Bøger af Kevin Kiely

Quintesse by Kevin Kiely'There will be those who'll say it's a cop out, and those who'll say it's a manifesto; those who'll say it's a fragment, and those who'll say it's a bible. There will be those who'll say it's drunk on its own excesses; and those who'll say this very delirium is its greatness.'-Aubrey Dillon-Malone The Evening Herald.'Neither slick nor over-clever, betraying all the ingredients of the genuine fools of literature in whom an unconscious nobility rather than rebellion is the mainspring.'-Gillman Noonan The Irish Times'Kiely's prose presents a stream of surreal images, evoking an Ireland that is part real and part literary tradition.' -Stephen H Cape Library Journal New York'As did the mature Nabokov in Ada, the novice Kiely offers a sort of palimpsest of erotic memories, in which old experience glimmers beneath the surface of new.' -Stephen Whittaker Best Seller New York'This first novel has quite a simple plot, I have read it three times to establish this, and it was worth it.'-Gerry Colgan The Irish Independent

Kevin Kiely writing about Heaney's collected verse in 'The Irish Independent' and 'Village: politics and culture' met with widespread condemnation from the Heaney clique. Supporters of Kiely's critiques agree that famous Seamus as exalted verse-maker is fraudulent. This is the only full-length book (so far) defending poetry against the exorbitant claims of the self-protective Heaney cult. There is a plea to discerning students, scholars and teachers imposed upon by Heaney's low resolution verse. All of Heaney's collections and translations are critically exposed, alongside his interview statements and criticism. Academic ghouls who 'made' his reputation are 'outed' including Harold Bloom, Helen Vendler, John Carey, Blake Morrison, Karl Miller, Peter Levi, Andrew Motion, Lachlan Mackinnon, Clive James and Christopher Ricks among the easily bought. The conspiracy is located in Faber & Faber's contemporary mediocrity as 'poetry publisher' after their high modernist, post-modernist successes. 'Heaney knows that he can never be Yeats'-Declan Kiberd. 'A minor talent, grossly over praised for political reasons. His talents as a poet wouldn't, in a sane world, have taken him further than the parish magazine, but he is hailed as a Nobel Prize winner.'-A. N. Wilson'-I have enough of the aborted scholar in me to express doubt about the advisability of studying Iris Murdoch or William Golding or Philip Larkin or Seamus Heaney in a university course.'-Anthony Burgess-'Heaney was preparing books for Faber.'-James Simmons 'A minor poet [...] elevated to a touchstone of contemporary taste.'-David Lloyd'-Political correctness came as naturally to him as breathing'-John Bayley-'Heaney unable ever to address the relation between politics and writing more than superficially' -Tom Herron

Poets, Poetry and Patronage: focusing on Harvard's 'Patron of Poetry'-the Brooklyn-born millionaire, John L 'Jack' Sweeney (1906-1986) who 'worked for free' in the Woodberry Poetry Room (HU). He was a pioneer in the recording of poets reading their poems. He ameliorated Harvard's fractious dealings with poets-in William James' term 'undisciplinables'-and pursued a precipitous diplomatic role on campus. Suspicious of the hermeneutics and theories within the academy, he supported American genius from modernism onwards to the 1980s including Berryman, Creeley, Cummings, Eliot, Lowell, Olson, Plath, Pound, Rich, Stevens, and 'the sturdy beggar' Dylan Thomas. Jack Sweeney reached out to a constellation of 20th century poets, not merely schools and movements but also mavericks and outsiders in conflict with professors and curricula, real poetry versus academic poetry; and he eventually quit the groves of academe for patronage outside of Harvard's walls.The non-academic Introduction and A-Z present a subversive scholarly, holographic, critical, biographical history of poetry based on unpublished letters and vast resources, unravelling the poetics, the politics, triumphs and tragedies. Poets in breakdown and breakthrough, madness and suicide, agony, ecstasy, and comedy; and producing immortal poetry and literature which is free patronage to the university system. 'Jack Sweeney, waiting, gracious, whitehaired, loveable, in the quiet sanctum of the poetry room.'-Sylvia Plath 'Jack Sweeney, he introJUICED Dylan [Thomas] to Harvard.'-Ezra Pound'You do know, don't you, Jack, that I appreciate all you have done for me and think of you always with great fondness.'-Anne Sexton'Benevolent Jack Sweeney!'-Marianne Moore 'Dear Jack, Thank you for your Phi Beta Kappa poem ("An Arch for Janus"). I liked the poem. I found it moving, especially, for some reason, the reference to John Quincy Adams.'-T. S. Eliot 'My staunch friend Jack Sweeney (himself a poet) who runs the Harvard 'record room'"-E. E. Cummings

'UCD Belfield Metaphysical: New and Selected Poems' contains two previously published collections 'Plainchant for a Sundering' and 'Breakfast with Sylvia' along with Kiely's most recent poems published in magazines, journals and newspapers in Ireland, England, and the United States. The new poems under the 'metaphysical label' resonate beyond the 'refinement' of language as wordscape. The metaphysical quest varies in each poem as the work of a poet whose lines are 'given' rather than engineered into position to achieve certain effects. The poetry mirrors the fleeting recognition of the universal metaphysics evoked, made present and living. The lines in their final form and content register the intensity and boundless openness of the poems. Kevin Kiely, like quite a few of his literary contemporaries, has a reputation as strong in Europe and the US as it is here. -James J. McAuley The Irish Times Kiely's style-and the liberty of his voice-has more to do with those few Irish poets who have been exposed to a working European modernity; the work is given its head, allowed to find its own form. This is dark, almost Gothic stuff, not for the poetically squeamish. -Fred Johnston Poetry Ireland ReviewKiely jolts us into another dimension of language, where speech is worked like molten metal, throwing off sparks.-Barbara Ellis Iota (London) Here poetry redeems itself in Kiely's assured perspective. The title poem is in two parts which, if they were music, must resonate of Bach. -Tommy Frank O'Connor Studies Successful is his series about famous artistic personalities. The mix is eclectic: 'Requiem for Kurt Cobain' sits between 'Who's Afraid of Ezra Pound?' and 'Skimming Sam Beckett', while Ovid, Buddha, and Coleridge all inspire poems of their own. -Val Nolan Poetry Ireland ReviewKevin Kiely [...] haunted by real and imagined women, and by how the most ancient myths are the most contemporary. He's an essential voice with the news that stays news.-Norman C Weinstein, author of 'No Wrong Notes'

Francis Stuart (1902-2000) published 25 novels, including 'Black List, Section H' (King Penguin). He was critically acclaimed as a young poet and writer by W.B Yeats among other notable literary figures; however, his wartime broadcasts from Berlin for Hitler's Third Reich immediately established lifelong controversy with Nazi collaboration, issues of criminality and dissidence which permeate his writings. He and his Polish lover, Madeleine Meissner were arrested by the French in Post-War Freiburg where he wrote 'The Freiburg Trilogy'.His life events read like the epic novel of a flawed hero. His father's suicide when Stuart was an infant became a family secret which he discovered during his marriage at age seventeen to Maud Gonne's daughter, Iseult, a former lover of Ezra Pound's. The marriage engulfed him in Irish Republicanism as soldier and gunrunner in the Civil War. He established a reputation as international novelist and aristocratic squire of Laragh Castle (Ireland) where he became a racehorse owner, chicken farmer, drinker, gambler and womaniser. His lifestyle ended on moving to Nazi Germany in 1940 (after a lecture tour there in 1939) organised through the German Ambassador Edouard Hempel. Stuart worked with German Intelligence (Abwehr), and also met members of the anti-Nazi Rote Kapelle'. As broadcaster and lecturer, he reached outcast status becoming a vagrant in post-war Europe. Having left his family in 1940, when his wife Iseult died in the 1950s he married Madeleine in London while they both under Inland Security surveillance. Stuart's return to Ireland in the 1960s meant losing his London Jewish publisher, Victor Gollancz. There followed two decades in the literary underground until his adoption as mascot by the ultra-conservative Arts Council group known as Aosdána. 'Enmeshed' in this group and dependent on them as funding cartel, he struggled for artistic freedom as covertly depicted in his later novels such as A Hole in the Head and The High Consistory. He consistently repudiated Nazism at the behest of the Irish Media yet remained a 'hostage' of Aosdána and their imposed establishment. The eclipse of his work by affiliation with Hitler remains, whereas he claimed that as 'criminal author' his vision had reached full utterance. In this Revised Edition, previously expunged material in the 2007 Liffey Press edition is restored with an exploratory Foreword relating to Stuart and Aosdána. There is a lengthy New Introduction appraising Stuart by Kiely who personally knew him over twenty years.'Stuart's labyrinthine life will hardly find a more detailed exposé'-David O'Donoghue The Sunday Business Post'Stuart predicted the course his life would take in his pre-war novels'-Tony Bailie The Irish News'Fascinatingly accurate echo of the controversial writer's own eerie voice'-Brian Lynch The Irish Times'The biographer's congenial access to Stuart lends authentic immediacy'-Richard T. Murphy New Hibernia Review

Breakfast with Sylvia (Lagan Press, Belfast, 2005; US Edition 2007) Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship Award 2006 'Kevin Kiely, like quite a few of his literary contemporaries, has a reputation as strong in Europe and the US as it is here.' -James J. McAuley The Irish Times 2005 'Kiely jolts us into another dimension of language, where speech is worked like molten metal, throwing off sparks, allusions, memories and experiences. Yet through the pyrotechnics shines the cool winter light of Donegal.' -Barbara Ellis Iota (London) 2006 'Here poetry redeems itself in Kiely's assured perspective. The title poem is in two parts which, if they were music, must resonate of Bach.' -Tommy Frank O'Connor Studies Spring 2006 "Successful is his series about famous artistic personalities. The mix is eclectic: 'Requiem for Kurt Cobain' sits between 'Who's Afraid of Ezra Pound?' and 'Skimming Sam Beckett', while Ovid, Buddha, and Coleridge all inspire poems of their own." -Val Nolan Poetry Ireland Review 2006 'Lyrical, original, faithful to the moment and its joys but with an undertone of sometimes rueful experience-these are the poems of a man who has come through.' -Anthony Cronin 'These poems are full of edgily real things, people and places caught in a sudden urgent perspective that shakes the reader with their nearness. A poem such as 'On a deserted beach with a Sony Walkman'' succeeds in doing this simultaneously with the material world and with emotions and ideas about art. There is nothing glum or staid here and much that is invigorating to read.' -Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 'The mythic mingles with the realistic, the spiritual touches the material world, the robust sexuality of many of the poems lies side by side with moments of delicate reticence. There's an energetic awareness of, and participation in the joy of being.' -Brendan Kennelly

THE WELKINN COMPLEX Psychological-Psychiatric Thriller Revised Edition Dr Strongbow, Director of The Excelsior Clinic in Guernsey is testing a new drug, 'XcellN' that can erase trauma and severe mental disabilities under controlled clinical conditions. Treatment is expensive and some of the clients (patients) are volunteers seeking escape from traumatic eclipse. Strongbow hires a fireball American, Dr Welkinn who begins an affair with Rosy Siggins of the Pandora Hotel.With the arrival of Welkinn's wife, Kay from America the Excelsior Clinic radiates fall-out not least involving Rosy and a Satanic Cult among a list of extremes leading to tragedy. 'Welkinn is surrounded by people who are cracking up and yet he functions with a cold detachment.' Tony Baillie 'The Irish News' 'Though the opening suggests a riff on Mel Brooks' movie "High Anxiety" the reader is quickly absorbed by an engrossing "noir" and serious read.' Geoffrey Elliott 'I Spy: The Secret Life of a British Agent' 'Kiely has written an international sensation. The Welkinn Complex is a doorway to the realities and cover ups interwoven into the ulterior motives of the treating physicians and drug manufacturers. The Welkinn Complex is the deliverance of realities through a complex fictional work.' Colin Sinclair 'The Janet Brook's Chronicles'

In May 1915 the ocean liner Lusitania sails from New York. It is rumoured to have spies on board. Thirteen-year-old stowaway Finbar Kennedy finds works as a deck-hand. He begins to understand what's happening, but there's nothing he or the crew can do. Then a torpedo from a german submarine hits ...