Let the Dead by Dylan Brennan
112 pages
Paperback
8 June 2023
ISBN: 978-1-8383126-9-5
Longlisted:
Laurel Prize 2024
Deeply attuned to those things that make and unmake us, Dylan Brennan’s Let the Dead concerns itself with life’s alchemical processes.
A couple breathe life into a doomed poppet; a photographer immortalises a corpse; Joyce and Breton rub shoulders on the streets of the poet’s adopted Mexico, where life is a tapestry of ‘delicate anthers’ and ‘disembodied tongues’. These dark meditations are set against poems which consider love, miscarriage, childbirth and the daily miracle of family life.
Beautiful and disturbing by turns, these reflections on Ireland and Mexico’s shared colonial past invoke topographies both real and imagined, where ‘things in the ground have a tendency to grow.’ Let the Dead reminds us of the power of art to shape our perception of history, and of the artist’s responsibility in a time of violence.
About the Author
Dylan Brennan’s debut poetry collection, Blood Oranges (The Dreadful Press, 2014), was awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Award runner-up prize. In 2016 he co-edited Rethinking Juan Rulfo’s Creative World: Prose, Photography, Film with Prof. Nuala Finnegan, and in 2017 he collaborated on Guadalupe & Other Hallucinations, an illustrated e-book, with visual artist Jonathan Brennan. He is a recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry bursary award. He lives in Mexico City.
Author photo by Liliana Pérez-Brennan
Media
Poetry People | RTE Radio 1 | 27 October 2024
New poetry: Jane Clarke, Maura Dooley, Airea Matthews and Dylan Brennan | The Irish Times | 21 August 2023
Let the Dead by Dylan Brennan – Poetry in Focus | RTE Culture | 12 July 2023
When I didn’t know what to write I turned to the dead, more specifically, The Dead | The Irish Times | 9 June 2023