Kelvin Corcoran

Facing West Kelvin Corcoran

"Facing West achieves true illuminations of the places and uses of myth. Corcoran's lines balance impressively between sometimes cryptic, aphoristic phrases and an orality encountered in song -and in great poetry. Several poems are almost like screens with a critical or philosophical text behind them; and the verse emerges stranger, and stronger, for the incidents in other books it points us to... The overall edifice in Facing West allows entrances by prose passages -often, apparently, autobiographical; also talismanic insertions from other tongues, sometimes acronyms and street names. Yet, these often fragmentary structures develop as an experiment in narrative across separate sections, they work as a book. And in the end, nothing feels out of place." (Paschalis Nikolaou)