vibrant web of life on Earth threatened, as it is, by malevolent destruction. Here are texts that philtre antidotes – powerful mixtures of philosophy and poetry restoring connections you had never imagined.” —Stephen Muecke, University of Notre Dame, Australia.“As humanity engages with end-time scenarios, a book that combines incandescent words and theoretical sophistica-tion to both provoke and assuage. Engaging with the quiddity of nature and arguing for the porosity of the human and animal, the authors pose both a new paradigm and a challenge to the disciplines in the age of the Anthropocene.” —Dilip M. Menon, Professor of History and International Relations, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and editor Changing Theory: Concepts for the Global South (Routledge, 2022).“In this unique antipodal collaboration, Kinsella and West-Pavlov engage in an exhilarating dialogue of forms—fictocriticism, poetry, microfictions—responding to the urgencies of climate crisis with brilliance and imagina-tive force.” —Philip Mead, The University of Melbourne, Australia.“Per Se is an extraordinary collaborative work that reflects in fascinating ways on its own making. In the variety and verve of its forms, registers and concerns, it embodies exactly the multiplicity and connectedness the writers celebrate in the world. Essential reading for our troubled times.” —Ivan Vladislavić, Distinguished Professor in Creative Writing, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.