Paper Bark Press
Zoo
2000, 160 pages, softcover, 215x150mm
ISBN 1 876749 12 1
Cover photograph by Juno Gemes
Zoo is a poetic collaboration between the Australian poets Coral Hull and John Kinsella which explores the relationships between humans and animals. The poets ask ethical questions and examine exploitation and the 'politics' of zoos, as well as farms, circuses and 'the natural world'.
Hull's poems work as narratives, monologues and episodes, continuing her exploration of the prose poem, while Kinsella's work is more lyrical in nature and further develops his interest in the 'pastoral' voice.
Zoo is both experimental and formal, and always interactive. It is an Australian book with an international scope, in which the movement of voice between the two poets develops an immediacy and impelling dynamic.
'Hull is a deceptively accessible poet, and appears to be developing into a major social, political and spiritual conscience in our poetry.'
~ Greg McLaren
'Coral Hull is an outstanding poet, far advanced in both her imagery and her political ideas over most comparable candidates. Indeed over most Australian poets.'
~ Chris Wallace-Crabbe
'Kinsella is a prodigy – a kind of fountain of Parnassus all in himself. His range, his cognitive music, his variety are unique in a poet of his age in the English-speaking world today. He gives us the life of poetry, revealed again as a vocation that can transform reality.'
~ Chris Wallace-Crabbe