“Revisiting the Revolution”: Review of David Wheatley’s The President of Planet Earth

In the Summer 2018 issue of Poetry London, Claire Crowther writes:

Irish poet, academic and critic, [David] Wheatley is firstly a satirist. A previous collection was titled Mocker and there, as well as here, the narrating persona debunks himself along with the world. … Learned but never dry, always witty and surprising, Wheatley scampers through the arts, music, painting and history in this big bazaar of a book but scatters bitterness along the way.

She goes on to describe the “variousness” of these poems’ “humour and forms,” and comments on Wheatley’s long-time fascination with birds, which turn up again and again in The President of Planet Earth. Using the poem “Tunnels Through the Head” as an example of a poem in which “birds … fly in and out almost unnoticed,” Crowther says that these birds remind the reader that, “given the pigeon is dead, even a satirist poet needs to sing occasionally. Wheatley does, like a nightingale, but is a great poet because of his raven tendencies.”

Read the full review in the Summer 2018: Issue 90 of Poetry London.

The President of Planet Earth was published in December 2017. Read more about David Wheatley on his author page.