At the Flash & At the Baci
Wakefield, $24.95 pb, 224 pp, 1862546924
The Boltonic world
I learnt today, while being read Ken Bolton’s poetry aloud by a friend (a native South Australian), that Hindley rhymes with ‘kind’ and not with ‘wind’. My friend spontaneously started reading to me and couldn’t stop. It runs on, this K.B. speaking voice: compulsive, South Australian, poetic, paranoid, poignant, funny. One way of describing the experience of reading Bolton is that you feel like you are an outsider, looking in at the window, nose pressed against the glass, and inside are all the poet’s friends: children, loved musos, long-term waitresses, artists, favourite poet-heroes. But then K.B. tells you that he is the perpetual outsider, too, solipsistic, meditative. My friend chose, almost randomly, the poem ‘Mostly Hindley Street’, with its wide lines rolled out across the page – in turn witty, desultory, intertextual, local and cosmopolitan – each daring you to take them too seriously, to miss the flipness, daring you to take K.B. seriously, as poet, or person. He might be just like his references (he suggests) – that old prig Thomas Gray, for one, who ‘never spoke out’:
Continue reading for only $10 per month. Subscribe and gain full access to Australian Book Review. Already a subscriber? Sign in. If you need assistance, feel free to contact us.
Leave a comment
If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.
If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.
Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.