ABOUT

There is a selection of over 100 poems written between 2009 and 2016.

This material was complied sitting on a bench at Black Rock, on Kemptown’s stony beach, in Tey Garden or in a pub in St James Street.

John J. Leahy considers it is actually the obligation of the Poet to be the voice of the silent individual and the downtrodden. To recognize and applaud society’s alternatives. Also to highlight, construct and illustrate situations, in the roll of Story Teller.

The Kemptown Verses as a whole, are deeply cynical and wonderfully pretentious. Extremely So. Poetry does need to be alluring, confident, honest, yet at times stay tainted and retain the grubbiness of reality. On other occasions, to be pompously larger and more fluorescent than the even existence it endeavours to reflect.

Most of the poems are constructed of the simplest conventional rhyme; the structure becomes almost irrelevant when driven by the narrative. Some Poems have a Tempo (in Italian) as a guide. This is not a bpm indicator, just a suggestive to the pace and feel of the work when performed.

The more serious subject matter warns of the current rise of the right wing and makes comparisons to historic world events.
Jostling among the suicide, murders and overdose, there lurks bitter tirades against the intimidation and practices within the modern corporate workplace.

This material also castigates the management of the world wide banking sector, whose greed facilitated the financial crisis of recent years.

The work ferociously stands up for free speech and for tolerance.

At times it attempts to dissect the individual or situation to entirety; whether from a conceptual or analytical stand point. To understand events from an Existential panorama. To challenge and expose ideals that are morally or rationally insolvent, also to analysis and promote ethics from the alternative perspective.

There are constant references to ‘The Artist’. This, of course does not necessarily mean just the painter, but also the musician, novelist, designer, actor, songwriter and poet.
The work does endorse the hedonism of the genuine. It also appreciates and spotlights the beauty of the extreme person.

The Verses were originally laboured on in the throws of depression. This is an affliction which affects a lot of people, but still carries a stigma. So it was through using the dark times that engineered, fuelled and drove the creation of The Kemptown Verses.