Winner of the inaugural Glen Dimplex New Writer Award for Poetry, 2006
"[S]o long as the poems are as snazzy, and sharply focused, and ingeniously rhymed as Iggy McGovern's one-pagers in The King of Suburbia, we can't complain. This first collection, from one whose reputation has preceded it, consists mainly of umpteen variations on the sonnet, one sestina at the end, and nonce-forms that read like resurrections of long-lost rhyme schemes. 'The Bony', for example, combines a spine of short-lined vertebraic stanzas cunningly connected by a spinal cord of rhyme. These assured formal techniques serve Prof McGovern's purpose very well, for he's a master of the ironic, the pun, the innuendo, and such feats of word-play as will keep a smile on any visage but that of the incorrigible cynic. We could do with a whole lot more of this kind of well-turned verse and sharply-observed ironies."
James J McAuley, The Irish Times
Iggy McGovern was born in Coleraine and resides in Dublin where he is Associate Professor of Physics at Trinity College. His poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals in Ireland and abroad, as well as in the popular ‘Poetry in Motion’ series on trains in the Dublin suburban rail system (DART). Well-known for his witty, playful, but emotionally engaged poems, McGovern is the recipient of the McCrae Literary Award and the Hennessy Literary Award for poetry. Originally published in November 2005 in a special pocket-sized edition, and already reprinted, some four months later, in a new standard format, The King of Suburbia is his first collection.
"[S]o long as the poems are as snazzy, and sharply focused, and ingeniously rhymed as Iggy McGovern's one-pagers in The King of Suburbia, we can't complain. This first collection, from one whose reputation has preceded it, consists mainly of umpteen variations on the sonnet, one sestina at the end, and nonce-forms that read like resurrections of long-lost rhyme schemes. 'The Bony', for example, combines a spine of short-lined vertebraic stanzas cunningly connected by a spinal cord of rhyme. These assured formal techniques serve Prof McGovern's purpose very well, for he's a master of the ironic, the pun, the innuendo, and such feats of word-play as will keep a smile on any visage but that of the incorrigible cynic. We could do with a whole lot more of this kind of well-turned verse and sharply-observed ironies."
James J McAuley, The Irish Times
Iggy McGovern was born in Coleraine and resides in Dublin where he is Associate Professor of Physics at Trinity College. His poetry has been widely published in anthologies and journals in Ireland and abroad, as well as in the popular ‘Poetry in Motion’ series on trains in the Dublin suburban rail system (DART). Well-known for his witty, playful, but emotionally engaged poems, McGovern is the recipient of the McCrae Literary Award and the Hennessy Literary Award for poetry. Originally published in November 2005 in a special pocket-sized edition, and already reprinted, some four months later, in a new standard format, The King of Suburbia is his first collection.