Liam Ryan covers a broad spectrum of subjects in his second collection of poems, What’s Happening in the Shade. Part I of the collection visits life, death and God, while Part II examines love in many of its forms: parental love, spousal love and unrequited love. He provides both objective observations and his private thoughts, with a joke or a pun always waiting just around the corner. Throughout this collection, Ryan borrows the words of fifteen world poets – including Pablo Neruda, Mirabai, and Rainer Maria Rilke – translating them and making them his own, offering new versions of lofty poetry to both professor and novice alike.
