“His poetry is distinguished by its precision. There is no surfeit to it. His poems are short and taut as well-set sails.” – Robert Macfarlane. After the success of his first novel, the much-lauded A Book of Death & Fish, Ian Stephen returns to poetry and his passion for all things marine with a collection that evokes the dramatic waterscapes, rocky shores and wind-blasted textures of his native Hebrides. A natural-born son of the sea, Ian writes with an intensity, spareness and precision that echoes the turmoil, the beauty – the essential character – of the northern seas and their liminal coastlines.
“His poetry is distinguished by its precision. There is no surfeit to it. His poems are short and taut as well-set sails.” -- Robert Macfarlane
“His main subjects – seas, winds, tides, shorelines and horizons – are expressed in precisely observed details of shape, colour, texture and movement that capture the spirit of a place as well as the topography.” -- James Aitchieson * Herald *
“Absorbing and riveting... dense, compelling and wildly idiosyncratic... splits the form open like a fresh catch, glistening and raw and singing with the sea.” -- Kirsty Gunn * Guardian *
“A rugged landscape and stoic yet lyrical simplicity.” -- Robert Morace, Professor of English at Daemen College, Amherst, NY
ISBN: 9781910192368
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
176 pages