"Complicated Pleasures is his first collection and in it he demonstrates an awareness of the realpolitik of global marketing and global terrorism. In the title poem, lovers sleep while countries are invaded and the fates of populations decided... 'Southern Shores' echoes Yeats's 'A Prayer for My Daughter' in the speaker's wish for a charm to protect a small child, 'to gird you a little against what will come, / or even against the everyday difficulties, / let me wish you privacy'. In 'Silent Alarm' the menace comes from the technology of credit checks and Google. Yet set against these fears is the belief that humans must continue to connect, that the 'body beside me' is the only constant that makes sense of an increasingly irrational world."
Nessa O'Mahony, The Irish Times
Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at North Monastery and UCC. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals and he was shortlisted in 2005 for a Hennessy award. The poems in Complicated Pleasures, his debut collection, exist on the border between the personal and the political, combining delicately lyrical meditations on love, art and memory with darker works that confront head-on the pressures and uncertainties of an urban globalised. Complicated Pleasures is a first collection of considerable daring and undeniable accomplishment.
Nessa O'Mahony, The Irish Times
Billy Ramsell was born in Cork in 1977 and educated at North Monastery and UCC. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals and he was shortlisted in 2005 for a Hennessy award. The poems in Complicated Pleasures, his debut collection, exist on the border between the personal and the political, combining delicately lyrical meditations on love, art and memory with darker works that confront head-on the pressures and uncertainties of an urban globalised. Complicated Pleasures is a first collection of considerable daring and undeniable accomplishment.