Padam Padam

Kevin Killian was a San Francisco–based poet, novelist, playwright, and art writer. Recent books include the poetry collections Tony Greene Era (2017) and Tweaky Village (2014). He is the coauthor of Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance (1998). With Dodie Bellamy, he coedited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing, 1977–1997 (2017).

"Killian—a figure in San Francisco’s New Narrative movement, alongside writers such as Kathy Acker and Robert Glück—saved his biggest celebrity obsession, however, for Kylie Minogue. She ran through his work like letters in a stick of rock . . . Padam Padam [is] a new collection of Killian’s work that pays obvious homage to Kylie’s 2023 hit of the same name."—Michael Cragg, The Guardian"[Killian’s] poems could end anywhere—a reason why his corpus pushes past neat conclusions and tidy messages into an indeterminacy that seems now like a beacon of hope. Killian’s verve has become more potent since his expiration date."—Daniel Felsenthal, Poetry Foundation“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"The four hundred pages of Padam Padam, carefully curated by Evan Kennedy and Jason Morris, are but a smattering of Kevin Killian’s life work, yet they’re ample enough to show his brilliant, hungry mind develop over the decades, spinning up new universes, sometimes enjambed but always brainy and sexual."—Daniel Allen Cox, The Brooklyn Rail“Like his beloved Kylie Minogue sings, Kevin created a body of work that is "more than [we] dare to think about"—a "dark secret" that filled and felt "the need," a deep need, in all of us.”—Dorothea Lasky"Like Acker, Glück and Bellamy, Killian’s writing interweaves found text, literary canon and pop culture with the personal and diaristic . . . For anyone who has cultivated a mistrust of the weighty topics considered poetry-worthy, Killian is a bracing ally."—Andrew Spragg, The Poetry Review