Ebook: In Mortal Memory

In Mortal Memory is a collection of lyric poems, celebratory if often melancholy, both elegiac and ironic. Affirming that life is 'all becoming' McNeillie mourns what that means in terms of loss and sorrow at time passing. The sea is a powerful presence, its meaning drawn both from the northern landscapes in which McNeillie's work is rooted, and from the work of French poets, from Baudelaire and Hugo to Rimbaud and Corbière. The poems pitch up and down across formalities, against the idea of purity, while sustaining a rhyming, singing line.;Cover; Title Page; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Table of Contents; PART I : Song in Winter; Winter Song; Boozy Weather; Grief; How Deep is the Ocean?; High and Dry; Les Poètes maudits; i.m. Juliette Drouet; Love in the Language Room; Le Rêve; Solo in New York; Summer Reading; My Death; Mislaid; Trick Cyclist; At 'The Oystercatcher', Portmahomack; Literalist; Spring Campaign; The Rising of the Year; Hedger; Great Leveller; Internal Exile; Botanical Gardens Revisited; Nightjars; Arctic Terns; Anno Domini 2007; Summer Migrant; The Big Snow; The Wild Thorn; PART II : At Sea; Life-Line.