Reagent. Hiding Press. Philadelphia, PA. 2023. Hiding Press Chapbooks 07. 4.25 × 7 in. 36pp. https://www.hidingpress.com/books/reagent
Reagent is an egregious, concatenated spit-take into the deep interior sky, stuffed into the future past, treading syrup in unholy, dizzying Bildungsroman couplets that drag, drift, shuffle, dip, hang, return, stop and generally prod the malice at the center of malaise. An accessory to fearful reaction, intensively superficial and disgusted by all the stories, Reagent wants to know what’s in it—all of it—for you, dear reader, among the devices that circulate through the grand et cetera.
Earthbound Poetry Series, Vol. 1, No. 31. London, UK. (3 August 2020). Text: ‘House’, ‘Three Bags’, ‘Pro’, by Ryan Dobran [3 poems]. Cover: Untitled [page from Men I Trust], by Tommi Parrish. Gouache on Paper (2019). Printed in Aqua, Red, Yellow, and Black riso inks, on FSC certified Munken Pure 170gsm acid-free paper. 8pp. Edition of fifty-two numbered copies. Second printing. https://earthbound.press/shop/earthbound-poetry-series-vol1-no31-ryan-dobran
“Meals” Social Text Journal. June 2020. https://socialtextjournal.org/meals/
Old Business. Golias Books. Brooklyn, NY. May 2019. http://goliasbooks.com/releases/old-business/
The poetry of Ryan Dobran begins in a congenial, observational mode and crystallizes swiftly into an engrossing lattice of voice and affect, a prismatic language that pivots unassumingly through shades of the quotidian and the disenchanted, the earnest and the circumspect, the ingenuous and the vatic. It is a recognizably contemporary poetry: familiar discourses and lifeworlds made uncanny by an exacting realism, conscientious of the creaturely and all-too-embodied travails of a rapidly immaterializing modernity, persistently shot through with fleeting glimpses of those distributed, elusively disciplinary forces — of law, finance, technology — that everywhere impinge locally and yet evade global apprehension. At the same time, there is yet something about Dobran’s clear-eyed view out onto the actual existing world that bestows a kind of proleptic clarity on the Skinner box of the present: the poetic defamiliarization at play is not the techno-stunned alienation of modernism but something older and more stoic, comic, or forgiving, not didactic and yet in its composure quietly instructive.
Old Business is a well-turned full-length debut comprising three chapbook-length poems that have previously seen only limited release by small presses in the UK — Story One, The Meritocrat, and The Last Shyness — along with a suite of poems published here for the first time.
The Last Shyness. Face Press. Oxford, UK. May 2018. http://www.face-press.org/shyness.html
Six poems from The Last Shyness. Paradise Now (March 2018): https://thisisparadisenow.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/paradise-now-march-2018.pdf
The Meritocrat. Shit Valley Press. London, UK. November 2017. http://shitvalley.tumblr.com/
“Fantasy Index.” Cordite Poetry Review. 2015. http://cordite.org.au/poetry/irishenglish/fantasy-index/
4 poems from “Caissons.” Materials 3 (2014) eds. David Grundy and Lisa Jeschke. http://material-s.blogspot.com/
Story One. Privately printed. 50 copies. Burlington, VT, 2014.
Review by Tom Allen in Hix Eros 6 (August 2015)
Review by David Grundy on streams of expression (July 2017)
Remote Carbon. Cambridge: Critical Documents, 2013. [OUT OF PRINT] http://plantarchy.us/remote.html.
Shouts from OK Glamour. Brighton and London: Barque Press, 2013. http://www.barquepress.com/publications.php?i=93.
“Remote Carbon.” This Corner 4 (2012) eds. Rod Mengham and John Kinsella [Cambridge, UK].
11 poems from Shouts from OK Glamour. Damn The Caesars: Crisis Inquiry (2012), ed. Richard Owens [Scarborough, ME, USA]. http://damnthecaesars.org/.
7 poems from Shouts from OK Glamour. Hi Zero 7 (2011), ed. Joe Luna [Brighton, UK].
Confection. Cambridge, UK: Face Press [formerly ©_© Press], 2011. http://www.face-press.org/confection.html
10 poems from Shouts from OK Glamour. International Egg and Poultry Review [Sussex Poetry Festival issue], (July 2011), eds. Justin Katko and Luke Roberts [Cambridge, UK].
“Teaser Fails the Edge.” That Merciless and Mercenary Gang of Cold-Blooded Slaves and Assassins, called, in the Ordinary Prostitution of Language, Friends (May 2011), eds. Justin Katko and Luke Roberts [Cambridge, UK].
“3 Songs for the Blastophyly.” Half Circle 2 (February 2011), ed. Tom Graham [Oxford, UK].
“Op Rep.” Holly White 4 (January 2010), ed. Matthew Cunningham [London, UK].
Ding Ding. Cambridge, UK: Critical Documents, 2009. http://www.plantarchy.us/dingding.html.
“Scree Lots.” Hot Gun 1 (2008), ed. Josh Stanley [New Haven, CT].
“Redundancies.” Axolotl 1(2008), ed. Luke Roberts [London, UK].
Your Guilt Is A Miracle. London: Bad Press, 2008. Review by Stuart Calton: http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.com/2009/12/your-guilt-is-miracle-by-ryan-dobran.html.
Ed. with Justin Katko and Sara Wintz. INVISIBLY TIGHT INSTITUTIONAL OUTER FLANKS DUB (verb) GLORIOUS NATIONAL HI-VIOLENCE RESPONSE DREAM. New York: Pretty Panicks Press; Providence: Critical Documents, 2008. Transatlantic contemporary poetry anthology, featuring Peter Manson, John Wilkinson, Lisa Jarnot et al..
Ed., LIFECOACH 2 (September 2007), Brooklyn, NY, privately published. Journal of innovative poetry, criticism, mixed media collage and experimental music.
Ed., LIFECOACH 1 (February 2007), Brooklyn, NY, privately published. As above.