Noctuary

by Niall Campbell

Overview

A noctuary is a diary for the late hours. In Niall Campbell’s poems, this is a time for reflection, discovering what it means to be a young father, anxious, caring and protective, deeply connected to the new, precious life of another human being. The deftly lyrical poems in his second collection illuminate a night world of disturbed sleep and half dream, midnight feeds, the quiet of snowfall through the hours of dark. At the same time the grown man now living in the city reconnects with his own childhood on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, the territory of his highly praised first collection, Moontide. Hearing his father’s voice in how he calls to his son, other images of the island’s seascapes, myths and wildlife return to him in Noctuary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780374666
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	04/25/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	54
File size:	215 KB

About the Author

Niall Campbell was born in 1984 on the island of South Uist, one of the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and an Arvon-Jerwood Mentorship in 2013, and won the Poetry London Competition in 2013. His work has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies including, Granta, The Dark Horse, Poetry London, Poetry Review, The Salt Book of Younger Poets and Best Scottish Poems 2011. His debut pamphlet, After the Creel Fleet, was published by Happenstance Press in 2012. His first book-length collection, Moontide (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), won Britain’s biggest poetry prize, the £20,000 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, as well as the Saltire First Book of the Year Award; it was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. First Nights: poems, a selection from Moontide with additional new poems, was published by Princeton University Press in the US in 2016. His second book-length collection, Noctuary, was published by Bloodaxe in 2019. He lives in Leeds.

Table of Contents

Midnight 13

First Nights 14

Thinning Apples 15

First Illness 16

Keeping the Poacher's Light 17

Crusoe, One Year on the Island 19

Clapping Game 20

All the Doubts of the Late Evening 21

Moth 22

Lyrics 23

Packhorse 25

The Address 26

Poacher 28

A New Father Thinks About Those Running Home 29

Dear 30

The Night Watch 31

The Disembarked 32

Go There 33

The Water Carrier 34

Returning to Work 35

Measuring Heat Loss in the Arctic 36

Dream 37

Blackberries 38

Poetry When Working 39

An Island Vigil 40

The Cut 41

Four Memories in No Particular Order 42

Horseshoe Crab 43

Proof 44

Living in the City and Dreaming of the Winter Beach 45

Two Poems after Cuevas Lopes 46

Picking Day 46

Leaving Town 47

Other Branches 48

February Morning 49

Glasgow 50

Cooling a Meal by the Outside Door 51

Capture 52

Tightrope 53

Thirties 54

Language 55

From the Spanish 56

Good Night 58

Acknowledgements 61

Biographical Note 63

Editorial Reviews

With precise language, musicality and insight, Campbell’s first collection explores solitude, companionship and memory against a backdrop of closely observed nature. His intimate poems draw on the seascapes and myths of his native Eriskay, in the Outer Hebrides, but take the same sharp-focused eye to other places, too... Meditative and haunting – my favourite poetry book of 2014 so far.' – Juanita Coulson, The Lady, on Moontide.

From the Publisher