Ken Bolton is a poet, art critic, editor and publisher. From Sydney, since 1982 he has lived in Adelaide. He produces the Little Esther books series and edited the magazines Otis Rush and Magic Sam. His major literary publications to date are a Selected Poems (Penguin/ETT), and Untimely Meditations and At The Flash & At The Baci (both Wakefield Press). Ken Bolton has also written a number of collaborative books of poetry, verse novellas etc with Melbourne writer John Jenkins. In 2000 he had a six month Australia Council residency in Rome. He edited Homage to John Forbes (Brandl & Schlesinger, 2002) and has written a study on the work of the artist Michelle Nikou. (Those interested are invited to check his entry at Australian Literary Resources which carries a selection of literary work & connects to other sites.) Art Writing, a selection of his art criticism pertaining to Adelaide, is being published by CACSA (Contemporary Art Centre South Australia) in August 2009.

For money (though not much money) Ken runs Dark Horsey Bookshop at the Experimental Art Foundation.

He is interested in art theory & art history (in which he has lectured & tutored at various institutions), in continental philosophy & cultural studies - & in the innovative side of literature.

Ken Bolton's art criticism has appeared in Adelaide publications Broadsheet, Artlink, Otis Rush and regularly in the early 90s in The Advertiser. And he has published in Photofile, Art and Text, Art Monthly, Meanjin, in Agenda and Like and in Eyeline, and in magazines internationally.

Ken studied Fine Arts at Sydney University where he tutored for a time. He has taught in visual art or communications at: Wollongong Art School, Wollongong University; Flinders University; SA School of Art, Adelaide.

Ken won Melbourne University's Michel Wesley Wright Poetry Prize for 1990. His Two Poems - A Drawing of the Sky was shortlisted for the 1991 Victorian Premier's Award. Untimely Meditations was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's award in 1999. In 2000 he spent six months in Rome, courtesy of the Literature Board of the Australia Council.

There are a number of things he wishes to avoid in poetry (the cornily 'poetic', strong reliance on metaphor, and the supposedly ineffable and transcendent). More positively he writes to keep himself awake, & amused.

When that fails he knows where to find a good book.