Bonfire Night

‘Allen summons up the textures of language and experience with impressive fluency.’ – Martin Mooney

‘Allen’s voice is intense and clear, but behind the anguish is a sensibility that accepts and perseveres.’ – Maurice Harmon

‘Sour Hill is, to be sure, a difficult read but also an artful and thought-provoking one that ought not to be passed up.’ – PW Bridgman

‘This is poetry that goes for the jugular. Allen’s poetry is marked by its potent, dynamic syntax, and also by his storyteller’s sensibility. Skillfully crafted in their shifting perspectives, there is a great verve and sense of surprise in his lines. He has a fantastic ability to swoop into vivid detail while keeping the poem sweeping onwards. This is tough, sometimes brutal poetry, but still singing; a rich and rough music, just right for our times.’ – Alan Gillis

‘This is a poet writing with maturity and raw honesty and from the height of his literary powers.’ – Niall McGrath

‘Allen is beyond any doubt one of the finest Northern Irish poets his generation has produced.’ – Nigel McLoughlin

‘Allen is an author who knows exactly what he is going to say, and possessed of a rare poetic facility with which to say it.’

– David Woelfel

Gary Allen’s latest collection, Bonfire Night, sees a continuation of the Ballymena-based poet’s exhaustiveexploration of the Ulster Protestant psyche. But these are not poems of easy celebration or condemnation.Rather they show the work of a stubbornly individual poet determined simply to get it right. Written with a blunt candour and a refreshing poetic skill, Bonfire Night shows a unique poet at the height of his powers.

About the author:

Gary Allen was born in Ballymena. He has published several collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, and two novels. Widely published in international literary magazines and anthologies in Ireland, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, he has been described as one of the most interesting and intriguing of the post-Heaney generation of Northern Irish poets.

88 pages

ISBN: 978-1-910996-48-5