The hierarchy of sheep - John Kinsella

John Kinsella is the most original Australian poet of his generation. He has dusted down the pastoral, and made it a vibrant, contemporary form. The Hierarchy of Sheep is the next phase in his 'pastoral life-project': a counter-pastoral, a new way of viewing the natural and articial worlds. Things are never what they seem. These are poems of place, loss, ethics, painting, vernacular, new ideas expressed against a backdrop of "tradition", and, above all else, language - a potential "new" language of place. They ask the question: How much do we ourselves adapt as we move from one landscape to another?Kinsella "investigates" the landscapes of the English fens and wheatbelt Western Australia, sometimes in isolation, at other times fusing them together. His ways of seeing landscape are politically aware - against colonisation and appropriation - but open to the possibilities of hybrid change and growth. He calls his approach "international" regionalism - a respecting of regional integrity while creating international connections, opening the lines of global communication.