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Paris Light
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.
102 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2024
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November 30, 2024
As Jean Kent says in her acknowledgements: “Paris Light is an intensely personal and idiosyncratically Plan de Paris. Many of the streets and places are within easy walking distance of the Cite International des Arts, where Martin and I lived for two six month periods, first in 1994 and later in 2011.”
For me, even though she may have invented a few street names, presumably to complete the alphabet of Paris streets, this is the next best thing to actually being, there. We are not only seeing parts of Paris the reader will probably never visit but we are in the company of two people who observe so much, who can articulate and put into words and images, a lot of what the average person can only sense or even miss altogether.
Don’t expect a white-washed Paris either. Jean is unflinching in depicting what she encounters. In the first poem Rue de l’Ave-Maria:
“there is also rue d’Ave-Maria, this aisle unsung
in Travel Guides, ambling towards a park
where the homeless sit, their feet in the sweet
bruises of hyacinths.
En route: rowdy youths, a running grey rug
of Afghan...then a school, after-hours empty,
plaqued in memory of children deported:
vanished families of Jews.”
In Rue des Barres:
“Back at the church, spring will bring the first
dedicated beggar. She appears out of the darkness
of St Gervais-St Protais, a mass of solidifying folds.
Perhaps her whole wardrobe clothes her?...”
And the poem finishes with these heartbreaking lines:
“’Madame, Madame,’ a pleading sparrow
when kind birds were all hidden, only crows
and pigeons foraging and warring in the cold.”
As always Kent’s word choices are impeccable. In Quai des Celestins the alliteration is soft and mesmerising, yet still differences are highlighted:
“ On the other side of the world
The calendar changes-but here it’s not yet
too late. A postcard of the Eiffel Tower, lit-up,
will take time to become a sparkler
in a Brisbane mailbox-but in this park
pocketed between traffic, still five year olds play.”
Kent is also able to be brave. To say, reading the first two lines of Passage d’Enfer, ,that not everything is sweetness and light even in Paris:
“Every city, every life, has its hells.
Holes in the day you fall down.”
This is quite a surprising and confronting poem. Further in:
“...Then the Metro rehearses you
for that last torture before the mortuary.
Under the broken wing of your arm,
the little girl you’re sheltering
will surely go there first. Liverwurst
in sagging skins, already in the belly of a wolf
that howls and lurches underground.
No frail petals now, on any dark bough.”
Soon though we are back with a more familiar Kent, aware though now that everything comes at a price – six months in Paris traded for uncertainty, the necessity to deal with bureaucracy and of course homesickness – makes both Martin and Jean determined to make the most of their time in Paris and capture, even at a later date, what it was like to live there. From Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier:
“The geraniums I plant in my Paris window box
Are liquorice allsorts: Antipodean anarchy –
candy-pink, scarlet and white, not single-tinted
elegant confections like my neighbours.”
I could go on quoting all the marvellous lines that jump out at me, complimented by Martin’s artwork:
“cocooned in sleeping bags like a Contemporary Art installation,
their disorderly heads hidden, their futures frozen
under a ceiling of stars.”
“I need trees.
So that is why, each Sunday in Paris,
I go to the Jardin des Plantes.”
“The dowager trees near Quai St Bernard are dancing.
They have no choice. Though they are withered,
wind lilts their branches, waltzing free
the last frail leaves.”
This is an elegant and perceptive guide to Paris, a Paris most of us won’t get to see. If you, like me, can’t afford to travel then walk with Jean and Martin Kent and let them tell you about the Paris they know and love, both the dark and the light. A wonderful collection. Highly recommended.
For me, even though she may have invented a few street names, presumably to complete the alphabet of Paris streets, this is the next best thing to actually being, there. We are not only seeing parts of Paris the reader will probably never visit but we are in the company of two people who observe so much, who can articulate and put into words and images, a lot of what the average person can only sense or even miss altogether.
Don’t expect a white-washed Paris either. Jean is unflinching in depicting what she encounters. In the first poem Rue de l’Ave-Maria:
“there is also rue d’Ave-Maria, this aisle unsung
in Travel Guides, ambling towards a park
where the homeless sit, their feet in the sweet
bruises of hyacinths.
En route: rowdy youths, a running grey rug
of Afghan...then a school, after-hours empty,
plaqued in memory of children deported:
vanished families of Jews.”
In Rue des Barres:
“Back at the church, spring will bring the first
dedicated beggar. She appears out of the darkness
of St Gervais-St Protais, a mass of solidifying folds.
Perhaps her whole wardrobe clothes her?...”
And the poem finishes with these heartbreaking lines:
“’Madame, Madame,’ a pleading sparrow
when kind birds were all hidden, only crows
and pigeons foraging and warring in the cold.”
As always Kent’s word choices are impeccable. In Quai des Celestins the alliteration is soft and mesmerising, yet still differences are highlighted:
“ On the other side of the world
The calendar changes-but here it’s not yet
too late. A postcard of the Eiffel Tower, lit-up,
will take time to become a sparkler
in a Brisbane mailbox-but in this park
pocketed between traffic, still five year olds play.”
Kent is also able to be brave. To say, reading the first two lines of Passage d’Enfer, ,that not everything is sweetness and light even in Paris:
“Every city, every life, has its hells.
Holes in the day you fall down.”
This is quite a surprising and confronting poem. Further in:
“...Then the Metro rehearses you
for that last torture before the mortuary.
Under the broken wing of your arm,
the little girl you’re sheltering
will surely go there first. Liverwurst
in sagging skins, already in the belly of a wolf
that howls and lurches underground.
No frail petals now, on any dark bough.”
Soon though we are back with a more familiar Kent, aware though now that everything comes at a price – six months in Paris traded for uncertainty, the necessity to deal with bureaucracy and of course homesickness – makes both Martin and Jean determined to make the most of their time in Paris and capture, even at a later date, what it was like to live there. From Rue Geoffroy l’Asnier:
“The geraniums I plant in my Paris window box
Are liquorice allsorts: Antipodean anarchy –
candy-pink, scarlet and white, not single-tinted
elegant confections like my neighbours.”
I could go on quoting all the marvellous lines that jump out at me, complimented by Martin’s artwork:
“cocooned in sleeping bags like a Contemporary Art installation,
their disorderly heads hidden, their futures frozen
under a ceiling of stars.”
“I need trees.
So that is why, each Sunday in Paris,
I go to the Jardin des Plantes.”
“The dowager trees near Quai St Bernard are dancing.
They have no choice. Though they are withered,
wind lilts their branches, waltzing free
the last frail leaves.”
This is an elegant and perceptive guide to Paris, a Paris most of us won’t get to see. If you, like me, can’t afford to travel then walk with Jean and Martin Kent and let them tell you about the Paris they know and love, both the dark and the light. A wonderful collection. Highly recommended.
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