[{"id":52435,"date":"2026-09-18T14:32:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T06:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westerlymag.com.au\/?p=52435"},"modified":"2026-09-21T14:06:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T06:06:42","slug":"naag-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westerlymag.com.au\/naag-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of \u2018Naag Mountain\u2019 by Manisha Anjali"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anjali, Manisha. <em>Naag Mountain<\/em>. Penrith: Giramondo Publishing, 2024. RRP: $27.00, 112pp, ISBN: 9781925818994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Naag Mountain<\/em> is an enthralling work of intergenerational story-making and reclamation. Poet and artist Manisha Anjali draws on methods of oceans and of dreams to repair the violence of coerced labour by the loving freedoms of collective imagination. In this carefully mystifying text, readers are called to follow Anjali beyond the formal(ised) borders of nation-states into the spirited ways of liquid; the cloud-becoming-ocean transformations of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">Names of seas are fictitious. The sea does not need to prove its autonomy. There is no beginning. There is no end. Water takes the shape of whomever they love. (92)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sharing evident synergies with Tongan anthropologist Epeli H\u2019auofa\u2019s articulation of \u2018the ocean as method\u2019<sup style=\"font-size: 8pt;line-height:60%\">1<\/sup>, Anjali\u2019s writing is as seamlessly poetic as historical as methodical. Geographic imaginaries are formed through and across the Pacific Ocean and its more-than-mythical myths. Culturally sovereign, re-spun ancestral (hi)stories variously evade, dissolve and drill away colonial stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">To dissolve the distance between dream and propaganda, I drill a hole in my skull. (8)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-green-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-green-background-color has-background is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Colonisation in the Australia-Pacific region and beyond has long been a cosmological project. Its practices of property-making and land and resource extraction are enabled by a stifled sense of the cosmos, for settlers (my loved ones included) are asked to treat land as less than it is\u2014as material rather than spiritual and alive. In her thesis \u2018The Right to Dream\u2019, Goenpul, Yagerabul, Minjungbul, Bundjalung, South Sea Islander scholar and storyteller Romaine Moreton writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">Invasion and colonization imported western consciousness and concepts to the land now known as Australia. Through the advent of western language, the cosmology of Indigenous folk was to collapse beneath the weight of colonial lexical baggage; and the view that the land was a thing rather than a being is the basis of emergent colonial narrative. (199)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At every line and page, Anjali keeps a potentially (re)colonising sense of history at bay, revealing colonial archives and stories to be but drops in the text\u2019s multi-dimension world. The land and water-base of colonialism is expanded through the poet\u2019s relationship with what might be called the metaphysical, or what might be experienced as a realer reality. Anjali invokes the agencies of spirits and beings, such as the titular naag, a thousand-mouthed snake; beings that British colonialism\u2014with its many and varied efforts to cast non-Anglo-Protestant spirituality as superstition\u2014clearly never succeeded in reducing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">A message from the moon. I am moving at 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 revolutions per minute. When you see me I\u2019ll be out of print. (34)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result is a decolonised historical truth both implicitly and transparently rendered. Within this book, a film of archives called <em>Paradise Paradise<\/em> washes up on shore. \u2018Are these archives real?!\u2019, I wondered at first read. Then, as Anjali continues to hold a light up to the specious differences between history and myth, I register the coloniality in my curiosity. Obsessions with the line between fiction and nonfiction can be border-making exercises. In a determination to pinpoint a definitive truth, a reader\/I might unwittingly impede the life and flow of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">The smell of kerosene and clove awakens our cellular memory. Our hearts beat against the green current. We find the oldest book in the pocket of our uncle\u2019s denim jacket. There are seeds inside. We read the seeds and we witness the falling of the colony and our names, passports and flags fall with it. (48)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-green-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-green-background-color has-background is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the ocean in <em>Naag Mountain<\/em> is a borderless being, it is also evoked as a site that has seen specific historical displacements and separations of family and community, including Anjali\u2019s Indian ancestors who were indentured work on Australian-owned plantations in Fiji. Between 1863 and 1904, Anjali tells, \u2018over 62,0000 South Sea Islanders [\u2026] were taken to Australia for sugar and cotton labour. Many were abducted, forced, trafficked\u2019 (66). Indentured labour, I learnt from the teachings and family history of the beloved Fijian Australian historian Tracey Banivanua-Mar, was a much less famous global system than slavery, but similarly exploitative and abusive. European colonisers fought for the moral superiority of being the first to outlaw slavery. And yet, indentured labour was very like slavery. Ancestors of labourers and historians alike agree that the legal trick of the contract\u2014what Anjali describes as \u2018the haunted \u201cagreement\u201d\u2019 (25)\u2014allowed for labour exploitation to continue under a new name and new laws. Written from the subject-position of a poet who directly inherits this history, the possessive practices of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR)\u2014the sugar company that, Anjali writes, \u2018once owned my family\u2019 (9)\u2014feel newly violent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When taking a break from writing this review, an ad for CSR appears on my laptop. I become conscious that, at the very same time as I\u2019m in the world of <em>Naag Mountain<\/em>, millions of people are eating refined sugar produced by companies yet to recompense or confront their exploitative violence. In 2021, CSR had \u2018over 3,000 employees and reported an after-tax profit of $146 million\u2019<sup style=\"font-size: 8pt;line-height:60%\">2<\/sup>. Consciousness-blinkering ads playing on repeat or not, Anjali\u2019s thriving relationship with the ocean ensures that nothing about sugar\u2019s production is forgotten:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">The naag disseminates a creation story that has been fractured, manipulated and half-forgotten. The ocean remembers the original version of the story. The ocean remembers every time it is touched. (7)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-green-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-green-background-color has-background is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lightly-threaded prose of <em>Naag Mountain<\/em> carries enormous amounts of the past; enormous not only in the spatial sense of what might be called Asia-Pacific and Australasian geographies, but also in embracing lots of sub- and (un)consciousnesses. Anjali is generous in creating space for others to enter deeper into dreams. She is the founder of the Neptune Archive, a research and documentation platform for dreams, visions and hallucinations, and runs \u2018The School of Dreams\u2019\u2014workshops \u2018rooted in the idea that the artist must perform between two realms\u2014the dream realm and the waking realm.\u2019 Dreams, as historian Samia Khatun has written in her work on South Asian odysseys in so-called Australia, are not outside of history, even if institutional history conventionally places dreams as epistemic outcasts.<sup style=\"font-size: 8pt;line-height:60%\">3<\/sup> Anjali is a professional interpreter and archiver of dreams, and in <em>Naag Mountain<\/em> she both spells out and realises a dream method that poets, creative practitioners, genealogists, healers, cultural theorists and historians all might learn from. Indeed, this poetry raises profound questions about history\u2019s epistemic and ontological boundaries. Where is history? In which (dis)connected dimensions? Which temporalities and spiritual realities are bracketed out of history, and which invited to the body-soul, the page? And what kinds of labour does it entail to live through the knowledge paradigms of your ancestors? Anjali writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">When a story is shared by mouth, the story is never the same, it changes the way it wants to, and every version is true. We pull the propaganda instruments out of our throats. We hang our mother\u2019s singing shellfish from our ears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Such methods of receiving and knowing history extend into ways of ethical living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">Imagination is a political tool designed to keep us in love. It is our responsibility to always be in love. (51)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-text-color has-dark-green-color has-alpha-channel-opacity has-dark-green-background-color has-background is-style-dots\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Naag Mountain<\/em> cleaves spaces between the material and archival registers of historical knowing that colonialism produced. At moments, we\u2019re jerked out of a dream-state to wake to a possessive, profitable and enduring CSR Company devastatingly and disgustingly \u2018real\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">We cut a circle in the watery mythology. This is how we cut time in half. The Colonial Sugar Refinery Company planted our bloodlines in the great southern waters. This is how our tea and biscuits become sweet on red Australian afternoons. (17)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The truth at stake here, it seems, is less about a set of facts and more truth as ontological realm. What of consciousness, which beings, can we, <em>do<\/em> we, allow to thrive in poetry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Naag Mountain<\/em> is a collection that beats in the heart of changing nothing less vital than a reader\u2019s sense of how things connect and collaborate and speak with each other. This is poetry that expands the possibilities of transmitting history through the plantation-haunted, machine-manufactured fibre of a page to enliven the future. Anjali seems to suggest that transformation takes place at once in the text and in interlinked dimensions beyond it; dimensions where inherited pain\u2014and freedom from it\u2014co-exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"is-style-indented wp-block-paragraph\">The flowering white jasmine tree cannot hold the violence of the translation, so she picks herself up and walks into the ocean. She plants her roots in the water so she can dream with the sea. (37)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In pouring this collection into a place where the poet and the ocean are inseparable, Anjali creates a timelessness to dream with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">1 See Hau\u2019ofa\u2019s essay \u2018Our Sea of Islands\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">2 This is according to CSR\u2019s Wikipedia entry: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CSR_Limited\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/CSR_Limited<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">3 See Khatun\u2019s essay \u2018The Book of Marriage: histories of Muslim women in twentieth-century Australia\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" style=\"font-style:normal;font-weight:600\">Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Banivanua-Mar, Tracey. <em>Violence and Colonial Dialogue: the Australian-Pacific indentured labor trade<\/em>. University of Hawaii Press, 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hau\u2019ofa, Epeli, \u2018Our Sea of Islands\u2019. <em>The Contemporary Pacific<\/em>, 6.1 (1994): 148\u201361.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Khatun, Samia. \u2018The Book of Marriage: Histories of Muslim Women in Twentieth-Century Australia\u2019, <em>Gender &amp; History<\/em>, 29.1 (2017): 8\u201330.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moreton, Romaine. The Right to Dream. Doctoral Thesis, University of Western Sydney, 2006. Sourced at: p. 199. <a href=\"https:\/\/researchers-admin.westernsydney.edu.au\/ws\/portalfiles\/portal\/94779651\/uws_2495.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/researchers-admin.westernsydney.edu.au\/ws\/portalfiles\/portal\/94779651\/uws_2495.pdf<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nadia Rhook is a writer, historian and educator, currently living in Ballarat, on beautiful Wadawurrung Country. She&#8217;s the author of\u00a0<em>boots<\/em>\u00a0(UWA Publishing) and\u00a0<em>Second Fleet Baby\u00a0<\/em>(Fremantle Press). Her third poetry collection,\u00a0<em>Stone Veins<\/em>,\u00a0traces histories of bluestone mining, ecology and haunting, and will be released by Cordite Books in 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anjali, Manisha. Naag Mountain. Penrith: Giramondo Publishing, 2024. RRP: $27.00, 112pp, ISBN: 9781925818994. Naag Mountain is an enthralling work of&nbsp;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":52450,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[187,716,115,304,1525,2500,395,1229,2507,1767,2506,1036,150,50,1742,2508,38,44],"class_list":["post-52435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-australian-literature","tag-australian-poetry","tag-australian-writing","tag-book-review","tag-diaspora","tag-diasporic-writing","tag-giramondo","tag-giramondo-publishing","tag-indentured","tag-intergenerational","tag-manisha-anjali","tag-nadia-rhook","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-review","tag-postcolonial","tag-postcolonialism","tag-review","tag-westerly"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ 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of \u2018Wingbeat\u2019 by Tim Kinsella"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kinsella, Tim. <em>Wingbeat<\/em>. Perth: WA Poets Publishing, 2024. RRP: $30, pp 88, ISBN: 9781923100022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tim Kinsella\u2019s first poetry collection traverses multiple landscapes<strong>\u2014<\/strong>natural\/human-influenced spaces and different countries alike<strong>\u2014<\/strong>with sensitivity and sharpness. There is no single poem titled \u2018Wingbeat\u2019; rather, each piece is a movement, a snapshot and point of engagement. In many ways, the collection feels a lot like a photo album; many of the poems are framed as pithy encounters and observations, with an occasionally wry undertone. Kinsella\u2019s poetic speaker is predominantly in motion, taking nothing from the environment but snapshots, while savouring the opportunity to question different dynamics at play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In Kinsella\u2019s own words in the book\u2019s introduction, <em>Wingbeat<\/em> is not \u2018a book of bird poems\u2019 (viii), but there is certainly no shortage of birds thriving amongst the pages (I have Kinsella to thank for learning the names of so many new types of bird!). The collection\u2019s second section, \u2018Plumage\u2019, is supported by bird photographs by Wendy Kinsella, Kinsella\u2019s grandmother, with both creatives sensitively capturing portraits of different birds. These pieces operate as untitled ekphrastic works, delicately sketching moments in the birds\u2019 lives. Alongside these richly varied lives are also explorations of the natural environment, including a suite of poems set while climbing Walwalinj<strong>\u2014<\/strong>a mountain in York, Western Australia. Howard Taylor\u2019s art is another frequent refrain across the collection, with David Lynch and Andy Warhol also making appearances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Stylistically, Kinsella\u2019s poems could be perceived as imagistic, showcasing precise moments in bright detail; Kinsella also credits Classical Chinese poetry as a major source of inspiration. Du Fu (712\u2013770) immediately appears in the collection\u2019s opening poem \u2018Dolphin &amp; Night Heron\u2019, and while Du Fu\u2019s \u2018clenched fist\u2019 refers to roosting white egrets, here we have a nankeen night heron, roosting by day rather than the moonlit night (2). The human presence acting on the scene in Du Fu\u2019s \u2018Brimming Water\u2019 is notably absent. Kinsella\u2019s parallel reflections in this poem are reserved, letting the wildlife shape the scene, in keeping with the opening section\u2019s root focus on birdwatching. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the poems in <em>Wingbeat<\/em> tend towards sharp, imagery-intensive pieces, the poet also engages with longer forms, including more lyrical pieces, looping in cyclic rhyme schemes. \u2018The Wheatbins\u2019 is one example, imparting a looming, ominous impact in the process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">Refrain is the poetic quality in this landscape<br>&amp; we can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s new or a residue<br>in this region, a place always changing shape.<br>They tower over us now that we\u2019re passing through<br><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">&amp; we can\u2019t tell whether it\u2019s new or a residue.<br>The colours change in sky &amp; structure\u2019s exterior\u2014<br>they tower over us now as we\u2019re passing through.<br>Locals have painted murals to break off from the interior\u2014\u00a0 (51)<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Silos effectively \u2018take over\u2019 the poem halfway through, tightening the form into repeated rhymes and lines, just as they visually dominate the landscape the speaker travels through:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">We don\u2019t need to look any further for evidence of the surreal<br>in these great silos. They are punctuated by murals\u2014 <br>sketches of psychedelia, illusions of the land\u2019s vastness.\t<br>We don\u2019t need to look any further for evidence of the surreal\u2014 <br>all lumped together are projections of eyes, hands &amp; masts (51)<br><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final, chilling line\u2014\u2018Listen! The murals are talking. The wheat is talking. There is no other sound\u2019 (51)\u2014echoes recurring questions in Kinsella\u2019s poems: who may speak? who is being observed? which powers are at play? Similar tensions appear in \u2018Bullet Holes\u2019, a piece composed of rigidly rhyming, cyclic couplets in a linked examination of gun violence, degradation and the control of the natural world, and threats to life, both animal and human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ability to speak or be heard is another recurring theme in many of Kinsella\u2019s poems. In the collection\u2019s final work, \u2018A Dream of Waterbirds\u2019, the human speaker comes through more strongly, offering a more optimistic note, albeit with caution, with \u2018that white-necked heron flying \/ over the slope once paddock now tree\u2019d\u2019, speaking of restoration of the land to a more natural state (84). There is a blurring of \u2018his own \/ injured body &amp; scarred face \/ their beaks &amp; feet below the water\u2019s surface\u2019, yet the speaker admits that they are \u2018unnamed only to an extent\u2019 (84). Speaker and bird are both observers reflecting, caught in this optimism for healing and restoration of the natural world. In another poem, \u2018Four Walks: T\u00fcbingen\u2019, Kinsella\u2019s poetic speaker explores intersecting points between human\/animal and forest\/suburb, recognising moments of blur, as in the second section:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">2.<br><br>This staircase where<br>various elsewheres congregate<br>mediates\u2014it\u2019s a zone in between<br>tower &amp; sandpit<br>eyed by pigeons &amp; blackbirds<br>gargoyles upon a scape of grey &amp; beige<br>suburban unravelling. (80)<br><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final part of this poem catches my eye, not least because it mentions horses, but primarily because it is the first where Kinsella\u2019s speaker actively appears in the poem, foregrounding his keen eye for the points in which humanity and the natural world intersect. The layers of communication between woman\/dog\/horse\/human bystanders are rigidly bound, unshifting as the speaker watches:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">4.<br><br>In the forest, a woman<br>rides a horse that trots<br>&amp; walks a dog that barks &amp; leaps;<br>their communication is <br>vague. The woman takes<br>no notice. The dog exclaims &amp; jumps<br>higher. The horse doesn\u2019t deviate.<br>People walk by &amp; the dog\u2019s<br>focus shifts. I watch <br>from a distance, not wanting<br>anyone but the horse to see me.<br>The path I\u2019m standing on<br>turns to mud &amp; then to field. (81)<br><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the reference to wanting the horse to see the speaker may be a wry nod to not wanting to spook the animal, it also recognises the absence of communication taking place between woman and horse, and seems to invite connection. \u2018Four Walks: T\u00fcbingen\u2019 recognises the potential for change in communication strategies and levels of interaction between humans and the natural world, while also exposing their limits. The space is transformed from forest\u2014a potentially wild space\u2014to mud, a more ambiguous terrain\u2014to a field, a space cordoned and limited by humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Tim Kinsella\u2019s first collection is a rich journey through the natural world, sensitively achieved, full of memorable imagery and paired with sharp queries. Its strengths lie in its stylistic variety and respectful examinations of birds, landscapes and artworks, and also in acknowledgments of where there remain gaps in communication. The final lines of \u2018Harbour &amp; Castle\u2019 are a fine summation of this anxious state:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted indented\">\nOnly at the top of\nthe tower am I able to see things clearly,\nbut not for one second\t\t\n\n                                                   do I assume I have grasped them. (44)\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The desire to try, however, is what makes this collection with its veritable narrative of \u2018common ground\u2019 (\u2018The Encroaching Mast\u2019\u00a046) a delight to read and a bright promise of much more to come. Kinsella\u2019s poetics of observation and question are frequently quiet, personal and episodic, but just as often recognise the blurred lines and boundaries of the world, and the broader politics of crossings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Siobhan\u00a0Hodge\u00a0has a Ph.D. in English literature.\u00a0Her thesis examined the creative and critical legacy of the ancient Greek poet Sappho.\u00a0She was winner of the 2017 Kalang Eco-Poetry Award, joint winner of the 2015 Patricia Hackett Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2019 Fair Australia Prize. Her work has been published in numerous places, including\u00a0<em>Overland, Westerly, Southerly, Cordite, Plumwood Mountain<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Peril,\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0<em>Fremantle Press Anthology of WA Poetry<\/em>. Her chapbook,\u00a0<em>Justice for Romeo,<\/em>\u00a0is available through Cordite Books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kinsella, Tim. Wingbeat. Perth: WA Poets Publishing, 2024. RRP: $30, pp 88, ISBN: 9781923100022. Tim Kinsella\u2019s first poetry collection traverses&nbsp;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":868,"featured_media":52362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[40,187,1449,716,1280,115,304,150,50,38,503,2503,1726,930,2504,513,44,2505,1011,2491],"class_list":["post-52360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-australian-book-review","tag-australian-literature","tag-australian-poet","tag-australian-poetry","tag-australian-writer","tag-australian-writing","tag-book-review","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-review","tag-review","tag-siobhan-hodge","tag-tim-kinsella","tag-wa-poets","tag-wa-poets-publishing","tag-wa-writer","tag-west-australian-writer","tag-westerly","tag-western-australian-poet","tag-western-australian-poetry","tag-western-australian-writer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Review of \u2018Wingbeat\u2019 by Tim Kinsella | Westerly Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&#039;Wingbeat&#039; is Western Australian poet Tim Kinsella&#039;s first poetry collection. 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