THE AFTERMATH (2018)

Following on from 2017’s poetry collection, ‘The Last Cut is the Deepest’, Johnny Monroe has now produced a ‘sequel’ of 26 poems that confront the crisis of facing life without a loved one. Dissecting an emotional minefield with both blisteringly visceral rage and resigned melancholia (albeit shot through with characteristic gallows humour), Johnny Monroe has produced a powerful work that highlights the internal struggle of the jilted - torn between their intense feelings for those who abandoned them and resentful bewilderment with the traumatic predicament they find themselves in. It speaks to all lovers left behind and does so with wit, pathos and an ability to depict the wildly contrasting moods that mercilessly assault the individual coping with romantic bereavement.