New from Jean Kent

A shadow box on a sitting room wall; a hat box hiding a wedding dress and a kit bag; a hallstand decorated with hand-carved kurrajong leaves… In such leftovers from other lives, these poems began.

The Shadow Box is a book-length sequence of poems inspired by the experiences of my maternal grandparents, George and Jean Campbell, during and shortly after World War I. From their marriage a month before George left for war, through four years of separation—broken briefly by a six month visit by Jean to him in Egypt—the poems attempt to recreate their daily lives on different sides of the world. They draw on George’s diary and Jean’s letters to him, as well as my own imagination, to celebrate a family history which is both a cameo of another time, and strangely resonant with challenges in our world today.

The Shadow Box will launch at the Newcastle Writers Festival on Sunday April 2nd, 1.30-2.30pm.