Crisis Actor

(Paperback, Main)

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'Elegant and heartaching, these poems illuminate the sorrows of life with a bright flame, returning us to that miraculous human capacity for love and faith even in our darkest days.' - Liz Berry
'Declan Ryan reveals himself a master of both the telling detail and of narrative suspense. Each exquisitely orchestrated vignette delivers a punch worthy of the heroes of the ring here commemorated.' - Mark Ford


Crisis Actor chronicles various failures and farewells. It is peopled by faded heroes and deferential devotees; a hanged donkey, a bloated rat; solitary bachelors and disillusioned youths - these are the watchers, not the players. The poems are awash with rueful self-accusation and laconic scepticism. There are touching elegies, reportage and bruised, wary replayings. A blistering sequence about boxers and their fates weaves through the collection. The overwhelming sense is of life going on elsewhere, the halcyon days and brightest of years long past. This is the aftermath of being one who - in Matthew Arnold's words - 'has reached his utmost limits and finds . . . himself far less than he had imagined himself'.But there are still flashes of camaraderie, of stars aligning: lunchtimes in sunlit garden squares, languorous pub afternoons, cheering on and hard-won triumphs. These precious, precarious moments point to how we might reclaim potential, discover human connection in times of defeat or despair, and reach towards grace and redemption.

Author Bio

Declan Ryan was born in Mayo, Ireland and lives in London. He has published two poetry pamphlets, Faber New Poets 12 (2014) and Fighters, Losers (2019). His first collection, Crisis Actor, is forthcoming from Faber in 2023. His reviews and essays, mostly on poetry and boxing, have appeared in journals including the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The Baffler, Guardian, Observer, Poetry, New Statesman and Los Angeles Review of Books.