Experience Poetry In Motion.
Watch the Ritual and Ruin videos below.
In his debut book, emerging artist Ryan O’Neil delivers a vibrant poetic and photographic vision of the dissonance and beauty found in his first decade as a Jamaican expat.
Escape into a decadent dream of migrant melancholy and millennial romance with a distinct Caribbean flair. Ritual and Ruin traces Ryan's journey of assimilation through tales of love, pain, and dancehall.
In this book packed with visual and verbal imagery, Ryan invites the reader to see how he found a home on foreign soil through his art.
take a look at what’s inside the pages
my neck is raw from the loosened shirt collar,
raw like apprehension, like the first time thinking,
'back home, the fish comes fried or steamed,
sometimes roasted but always with fire,
never raw.'
but my appetite for the new
and the way her smile makes
the lines around that mouth
tickle that nose makes the experience
sweet jerk on Friday night.
Conversations Over Sushi and A cold Sapporo
bless me with the supernatural of your perfume,
the taste of the chemical cocktail
dripping dopamine in our sweat,
the feeling of rum flowing under our skins,
sacred drums and your black dress.
let's explore the power of our bodies moving together.
let's devise new theories of how electricity
travels through flesh and ask questions of physics
like ‘could we be lightning?’
Dance with Me
