Oz on trial: Poems on Australia’s “new era of censorship”

Poet John Kinsella talks to Aimée Hamilton about Australia’s new era of censorship, and, below, Index exclusively publishes two new poems

POET JOHN KINSELLA describes Australia as “collapsing into a ‘dark age’ of censorship”. He says: “I have experienced censorship in many forms. But the Australia of today is even more extreme – the limitation on reporting of things considered a threat to the nation has frightening implications.”

Kinsella’s comments on his homeland come after the board of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers called on Australian prime minister Tony Abbott to protect press freedom by revising the initial part of new national security laws, which stipulated that journalists could face 10 years in jail for reporting on a “special intelligence operation”.

Kinsella says: “The government impositions on journalism, internet and personal liberties are only part of a complex picture of suppression. There are many Australians who censor each other, oppress their fellows by demeaning their religious, social, identity and political freedoms.”

Has he ever had his own poetry censored? “Never by my book editors or publishers, but I have been in many other ways – including by literary and other journals who have dropped overtly politicised poems ‘on advice’. And I had a ‘rewording’ issue for legal reasons with another journal.”

When asked if self-censorship is a problem, Kinsella says: “Too often, review-culture is praise or hate, and is driven by fear that Australian identity (that is, the nationalist version) will be undermined or especially shamed overseas.”

Kinsella considers himself an “activist poet”. “I use all ‘methods’ in my poetry, from the lyric to the rant, from figurative language to factual details. I don’t wish to ‘tell’ anyone how or what to think, but rather to prompt discussion and concern, to open different ways (maybe) of seeing and hearing.”

He calls the two poems Index is publishing here “direct indictments of the loss of rights to an increasing militarisation of Australian society”. He adds: “I don’t need to provide statistics to show the impoverishment and exploitation of Australian indigenous peoples – mining companies have become very adept at manipulating and claiming rights where they should have no rights. It is indigenous land, and usage needs constant negotiating. Of course, ‘we’ are all part of the place now, and we have rights, but those rights should not occlude or deny the rights of traditional peoples.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott is accused of pushing Australia into a new age of censorship in the name of national security

Credit: Lukas Coch/AAP/Press Association Images

Warrant: Pssst (National Security Legislation Amendment Bill)

All you see

will be seen

or, say, unsaid –

your words

another’s

a cluster’s.

Seen and not

heard is an old way

few of us would raise

our children by – history?

Incognito (mode)?

Obliterate?

Following

in the footsteps.

I watched blue butterflies

for so long in summer

they hurt my eyes

and yet they have

such short lives –

these, their last lives?

Sifting for the well-

being. Of me.

You. Blue

Butterflies.

I warrant

we won’t think

further; giving up

what you can’t see

won’t hurt.

Poet John Kinsella

Credit: Tracy Ryan

Delicate Balance

‘The delicate balance between freedom and security may have to shift’ – Tony Abbott, Australian Prime Minister

Tilting

on edge,

the fall.

Point

of return

profitable

as security.

Butterfly

with its effect

torn off —

as brutal

as the cruel

child, bitter

adult.

Sets the gallery’s

seismographs off

before walls

even move, art

stable as iron

ore.

Sovereign

with self-styled

head, done

in coal.

Doesn’t require

comparison

with other

titular heads:

needs no precedent,

is its own pedestal.

Your signature,

elusive and solid

as its digital record.

You’ve created

a placebo,

ephemera:

together we can

keep an eye on

each other,

push the shift

key.