Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Review of Bird Years
Norman Dubie
Author of The Quotations of Bone
"Dicko King’s first collection of poems, Doggerland, depends on a strange parallelism of time past and time present—this is, in a way, nearly the lettered sedimentary sense of time that we get in rock—but it’s also all of the intricate and intimate bloodlines that ask that the present moment illumine innumerable pages within this volume. This is a lovely book – I’m grateful to have it."
Cynthia Hogue
Author of Revenance
"Doggerland, Dicko King’s wonderful debut volume, is rich in the history and prehistory of Ireland. The poems are mysterious, at once fabulous and erudite, telling in their knowledge of the evolution of a nation. In the taut restraint of these poems, King delivers us to poetry’s grand bargain with philosophy, that truth be delivered by beauty."
Kirkus Reviews
Review of Doggerland
"...the poems are as worn and wondrous as the ocean floor where Doggerland now rests. King is equally adept at brilliant phonetic stanzas and concentrated verse essays. King is a Boston native, but his collection is a must-read for devotees of the last half-century of Irish verse...the collection ends far too soon. A tremendous volume of poems that will illuminate and linger."
Washington Independent Review of Books
July 2015 Exemplars: Poetry Reviews by Grace Cavalieri
"This is a genuine touch of Ireland from every side with the poet as historian, storyteller, and wit at its epicenter."
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Volume XVI, Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Inclusion in the list of recommended books of poetry in Valparaiso Poetry Review: Volume XVI.
23rd Annual Poets House Showcase Exhibition
Volume XVI, Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
Inclusion in the 2015 23rd Annual Poets House Showcase Exhibition.
Raleigh Review
Samuel Piccone Review
"Reading Dicko King’s first poetry collection, Doggerland: Ancestral Poems, the first thing one notices is the deftness with which King explores time and place. The Ireland of this book is a place that constantly explores its own chronicled history, searching the primordial past for evidence of human evolution and the meaning of culture inherited. King strikes me as a poet focused on the prismatic and multivalent, and Doggerland does a wonderful job, both narratively and linguistically, of revealing the organic connection between humans and nature and the ways the truth behind that connection becomes skewed over centuries."