Kevin Cadwallender was raised by a pack of vowels but found himself in a land of no sun, scant noons and jive cadets. Poetry came to him as a scrabble board of acne mists and algae guns. Escaping the polar hotels, he has since dwelt among larded nuns and in the seediest towns.
Dances with Vowels brings together poems from twenty-three of the many small-press chapbooks Cadwallender has published since 1984, as well as from his three full-length collections of poetry, Public, Baz Uber Alles and Colouring in Guernica.
Angry, funny and surreal, these poems explore the world of the underdog, the world of the crawling from beneath the boot, the world of turning over clouds to find the silver lining and scraping graffiti on its cumulus underbelly. Dances with Vowels has a heart that beats for its native North East. Lewd and clear.
"Kevin Cadwallender is a poet who often shelters in the shadow of his more confident comedic alter-ego. But there's a tender side to his work too, vulnerable, wistfully reflective and loaded with that underlying melancholia which so often sits upon the shoulder of our great comedians."
Paul Summers
"Life's gentle reporter, an angel-fire talker, putting a wry spin on our walk."
Beccy Owen
"There’s an anarchic energy in these poems…from despair and rage to tenderness. Their power, skill and intelligence will speak to many."
M. R. Peacocke
Hartlepool-born Kevin Cadwallender has worked as a clown, floor tiler, student nurse, policeman, record shop manager, care assistant, play leader and roadie and as a writer-in-residence with the Co-op, the Great North Forest, the Sunderland Echo and James Cook University Hospital. A former editor of Hybrid and Sand, he has published a novel, Sugartown. His Radio 4/Soundscape voice play, Voyages was short-listed for a Sony Radio Award. Has also made four films with Anton Hecht: Steam Powered Poetry Engine, Falling Down, Around the World in Eighty Days and Born in a Field. He lives in Drubhinge, the capital city of cold ants.
Dances with Vowels, Kevin Cadwallender
ISBN-13: 978-0-9554028-6-9
Price: £7.95
Order Dances with Vowels from Inpress.
