After Party

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation
A Sunday Times, Telegraph and Irish Times Book of the Year

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.

'Wildly expressive and exuberant, throwing out phrases and ideas almost recklessly. . . After Party is surely the start of an exceptional poetic career' – Graeme Richardson, Sunday Times Books of the Year

‘Poems that sneak in the side-door then exit through the ceiling’ – Caroline Bird

'The success of this Cork-based 31-year-old is by no means a surprise . . . But it’s still refreshing to encounter such a distilled, haunting voice' – Telegraph, Books of the Year

‘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