AustLit

'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 say. '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. ' (Publication summary)

'The Elsewhere Variations is a series of poems by Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton in which themes develop, are abandoned, resurface, where poems answer, continue or oppose each other. The usual thrills of collaborative projects. But these are unusual and will get attention just on that basis - and they are variously funny, mysterious, & occasionally moving.

'There are eight sets of six: forty-eight poems. They begin with a lightly fictionalised account of the poetry wars of inner Melbourne - but from there they undertake a survey of human happiness, ambition and acceptance.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'"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' (Publication summary)