- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones
CONTRIBUTORS
Ken Bolton
Introduction to Ken Bolton’s A Pirate Life
The author’s playfulness is to the fore in this strange, charming book. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck, gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional game board: a pirate’s world of exotic ports, risky encounters, escapades, wonders and the routine of shipboard life, always in the presence of the moody, changeable sea.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged ken bolton, Nicholas Jose, Zoë Sadokierski
Nine Lives
Fix breakfast, make coffee. A sort of virtuous morning. No hanging about. Wash clothes, dinner —on the stove by 10.30, cooking, ready for some time tonight or another day. The plumber—who could show any time— (‘over from the mainland’) . …
Posted in 106: OPEN
Tagged ken bolton
Lunchtime Variations: Dominic Symes Interviews Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton
I became interested in how Ken and Peter worked with one another, with an eye to discovering the conditions which allow poetic collaborations to remain fresh and full of humour, in the same way people examine the diets of people in Blue Zones, like Okinawa and Ikaria.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Dominic Symes, ken bolton, Peter Bakowski
Introduction to Helen Lambert’s Echoland
Helen Lambert’s work is as new to me as it will be to others – she has been operating away from Australian poetry for some time, with long periods in Ireland and, lately, Russia. One approaches a new poet warily. Yet the inventive and capable intelligence behind the poems here is immediately apparent. It is wonderful to be able to drop one’s guard, to forget it – and to enter a wonderful world.
Posted in INTRODUCTIONS
Tagged Helen Lambert, ken bolton, Kent MacCarter, Zoë Sadokierski
Ken Bolton’s Suburbia, an Introduction
This is going to be a rather disordered list of undeveloped and not closely connected thoughts about ‘the suburban’ and its binary partner ‘the urban’. Not my thoughts, for the most part, but my list of thoughts generally available.
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Howard Arkley, Justin Clemens, ken bolton, Reg Mombassa
Reach & Ambition
for John Jenkins I Reach & Ambition Late at night, up, looking at the things on my mantelpiece a profusion of crap, clutter & gewgaws a range of detail I love (John’s photos of it came today, reminding me). I …
Posted in 80: NO THEME VI
Tagged ken bolton
Dark Heart
I look in here—this notebook—& see the notes for the last review I did, & note—that I am about to write another. Tho I would rather write something else. I whistle bop a bit try not to think of the …
Posted in 72: THE END
Tagged ken bolton
Heaven, Bruny Island
,… like the Mets I’m coming up to bat in the bottom of the 9th, or maybe the 8th, if I’m lucky but far behind in the game— and the music seems to have stopped to listen. —Tony Towle listening …
Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN
Tagged ken bolton
End of Year
for Crab & Martin … there is much to do. A little man tells us how to invest our money, my teeth gain a few fillings, probably, at the dentist’s—who knows, maybe no drilling—but, as Xmas closes in, some shopping, …
Posted in 68: NO THEME IV
Tagged ken bolton
(Late at Night Bruny Island)
here in the bookshelves of the holiday house is a book of John’s poems—also Les—a fat spine appropriately. Why is that here? Masochism? I am unlikely to read it. Anyway, I wonder what John’s got to say— this time. * …
Posted in 61: NO THEME III
Tagged ken bolton
“Hindley Street”: How to Be Perfect There
Pete Bakowski’s challenge: attempt Padgett’s ‘How To Be Perfect’. “Hindley Street”— I write those words, the title of this poem, on this pad, to start a list—of things I must do. Is this going to be a poem? Isn’t it? …
Posted in 57: MASQUE
Tagged ken bolton
London Postcard: A Quiet Morning at The Wapping Project Art Space
‘Avenue Victor Hugo, cognac— Lianne Fowler as Isabel,’ the caption says. And continues: ‘A French Picture Show’. So a movie still I expect. Why such an image will anchor one. Benediction. One is blessed. It is the softness of the …
Posted in 57: MASQUE
Tagged ken bolton
Manic at Night
The refrigerator’s humming outside and I like that. Outside of any use I could make of it. But I can’t see it now, cause I’m in a different suburb, but this reminds me of how I used to like the …
Posted in UNIVERSAL ARCHIVE
Tagged John Jenkins, ken bolton
The Lee Marvin Readings: An Evening with Edmund Gwenn
The Lee Marvin Readings has run, off and on, since the 1990s. Its venue has changed a number of times – from Adelaide nightclubs like Supermild, to the Iris Cinema, to the charmingly Zurich-1917, bo-ho De La Catessan and the more robustly hard-drinking and confrontational Dark Horsey bookshop at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation, where it now takes place. The sessions have been organised, run, staffed and emceed by poet and art critic Ken Bolton.
Posted in CHAPBOOKS
Tagged Cath Kenneally, Doug Mason, Ella O'Keefe, Jill Jones, Kelli Rowe, ken bolton, Laurie Duggan, Pam Brown, Shannon Burns, Steve Brock, Tim Wright
Shock To The Screen Door
You can hear it banging in the wind, or when someone delivers something and lets it ‘have its will’. It causes you to jump, inevitably. “Trouble in your bubble, mate?” is what Dave says when I look morose. Which might …
Posted in 47: NO THEME!
Tagged John Jenkins, ken bolton
Ern Malley: Pedestrian Verse
A gay, light-hearted bastard, ERN MALLEY cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary scene, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar sports car, El Cid. It is this image that also carries in its train the stories of later suffering-the affairs, the women, 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).
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged John Jenkins, ken bolton
Ern Malley: I have gone missing from this world
A gay, light-hearted bastard, ERN MALLEY cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary scene, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar sports car, El Cid. It is this image that also carries in its train the stories of later suffering-the affairs, the women, 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).
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged John Jenkins, ken bolton
Ern Malley: Prospect Of The Young KB As A Critic
A gay, light-hearted bastard, ERN MALLEY cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary scene, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar sports car, El Cid. It is this image that also carries in its train the stories of later suffering-the affairs, the women, 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).
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged ken bolton
Ern Malley: A Fool To Care
A gay, light-hearted bastard, ERN MALLEY cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary scene, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar sports car, El Cid. It is this image that also carries in its train the stories of later suffering-the affairs, the women, 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).
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged ken bolton
Ern Malley: Escape Clause
A gay, light-hearted bastard, ERN MALLEY cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary scene, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar sports car, El Cid. It is this image that also carries in its train the stories of later suffering-the affairs, the women, 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).
Posted in 24: CHILDREN OF MALLEY
Tagged ken bolton
Ken Bolton: "the ice in my glass"
the ice in my glass goes crink! as it adjusts to the tequila – keying in that sophistication – or the feel of it – associated with these tall buildings, a bit of the skyline of New York I envisage, …
Posted in 11: COPYLEFT
Tagged ken bolton
Happy Accidents
D.U.I. in the 1970s for Gary Oliver Are you, perhaps, a ‘Reader of Books’ ? —John Jenkins I had been reading some poets before, who were supposed to be good And I suppose they were but it was on first …
Posted in 05: UNTHEMED
Tagged ken bolton
