Reading poetry, the task of a reader is in part to situate the poet – where they are in a poem is often as telling as who they are. In Declan Ryan’s adroit debut, Crisis Actor, he lets us know, from the title itself, that we should not feel certain of his whereabouts.
A crisis actor (I had to look it up) is someone who “takes part in a supposed conspiracy to manipulate public opinion” and pretends to have survived a disaster. Ryan is, it would seem, mindful of the possibility of being a poetic impostor – someone who falsely reacts to other lives, distorts the voices he impersonates, takes on conflicts not his own. A poet as crisis actor. But he proves himself brilliantly equipped to see off the risks of relating other people’s narratives, alongside his own, in poems of serious-minded, clear-sighted, conversational intelligence.
