Padam Padam: The Collected Poems

Kevin Killian (eds. Evan Kennedy & Jason Morris)

Kevin Killian—the puckish poet, playwright, novelist, scholar, and impresario of the Bay Area arts community—channeled the charisma of the pop stars. Pulled from his legendary corpus, and long out of print, the work collected here is the record of Killian’s life as a radical littérateur. In Argento Series, Killian conjures the horror, suspense, and cinematic imagery of director Dario Argento as he documents the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. In Action Kylie, he revels in queer identity and the universal love of fandom. In Tweaky Village and Tony Greene Era, Killian elevates artists and friends to legendary status within his personal pantheon. And Elements, Killian’s wink at the periodic table, makes its U.S. debut.

The collection features an introduction by Kay Gabriel, who writes of Killian’s 'fabulous, permissive body of work, charming, filthy and smarmy at turns, with its retchable milk enemas and its devilish twists.'

'Kevin loved culture and was its constant undoing.' – Eileen Myles

'I used to say Kevin was the only person I ever knew who possibly could have come from a different planet—an enigma who possessed superhuman knowledge, baffling productivity, and later, super-human kindness.' – Robert Glück