Are You Ready?

"The Ireland of 2009 has almost as many 'serious' poets as it does blocks of unsold apartments. What I love about John Corless's poetry is that instead of pretending to sit po-faced on the summit of Mount Parnassus, it goes absolutely in the opposite direction. Like Swift, Paul Durcan and Rita Ann Higgins before him, Corless takes the low road and shines the telltale torchlight of his killer wit into all the most embarrassing areas of contemporary Irish life. No-one is safe. If the truly serious are those who see the world for the joke it is, John Corless is one of the most serious poets we have. He is also a great performer of his own poems, one of the brightest rising stars of the live poetry scene. If you get the chance to go and see him read, do. Desperate Housewives will be repeated. John Corless may not."
Kevin Higgins

"John Corless comes to poetry with an infectious enthusiasm. He has imbued his work with a sense of discovery and wonder. His debut collection is gritty and irreverent, infected with copious amounts of tongue-in-cheek humour. Here you will find fake tan and calf nuts, the PDs, dancehall fights and dry cash hid behind dressers by dead bachelors. This is not a naive nostalgic sojourn through rural Connaught but an uncompromising white knuckle ride through sometimes dark and menacing places where sacred cows are put through their paces before being loaded up in a trailer and driven unceremoniously out to grass. You have been warned."
Ger Reidy

John Corless lives and writes in County Mayo, Ireland. His poetry is a mix of political, satirical and rural and has been described as "Paul Durcan meets The Sawdoctors". He has an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University (2008) and is currently researching for a PhD. He writes poetry, fiction and drama. His work has been published in magazines and collections worldwide. He teaches creative writing in the Castlebar campus of GMIT (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology).