rare air 15 - john kinsella 2

“When I say I’ve been sober for 21 years, I mean entirely sober. I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped drugs I stopped everything. I haven’t had a cup of tea.
I stopped every single stimulant and thing that could in any way alter my behaviour. I am that kind of person. I’m an all or nothing person. I was ALL. I was a polyglot user of anything I could get hold of, in any amount I could and then I stopped.”

In the second part of this conversation with poet, vegan, anarchist and pacifist John Kinsella he speaks of personal redemption and his daily efforts towards ‘secular ascension’ noted in his work by American literary critic and Yale academic Harold Bloom.

"We are poised before...what I prophesy will be a major art."
Harold Bloom, on John Kinsella’s Peripheral Light: Selected and New Poems
Published July 2005

Sincere thanks to John Kinsella for agreeing to this interview.
Recorded at the studios of RTRFM, Beaufort St, Mt Lawley, Western Australia
Mixed by Adrian Sardi - The Vault audio post production

Theme music Les Jeunes Pousses by Françoiz Breût
Production Music Ambient M by Antony Raijekov ( Free Music Archive)

Hear Part 1 of Rare Air with John Kinsella
See the John Kinsella photo essay
Read the John Kinsella explainer

"When I say I've been sober for 21 years, I mean entirely sober. I stopped smoking, I stopped drinking, I stopped drugs I stopped everything. I haven't had a cup of tea. I stopped every single stimulant and thing that could in any way alter my behaviour. I am that kind of person.