ken bolton



Trick Light

regard jusqu’à set posture to be admired for le something the empty place where succulents were where wallpaper was intentional ly harbouring we go build le quelquething ubud harbour alarm has a plume held a signal climbs slides against across …

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Notebook Poems I-IV

I e-mail to the deep breaths department five goodberries unsampled the river brackish,         or perhaps actual bracken (slides around us) like koi, not good eating first taste of real life exclusion                 in small gloves                 couldn’t read the sandlewood fan codex …

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A Little Rain

The hot spell broke last night Today, light showers, not even enough to damp down the sandy dust in the front yard But just the sight of rain slanting earthwards seen from under a café awning, lifts the spirits, germinates …

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Charge Nurse

depth-charge migraine aftershock bouncing side to side in brain-pan Pola knows this is no ordinary lie-down I hear her clip up the passage into the room stop beside me to lick my fingers where they dangle from under the covers …

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Dressed in Yella

My voice-reading facility kicks in as I listen to the recording with forensic precision it deciphers her answering-machine message one part frightened, two parts breathless My sister sounds harried, almost asthmatic and that’s her work voice Oh dear. I’m too …

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Ten Zen Poems

a bird in the garden below – the fan spread as it put to wing ______________________ a kangaroo bounds silently across the far end of the field a penny in motion ______________________ a single-syllable bird call shadow waves ripple across …

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Night Works

moon where do you come from? a half slice of orange about to be dunked in a chocolate sea you are always there moon behind midnight clouds I come outside to listen to the wind in the trees but find …

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(Failing)

In the beginning, sometimes, I wrote “I love you” in the street. I dipped my finger in a puddle and wrote you a love letter, of sorts. Although I don’t believe you ever got to read it. The I evaporated …

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The Lives of the Writers, their Vicissitudes, Proclivities, Highs and Lows

CHRISTINE COLLINS is sometimes seen as almost an interface between Bruce Nauman and Christine Brooke-Rose, a troubling entity to conjure with—and an eagerly awaited presence should it ever manifest itself. Early in her life Collins featured in Let Numan Write …

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I May Have to See You Again, Charlie

Dear Teri I am not really in love with Charlie, but I think I am obsessed, but I can’t say it is entirely pleasurable It is not like wine or chocolate It is more like picking off skin after a …

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What’s the frequency, Kenneth?

a revhead full of vodka slushies, fading bling, the schlock of the old. just don’t hand over the car keys. sampling a fizz of schweppervescence I think of us, you and me, our lifetime lack of fancy salaries. on a …

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More than a feuilleton

the experienced world hasn’t been the world itself for a long time now & now we want to see the world as we want it to be * who’s speaking, saying this about the ‘world’? what ‘world’? * a cute …

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Bin Ends

It says here that Tony Baker makes ‘sounds across the range from free improvisation to rustic guinguette à la moules frites’. Refried boogie Tony? * Mohair her suit hirsute * nobody ever talks of their ‘wasted middle age’ * Headers …

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David McCooey Reviews Peter Rose and Ken Bolton

The opening poem of Peter Rose’s Crimson Crop – which recently won a Queensland Literary Award – brings together illness, noise, and madness in a powerful vision of human frailty. In that poem, ‘Prelude’, the poet relates seeing a man at the Rome Railway Station banging his head on vending machines, while his countrymen ‘rushed to their trains, / fearful, cashmered, blinkered, / avoiding this glimpse / of what their brother had become’.

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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 …

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Tim Wright Reviews Ken Bolton

The cover of A Whistled Bit of Bop makes use of a cool, spare design, reminiscent of 60s jazz album covers. It’s a change from the handmade look of many of Bolton’s earlier collections. The O and P of ‘BOP’ are also the record and arm of a turntable; the circular author photograph on the back cover – showing Bolton in a thumb-to-chin thinking pose – might then be the sticker in the centre of the disc about to be played.

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Heather Taylor-Johnson Reviews Ken Bolton

The best way to read Ken Bolton's poetry is to sit down and read Ken Bolton's poetry. Trying to decipher or even appreciate his style can be frustrating if the reader is only given the odd poem in a random literary magazine; and such a reading could result in Bolton appearing indulgent in his verse, perhaps working too hard (or not hard enough) at being clever.

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Mark Garnett: On reading Ken Bolton's Three Poems for John Forbes Or, Poem for Betty

After meeting someone i kind of knew in the city for coffee at Pellegrini's i came home to my messy room. On the tram i was reading Ken Bolton's Three Poems for John Forbes and they have made me a …

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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).

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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).

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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

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

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: "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, …

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