Patrick Chapman has one of the most distinctive and creative voices in Irish poetry today. This book contains 22 new poems and selected work from his five previous collections: Jazztown (1991), The New Pornography (1996), Breaking Hearts and Traffic Lights (2007), A Shopping Mall on Mars (2008) and The Darwin Vampires (2010).
Chapman’s work has always followed its own imaginative path – heartfelt yet adventurous, shocking yet moving – exploring themes of lost childhood innocence, fractured love, fear and mortality.
“One of the very best Irish poets born in the last 40 years... You avoid him at your cool-quotient peril.”
Todd Swift
Patrick Chapman was born in County Roscommon in 1968. He has twice been a finalist in the Sunday Tribune Hennessy Literary Awards. He is also a scriptwriter, working in children’s TV, on Doctor Who audio-plays, and adapting his own short-story for Burning the Bed (2003), a short film starring Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen which received several awards on the US festival circuit and a general theatrical release across the UK. He lives in Dublin.