The Sun King

$14.95

The poems in The Sun King celebrate love and lament its loss; bathe in the warmth of family while standing in the cold; see sexuality as a life force and measure the pulse of betrayal with a clarity that is nothing short of disarming. At times, O’Callaghan can be clever in the very best sense regarding technique and poetic voice, handling one with virtuosity and interrogating the other with postmodern zeal. At others, he drops his guard and witnesses the given life with a candor and simplicity that is made even more powerful because it has been so richly earned. All emotion is parried and tested with a command of poetry’s themes and forms that is as deft as one is likely to encounter anywhere by anyone.

Note on the cover: The cover features a work by artist Paul Bright, Assistant Director, Charlotte & Philip Hanes Art Gallery, Wake Forest University.

WFU Press is pleased to provide a Reader’s Companion to The Sun King in free, downloadable PDF format. Download the Reader’s Companion here.

Read an interview with Conor O’Callaghan about The Sun King, conducted by WFU Press intern Nicole Fitzpatrick.

Praise for The Sun King 

“Exhilaratingly contemporary . . . O’Callaghan’s best book to date.”
– John McAuliffe, The Irish Times

“The most sonically alive of poets . . . The Sun King beats radiant gold out of the dark shards, the refuse and refusals, of life.”
– Maria Johnston, Tower Poetry 

“Conor O’Callaghan exhibits an almost Shakespearean tendency to render reality not only by means of literary devices but in terms of those very tropes and conceits. Again and again in this his superbly reflexive fourth collection parts of the world are compared to linguistic concepts.”
– Billy Ramsell, The Stinging Fly