Lightning Tree

Lightning Tree is arguably one of John Kinsella's finest collections of poetry published to date, stylistically varied and at the same time deeply informed by traditional forms and practices. It is a work of restless beauty, in which haunting images of rural Australia — vast landscapes, riverscapes, seascapes — are juxtaposed with a tender, magical evocation of the Cocos Islands, their physical reality and the lives and cultures of their inhabitants.

These are powerful poems, poems in which natural geographies and lives stand out with crystal clarity in the stillness that precedes a storm, or are shot through with the savage brilliance and unquenchable, elemental force of lightning. Lightning Tree is a work of considerable accomplishment and originality, and confirms John Kinsella as one of the major English-language poets of our generation.

Paperback
114 pages
ISBN 1 900072 61 0
Published October 2003

» About John Kinsella