Sly Mongoose by Ken Bolton

JUDGES' COMMENTS

With a seriousness of thought and intellectual engagement, Sly Mongoose is an immersion into a sensory collage of art, music, literature and coffee. The reader encounters poets, artists, musicians and cultural figures from the past and present with whom Bolton collaborates to create his poetic art. The deeper the reading, the more inviting and entertaining Bolton's work becomes. This book is veritably fecund with diverse ideas and references, inventive notations, appreciation of relationships — both friends and family — and plenty of wonderful jokes.

Nobody else in Australia writes like Ken Bolton, he is a singular poet who knows that poetry is an important critical form as well as a conduit for a rich relational aesthetic. Bolton’s poems work like magic on the reader. At first they appear to be relaxed conversations, jocular observations but they are very much considered constructs. One becomes addicted to his fine and unique language jigsaws.