First Nights: Poems (Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets, 132)

Description

The North American debut of an exciting new voice in British poetry The Scottish poet Niall Campbell's first book, Moontide, won the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize, the largest such prize in the United Kingdom, was named the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for both the Fenton Aldeburgh and Forward prizes for best first collection. First Nights―which includes all the poems in Moontide and sixteen new ones―marks the North American debut of an exciting new voice in British poetry. First Nights offers vivid descriptions of the natural world, and the joy found in moments of quiet, alongside intimate depictions of new parenthood. Campbell grew up on the remote, sparsely populated islands of South Uist and Eriskay in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, and First Nights is filled with images of the islands’ seascapes, myths, wildlife, and long, dark winters. But the poems widen beyond their immediate locations to include thoughts on sculpture and mythology, Zola and Dostoevsky, and life in English cities and French villages. In the poems on early fatherhood, the geography shifts from coastal stretches to bare, dimly lit rooms. Stripped back, honest, and immediate, these poems capture moments of vulnerability, when the only answer is to love. Combining skilled storytelling, precise language, an allegiance to meter and form, and a quiet musicality, these poems resonate with silence and song, mystery and wonder, exploring ideas of companionship and withdrawal, love, and the stillness of solitude. The result is a collection that promises to be a classic. Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Song The Work On Eriskay After the Creel Fleet The Tear in the Sack Rodin Sculpts The Kiss Black Water The Cut The Winter Home “The Letter Always Arrives at Its Destination” Midnight The Blackbird Singer The Fraud Harvest Grez, Near Dusk The Water Carrier One Day, Too Hot, I Swam to the Middle of the Stream Lyrebird First Nights Exchange Street An Eel, A Singing Bird, A Silver Coin A Little Night Music The Well Found Dry Return, Isle of Eriskay When the Whales Beached Later Tasting Crossing For the Cold Fleece Dream Le Penseur February Morning Sea Coins, Scottish Beach Advice on Love, Over Whisky A Danse Macabre Leave, Eriskay Grez A Porch-Step Glossary for Smokers Foxes Epitaph Forge And This Was How It Started An Island Vigil Walking Song An Introduction to the Gods of Scotland Window, Honley I Started Cyprus Avenue The House by the Sea, Eriskay The Songs of Kirilov Horseshoe Crab Reading Emile Zola, Grez Carpenter’s Studio off Exchange Street Concerning Song/Silence Leave Poetry Addendum Island Cottage, November Proof Smultronstället, Glendale A Sealskin Tale Kid Juggler Winter with Soren North Atlantic Drift From a Letter to the Butter-Makers Aesthetics, on a Side Street off Glasgow Green Measuring Heat Loss in the Arctic A Song for Rarity