Ken was reared in a family that was unable to give him a sense of meaning and connection with life - something that he wanted and needed. The last two poems in this collection - Cold Turkey and Indifference - convey that situation very clearly. His early years channelled him into becoming a 'detached' observer of life. And yet his poems carry in them evidence of passionate involvement, albeit masked. That he achieves this expression poetically and without any use of rhyme is intriguing. His own comment on rhyme is as follows: Byronic The romantic legacy of yesterday rhyme at the end of lines continues to contaminate contemporary poetry Although eloquently put, this is part of the mask. The real reason for the absence of rhyme bites much deeper and forms an essential part of the potency of his expression. Another very relevant aspect is that Ken is a trained artist. His artistic talents come together with his poetic expression to create pictures in the mind. These pictures move and flow. They are multidimensional, communicating deeper messages than the words might at first appear to convey.
Ken was reared in a family that was unable to give him a sense of meaning and connection with life - something that he wanted and needed. The last two poems in this collection - Cold Turkey and Indifference - convey that situation very clearly. His early years channelled him into becoming a 'detached' observer of life. And yet his poems carry in them evidence of passionate involvement, albeit masked. That he achieves this expression poetically and without any use of rhyme is intriguing. His own comment on rhyme is as follows: Byronic The romantic legacy of yesterday rhyme at the end of lines continues to contaminate contemporary poetry Although eloquently put, this is part of the mask. The real reason for the absence of rhyme bites much deeper and forms an essential part of the potency of his expression. Another very relevant aspect is that Ken is a trained artist. His artistic talents come together with his poetic expression to create pictures in the mind. These pictures move and flow. They are multidimensional, communicating deeper messages than the words might at first appear to convey.
Contents Preface Introduction Pollution 1 Born to Die Again 2 Insight 2 Compatibility 3 Cheers 3 Credo 3 Nightmare 3 Tints of Gold 4 Watercolour Words 4 An Elegy 5 Baloney 6 Consanguinity 6 Curiosity 7 Tokens 7 An Autumn Interlude 8 Contented Breezes 9 The Morning Sting 10 Programmed 11 Room for Regret 12 The Reality of a Dream 13 Rural View 14 Air Conditioning 15 Touring Blues 16 Words of Infatuation 18 Carved from Clouds 18 Looking Back 19 Greetings 20 Familiarity 22 Dolly 23 Cold Turkey 26 Indifference 28
I was born at South Camberwell, a suburb of Melbourne, just before WW2. I was the first of a family of three boys. After primary school I was enrolled at Scotch College, where I spent several fruitless years until the age of fifteen. After that I worked for my father, a chartered accountant, as an audit clerk. Numbers meant very little to me, but I stuck it out for three years. Then I worked as a despatch clerk at a furniture store for another three years. My father noticed my artistic bent and spoke to his cousin who taught graphic art. This resulted in my taking a drawing test at Swinburne College and being accepted for a four-year diploma course there. The course was academic and 'old school'. The first two years (the Certificate of art) were spent learning to draw accurately from life and casts. There were also design-related subjects - including pottery. I chose to specialise in painting for the final two years. This was academically oriented - with still life and portrait painting in oils, and drawing with charcoal, chalk and pastels. We also studied the history of art, and had to matriculate in English expression. I worked as an art teacher in technical schools for the next fifteen years, broken only by a trip to the UK in 1958. I was superannuated due to stress-related illness towards the end of the 1960s. I had already written a short story, which had been valued by an English teacher. Now, in a new phase of my life, I wrote more. It was about ten years ago when I first began to write poetry. I soon discovered that free verse was a natural mode of expression for me. I have had seven poetry books published by SBPRA and Sanbun, a small press in New Delhi. Ideas occur to me almost every day, and I continue to distil the essence of these into new poems. I have a rich family life as I live with my daughter, her husband and their four children at Lysterfield in Victoria, Australia.
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