Description
‘‘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. Sometimes this is because of unrealistic expectations, sometimes because of factors outside their control and sometimes because they have simply made wrong choices or decisions. He movingly conveys their yearning in poems that will ‘linger, linger, linger’.
Nigel Kent’s intimate poems provide a quiet mouthpiece for the disenchanted examining what it is to be human with all its frailties. They urge us to linger on the ineluctable question of what it is that makes life complete.
Maggie Sawkins, author of ‘Zones of Avoidance’ and Winner of Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, 2013.
About Nigel Kent
Nigel Kent is a poet living in rural Worcestershire. He is an active member of the Open University Poetry Association and occasional editor of its workshop magazine. He has been shortlisted for several national competitions and his poetry has appeared in a range of publications such as A Restricted View Under the Hedge, The Road to Clifton Pier, Lost things, Poems for Keeps, What the Elephant said to the Peacock, What the Peacock Replied, Persona non Grata, and The Pocket Book of Anger, South Poetry Magazine, Acumen, Eye Flash Poetry. His poetry conversation pamphlet, ‘A Hostile Environment’, written in collaboration with Sarah Thomson, was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in January 2019, and a second conversation, ‘Thinking You Home’ in June 2019. His poetry has been translated and appeared in the literary journals, Pro Saeculum and Banchetul. Saudade’ is his first collection. He is currently writing a libretto for an opera with composer, Gilbert Biberian. You can follow Nigel on Twitter @kent_nj
Product details
Daniel Clark –
In Saudade, Nigel Kent traces lives and their losses, carefully threading themes of love, death and legacy to reflect on how we record and remember our existence. Art, poetry and the body’s demise all serve as frameworks, yet it is absence and nostalgia that dominate Kent’s debut collection.
Kent is arguably at his most poignant in the prose poem, ‘Bleak, dark, and piercing cold…’, which takes its title from Oliver Twist. Through a deceptively profound analogy between a homeless man and discarded piece of chewing gum, he shows how bodies can be turned into unwanted stains on a landscape: ‘They spit you out like gum that’s lost its taste, yet they complain it’s you who litters the city’s streets’.
Reading Saudade is an enriching experience. The reader will share characters’ frustration at an inaccessible past or evasive present/presence, as well as sadness at the body’s inevitable decline. But, more importantly, she will feel quietly invigorated. For Saudade is full of small moments of pleasure and beauty which give us something for which to yearn.
[https://brieflywrite.com/2021/01/14/review-saudade-nigel-kent/]