Breakfast with Sylvia

Breakfast with Sylvia (Lagan Press, Belfast, 2005; US Edition 2007) Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship Award 2006 'Kevin Kiely, like quite a few of his literary contemporaries, has a reputation as strong in Europe and the US as it is here.' -James J. McAuley The Irish Times 2005 'Kiely jolts us into another dimension of language, where speech is worked like molten metal, throwing off sparks, allusions, memories and experiences. Yet through the pyrotechnics shines the cool winter light of Donegal.' -Barbara Ellis Iota (London) 2006 'Here poetry redeems itself in Kiely's assured perspective. The title poem is in two parts which, if they were music, must resonate of Bach.' -Tommy Frank O'Connor Studies Spring 2006 "Successful is his series about famous artistic personalities. The mix is eclectic: 'Requiem for Kurt Cobain' sits between 'Who's Afraid of Ezra Pound?' and 'Skimming Sam Beckett', while Ovid, Buddha, and Coleridge all inspire poems of their own." -Val Nolan Poetry Ireland Review 2006 'Lyrical, original, faithful to the moment and its joys but with an undertone of sometimes rueful experience-these are the poems of a man who has come through.' -Anthony Cronin 'These poems are full of edgily real things, people and places caught in a sudden urgent perspective that shakes the reader with their nearness. A poem such as 'On a deserted beach with a Sony Walkman'' succeeds in doing this simultaneously with the material world and with emotions and ideas about art. There is nothing glum or staid here and much that is invigorating to read.' -Eil an N Chuillean in 'The mythic mingles with the realistic, the spiritual touches the material world, the robust sexuality of many of the poems lies side by side with moments of delicate reticence. There's an energetic awareness of, and participation in the joy of being.' -Brendan Kennelly