the x of y
Originally released from Eyewear Publishing
3rd May 2018 ISBN-13: 9781912477142 | Price: £10.99 / €12.49 / $14.99 Currently out of print, available from third party stores: Amazon (UK), Foyles Bookstore, Book Depository, Books Etc. and other stockists Reality and escapism, protection and peeling away, prayer and sacrilege, resistance and surrender; navigating an often complex and uneven playing field, Colin Dardis strives to find balance from a life constantly fluctuating between profit and loss. The poems on offer here explore questions of existence and identity, asking who we really are, and how we can possibly be.
"In the x of y we encounter a quirky, singular voice which sets the writer apart from the standing army of Irish poets ... there are poems of longing and loneliness here, engaged with the isolation the modern condition can bring about, but Dardis approaches these daily anxieties with a philosophical attitude shot through with wry humour." - Poetry Ireland Review |
"The poetry of Colin Dardis is multi-tonal. He can be tender or enraged, applying his observant eye and attuned ear to the every-day and the eternal and treating each with the same seriousness. His is a humane voice in a world of increasing dissonance, where identity politics threaten to overwhelm and dehumanise, where the kerbstone and telegraph pole blind too many to the real lives behind, where salvation may just lie in the revealed glory of a peeled boil egg. "
- Nessa O’Mahony
"The poems in Colin Dardis’ debut collection the x of y are as inventive, quirky and intriguing as the book’s title. Dardis is adept at making the familiar unfamiliar - he unsettles expectations and gives us new angles from which to contemplate activities as diverse as scrambling eggs, lighting a fire, shaving or visiting the dentist. And he is equally able to chart the difficult terrain of private shocks, as in ‘The Unforgettable Dog’, and collective sorrows, such as the bombing of Belfast during WW2, in the standout piece ‘Easter Tuesday, 1941’. These are vital, original poems - Dardis is a poet to watch."
- Kathleen McCracken
"In the x of y, Colin Dardis is a poetry sleuth, a gentle but dedicated interrogator of humanness; a subtle seeker-sifter who works to uncover and carefully examine evidence taken from the yin and yang of everydayness, from the daily dust of our routines and interactions with those around us, especially with those we hold dear. And, like all good sleuths, he invariably gets his wo/man."
- Adrian Rice
- Nessa O’Mahony
"The poems in Colin Dardis’ debut collection the x of y are as inventive, quirky and intriguing as the book’s title. Dardis is adept at making the familiar unfamiliar - he unsettles expectations and gives us new angles from which to contemplate activities as diverse as scrambling eggs, lighting a fire, shaving or visiting the dentist. And he is equally able to chart the difficult terrain of private shocks, as in ‘The Unforgettable Dog’, and collective sorrows, such as the bombing of Belfast during WW2, in the standout piece ‘Easter Tuesday, 1941’. These are vital, original poems - Dardis is a poet to watch."
- Kathleen McCracken
"In the x of y, Colin Dardis is a poetry sleuth, a gentle but dedicated interrogator of humanness; a subtle seeker-sifter who works to uncover and carefully examine evidence taken from the yin and yang of everydayness, from the daily dust of our routines and interactions with those around us, especially with those we hold dear. And, like all good sleuths, he invariably gets his wo/man."
- Adrian Rice