How they clutch at my heart,
last year's birds' nests
in the mind's bare branches
this New Year's Day.
Stuff in manuscript,
ink-squiggle and thicket.

from 'Hedge Fund'

Slower, Andrew McNeillie's third collection, meditates on personal and natural history, nation states and mental states, violence, religion and poetry. It treats too of personal bereavement, and of love and marriage. The poem sequences at its core make connections between places, times and events, and meditate on continuities.

The twenty-eight 'Glyn Dwr Sonnets' explore parallels between the campaigns of the Welsh hero and those of Osama Bin Laden, offering wry reflections on ideas of nation and belonging, and on the practice of writing poems. 'A Portrait of the Poet as a Young Dog' also plays to a Welsh tune, offering eleven sonnets on the author's wayward young manhood, while 'Arkwork' - with 'artwork' by Julian Bell - finds in the loss of the Stranraer-Larne ferry in January 1953, in which the 133 passengers and crew drowned, a focus for reflection on the literary history of shipwreck, death, and survival. At the book's close, the title poem looks towards a new future, in a meditation at an Irish wedding, with reflections on the Good Friday Agreement.

Table of Contents

Honeysuckle

Stones

In Memoriam Vernon Watkins (1956-1967)

In Defence of Poetry

The State of Play on the Rialto

Thirty-Six Exposures

To a Critic

Portrait of the Poet as a Young Dog

(i) Diana and Actaeon

(ii) Hume's Enquiry

(iii) For the Fallen

(iv) Esse est percipi

(v) A Vision of Reality

(vi) L'Albatros

(vii) Like a Rolling Stone

(viii) i.m. Le Deuxième Sexe

(ix) 'The Tree' Revisited

(x) Northern House

(xi) In Vaucluse

News of Spring

Death

Shade at the Funeral

Gone for Good

Natural History

The Fisher Widow

Ends & Means

Hedge Fund

In Memoriam Carey Morris RA (1882-1968)

Meditation on Armistice Day

Glyn D^wr Sonnets

(i) 'So he retreated...'

(ii) 'At Pumlumon...'

(iii) 'Mr De Valera's Hint to the English in Wales'

(iv) 'Soon after, seething...'

(v) Cynefin Glossed

(vi) Owain's Poetics

(vii) 'Prophecy' from Iolo Goch's Last Poems

(viii) 9/18/1400

(ix) A Monoglot Trout

(x) 'When young Owain...'

(xi) 'As if...'

(xii) On the Study of Celtic Literature (1866)

(xiii) Homage to Kyffin Williams

(xiv) 'Mc maybe I am...'

(xv) Ubi Sunt

(xvi) On Burning the British Library

(xvii) The Irish Question

(xviii) 'Gwalia'

(xix) Inferno: The Superhighway

(xx) Purgatorio: The Long March

(xxi) Paradiso: Dulyn, 1957

(xxii) Wake for Owain

(xxiii) For Diana, i.m. Mrs Glyn D^wr

(xxiv) 'Suppose it had worked out?...'

(xxv) Y Werin

(xxvi) Aubade

(xxvii) The Emerald Isle Express

(xxviii)Epilogue

In Memoriam Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

Homage to Patagonia

(i) Mysterious Are the Ways of God

(ii) Witness Lost Souls

(iii) Against the Afflictions of the Taskmasters

(iv) Several Families Came from the Slate-Quarrying Areas of North Wales...

(v) The Thomases at San Tomis

(vi) In Toil and Love

(vii) Dream-Bird

(viii) Cwm Hyfryd

(ix) Songline for Chatwin

(x) Qué Lindo Dia!

(xi) Songline for Kyffin

In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Meditation in a Private Garden

Dog Days

Winter Thoughts

Poem

Arkwork (with Artwork by Julian Bell)

(i) Noah's Flood

(ii) No Doubt

(iii) 'No good? No good?'

(iv) 'Two hours out...'

(v) In Memory of David Broadfoot, Radio Officer

(vi) May-Day

(vii) Altogether Elsewhere

(viii) A Cowshed High Up In the Alps

(ix) Noah: The Complete Works

(x) Art Lubber

(xi) Covenant

North Cluta

(i) A Poacher's Handbook

(ii) clutarche

(iii) Andy Walker (Ploughman)

(iv) i.m. Margaret Willson

(v) Covenant

(vi) The Carry

(vii) For Great-Granny Elizabeth

Slower

Quicker (Go Little Book)



Notes