Spirals is the third and final volume of John Kinsella’s collected poems and dates from 2014-2023, seeing Kinsella through his fifties and without an end in sight. Spirals is not a case of a poet growing older, steadier, and more sedate but rather brings an ongoing sense of development that is also recursive and spatial. Politically, institutionally, and attitudinally, Kinsella remains an outsider.

John Kinsella’s poetry is collected in one place for the very first time and includes poems that have appeared in chapbooks, publications outside of Australia, and some that are no longer in print. In this final volume, the spiralling effects of time combined with Kinsella’s probing and connections in space have brought his poetry an authority and a sense of being listened to not only with awe but with respect. And still, Kinsella renounces any inflated self. Instead of basting in a perversely satisfying white guilt, or retreating to a passive melancholy, Kinsella is active, dynamic, and even exuberant. His poetry is replete with astounding energy that is creative and forward-looking while remaining concerned about environmental damage, exploitations of neoliberalism and militarism, and the continuing illegitimacies of unacknowledged settler occupation. Kinsella’s final volume marks the culmination of his Collected Poems and cements itself as a landmark addition to Australian poetry.