Anxiety Music
A poetry collection with artwork by Stephen Morton published by Verve Press, Birmingham and promoted via a 22-date European tour.
Anxiety Music explores the fragmented nature of our modern lives and our need for real connection during an era of rampant individuality. The latest collection from Kevin P. Gilday, one of Scotland’s most celebrated contemporary poets, Anxiety Music is a darkly comedic dissection of mental health, late capitalist dread, existential angst, sexual liberation and marital breakdown.
This collection bridges page and stage, craft and performance. It is an unfiltered look at the sources of anxiety that hi-jack our lives and a personal journey to confront them - a rallying call to face the forces of anxiety wrought upon us by an uncaring society and fight back.
Praise for Anxiety Music
‘A peerless poet and performer.’
Darren McGarvey
'A wonderful collection written with such flair and warmth. I loved it.'
Hannah Lavery
‘If you've ever wandered, bewildered, through a world of high rents, sticky romantic encounters, dying relationships and occasional, soaring triumphs then Kevin Gilday's Anxiety Music will speak to your soul. Fearless, hilarious and steeped in a Weegie-ness that still, somehow, manages to feel universal, this is poetry for our times…Anxiety Music is the new soundtrack for your solipsism.’
Alan Bissett
‘You will have thought these thoughts before. Kevin has just articulated them for you.’
Mike Garry
‘An accomplished purveyor of saline wit. Anxiety Music holds a mirror to the cult of individualism, surveying the wreckage with glimmers of hope and hard truths.’
Victoria McNulty
‘This collection is life itself. Kevin's poems have an awe-inspiring ability to floodlight the world's ills whilst feeling like an afternoon in your favourite boozer. A stunning book.’
Matt Abbott
‘Anxiety music takes the grim and gritty parts of contemporary existence and turns it into something glorious. A confronting, comforting and captivating written soundtrack to modern life. From cunnilingus to capitalism, from drinking to divorce - the sharply witty interrogation of human joy and tragedy touches you in unexpected ways. Wouldn’t expect anything less from this leading voice in the Scottish spoken word scene. Tender and tough in all the right places’
Cat Hepburn