Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from Bloodaxe Books via edelweissplus, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own.
The Island in the Sound, the third collection by Scottish poet Niall Campbell, creates an archipelago of memories, lyrics, observations and folktales that place the small islands of his birthplace into conversation with moments from literature and history.
In this collection, mirroring the islands’ precarious future, we uncover strange links to Rome falling, Lindisfarne, and the temporary heaven found in Alamut, North Iran. The waters that churn around the islands in the poems bring strange things to their shores: saints, remnants of various types of havens, crab-boxes, and figures from the working-class lives of Uist. It is a poetry collection attuned to the growing sense that something is changing around us and there never will be a going back. These islands in the sound are what’s left: shaped, crafted, riven by the strange tuneful sea they sprang from.
Except:
You left the echoing road, the verge blanket of the grass to now walk just on sand, each footstep sayinghush as if to the one previous.Hush. Hush.
The beach path all feldspar and dusted quartz.Hush. Hush. The razorshell. The conicals of whelks.
Alone, passing the snores of driftwood hunkered on the beach silk – you might hear the something else that isn’t the sea returning to the beach, or the corncrake in the small blacked-out cathedral of collected thatch; that isn’t the lighthouse making the one sound of its light...
Review:
This really isn't what most people would call poetry- it's not stanzas and set lines that rhyme. Rather it is a stream of consciousness verse similar to that of what we would call Street poetry. But this poetry concerns the island that is Ireland its culture this peoples and its geography. It's striking inputting you into the place with few words, it's an interesting book of small verse essays that all bind together and tore a unique look at Ireland.
About the Author:
Niall Campbell’s first collection, Moontide (2014), won both the £20,000 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the Saltire First Book of the Year Award as well as being shortlisted for three other major prizes. First Nights: poems, a selection from Moontide , with additional new poems, was published by Princeton University Press in the US in 2016. His second collection, Noctuary (2019), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Born and raised on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, he now lives in Fife. He is editor of the leading UK poetry journal Poetry London.
Comments
Post a Comment