Books

Unmuted, Nigel Kent, Hedgehog Poetry Press, Clevedon, 2021.

Nigel Kent’s collection of ekphrastic poems,”Unmuted”, is inspired by a gallery of famous works by artists from the present and the past. Each artwork acts as a frame in a storyboard which he unfreezes and unmutes to reveal the narrative he imagines lies behind it. Even for those who have no interest in art these direct, accessible and moving poems will stand alone and promise to engage with issues that truly matter.

 “With a gifted painter’s deft touch coupled with an awareness that every brush stroke matters, Nigel Kent’s ekphrastic poems are a masterclass in the use of telling detail.” Anna Saunders, poet. 

“With this collection Kent puts himself in the frame with the masters he has written to, giving each a new voice.” Darren J Beaney, poet. 

“If the hands of the past were to reach out and shine a light on our modern lives, this collection of poems is what they would have to say.” Steve Cawte, Editor of Impspired. 

A Voice and A Vision, Nick Browne and Nigel Kent, 2021.

A Voice and a Vision is a refreshingly original collection of photopoetry. Nick Browne’s finely crafted images interact with Nigel Kent’s lyrical verse to create a dynamic relationship in which each picture comments upon its paired poem, sometimes to reinforce its effect and sometimes to take it in a new unanticipated direction. This is a collection that will engage both lovers of art and poetry.

Psychopathogen, Nigel Kent, Hedgehog Poetry Press, Clevedon, 2020 (nominated for the 2020 Michael Marks Award for Poetry Pamphlets)

‘Psychopathogen’ explores the effect of exceptional times on unexceptional people: a reluctant schoolboy; a shielded grandmother; a middle-aged married couple; a pair of home-working parents and their children. This is not life as we know it.

Nigel Kent’s sometimes witty and always moving poems show us how life under Lockdown has been transformational, changing our routines, our relationships, our values and our perspective on the world.

Underpinning them all is a profound sense of loss: life will never be the same again.

Saudade, Nigel Kent, Hedgehog Poetry Press, Clevedon, 2019.

‘Saudade’ captures the zeitgeist of an age seduced by social media with its images of idealised lives. Many of the characters in Nigel Kent’s first collection experience a deep sense of dissatisfaction and an irreconcilable longing for someone or something that they have either lost or never had. He movingly conveys their yearning in poems that will ‘linger, linger, linger’.

‘Nigel Kent’s intimate poems provide a quiet mouthpiece for the disenchanted.’ Maggie Sawkins, Winner of Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, 2013.

“I was hooked.” Isabelle Kenyon, editor of Fly on the Wall Poetry Press.

“These poems express an exquisite poignancy and demand to be read and re-read.’    Adrian Green, author of All that Jazz and other poems’.

A Hostile Environment, Nigel Kent and Sarah Thomson, Clevedon, Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2019.

In the summer of 2018 the news broke of the mistreatment of the Windrush generation. It transpired that British subjects had been wrongly detained and deported, lost their jobs and homes, and were denied benefits and medical treatment. This story precipitated this poetry conversation with Bristol poet, Sarah Thomson.

Thinking you Home, Sarah Thomson and Nigel Kent, Clevedon, Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2019.

An article on quantum entanglement and the behaviour of sub-atomic particles inspired this second poetry conversation with Sarah Thomson, In particular, the idea that once entangled particles remain connected however far apart, a kind of ‘particle telepathy’. What does this mean for our connection with loved ones after they have gone?