PositiveThe Irish Times (UK)The eeriness of this deaf republic is found as much in its puppet shows as in the violence between the soldiers and the deaf. Kaminsky also introduces a sign language into the poem, through which the citizens can communicate, in spite of the military occupation, and which – in a bold move – the book asks us too to learn to read ... aspires to a universal application, but invites us to look again at one country in particular ... bears comparison with other excellent North American imports of recent years: Anne Carson, Claudia Rankine and Danez Smith. Deaf Republic should also compel readers on this side of the Atlantic.
Nick Laird
RaveThe Irish TimesThe quarrel in this book is between the language-loving poet for whom one phrase deliquesces into another and the more hard-bitten and judicious figure of \'Autocomplete,\' who holds language to account, who wants an ethical warrant for his aesthetic skill. That ethical prerogative is there in poems on the besetting public horrors of Laird’s immediate environments, Grenfell in London, the residue of war in Northern Ireland, race in America and the refugee crisis: these subjects might be said to call for the blunter, more direct treatment they receive. But the highlights of the book are love poems and city poems for the Information Age: the poet’s situations and relationships—as a father, a son, a husband—are sized up and filtered through different kinds of brilliantly manipulated language, often tuned to a distinctive acoustic, an assonance that depends on short vowel sounds ... Feel Free, Laird’s best book yet, features other less flamboyant but equally good poems, including an affecting sequence for his mother, \'The Folding,\' and hard, gem-like lyrics, \'Watermelon Seed\' and \'Glitch,\' and \'La Méditeranée,\' which shows his gift for finding original images[.]
