Peter Dent (born 9 May 1938) is an English editor, poet, and former school teacher whose poetry has moved from spare notations to linguistic experiments.
Career
Dent was born in Forest Gate, London, on 9 May 1938 but spent most of his childhood in Surrey. After serving in the Signals section of the RAF between 1957 and 9, he worked in offices and a library before training as a primary school teacher at Reading University. Thereafter he taught between 1971 and 1991. He was the editor/publisher of Interim Press from 1975 to 1987, starting this while living in Egham. In 1978 he moved to Budleigh Salterton, where he has lived since. He taught at Drakes Primary School, East Budleigh.
Dent's poetry began as spare notations in which time, place and emotion form a unified whole, which identified him with the writers of Agenda magazine. He has moved on since into both verse and prose poetry of considerable stylistic experiment. His latest writing consists of linguistic constructs of both humour and ingenuity. Peter Hughes has described the way "Language of political disinformation or advertising morphs into that of intimate reflection. A vocabulary of emotional intensity suddenly appears in corporate training talk. Words wriggle free of context to resonate afresh in unexpected settings. The texts breach categories of inside and outside, public and private, control and freedom – thus questioning, reviewing and re-presenting the nature of the boundaries."
Dent's writing has earned him a place in anthologies of those standing outside the mainstream poetic tradition in both the UK and the USA. In 2009 he was guest poet at the Porlock Arts Festival.