A Review of David Hay’s On The Edge of The Asylum (Rare Swan Press, 2024) – by Vikki C.

An arresting exploration into the complexities of mental illness, On The Edge of The Asylum unveils a powerful spectrum of human experience poised at the mercy of a metaphysical Armageddon. 

Hay artfully channels the masculine voice with a postmodern flair that is both confessional and deeply philosophical. One that challenges and reinvents the nihilist vision – juxtaposing fragility, despair and terror with a clandestine world of pleasure and fantasy.

From haunting childhood cameos to dream-like prophetic monologues, readers are submerged in a deconstructed terrain – a dwindling natural world internalised by complicated familial dynamics. Hay acquaints us with the dark romanticism we both fear and covet – a life of impossible love and excess, summoned through echoes of literary forebearers: Keats, Whitman, Thomas et al.

These converge into a “Kerouac-style” stream-of-consciousness, appealing to the disconnect between body and psyche. A chorale of voices that project: “images/ too unspeakable/ to accompany/ word pictures/ would make prophets blush/ spitting out their recycled tomes…”

On The Edge of The Asylum is both ambitious and avant-garde, awakening readers to our collective wounds in an original and dignified light. Deft, forensic and revolutionary, the contrapuntal verses capture a charged beauty laced with rue and urgency: serrated fragments that align with our own fractured pursuits for agency in the greater scheme of the human paradox. A poetic masterpiece that reconciles rupture and rebellion with a profound rewilding of its own making.

On The Edge of The Asylum is available from Ballerini Book Press