Paris Light

Paris Light (paperback)
Paris Light (paperback)
Paperback B format 128 x 198 mm. 102 pages. Full colour internals and cover.
978-1-922776-16-7.
Illustrations by Martin Kent.
Price: A$28.00
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Paris Light is an intensely personal Plan de Paris. What began as a tongue-in-cheek attempt by Jean Kent to write a poem for each letter of the alphabet, based on streets or places in Paris which had meaning for her, evolved into an emotional map of her time there with her husband, Martin, trying to live as locals. Many of the poems are set within easy walking distance of the Cité Internationale des Arts, where the couple lived during two six-month Australia Council residencies, firstly in 1994 and later in 2011. With the inclusion of Martin’s art works, which complement the poems but have their own idiosyncratic focus, this book is both a celebration of the romance between words and images and the magic of the City of Light.

The Shadow Box

The Shadow Box (paperback)
The Shadow Box (paperback)
Paperback B format 128 x 198 mm. 156 pages. Full colour cover.
ISBN 978-1-922776-04-4.
Price: A$28.00
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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.

Paris in my pocket

Paris in my pocket (illustrated poetry pamphlet)
Paris in my pocket (illustrated poetry pamphlet)
Illustrated poetry pamphlet with French Flaps. 110 x 160 mm. 32 pages. Full colour cover.
ISBN 978-1-922080-58-5.
Drawings by Martin Kent.
Published 1st March 2016
Price: A$15.00
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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.

The Hour of Silvered Mullet

The Hour of Silvered Mullet (paperback)
The Hour of Silvered Mullet (paperback)
Paperback with French Flaps. B format 128 x 198 mm. 104 pages. Full colour cover.
ISBN 978-1-922080-44-8.
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.
Price: A$28.00
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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.

Jean Kent

Jean Kent was born in Chinchilla in 1951 and grew up in rural Queensland. Nine previous books of her poetry have been published. The most recent is The Shadow Box (Pitt Street Poetry 2023). Her awards include the Anne Elder Prize, Dame Mary Gilmore Award and Wesley Michel Wright Prize for her books; and the National Library Prize, Josephine Ulrick Prize, Somerset Prize and runner-up for the Newcastle Prize for individual poems. She has also received several writing grants from the Australia Council, including Overseas Residencies in Paris in 1994 and 2011.
Jean lives with her husband, Martin, at Kilaben Bay, overlooking Lake Macquarie.
For more of her poems and occasional Jottings, visit jeankent.net.au

 

 

At AustLit | At Sydney Poetry website | At the Newcastle Writers Festival

Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks

Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks (limited edition hardback)
Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks (limited edition hardback)
Sewn cloth bound volume with a red silk bookmark ribbon. 145 x 230 mm. 102 pages.
ISBN 978-1-922080-09-7.
Jean Kent’s new collection launched in August 2012. 276 signed and numbered copies.
Drawings by Sydney artist Oliver Watts.
Price: A$50.00
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Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks (paperback)
Travelling with the Wrong Phrasebooks (paperback)
Paperback with French Flaps. B format 128 x 198 mm. 98 pages. Full colour cover.
ISBN 978-1-922080-10-3.
Published August 2012.
Price: A$25.00
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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.

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.