After Party

Wildly expressive and exuberant, throwing out phrases and ideas almost recklessly… After Party is surely the start of an exceptional poetic career – Graeme Richardson, Books of the Year * Sunday Times *
The success of this Cork-based 31-year-old is by no means a surprise … But it’s still refreshing to encounter such a distilled, haunting voice – Books of the Year * Telegraph *
After Party by Dean Browne doesn’t feel like a debut collection, so measured and accomplished is the voice that constitutes it. Delightfully absurd, serious about the jokes it makes, and with enormous heart – Mícheál McCann * Irish Times *
After Party is a special book… a debut that does not feel like one; it is fully formed, sophisticated and has an immense sense of follow-through. Browne’s approach to writing memory feels at once mature and surprising – Ellen Orchard, The Stinging Fly
[After Party] revels in excess and precision … writing that captures and vivifies; poetry that works like a binding spell – Ali Lewis and Abigail Parry * Poetry Review *
Browne works via associations, linking things that are both real and surreal but never un-real. Nothing is stable. As a poet he has confidence, energy and the rare quality of writing memorable poems that insist on following you around… Great stuff! – D.A. Prince, The Friday Poem
Poems that sneak in the side-door then exit through the ceiling – Caroline Bird
Dean Browne is a terrific poet: his language is agile and fresh, his ideas surprising, and the reader feels invigorated, renewed – and lucky to have met such poems – Nick Laird
Quirky, kooky, dark, philosophical, absurd and always wonderful, often edged between outrageous humour and revelation, these richly imagistic poems are full of invention. Each poem treads slowly onwards inventing itself as it proceeds to celebrate the transforming powers of poetry. An original and thrilling poet whose every poem hit the mark! – Daljit Nagra on Kitchens at Night * The Times *
These poems are packed with exuberant images. They twist and turn in constantly surprising ways – line by line, I never know where they’ll take me next! … This is gorgeous, exciting work and I’m in awe of its energy and vitality. – Pascale Petit on Kitchens at Night

Dean Browne is from Tipperary, Ireland, and lives in Cork. He received the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2021 and his pamphlet, Kitchens at Night, was a winner of the Poetry Business International Pamphlet Competition; it was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022. His poems have appeared in The London Magazine, New York Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, and elsewhere. After Party is his debut collection.

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