environment and space 159here a long time’ (p. 129 ). Ethnological approaches look beyond a
Western construction of landscape and involve ‘an act of transla-
tion’ (p. 129 ). Skinner’s subheadings are not in themselves dis-
crete categories. It is, for example, possible for a poet to perform
both topologically and tropologically in the same poem. John
Kinsella and Juliana Spahr’s poetry offers illustrative approaches
to an understanding of how ecopoetics may function in recent
poetry.
APOCALYPTIC LANDSCAPES: JOHN KINSELLA
John Kinsella’s poetry often depicts and examines the landscape
in his native Western Australia. Spending time between Australia
and Cambridge, he suggests that his writing encompasses both a
regional and international perspective. Indeed, coining the term
‘international regionalism’, he believes is ‘respecting the integrity
of place, of a region, and at the same time opening avenues for com-
munication and discourse’.^60 He proposes that ‘regional identity is
enhanced and best preserved by being part of the global commu-
nity. Mutual understanding, mutual respect, and a willingness to
tolerate difference best comes out of understanding what it is that
makes and/or informs difference’.^61 His poetry is also associated
with a form of ‘ “radical”, or “neo”, or “post”, or (even) “poi-
soned” pastoral’.^62 Traditionally, pastoral poetry presents a roman-
ticised, idealised or nostalgic impression of countryside spaces,
often targeted at an urban audience. Kinsella suggests that his
‘ “radical” pastoral’ arises from ‘the bleak picture I paint of human
destruction of landscapes and the external dismantling of indig-
enous cultures. Be they the Australian Aboriginal peoples or the
early fenlanders colonised by drainage engineers and farmers’.^63
Kinsella’s revisioning of the pastoral challenges established criteria
of aesthetic beauty in poetry: his poems may contain ‘The beauty
horror of a polluted sky emanating a sickly red sunset, the exqui-
site crystalline formations resulting from clearing and degrada-
tion of land in the Western Australian wheatbelt’.^64 This radical
pastoral embraces ideas of the mutated as a vehicle for change and
activism: