Jean Kent
Paris in my pocket
Jean Kent returns to familiar haunts in Paris with this beguiling chapbook, which brings together poems of time and place first published in 1998, drawn from her first residency at the Cité des Arts in the mid nineties. Accompanied by plangent drawings by her husband Martin, these poems will be read and re-read with wistful pleasure by anyone whose heart has missed a beat on crossing the Pont Neuf on a misty winter evening.
But now the inky quills over Paris rewrite
ancient celebrations.
It is the hour of hope and the dome of the world
has a slippery ceiling, a dark blade whose other side
has already turned to silver—
as the huge night swings me over its edge and back, gathering
more than I could imagine into its dream-dented bucket.
ISBN 978-1-922080-58-5. 32 pages.
Saddle stitch chapbook. 160 x 110mm.
Full colour cover with French flaps.
With 6 colour drawings by Martin Kent
Published 1st March 2016
The Hour of Silvered Mullet
Jean Kent’s new collection comprises poems written over the last 20 years, from a group of rural meditations through to recent reflections of life lived as part of a lakeside community in northern NSW.
Launched initially at the Newcastle Writers Festival in March 2015 and then at a celebratory event at the Cardiff Library, where poet and poetry academic Christopher Pollnitz provided a characteristic wryly humorous and insightful celebration of a book destined to be sought after by Jean Kent’s many readers.
RRP is A$28
Jean Kent’s new poetry collection explores the pleasures and heartache of rural and regional life with her inimitable mix of insight, good humour and unforgettable vignettes of people, places and foliage.
Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks
This collection brings together poetry written during two Australia-council funded residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris and a family reunion visit to Lithuania.
The themes of home and distance, familiarity and making-strange, family networks and chance encounters are explored with the subtlety of poetic craftsmanship and warmth of geographic and human embrace which characterise this fine poet’s life and work.
Reviews
Martin Duwell Australian Poetry Review 1st July 2013
Paul Summers Rochford Street Review 18th September 2012
Sample Poems
Buy a book on line now!
All you have to do is choose between the elegant $20 paperback and the splendid illustrated limited edition hardback, hand bound in red German cloth, signed and numbered by the author, which sells for $50.
Jean Kent’s new collection launched in August 2012.
276 signed and numbered copies.
Drawings by Sydney artist Oliver Watts
Sewn cloth bound volume with a red/ silk bookmark ribbon
102pp. 230 x 145 mm
Jean Kent’s new collection, released in August 2012.
B format paperback. 86 pages.
About the author

Jean Kent has received several fellowships and writer’s grants from the Literature Board of the Australia Council. Most recently, she was awarded a six months residency during 2011 at its Keesing Studio in the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Her more usual home is at Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle in New South Wales.