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About the Book
Guardian Reader’s Book of the Year, 2007
As with so much in this absorbing book, the title opens onto other, more painful and more puzzling perspectives. Touch and taste, history and healing, are thematic in Jenner’s poetry, which is ultimately about (im)mortality and bloody Time itself - James Keery, PN Review (193)
About Bloody Time is brilliant, full of tactical love of language, attractively drawn to events and arts as well as to the terrible obligations of pastoral and ethical. Best point is that page after page there are things I’m glad I’ve encountered and almost as frequently signs emerge which are new to me and happily met - Peter Porter (2009)
Rich and complex. For me there are essentially two kinds of ‘difficult poetry’—material I find worth engaging with…and that which I don’t. Jenner’s work is very clearly in the first category - Steve Spence, Stride‘Xenakis’, for instance, is a classic - Andrew Duncan
There is genius in this poetry - Martin Seymour-Smith (1998)
Of course, this is ‘difficult’ or ‘modern’ poetry. I believe, however, that the world will catch up with it. This little review is to let you have advance warning so that later on you will be able to say ‘I told you so’ - David Pollard, Tears in the Fence (51)
Simon Jenner is a serious and witty writer. His work is difficult but rewards close attention... There may well be a considerable new poet on the horizon. In my opinion, his best work is yet to come - Robert NyeSuperbly original, I think great poetry - Jeremy Reed
This collection alchemises its way into “the time of a poem” with richness and brilliance. I will be reading it for a long time - Christina Viti
About the Author
Simon Jenner was born in Cuckfield, Sussex in 1959. Failing everything at school except art, he learnt to fly instead, although discovering poetry forestalled a career in airframes. He was belatedly educated at Leeds, then Cambridge, where his PhD topic was paradoxically ’Oxford Poetry of the 1940s’. Despite early recognition from poets such as Martin Seymour-Smith, Peter Porter and Robert Nye, Jenner’s solo mono-lingual debut was curiously delayed: uniquely, his debut came with two bi-lingual volumes published in Germany, in 1996 and ’97 – and parallel texts in English and German. His British debut collection, About Bloody Time, was published eventually by Waterloo Press in 2007. Extensive reviews of this volume appeared in Stride (Steve Spence), Tears in the Fence 51 (David Pollard), and PN Review (Jim Keery). Prior to this debut, he undertook poetry tours in Germany in 1996 and 1997 (hence the bi-lingual collections), a South East Arts Bursary in 1999, Royal Literary Fund grants in 2003 and 2006 and appearances on the BBC between 1999 and 2003. He has been Director of Survivors' Poetry since 2003 and, since 2008, has also been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow, first, at the University of East London. He took up the same post at Chichester University in September 2009.