Crisis Actor

Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement

"Who knew that writing with this degree of care and pain and tact was still possible? For my money it's the best first volume in decades . . . no dead weight, foot-perfect and engaging." —Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement

"Tough but tender, [Crisis Actor] takes boxing and boxers as its leitmotif, and develops the idea of contest to create a portrait of contemporary life which is haunted by images of violence, defeat, and complicated nostalgia. Ryan's voice may not be the loudest in the contemporary arena, but it carries an impressively long way." —Andrew Motion, The New Statesman

"If instead of writing of emperors, C. P. Cavafy had written about boxers, he might have sounded like this." —Michael Autrey, Booklist

"Ryan layers his finely crafted debut collection with precise, nostalgic, and striking poems that probe the past and present. His verse shines in sonically rich descriptions . . . These poems are full of humanity, rewarding insights, and affective phrases." —Publishers Weekly

“What a pleasure to read this book. Among the so many things that make Crisis Actor extraordinary is how each poem is formally skilled and shrewd and smart, while, at the same time, profoundly packed with emotion. The book is carefully structured: the placement of the brilliant ‘boxer/boxing poems’ in the book is perfect. The book is, for me, essentially, a book of love: love—love’s witness—is at its center. Ryan places himself among the great Irish poets and writers unafraid of sentiment and sensuousness, beauty and love, taking on history, ever-alive in the physical world, melding his traditions as his own, singular in power.” —Lawrence Joseph, author of A Certain Clarity: Selected Poems

"The poems in Declan Ryan’s Crisis Actor are deceptively straightforward—one makes one's way from word to word without feeling lost, but in each poem, sooner or later, one is surprised by a forgotten arm and laid flat. These are muscular poems, athletic poems, but the muscularity and athleticism are those of a dancer or, yes, a boxer, whose ordinary movements—the considered step forward, the quick repositioning of an arm—again and again erupt from the ordinary into beauty." —Shane McCrae, author of The Many Hundreds of the Scent

"Elegant and heartaching, these poems illuminate the sorrows of life with a bright flame, returning us to that miraculous human capacity for love and faith even in our darkest days." —Liz Berry, author of The Home Child

"Declan Ryan reveals himself a master of both the telling detail and of narrative suspense. Each exquisitely orchestrated vignette delivers a punch worthy of the heroes of the ring here commemorated." —Mark Ford, author of Enter, Fleeing