AustLit

'Ken Bolton’s thinking is never too relaxed, but moves restlessly and anxiously, across people, cultural references and disparate locations even as he writes, or so it appears. And the resultant poems also seem to be unfiltered by any desire on the poet’s part to be ‘poetic’. But perhaps this is illusory. The poems are, after all, carefully considered and crafted, occupying the page determinedly even though the poet writes as if the events and thoughts he references are taking place in an ongoing, urgent present, via a stream of consciousness, and that the last thing on his mind is making ‘poetry’. Indeed, Bolton records something that looks like immediate, unfiltered thought and his compelling purpose is to register rather than editorialise.' (Introduction)