Rapids

Wade draws into focus a landscape in constant transition. Here are city streets and alleys borders construction sites island edges boats and ocean that pulse like a burst dam with life unstoppable. Rapids is a glorious tour through the noisy dirty raw and often dazzling maze of history memory and the present moment as it exists in the long shadow of the poet's deep connection with his native Dublin. A skilled and eloquent guide Wade gifts us-page after striking page-with poems of loss hope brutality and stars.-Annemarie Ní Churreáin (2020 Artist-in-Residence Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris)Rapids Daniel Wade's debut very powerfully displays a mastery of not only craft but of his romantic-yet-reasonable fathoming of the troubles of humankind. In a time when poets write in water rather than ink inside the electrical cages of Political Correctness making no impression on the reader Daniel Wade has bravely eloped from his electrical cage and has left an eternal impression on me and will do so on others.-Marc Di Saverio author of Crito di Volta (Guernica Editions 2020)Rapids is a robust rowdy reverend and well-wrought début. Dublin and other cities are viewed through old eyes in a young man's head at the dawning of the day. The cast are all here: drug addicts dole heads thugs sailors pub heads and party boys ex-lovers and ex-enemies. We sail on river and ocean with ghosts of the drowned and lost with old men no longer of the new world water washing us clean of the city's scabs and waking us up to something more than just living. Daniel Wade sings elegies and marks the cut of legends known and unknown as he wanders with girls and wonders at the might and mire of other men's destinies. A writer on his way if you know what's good for you take a walk with him down the canal to the pub or better yet out to the Irish sea to hear the waves as he does with the ear of a conductor accurately noting the music of the sensorium.-Karl Parkinson author of The Blocks (New Binary Press 2016)