Connecticut-born author Brendan Walsh has drawn on his experiences across country and globe to write 'Go' (Aldrich Press), a new poetry collection that follows the journey of several voices through travels in Laos, South Korea, and across the United States.
'Go' grapples with nothingness, the primal ecstasy of movement, and the variance of human consciousness and desire. The focus begins on Lao voicesthose of a foreign speaker interacting with Lao monks and women planting rice, a quiet observation of an unknown but familiar place. It moves to South Korea, inhabiting the voices of two Koreans and an outsider at odds with a foreign culture. Finally, the collection ends in the United States, the former home of a speaker who feels empty but sees flashes of brilliance on road trips and in day-to-day life. Ultimately, the collection reconciles its longing with movement, finding answers outside of concrete explanations, but through the act of doing and being purely in the flesh.
"In this full-length collection, Brendan Walsh wins us the way Buddhist temples win over acolytes: with their truths about suffering, the community of prayer halls, sacred reliquaries that follow the emptiness of courtyards. This poetry grounded in the experience of place becomes animate, takes form, gathers Laos, Korea, and the U.S. in its hot dance, a globe spinning to the rhythm of the eternal divinity in each of us," says Lynn Houston, author of The Clever Dream of Man. "'Go' is an energetic and wise first collection, and its travels continue well past the final page," adds Ruthless's Jeff Mock.
'Go' will launch during National Poetry Month with a book release on April 2, 2016 at New Haven's Lyric Hall Theater. To learn more, visit brendanwalshpoetry.com/gobook or contact publicist Mukethe Kawinzi at brendanwalshpoetry@gmail.com for an advanced review copy.
About Brendan Walsh
Brendan Walsh has been published in Connecticut Review, Off the Coast, Mason's Road, Lines + Stars, Noctua Review, Drunk Monkeys, and other journals. His first collection, Make Anything Whole, was published by Five Oaks Press in January of 2015. From 2013 to 2014, Walsh taught English on a Fulbright Grant in Vientiane, Laos and has also taught in Masan, South Korea. He currently lives in New Haven, CT and serves as Assistant Director of International Education at Southern Connecticut State University, where he earned his Master of Fine Arts. His work has been awarded the Anna Sonder Prize of the Academy of American Poets, the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize, and a Freedman Prize for poetry in performance. He has been a featured reader at the New American Writing Festival and the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival's CT Young Poets Day. He can be found at www.brendanwalshpoetry.com.
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