A Wind-Up Collider

Like any self-respecting cloud, the words of this, Dent’s latest volume, have occasion to slip into and out of focus as well as flit between meanings. To recognise such moments is to ensure we are party to an intrigue more about delight and imagination than dissecting (or, heaven help us, directing) a life. An eye for weather (physical / mental) is a cannier companion here than any Baedeker or mind that frets. To be fully present within the action of the text is to see that what we’d first interpreted as ‘the finishing line’ was, shockingly, ‘birds migrating’. The mind is vulnerable, matter is contrary, life is in a state of flux. ‘Skip all that tosh about modelling clouds: for every big storm / or soul in torment, I’ve a shedful of u/s machinery.’ This resourceful and energetic new collection acknowledges not just the world we (think we) know but the many and various others. Being here, being reactive to ‘all that is’, is key.