Winter Moorings

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 "e;The Seafarer"e; to an elegiac play "e;for sounds and voices"e; 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.