Dean Browne arrives at the After Party with the maturity and style of an altogether more seasoned poet. In a debut collection of standout and stand-alone poems, each tests the boundaries of its unique universe. Browne is a mesmeric teller of strange tales, imaginings 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: two poets elegized here – Charles Simic and the late Donegal poet Matthew Sweeney – might offer a fingerpost of sensibilities, though Browne's significant talent is distinctly his own. After Party introduces a beguiling, resonant new voice, 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 Dean Browne is from Tipperary, Ireland, and lives in Cork. He received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by SmithDoorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. After Party is his debut collection. A suite of surrealist poems from a brilliant new voice in Irish poetry.
