John W. Sexton
Autore di Johnny Coffin School-Dazed
Sull'Autore
Opere di John W. Sexton
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Altri nomi
- Sex W. Johnston
- Data di nascita
- 1958
- Sesso
- male
- Luogo di residenza
- Kerry
- Premi e riconoscimenti
- Listowel Poetry Prize 2007
Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry 2007 - Breve biografia
- John W. Sexton was born in 1958 is the author of three poetry collections: The Prince’s Brief Career, foreword by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, (Cairn Mountain Press, 1995), Shadows Bloom / Scáthanna Faoi Bhláth, a book of haiku with translations into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock, and mostrecently Vortex (Doghouse, 2005). He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTE radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes. His novels based on this series, The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed are both published by The O’Brien Press, and have been translated into Italian and Serbian. Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem The Green Owl won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.
Utenti
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Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 8
- Opere correlate
- 3
- Utenti
- 37
- Popolarità
- #390,572
- Voto
- 4.2
- Recensioni
- 1
- ISBN
- 6
Before opening this book the only work of John W. Sexton that I had been exposed to was “Johnny Coffin School-Dazed”, a spin-off novel from the RTE children’s radio show, “The Ivory Tower” (also John’s work), and his excellent performance of a number of his comic, if not nonsense, poems.
Having collected the book I sequestered myself (not an easy thing to do when you’re in your late forties) and prepared for a side-splitting read. What I got was an emotional slalom (had to use “slalom” to avoid the clichéd “roller-coaster”) that had me sad, happy, aghast, shocked, and, on at least two occasions, in tears. I read the sixty-four pages of poetry in one sitting. I don’t even like poetry and to find myself unable to put this book down without reading to the end was unnerving.
Four days later I picked the book up and read right through it again with the exact same emotional response.
Every poem flowed to its own rhythm and style. The words were so crafted that images just poured into my mind. There was no esoteric language designed to bamboozle the reader and prove the ingenuity of the poet. Every poem was accessible and filled with feeling.
So much for the emotions. What caused this response to the works in “Vortex”?
The language and the pace make all the works easy to read. You are not conscious of reading a poem but are freed to absorb the content, and, more importantly, feel the emotion.
The collection includes incidents with family members, childhood memories, moments of magical fantasy and glimpses of the world from the viewpoint of the animal kingdom, as in “Hedgehog Speaks”.
The poem giving the collection its name, touches on the love of a father for his son; the poet and his son. John invokes the horrors of Nazi medical experiments and imagines what Dr. Mengele would do to his son where he in his hands.
“Old tobacco tins” brings to life the smells emanating from a play-thing of a simpler age. “Roland gets it” traces the ebbing life of a boy who received a bump to the head at school. “One of those days with your mother” brings you back to the distant time as a very young child when life was spent in your mother’s company.
Interspersed with these emotional trips are musings on nature and descriptions of happenings in the world of magical spiritualism.
“Annunciation” tells of the coming of a modern day son of a technological/sociological/psychological god.
The brief description of a handful of poems does nothing other than hint at the breadth of topics included in this collection. It also does nothing to convey the affect the poems have on the reader.
This is not one work. It is forty-four works and all I can do is let you know how it affected me. I am not qualified to provide technical assessment of poetry but I can tell you this book had an impact on me. I can honestly say I now view poetry in a new light.
Having finished reading “Vortex” I felt I had been eavesdropping on John’s personal and most intimate thoughts and feelings. I felt these poems had been written for the poet himself and the fact that other people were going to read them was incidental.… (altro)