A Journal of Australian & International Cultural Reviews, News and Criticism.
When I compare Ken Bolton’s back catalogue to his latest work Metropole, I’m struck by the remarkable consistency of his style. In the inner southern suburb of Adelaide where he now lives, Ken Bolton is still writing almost the same poem he was over forty years ago, and that is not a criticism but a compliment.
As Rae Desmond Jones said in his introduction to The Selected Your Friendly Fascist, “Poetry can tend to sombre pomposity, or the self-consciously polite.” Tug Dumbly is certainly not that.
The Wisdom of Infants. A suite of 6 pictures (enamel on timber construction) by Tony Twigg
with poetry by Mike Ladd
I want to go straight to the title “In the Room with the She Wolf”. We see here, straight away, the dynamic tensions in Jelena’s writing. Room – domestic, interior, protection. She Wolf – wild, exterior, danger. But it’s not as simple as that. The she wolf in East European symbolism also represents family, the matriarch, the pack leader, the protector.