Product Description
Shortlisted for the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Prize for Poetry.
Radiance is a book firmly grounded in the reality of contemporary life, yet lit by empathy and humour. Kissane ranges from the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk to a sailing trip on Sydney harbour with Percy Shelley to the celebration of an enduring relationship with The Moon.
Lyrical, moving and surprising, these poems are warm and shining creations.
“This is daring and imaginative poetry. The poems in Radiance are clever, funny, tender and knowledgeable with an uncluttered clarity of thought and feeling that is very appealing. They are unafraid to go where they need to go. The last long sequence is a delight.”
—Brook Emery
“It’s rare for such empathy to coexist with supple poetics of this calibre. Mark Doty says a great poem requires the poet to build, with the raw material of experience, a vessel strong enough to contain its emotion. Kissane is such an artisan: the poems in Radiance are beautiful, watertight vessels that are full to the brim. Drink deeply.”
—Judy Johnson
“Kissane’s work is magnetic and uplifting. It is a poetry charged with great breadth of emotion and diversity of image. There is tremendous variety to his narratives and poem after poem is crafted to excellence. He is a delight to read and to listen to, and gave a riveting performance at Ó Bhéal, Cork.”
—Paul Casey
REVIEWS
“Beginning with the premise that the familiar is as strange and necessary a subject as anything arcane or unheimlich, his poems draw variously on his daily experiences and on the somewhat less ordinary lives he encounters in books.” MARTIN LANGFORD, Meanjin
“The book discovers radiance and human endurance in a world of compromise and betrayal, and celebrates imagination’s wild joy. The poems come from a five-year period from 2009 to 2013.” JOHN UPTON, Cordite Poetry Review
“Andy Kissane’s fourth collection, Radiance, is a heartening answer to those who, like publisher Stephen Matthews, lament that ‘many modern poets choose to shroud their work in point-scoring obscurity at a time when clarity and accessibility might encourage more people to read poetry’. Kissane doesn’t address this issue directly, but his book is an important negative instance.” GEOFF PAGE, Australian Book Review (paywalled)\
“Though the poems in Radiance are powerful and hard-hitting – making the familiar new, and challenging the reader’s perspective, the entire collection is suffused with warmth that continues to charm, even when we’re reading about horror. These are poems that, regardless of theme, remain unabashedly positive, at times, extremely funny, and inviting, even as they’re undermining our prejudices. This is a collection that will bring the reader much delight, without ever sacrificing depth, intensity, or literary power.” MAGDALENA BALL, Compulsive Reader
“[His poem] The Sea of Tranquillity brings together the components of Kissane’s very particular style which are at work in this collection: his magic realism; his ability to describe love and adoration, warts and all; his humour; his long narrative line and his unveiling of radiance/Radiance. The collection as a whole is slender, elegant and well-constructed.” ANNA KERDIJIK NICHOLSON, Mascara Literary Review
