Radiance

$25.00 inc GST

Product Description

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

MEANJIN

“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

CORDITE

“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

ABR

“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

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