Metropole: New Poems

There is an amusing asperity. And, for all its judgements, Metropole is rather forgiving. Irresistible, of course-and smart. - Arlo Banens, The Tune

His work characterised by its 'degree zero' cool, Bolton would seem to have taken his American influences and refined them through an apparatus built of French cinema, nouveau roman, and contemporary art criticism: coolly conversational-but flexibly elastic-this work can contain multitudes. - Peter Goldsworthy, Australian Book Review

Excellent. - Millie Dickins, Astrolabe

Morose, counter-intuitive, something of a zany, 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, grinning cheerfully, at the wheel of his 1952 Lancia Aurelia, 'Mandy', an image that belies the tales of later suffering - the affairs, the court appearances, 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).