Over Here

$15.95

In Over Here, Alan Gillis reveals surreal intersections of mind and world, neither of which are stable: “For the mind is the sea, / the mind is mountains, rivers, and the great earth / moving and suspended until it’s not.” If Gillis’s poems feel like a high-wire act, they remain grounded, conscious of the threat of a brutal fall. Violence is often at the edges, as are anxieties of climate change, the staggering death toll of the pandemic, toxic masculinity, and internet trolls. Still, humor is a staple in this volume: “my head and backbone / through demonic consubstantiation, / are now seventy-five percent smartphone.” Equally attentive to pastoral possibility and our digital reality, to poetic form and even the poetic use of emojis, Gillis answers angst with an abundant hope—in language, in nature, and their intermingling intricacies:

It’s hard to be anything
other than a doomster, but we’re lifted by the swooshed pines
of this woodland, in and out of our minds,
its comedy of squirrels, moss-bed squelch, ladybird throng.

Praise for Alan Gillis

“Gillis’s voice is his own … The ground shifts in these existential poems.” —Martina Evans, The Irish Times

“Gillis is the dark star of contemporary Irish poetry, and a major talent.” —Conor O’Callaghan, Poetry Magazine

“Gillis gives contemporary poetry a much-needed shot in the arm; poetic language is vivified, made stimulating and vital, in poems that leave the reader hanging on for dear life over every expertly-executed turn.” —Maria Johnston, Poetry Ireland Review

“Gillis’s … ability to take a hammer to polite pieties does not involve sacrificing the ability to write affectingly about how we live now.” —John McAuliffe, The Irish Times

Customers in Ireland, the UK, and the EU: This title is available from The Gallery Press here.