The Poetry Circle
present
A Poetry Reading and Book Launch with Oran Ryan
Fri 25th Oct 2019 7.30pm

Nelly’s Cafe, Nicholas St., Limerick

The book will be launched by poet Kevin Higgins.

Portrait of an Atheist Monk at Prayer, Oran Ryan’s first collection, reflects on the nature of existence in a world of conflicting ideologies and belief systems, an age seeking certainty in a post truth state, an era of rising new empires and changing values and faiths, an era of absolutist thinking that hides a deep uncertainty about once seemingly timeless values. It’s also about sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, and robots.

“Like a Fly Agaric gospel from outer space, these poems are a hallucinogenic Book of Revelations.” John W. Sexton

“In poems of sometimes cosmic irony, comedy and tragedy dance together in a way that is often sublime.” Kevin Higgins

“The questing gnostic voice, rising from the tumult of discordant collision at the interface of popular culture and organised religion, speaks to both seeker and saved.” Eamon Carr

ORAN RYAN is a writer living in Ireland. He has written novels: The Death of Finn (Seven Towers, 2006) Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger (Seven Towers 2007), and One Inch Punch (Seven Towers, 2012). He has written plays: Don Quixote has Been Promoted(2009, Ranelagh Arts Festival) for the Stage and radio: Preliminary Design For a Universe Circling Spacecraft(KRPN, San Francisco, California 2010) He has written and published short stories, poetry and literary critical articles, particularly on William Burroughs, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace as well as editing and contributing to a recent critical volume on Doris Lessing calledFragmented Societies: Feminism, Love and Identity in the Novels of Doris Lessing. He lectures on James Joyce, particularly Finnegans Wake.

KEVIN HIGGINS, whose best-selling first collection, The Boy With No Face, published by Salmon Poetry, was short-listed for the 2006 Strong Award for Best First Collection by an Irish poet.Kevin’s second collection of poems, Time Gentlemen, Please, was published in 2008 by Salmon Poetry and his poetry is discussed in The Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry. His third
collection Frightening New Furniture was published in 2010 by Salmon and his work also appears in the generation defining anthology Identity Parade –New British and Irish Poets (Ed. Roddy
Lumsden, Bloodaxe, 2010). A collection of Kevin’s essays and book reviews, Mentioning The War, was published in 2012 by Salmon Poetry. His next collection of poetry, The Ghost in The Lobby, will be published in early 2014, also by Salmon.

Details: limerickwriterscentre@gmail.com Tel 087 2996409