Padam Padam
The Collected Poems
Published on 18. December 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
384 pages
978-1-64362-290-3 (ISBN)
Description
A posthumous celebration of the poet and provocateur Kevin Killian, Padam Padam pulses with camp, pop culture, and pleasure.
Kevin Killian-the puckish poet, playwright, novelist, scholar, and impresario of the Bay Area arts community-channeled the charisma of the pop stars. Pulled from his legendary corpus, and long out of print, the work collected here is the record of Killian's life as a radical litterateur. In Argento Series, Killian conjures the horror, suspense, and cinematic imagery of director Dario Argento as he documents the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. In Action Kylie, he revels in queer identity and the universal love of fandom. In Tweaky Village and Tony Greene Era, Killian elevates artists and friends to legendary status within his personal pantheon. And Elements, Killian's wink at the periodic table, makes its U.S. debut.
The collection features an introduction by Kay Gabriel, who writes of Killian's "fabulous, permissive body of work, charming, filthy and smarmy at turns, with its retchable milk enemas and its devilish twists."
Kevin Killian-the puckish poet, playwright, novelist, scholar, and impresario of the Bay Area arts community-channeled the charisma of the pop stars. Pulled from his legendary corpus, and long out of print, the work collected here is the record of Killian's life as a radical litterateur. In Argento Series, Killian conjures the horror, suspense, and cinematic imagery of director Dario Argento as he documents the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. In Action Kylie, he revels in queer identity and the universal love of fandom. In Tweaky Village and Tony Greene Era, Killian elevates artists and friends to legendary status within his personal pantheon. And Elements, Killian's wink at the periodic table, makes its U.S. debut.
The collection features an introduction by Kay Gabriel, who writes of Killian's "fabulous, permissive body of work, charming, filthy and smarmy at turns, with its retchable milk enemas and its devilish twists."
Reviews / Votes
"Killian-a figure in San Francisco's New Narrative movement, alongside writers such as Kathy Acker and Robert Glueck-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 Glueck
"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, Glueck 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
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 225 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 31 mm
Weight
652 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-64362-290-3 (9781643622903)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
11/2025
Nightboat Books
€16.49
Available for download
Persons
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).