“Добра темрява” отримала відзнаку як книжка року від Saltire Society 2015 року. Друкувався в часописах “New Writing Scotland”, “The Prairie Schooner” та “The American Poetry Review”.
Ryan Van Winkle was born in New Haven, Connecticut. His debut collection, "Tomorrow, We Will Live Here", was published by Salt in 2010. His second collection, "The Good Dark", won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award.
His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation and New Writing Scotland. He was awarded the Jessie Kesson fellowship at Moniack Mhor in 2018.
Van Winkle lives in Edinburgh, where I was living at the time of reading this collection. I came to it solely based on his positive reputation as a poet, but I was fairly disappointed. There were only two poems in the entire collection I resonated with, even remotely, and by the end found myself fairly bored and hoping for a saving glimmer of creativity. Despite my boredom, I do give the book two stars for the two poems I enjoyed; "One Year the Door Will Open," and the following untitled poem.
There is a dark melancholy to this collection but ultimately it left me largely unmoved. However there were two or three excellent poems for which I was glad that I had read the book. There were several pieces that I felt would probably work better performed than on the page and I was interested to read on the back cover (I always read the blurb after I have read the book) that he is also a performance poet. I would be interested in hearing him read - but this was sadly not a book I loved.