Description

The wing-shaped, wind-borne seeds of the ash-tree might be an image for poems in search of their readers. This selection, based on thirteen individual collections, represents Longleys unusual range as a lyric poet.

It shows how his themes, genres and forms have evolved and interlaced since the 1960s. Love, violence, the natural world, art, psychodrama, family, the Great War, the Homeric past and Northern Irelands troubled present cohabit in these pages as do depth, wit and beauty. Longleys poems of the west of Ireland, which pivot on Carrigskeewaun, his soul landscape, have also made him a pioneer of eco-poetry.