Ken Bolton

There is an amusing asperity. And, for all its judgements, Metropole is rather forgiving. Irresistible, of course-and smart. - Arlo Banens, The TuneHis work characterised by its 'degree zero' cool, Bolton would seem to have taken his American influences and refined them through an apparatus built of French cinema, nouveau roman, and contemporary art criticism: coolly conversational-but flexibly elastic-this work can contain multitudes. - Peter Goldsworthy, Australian Book ReviewExcellent. - Millie Dickins, AstrolabeMorose, counter-intuitive, something of a zany, Ken Bolton cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary landscape, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1952 Lancia Aurelia, 'Mandy', an image that belies the tales of later suffering - the affairs, the court appearances, the bad teeth - and speaking of teeth, the beautiful poems wrenched from the teeth of despair & written on the wrist of happiness "where happiness happens to like its poems written best" (in his inordinate phrase).

A Double Act draws upon various intoxicating books - Airborne Dogs, Nutters Without Fetters, Poems of Relative Unlikelihood, their verse novel The Ferrara Poems - later filmed - and The Gutman Variations, a study of Lacan.Warning: will produce exhilaration, euphoria, general systemic excitation, scorn, weeping, laughter. Parodic, yet intense - poems terse, thoughtful, complex or pellucid, philosophical, and not unacquainted with beauty, but always sharp, always funny - A Double Act."Due perhaps to their collaborative nature there is a remarkable freedom from anxiety here. But a deal of intelligence." - Stephanie Trigg, Island"Lucid, breathtakingly, drastically reductive - like Weil, like Brecht - caring and bare-knuckled, canny and guileless, winsome and ruthless - I love these guys " - Suzy Treister, Frieze magazine

'in one case I want poetry to do some of the work of philosophy, or at least of thought. In the other I just ('just') want them to be aesthetically terrific - organized abstractly or musically, so as to be abstract and musical''...bitchy, dreamy, acute ... a deeply serious - & witty & almost self-cancelling - consciousness at work' - Lyn McCredden'philosophical rigor and lyric enthusiasm - one of the most distinctive voices in Australian poetry' - John Forbes'The modesty and wit of the poems, even as they think 'grand' thoughts, now seems to me central' - Laurie Duggan"Excellent - cool." - Amelia Dickins

A work that shifts from high to low, philosophical, to ethical, to comic, in Bolton's well known, and highly praised, flexible style. A new collection from a prolific poet.Gee these poems be limber, you think, flipping thru the pages, admiring, here, the cut of this poem's jib, there the poise & rancour of another. For this is a book that might save your heart, a book to pull from your jacket pocket at some moment of last judgement & wave at the gate keeper, a tall and bearded dude, surely a hipster - avant la lettre but also after it - outside of time in fact, where final judgements are, and truth and poetry. You wave it at him. It's a talisman, dude, you sau. 'An earnest, ' says the figure, 'of your capacity for cool and rigour' He nods and you smile. You both smile - and he waves you in.Praise for Ken Bolton: "... bitchy, dreamy, acute ... a deeply serious - & witth * clmost self-canceling - consciousness at work" - Lynn McCredden, Heat"Easy to appreciate, lightheartedness is not a natural or easy gift, and Bolton's - brilliantly articulate - shimmers with a sense of being "amusing & sort of/crooked in relation to things." - Nicholas Birns, Transnational LiteratureAbout the author: A gay, light-hearted bastard, Ken Bolton cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary landscape, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, lipstick-smeared, grinning cheerfully at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar D-type, El Cid. Born in Sydney in 1949 he works at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and edits Little Esther books.

"beautiful and sharp, critical and concise observations... gestures towards a neglected conversation between poetry and cultural studies in Australia." -Tim Wright, Cordite "... one of the most distinctive voices in Australian poetry" -John Forbes, The Age "from the erudite to the everyday, ... the inconsequential, the tentative, are presented as more interesting than static profundities the author parodies in canonical poets ... Yet his work is also a meditation on poetry" -Gig Ryan, Australian Book Review

A gay, light-hearted type, Ken Bolton cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary landscape, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, lipstick-smudged, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar D-type, El Cid. Bolton, a poet & art critic-a 'Sydney' poet living in Adelaide, & working there at The Experimental Art Foundation-is editor of Little Esther books and at one time edited the magazines Magic Sam & Otis Rush. Major publications include Untimely Meditations and At The Flash & At The Baci-and, more recently, The Circus, A Whistled Bit of Bop and Sly Mongoose.