Taking Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy as template, John Kinsella asks what consolation might mean in a world where ecological collapse, violence, property, extraction and political failure, make it almost redundant. 

Kinsella’s characteristic ecological and anarchist concerns run throughout, but the collection is quite restless in form and register. Ants, trees, birds, damaged hillsides and weather sit alongside war, ideology, capitalism, religion and the language used to make domination appear ordinary. The local landscape continually opens into much larger questions about ethics and responsibility.

Boethius remains somewhere behind it all—the figure trying to produce thought under conditions of confinement—but Kinsella drags consolation into the contemporary world, where philosophy has to contend with ecosystems, extinction and the uncomfortable fact that describing damage is not the same thing as answering it. A new Australian poetry collection from one of the country’s most prolific and politically engaged poets.

Vagabond Press, Sydney, 2026. First edition. Paperback. Very light handling wear only; internally clean and unmarked. Near fine condition.