Colin Dardis

The Dogs of Humanity Colin Dardis

"The beauty of this poetry lies in its focus on what is animal, on the neglected mutt barking in a lonely garden, whose solitude mirrors our own. Only a humane animal, the poet implies, is worth our attention. With subject-matter this fresh, and an avoidance of zeitgeist poetry, what really sets the work apart tonally and in subject is its assumption of a counter-position at all times. The result is original writing. No poetic braggadocio here: just great poetry." - Mary O'Donnell



"Wry, melancholy, and wise, The Dogs of Humanity confirms his status as one of Ireland's most original contemporary voices. These are poems that circle, pack-like, around the truths of our humanity - our violence, our anxieties, and above all, our potential for love.'" - Jess Traynor



"In The Dogs of Humanity we see a poet who is equally comfortable to reside in places of light and shadow. Dardis shows us that he has the ability to take the world we create in moments of the everyday and spin it on a new axis. Here, canine traits are used as a lens to explore the best and worst of human experience. The reader who enters this zoo of poems will find that the animal seen most often will be themselves." - Mel McMahon - Author of Beneath Our Feet



"The voice in these poems is insightful, urgent but compassionate making the collection an enjoyable but unsettling read, with its call for perception, for engagement with the realities of the human condition and the lost souls of the early twentieth first century." - Michael Farry