{"title":"Ken Bolton","description":"\u003cp\u003eKen Bolton's works invite readers into a rich landscape of contemporary poetry and prose, blending sharp wit with reflective insight. His writing often explores the nuances of everyday life, art, and culture with a distinct voice that is both accessible and thought-provoking.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith titles such as \u003cem\u003eA Double Act\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eSly Mongoose\u003c\/em\u003e, Bolton's collection offers a compelling journey through inventive language and vivid imagery, appealing to those who appreciate a modern yet literary approach to arts and culture.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"a-double-act-by-john-jenkins-9781922571465","title":"A Double Act","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA selection drawn from their various intoxicating books (\u003cem\u003eAirborne Dogs\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eNutters Without Fetters\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003ePoems of Relative Unlikelihood\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Wallah Group\u003c\/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003eThe Gutman Variations\u003c\/em\u003e (their study of Jacques Lacan), the verse novel \u003cem\u003eThe Ferrara Poems\u003c\/em\u003e—later filmed—and \u003cem\u003eLucky For Some\u003c\/em\u003e).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWarning: will produce exhilaration, euphoria, general systemic excitation, scorn, weeping, laughter. Parodic, yet intense—poems terse, thoughtful, complex or pellucid, philosophical, and not unacquainted with beauty, but always sharp, always funny.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Double Act\u003c\/i\u003e—guaranteed to levitate right off the table, and take its readers with it.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'Due perhaps to their collaborative nature there is a remarkable freedom from anxiety here. But there is a great deal of intelligence.' Stephanie Trigg, \u003ci\u003eIsland\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e'Ludic, breathtakingly, drastically reductive—like Weil, like Brecht—caring and bare-knuckled, canny and guileless, winsome and ruthless—I love these guys!' Suzy Treister\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47340617793772,"sku":"9781922571465","price":32.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/14125773482872.jpg?v=1772160600"},{"product_id":"a-pirate-life-by-ken-bolton-9780648917656","title":"A Pirate Life","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Pirate Life\u003c\/i\u003e, a board game for the impossibly bored, is a tangy, buoyant ahoy. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck—short, shuffle-able blocks of prose are an avant-garde tradition—gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional board: a pirate's world of exotic ports, risky encounters, escapades, wonders and the routine of shipboard life. Cultural references bounce around, with jokes aplenty for the cognoscenti.\" - Nicholas Jose\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47340630606060,"sku":"9780648917656","price":25.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/450553482419.jpg?v=1772161836"},{"product_id":"salute-by-ken-bolton-9781925780406","title":"Salute","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGee these poems be limber, you think, flipping through the pages, admiring, here, the cut of this poem's jib, there the poise \u0026amp; rancour of another.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor this is a book that might save your heart, a book to pull from your jacket pocket at some moment of last judgement \u0026amp; 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ePraise for Ken Bolton:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'...bitchy, dreamy, acute...a deeply serious - \u0026amp; witty \u0026amp; almost self-canceling - consciousness at work' - Lyn McCredden, \u003ci\u003eHeat\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Easy to appreciate, lightheartedness is not a natural or easy gift, and Bolton's - brilliantly articulate - shimmers with a sense of being 'amusing \u0026amp; sort of\/ Crooked in relation to things' - Nicholas Birns, \u003ci\u003eTransnational Literature\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471499378924,"sku":"9781925780406","price":27.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781925780406-salute.jpg?v=1775245243"},{"product_id":"sly-mongoose-by-ken-bolton-9781921450303","title":"Sly Mongoose","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cem\u003eSly Mongoose\u003c\/em\u003e the author deals with the vagaries of the Adelaide art-scene, the career of Cy Twombly, the Sydney of the 1920s, 40s and today. A quartet of poems treats a single locale and time-frame from the point of view of an 'ordinary punter', a beaver, a worried mother and a cyclist. There is a sequence drawn from a diary of travel through an imaginary Africa in the 1970s, each entry partly structured around a buried pun or near-pun. A further pair of poems deals with after-echoes, among his friends, of the passing of John Forbes. So there you go.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eNobody in Australia is writing quite like Ken Bolton...working a relativist's sceptical, provisional territory...(a) thinking against thought\u003c\/em\u003e. - J.S. Harry\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA rare instance of contemporary Australian poetry in the mode of literary and cultural criticism\u003c\/em\u003e. - David McCooey\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA gay, light-hearted bastard, Ken Bolton cuts a moodily romantic figure within the dun Australian literary landscape, his name inevitably conjuring perhaps that best known image of him, bow-tie askew, lipstick-smeared, grinning cheerfully at the wheel of his 1958 Jaguar D-type, El Cid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBorn in Sydney in 1949, he works at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide and edits Little Esther books. Bolton has published a good deal of art criticism, some of it collected in \u003cem\u003eArt Writing\u003c\/em\u003e (Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia). He edited \u003cem\u003eHomage To John Forbes\u003c\/em\u003e and wrote the monograph \u003cem\u003eMichelle Nikou\u003c\/em\u003e. He edited the magazines \u003cem\u003eMagic Sam\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eOtis Rush\u003c\/em\u003e and has published numerous books of poetry. Wakefield Press published \u003cem\u003eThe Circus\u003c\/em\u003e in 2010 and Vagabond Press \u003cem\u003eA Whistled Bit Of Bop\u003c\/em\u003e. Earlier titles include \u003cem\u003eAt The Flash And At The Baci\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eUntimely Meditations\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47598290141420,"sku":"9781921450303","price":29.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/e51216b6104978d484c2623f8b477bc9.jpg?v=1778026453"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/ken-bolton.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}