The Kingsbury Tales: A Complete Collection

‘The Kingsbury Tales: A Complete Collection is a revolution in what a poetry book might be: a monumental and iconoclastic declaration at once, a refusal to be downtrodden but equally (or more) an affirmation of community and place, a political declaration of independence against the rules and regulations that have hindered the growth of poetics in Australia and anywhere that a national purity of ‘official’ language has been at work.

The poet’s persona is not a convention but something in which the full range of human emotions is active at any given time, guiding us through the tales of a suburb, a city, a country, which open into other cities and countries. Voice and stories merge and part, and an eruption of diversity offers us a life of thinking, reading, observing and recording.

Witty, abrasive, intelligent, sensitive, subtle, inclusive and radical, the journey through a life of breaking down the prison walls of ‘the other’, or reclaiming and reconstituting, makes this a major work of world literature. A masterpiece beyond comparison.’ — John Kinsella

ISBN: 9780980678673 | Published: 2012 | Paperback | 593 pages