Winter Moorings

Description

Andrew McNeillie's sixth collection returns to the sea and its immensity as a metaphor for fate. It also revisits the British and Irish archipelago ('For which read a figure for my heart. / For which read too a figure for time's hurt'), following a north-western trajectory from the Aran Islands to the Hebrides. The natural world is seen here in both its beauty and its indifference to human beings ('There's many a thing more lasting than a person'). From a version of 'The Seafarer' to an elegiac play 'for sounds and voices' retelling 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.

Andrew McNeillie was born in North Wales and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford before becoming an editor and publisher. For many years he was literature editor at Oxford University Press. He has also held a chair in English at Exeter University where he is now Emeritus Professor. He is the founding editor of the magazine Archipelago and runs the Clutag Press. His memoir Once appeared in 2009 from Seren. His Carcanet poetry collections are Nevermore (Oxford Poets, 2000), Now, Then (2002), Slower (2006) and In Mortal Memory (2010). His memoir, An Aran Keening, was published in 2001.

'There is some extraordinary virtuosity here - in one poem, he finds 33 half-rhymes for "envy".' - John Greening, Country Life 'delightful... a distinctive voice' - The Times 'McNeillie's poetry is full of a sense of lives lived on the edge [...] full of resonance and bite' - Charles Bainbridge, Guardian 'McNeillie's special gift is for providing the pleasure that comes from recognition: we can see ourselves in his poems.' - Times Literary Supplement