John Kinsella is an iconic story teller

A prolific writer, his work characteristically delves in the details of the landscape - like a postcard or a painter devising a miniature.

It conveys his deep interest in the agricultural lifestyle - the ploughing, harvesting and wheat bin work that he grew up with and which still fills farmers' days.

But also the grittier side - the roads, fences and power poles that carve up the natural world, the dangers of country life, the degradation caused by pesticides, chemicals, salinity and land clearing and the challenges of acknowledging Indigeneity and Aboriginal custodianship.

He is a keen promoter of preservation, encouraging farmers to save fragments of bush on their farms, open up green corridors and have cropping co-exist with the natural world

"I believe it can be done,'' Mr Kinsella said.

His work is now being celebrated in three new anthologies, being published by The University of WA Press, the first of which was released in February this year.

The second volume will be published next year and the third in 2024.

The Ascension of Sheep is a monumental tome, running to some 848 pages, and covers the first 25 years of Mr Kinsella's writing, from his first book, The Frozen Sea, written in 1983, incorporating his most-well known book, The Silo, to New Arcadia, written in 2005.

"I live in the Wheatbelt and my whole life has been associated with the Wheatbelt in one way or another,'' he said.

"I often have very different views from those living around me, but I try to record the life that I live and all the issues around it."

The first volume was "very much tied in with the Wheatbelt".

"I don't look at the Wheatbelt in any simple way, I try to look at it in all its complexity," Mr Kinsella said.

The anthologies will have a dual purpose - given a lot of his writing is on school syllabuses, it will make it more accessible for study.

But it is also a chance to reframe the language of farming, to promote contemplation and help further shift the conversation about important issues of land use, regenerative farming, combating salinity, replanting organics and conservation for which he is a passionate advocate.

"These are the issues I have been looking at and writing about for the past 45 years, and that have been part of my life,'' he said.

"I think they are becoming more and more relevant.

"I think a broader discussion about land usage is happening, and in the context of climate change there has to be one, because farmers are at the front of this.

"How they utilise the land and work the land is really important to how we address these kinds of issues."

For the past 13 years, Mr Kinsella has lived at Coondle, about 15 kilometres north of Toodyay, on the edge of the Victoria Plains.

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"Farming is the thing that most interests me,'' he said.

"I live in the region and it is very important to me, and when writing of place, it is important to be in the place."

For most of his life he has maintained an association with York, where many of his family still lives.

He spent a lot of time as a child, and then worked as a young adult, at Wheatlands farm, north east of York, which was owned and run by his aunt and uncle, who inspired him as early conservationists and tree planters.

He also lived for a few years on a small property his mother inherited from her mother at the base of Walwalinj, or Mt Bakewell, and later worked as an itinerant farm labourer around the South West.

Mr Kinsella moved into academia in the mid-1990s, teaching at Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom, and Kenyon College, before returning to the Wheatbelt in 2005.

Over that time, he has worked within all the different genres and written "dozens and dozens of books of poetry, half a dozen books of short stories and novels and critical books'', taken a lot of photographs and won many literary accolades.

Prolific is an understatement.

Though hailing from a long tradition of Australian rural poets, and with an early influence from Judith Wright, he most closely connects his work with that of Dorothy Hewett, Randolph Stow and indigenous writer Jack Davis.

"Those kinds of writers who looked at the complexities of the land but also had an incredible love for it," he said.

The Silo, his most popular book, was particularly well received by rural people and farmers.

"I might not be farming but I am interacting with farmers all the time,'' Mr Kinsella said.

"Also, because I hold views which many farmers would see as alternative, I think it is important to have people like me out there.

"I find most farmers are quite receptive, they might totally disagree with me, and some very much so, but most of them think "OK, there is a place for this guy'.''

Mr Kinsella's first poems were written as a youngster about small patches of land, a stylistic preoccupation which has stayed with him throughout his career.

It means he looks for the details, converging his focus from the vastness of the flat Wheatbelt plains to an area of only a few acres.

"I wrote very, very specifically about a very small patch, because that seemed really interesting to me,'' he said of his first poems.

"It is sometimes easier to write about very big areas, which I have done, but it is really hard to write about half a dozen acres of something, really up close.

"And that was something I did for many years and I am still very interested in, because you understand the broader areas by understanding a small patch of it."

Given the visceral nature of his work, it's not surprising that he has also had a life-long interest in photography and his mother is a photographer.

"At the moment, I am working in poem and photographs, and when I was young I used to do that a lot,'' he said.

"I am very interested in visual images and in trying to show people what something looks like.

"That has its complexities... because you might be able to paint a picture with a poem that looks particularly nice and pleasing.

"It's always harder with the gritty, gnarly bits that aren't so nice... the pollution and damaged land, I try to get that as well.

"I am not just trying to get pretty pictures, I am trying to paint it in a way that shows the whole story."

Mr Kinsella appreciates the whole story can be confronting but, he argues, it's something that needs to be faced - and he hopes the anthologies will help do that.

"I have noted, very pleasingly, in the past 10 years, more and more farmers are starting to not only hear the ecological message but realise it is in their own interests to have healthy plants,'' he said.

"You might have to crop less but you will be able to crop for much longer.

"Also I have found that there is a far greater receptivity to indigenous land and culture and a growing respect and understanding of this, and that is also essential."

Mr Kinsella also aims for the works to convey the diversity of opinion and voices that sometimes go unheard and unreported across Wheatbelt communities.

The region is not a monolith, farmers have all kinds of politics, and the ideas they have about farming are evolving with the changing climate and environment.

"People write a lot of things about the rural world and the Wheatbelt, but they don't always understand that it is not a still thing,'' he said.

"It is constantly changing and I am interested in that change.

"The idea that it is the same as it was 30 years ago is ludicrous - it's not."

Most importantly, he hopes the new volumes will help reshape the language used in poetry, which captures and reflects so uniquely in literature, people, communities and their landscape.

"This is the point, I think we need a progressive view of language in which language is talking about the kind of positive changes that need to take place - repairing damaged land, being conscious of all these things - the language has to reflect that and you almost need to create a new language to do it.

"That is not the way these things have generally been talked about.

"But this change has been happening for the past couple of decades.

"And I think it will continue to change."