Ken Bolton / September Poems / 11.



13   (West Hampstead)


I buy a jumper—
a top—at the Children’s
Health charity shop
The woman asks where
I’m from? “Australia.”

“You, too,” I add—
recognising her accent
& her look more than anything.
She thinks she can still detect
Australian in my speech. A trace,
she says. I’ve only been here
four weeks, I tell her:
“I’m from Adelaide—
the more ‘proper’ accent.”
We laugh, foreign-sounding
to the Brits around us.



Ken Bolton works at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide where he lives with partner Cath Kenneally. He writes art criticism (see The Dark Horsey Form Guide) as well as poetry (recently a Selected Poems from Shearsman, UK & Threefer from Puncher & Wattmann, in 2014). He runs The Lee Marvin Reading series.
 
 
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