Two other subject fields of around that time never impressed me. One was Dent's meditations on texts (Focus Germanus, OASIS 23, 1978; Desert Psalter, Glasshouse, 1980; Uncloudy Wine, 1987; Vigil & Dream (Blackthorn, 1990), impenetrable to those not familiar with the material he was reworking, unenlightening to those who were. The other field was his 'versions' of other poets, included in many of his collections and making up the whole of Night Winds & Dice (Big Little Poem Books, 1991). This project, lacking any stylistic variety and reducing the literature of over two millennia and many different cultures exclusively to the mode and manner of Dent himself, verges on the megalomaniac.

Northwoods (Taxus, 1992), a collection largely devoted to prose poems, does attempt to break new ground. But their manner and syntax, their spiky and percussive rhythms, are too close to his later poetry. Ironically, it is in the smaller proportion of verse in this collection that Dent fights free of his obsessive tics to produce the most beautiful writing there. The following year he showed what he was really capable of in the magnificently achieved "Daylight Illustrations", the long prose sequence featured in SHEARSMAN 11.

The raised stony beach at Budleigh Salterton, and the wooded coombes beyond it, are frequently in the background of Dent's new verse. His habit seems to have been to take long walks there, focussing his mind on what passed through it. This led to a leaner, more intensely inward poetry in which he moved from his former notations to a subjective and more tentative search for significance in experience.

The new departure is heralded by the poems of From the Flow (Taxus, 1983). Other stylistic novelties are noteworthy there. Word play is used as a device to move the meaning forward rather than as mere ornament. Indeed, consideration of what is to be expressed and the means of expression coalesce in many poems. Then there are the synaesthetic correspondences, as in a poem like "Stack":

N hindsight, it seems clear that Peter Dent's poetry changed quite radically in content and style after his move from Surrey to Devon in 1978. That this was not immediately apparent had to do with his publishing history. Soon after the move his first major collection appeared (Distant Lamps, Hippopotamus, 1980), containing much from earlier pamphlets. It represented the best of his old style: spare meditations presenting time, place and emotion as a unified whole. The voice was modulated, the rhythms liquid.

Dent should have left it at that, but he insisted on what he called 'a clearing of the stacks'. In the next large collections, Contour & Grain and Undergrowth (both self-published from Blackthorn Press, 1991), it appeared as if nothing had changed. Nothing had; much of it was in the Surrey manner - good stuff, some of it, mixed with much verging on the anecdotal. In a letter to me he later admitted to writing some of it 'in the manner of a former self', probably to bulk the collections out and give them unity. The clearing of the stacks was as much to do with returning to and rounding off past subject matter as with rounding up old work.

Finally there is his attraction to the sequence, a constellation of fragments generated about a fixed focus.

Many of the poems in that collection are characterised by their sense of revelation always at the edge of the mind without ever making itself quite manifest. The poem's task is to approach what is occluded there as closely as possible and observe at the same time the impossibility of crossing the threshold. Since the mind is always in motion, the recording of its flux gives Dent an inexhaustible and ever-changing subject matter.

Up to the mid-1990s, the bulk of his poetry published outside magazines was in the form of extended sequences. A new set of "Hours" (Blackthorn, 1985) appeared as twelve cards with a four-line stanza opposite an abstract illustration. The latter (unattributed there) are also by Dent, their two faces in one way or another corresponding to and thus mirroring the synaesthetic perceptions of the verse. The writing takes forward the notation of "Stack" into am more thoughtful dimension:

Each stanza is limited to between 15-18 syllables and is clearly influenced by the haiku approach without aspiring to imitate its form. The sequence is probably the most attractive of all Dent's publications up to that date.

Travel Song (Morning Star Folio 2/1, 1991) is a sequence illustrated by Susan Patterson. It is a folded sheet with her four abstract designs above and Dent's ten poems beneath. The latter concentrate on image and the ambiguity of skilfully placed words, so that a concertina of meanings unfolds in each stanza. Here one should note the calibre of other illustrators that Dent has attracted in some of his collections. The cover of From the Flow was designed by Alan Halsey, that of Night Winds & Dice by Laurie Clark. The cover drawings and five section headings in Equinox are Ian Robinson's. Dent himself was responsible for the drawing on the cover of Line (Markings #3).

Longer and more ambitious sequences have included Place to Place (Stingy Artist, 1993), Line (Cloud, 1995) and the sixteen sections from "Full Sail" that appeared in SHEARSMAN 18 (1994). All were fine linguistic structures celebrating language's ability to give experience meaning. Equinox (Oasis Books, 1993) was a bulkier collection, gathering five sequences within its 54 pages. In each section of these there is a controlled mental explosion of revelation and also a rediscovered fluency. Though the lines are generally short, there is an alternation of short and long sentences, the sense riding over lines and stanzas. The same sureness of rhythm is found in Dent's first U.S. chapbook, Suggesting Blue, from John Perlman's Room Press. All but one of its poems are long-lined couplets, separately titled but, for all that, organised about a theme. They too therefore seem to make a sequence.

Much of Dent's work that found its way into print after 1991 was adventurous and consistently good. Its admirable finish suggested that Dent had at last found his way to a new confidence and stylistic adaptability. On reading my original comment that he had finally 'landed on his feet', Peter wryly riposted that it felt more like tottering to him. This was because he was never satisfied with the point he had reached. By consistently experimenting with his approach he discovered not just new ways of saying things but new things that he wished to say, unimagined before they emerged. He could never be sure where his writing might be taking him or whether the journey was worth while. He simply submitted himself to being the servant of the language.

Taking such a risk requires courage. Not everything that has appeared in print has been well received. But his writing has the virtue of unpredictability. One is always challenged. While we never know what to expect next, it's always worth waiting to see.

© Yann Lovelock (This is a revised version of the feature that first appeared in OASIS 81, November, 1996).