The Official John Evans Website

A review of The Acid Real by Gwyn Griffiths appeared in theMorning Star newspaper 24th March, 2010. Read the full text below, or click on the page to see the review as it appeared in the newspaper.

The Acid Real
by John Evans (Underground Press, £5.99)

"Anyone who knows John Evans only from his published works will be surprised by this new collection of poems.

I use the term poems as his "Acid Realism" rant against the "stale and self-indulgent" world of state-funded art and literature is more poetry than prose.

Evans's writing is as cutting as ever, though his attitudes have softened from the brutal council estate rawness of earlier works.

This is Evans in his bucolic habitat, but he is never far from the drab streets and the cruelty of hunting and vivisection. "You kill animals, don't you? Then you kill people," he spits.

Nor is he distant from the ever-contemporary themes of global warming, cruelty, the credit limit and the "war on terror."

These are poems that will stand the test of time."

A review of The Acid Real by Steve Dube appeared in theWestern Mail magazine, 13th February, 2010. Read the full text below, or click on the page to see the review as it appeared in the magazine.

REVIEWS

The Acid Real
John Evans (Underground Press, £5.99)

"I don't know how old he is so I can't say whether John Evans is an Angry Young Man, but this book of word patterns challenges many ideas of what a poem is.

As a one time AYM, now more a professionally restrained old fogey the writer confesses himself duly challenged.

Evans despairs at the way things are and some pieces are invective on behalf of animals and against hunting or what used to be called vivisection. There's a lament, Holy Cow, for Shambo who was actually a bull slaughtered in the drive to combat the epidemic of bovine TB – though of course Evans doesn't put it like that.

Many of the poems juxtapose the beauty of nature and simplicity of desire with the horrors of 21st-century human society that most of us thankfully don't encounter face to face in daily life. The pieces can be difficult to read for reasons of syntax, imagery, or both. They can be stark, discomforting, unsettling - even sometimes brutal. But alongside the bluntness there are poems like Illuminatum, and prose pieces like Golden (for H.H.) that speak with love, hope and clarity, all the more positive for the grim contemporary landscape they inhabit.

These are among the pieces that confirm Evans as a vibrant as well as challenging modern writer. He won me over, and I began to understand why he made 27 in the larges-ever online poll, 100 Welsh Heroes ahead of Dafydd ap Gwilym and behind only Dylan and RS Thomas of the poets.

Let yourself go and find yourself on a sort of journey through modern Wales that you will want to make more than once, where the beauty of nature, the love of life and the possibility of tenderness shines out of the pages.

And the illustrations too, mostly by Marita Forss, are wonderful."

Steve Dube, Western Mail, February 13th, 2010

Early public reaction toThe Acid Real has also been very positive. Here's what some customers have been saying on the websites of online retailers.

"Thrilled to read this new book by John Evans, full of magical poetry and prose, thought provoking and very moving. Climate change, animal experimentation, war, fast food culture and x-box reality, the valleys Rimbaud and activist urges us to become active! Stylistically his writing reminds me of the cream of late Modernist, Postmodern British poetry, yet he has a very original voice. Beautifully illustrated. 21st Century poetry, with a soul, the best of Wales and Welsh poetry. Read, and read again. Highly recommended" - Jayne Davies, Book Rabbit, Nov 09.

(To read this review for yourself, please click, here)

"What a great book. A journey through modern Wales many poets would be far too afraid to make. An honest and moving collection of poetry and prose from a man that never ceases to amaze. If you're fed up with boring, pointless poetry buy this book it will reconnect you to the magic of a great art form." D. Lewis, Amazon, Nov 09. (To read this review for yourself, please click here)

"The Bright, Radiant Core. I enjoyed the book immensely, just by reading and re-reading some of the poems, prose & the final essay as one collective piece, I feel like I am passing through the corrosive, multicoloured, organic (as in as living, writhing, fluctuating creature that I think twists its way through each word) barrier of the Acid Real into its bright, radiant core; the manifesto; the meaning. For me, the best stuff begins with 'Magic Mountain' (although 'Empire' and 'Night' which precede that, are among some of my favourites) and all the material from thereon in. Those poems are transcendental. I can see the Bhuddist influences running through it: the merging of man and nature (oneness), the acknowledgment of life in death, death in life, and the rolling valleys 'red in tooth and claw'. Growing up in the valleys, the images are extremely evocative for me; the breeze, the smell, the sunlight and browning grass of the distinctly Welsh country. And the poems are distinctly Welsh. They're a remedy for the post-industrial, existentially-nervous Welsh working class; without culture, without purpose and without spirit. Perhaps that's why I prefer the more bucolically descriptive poems and prose, as opposed to the dystopian bluntness in some passages, although I understand the necessity of them. You have to diagnose the disease before you treat it." Darren J. Coles, Amazon, Dec 09. (To read this review for yourself, please click here)

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