THE COLLECTION OF POEMS
By Bill Nevins
Light Bending
Enjoy a rolicking collection that spans over fifty years of American life. Light Bending: Collected Poems of Bill Nevins brings together a lifetime of work from one of our most passionately engaged poets — poems that confront injustice, celebrate love and beauty, mourn profound loss, and bear witness to history.
From growing up in the Catholic Church to the Irish Troubles, from the mountains of the American Southwest to the grief of losing a son in Afghanistan, Nevins writes with raw honesty, lyrical power, and moral urgency.
This is not quiet or distant poetry — it is alive with truth-telling, rage, tenderness, and light.
Why This Book Stands Out
Light Bending gathers the best of Bill Nevins’ work across decades, offering a powerful retrospective of a poet who refuses to look away. His poems challenge readers to examine their own values while giving voice to love, loss, political fury, and hard-won hope.
Collected poems spanning more than 50 years of American life and politics
Deeply personal and politically engaged writing
Explores Irish heritage, war and peace, faith, family, and the American Southwest
Powerful praise from fellow poets and writers
A passionate, truth-telling voice that balances despair with celebration
This is essential reading for those who believe poetry can illuminate our deepest struggles and highest aspirations.
More Than a Book—A Meaningful Experience
Light Bending is a book to return to again and again — for solace, clarity, courage, or reflection. Perfect for quiet evenings, political thinkers, poetry lovers, or anyone navigating grief, justice, or the search for meaning in turbulent times.
It makes a thoughtful and lasting gift for readers of contemporary poetry, Irish-American literature, or anyone who values poetry that matters in the real world.
Discover Engaged Poetry & Collected Works
If you're searching for contemporary American poetry, political poetry, Irish American poetry, poems about grief and loss, or powerful collected poems, Light Bending: Collected Poems of Bill Nevins offers a passionate, luminous, and unflinching voice. A significant addition to any poetry collection.
About the Author
Bill Nevins
Bill Nevins, born August 4, 1947, is a poet, a songwriter, a journalist, and a retired University of New Mexico educator who has worked in various media including film and video. Bill grew up in the US northeast and has lived in New Mexico since 1996. Bill graduated from Iona College, did graduate work in literature at U. of Connecticut and U. California at Berkeley and visited Ireland, Spain, Mexico, NYC, New Orleans and other places during both troubled and happier times. Bill is also a member of La Raza Unida, The National Writers Union, and Irish-American Writers and Artists. bill_nevins@yahoo.com
FROM A RECENT REVIEW of Light Bending:
Bill Nevins takes us on a journey through this past century in this little gem of a collection of wonderful poems. I will be brief, as the power of poetry is in the few words chosen to tell the big things without baggage or bragging. This book speaks volumes in a few perfect brush strokes which paint a people’s history.
“Tunnel Rat” brings back memories of the worst, nightmarish jobs the Americans sent to Vietnam had to do, in these days when honesty has been set aside and truth murdered. It brings me back to days with friends who did return, but sat in a crowded room, alone and their eyes focused on things no one else in the room could have seen.
He writes of the generational difference between fathers and sons, the things which shaped those differences that we can know but never in the bones understand, from Pearl Harbor to Dien Bien Phu, and Mountbatten’s demise.
And he writes of the moment, the razor sharp now. Those who are strangling history. He sits us down in the deadly cold of the ICE detention disgrace, but also to the defeat and victory of Greasy Grass.
But also, the poetry of our Celtic past, the mists of time and heroic memory. This is the soul of Irish America, but also the soul of America, those original Nations, and the people who are coming and will be the us, the USA of tomorrow. It is a great collection.
~Lorcan Otway, Former owner of Theatre 80 and The Museum of the American Gangster