After Party

After Party is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and marks the debut collection by Dean Browne, who arrives with the maturity and style of a more seasoned poet.

Each poem in this standout and stand-alone collection tests the boundaries of its unique universe. Browne, a mesmeric teller of strange tales, creates imaginative narratives that can seem origamically contained within the compressed dimensions of a poem. A leg sets off on a long train journey; a Parisian alley cat is launched into space; earthbound lovers attempt to connect while their inner lives prove unbridgeable.

Losses are mourned, with two poets elegised here: Charles Simic and the late Donegal poet Matthew Sweeney, who might offer a fingerpost of sensibilities. Yet, Browne's significant talent is distinctly his own. After Party introduces a beguiling, resonant new voice with a raised eyebrow and fidelity to the image - sometimes carried along the tightrope much further than seems possible.

In poems that are both death-haunted and youthful, and thrumming with a delicious dark humour, Dean Browne brings a much-needed injection of the surreal - or the surreal-ish, as he might prefer to say - to Ireland's rising generation.

'Poems that sneak in the side-door then exit through the ceiling' - Caroline Bird

'Dean Browne is a terrific poet: his language is agile and fresh, his ideas surprising, and the reader feels invigorated, renewed - and lucky to have met such poems' - Nick Laird