Songs for Gillian

At times reflective, at times quickened by a rare and intriguing energy, these poems celebrate, evoke, and lament the nature of romantic love. Yet this anthology finds it is not only the human person that can capture a poet's heart: the reader is invited to consider whether the fine pulse of love-with its longing for attachment, its inspiration, its almost numinous power-might not also be prompted by the wider domain of nature as a whole. As the author himself explains, all poetry may-in a special and extended sense - be conceived of as 'love poetry'. Accordingly, this work brings into a single scope the delights of hillside and seascape-the wild and the elemental, as well as the more calm and cultivated. From the north-west of Scotland to the south-west of England, from the lure of the North Sea to the spell cast by Pendle's beacon, these pieces declare a rich soil for what is a surprisingly accessible literary harvest.