In Lonnie’s Lament Ken Bolton considers life in ‘difficult times’ and attempts to register change in the feel of eras as we pass from one to another - a ‘history of the vanishing present’.
An inquiring focus ranges across heroes, friends, footballers, old cartoons, and people observed in the street, in conversation and in art. Bolton explores how we define ourselves against others, and how our views of them define us.
These poems are philosophical, but always amusing, and range from dreamily associative, to snapshot and
argument, to travel sketches and the comical.
Praise for Lonnie's Lament:
'Writing that is buoyed by indeterminacy, in which a blithe surface both collapses and embodies intellectual enquiry ... the work is also a meditation on poetry.' - Gig Ryan, Australian Book Review
'[We find] the familiar use of floating lines, repetition, loose jaunty rhythms, tonal shifts, proper names and explicit references to other poets ... a rabbit warren of ideas and tangents grounded in the act of composition. In fact, no other Australian poet, with the possible exception of Pam Brown, pays quite so much attention to the physical and mental act of actually writing poetry.' - Liam Ferney, Rabbit magazine
'The pieces are lyrical, thoughtful, dreamily associative and easily distracting ... my recommendation is to read/savour only a few poems at a time, and then have the pleasure of returning to the book at a later time and having another very enjoyable session.' - Lynne Lancaster, Sydney Arts Guide
'Poetry that draws on moments of apparent ordinariness, and ever so subtly transforms them into lines of understated enchantment ... Lonnie’s Lament decries enclosure and conformity, while celebrating the quiet joy of close and loving connections, adding another impressive and humanistic work to its maker’s extensive and generous oeuvre.' - Nathanael Pree, Cordite Poetry Review
'One of the few Australian poets who is able to write about writing (even down to the exact materials and implements) without seeming self-absorbed or self-regarding. There’s nearly always a characteristic Bolton offhandedness, which will charm many and perhaps irritate a few.' - Geoff Page, Australian
Thoughtful - and yet forgetful, easily distracted, hardly there sometimes - Ken Bolton's is a lyrical figure limned against the harsh outlines, the stark colours, of the Adelaide art world, adding a word here, a thought there, in the general flux of words and deeds around town. A zany, he was for a long time employed at Adelaide's Experimental Art Foundation. He edits Little Esther books.
