After Party

· Pan Macmillan
Ebook
80
Pages
Eligible
This book will become available on September 25, 2025. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this ebook

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Dean Browne arrives at the After Party with the maturity and style of an altogether more seasoned poet. In a debut collection of standout and stand-alone poems, each tests the boundaries of its unique universe. Browne is a mesmeric teller of strange tales, imaginings that can seem origamically contained within the compressed dimensions of a poem. A leg sets off on a long train journey; a Parisian alley cat is launched into space; earthbound lovers attempt to connect while their inner lives prove unbridgeable.

Losses are mourned: two poets elegized here – Charles Simic and the late Donegal poet Matthew Sweeney – might offer a fingerpost of sensibilities, though Browne’s significant talent is distinctly his own. After Party introduces a beguiling, resonant new voice, a raised eyebrow and fidelity to the image – sometimes carried along the tightrope much further than seems possible. In poems that are both death-haunted and youthful, and thrumming with a delicious dark humour, Dean Browne brings a much-needed injection of the surreal – or the surreal-ish as he might prefer to say – to Ireland’s rising generation.

‘Poems that sneak in the side-door then exit through the ceiling’ – Caroline Bird

‘Dean Browne is a terrific poet: his language is agile and fresh, his ideas surprising, and the reader feels invigorated, renewed – and lucky to have met such poems’ – Nick Laird

About the author

Dean Browne is from Tipperary, Ireland, and lives in Cork. He received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet Kitchens at Night was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. After Party is his debut collection.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.