Paul Munden

Nigel Kennedy is one of the world's foremost violinists. His achievements have been met with great acclaim, not least his ability, both as performer and composer, to move across and blend an extraordinary range of musical genres and styles, resisting any notion of classification. Yet he remains a controversial figure, having rocked the classical music establishment with his radical innovations and uncompromising views. Paul Munden has followed Nigel Kennedy's musical journey for many years, and here sets down his reflections on everything he has gained from that experience. From a poet's perspective, he writes about Kennedy's extraordinary output, indeed the poetry of his playing. A sequence of chapters exploring various themes is interspersed with original poems, the idea deriving from Kennedy's own improvised transitoires.

This latest project of 'authorised theft' amongst poetic friends sees them raiding the 19th century for inspiration-across a variety of artforms. But C19 here is not just a past century; it is also the terrible present moment in which we live, and in which this remarkable collaborative work has been written.

The six senses have rarely been invoked in such sustained and evocative poetical terms. Whether one wants to understand touch, taste, smell, hearing, intuition or sight, this volume provides myriad avenues enabling a rich appreciation of sensory experience.

'Munden's vivid, well realised poems range across hemispheres and centuries, embracing music, art, film, historical events, and the potent catalysts of love, illness and death. In these pages our human frailties are apprehended with both a clear eye and a tender attentiveness.' Judy Johnson 'In Chromatic, Munden's superb use of contrapuntal texture and accumulating melodies announce a fractured and injured reality, set against the visceral burn of passion. The rich musicality of these poems speaks eloquently of beauty and love, both physical and divine. The darker harmonies are often brilliantly jittery in their interwoven and compulsive juxtapositions, accentuating the poems' silences and apertures. In Chromatic, Munden unlocks the musical performance inside his poems, and the result is transportive and rapturous.' Cassandra Atherton 'In this complex and intricately constructed volume, lyric poems address sometimes difficult, sometimes bewildering aspects of human existence head on, and in surprising and scintillating ways. Paul Munden tantalises and beguiles us with rich evocations of the mysterious and the opaque, reminding us of the strangeness of life and the mystery at the core of what we know.' Paul Hetherington