Andrew McNeillie’s most powerful collection to date returns to the subject of the sea and uses its immensity as a metaphor for fate. It celebrates the natural beauty of the British and Irish archipelago, following a northwestern trajectory from the Aran Islands to the Hebrides. The natural world is seen here in both its beauty and its indifference to human beings. From a version of “The Seafarer” to an elegiac play “for sounds and voices” that retells the story of an English airman drowned off Aran in World War II, these poems speak of lives and deaths across the reaches of history.
Author Biography
Andrew McNeillie is emeritus professor in English at Exeter University and the former was literature editor at Oxford University Press. He is the author of the poetry collections In Mortal Memory; Nevermore; Now, Then; Slower; and his memoir Once. He is the founding editor of the magazine Archipelago and runs the Clutag Press.
