The Gifts of Fortune

The Gifts of Fortune
Peter McDonald
RRP:
NZ$ 39.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 33.99
Paperback
h216 x 135mm - 98pg
28 May 2020 UK
International import eta 10-19 days
9781784109431
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
The poems in The Gifts of Fortune, Peter McDonald's seventh book of poems, cover a spectrum of personal history. They go to Belfast, Oxford, and further afield; in time they visit the poet's pasts, his now, his possible futures. Autobiographical detail abounds: McDonald's experiences (as a workingclass boy in Belfast, who dreams of leaving, and a middleaged Oxford don, who dreams of going back) are filtered through a deep instinct for poetic tradition. At the heart of the book are two sequences: one, 'Mud', in which family, professional, and literary histories are combined in strictly formal, but personally unguarded, reflections on poetry, class, and privilege; and another, 'Blindness', where a series of tenline units test poetic form to (and beyond) breaking-point, in a meditation on family and suffering, disappointment and hope. Other poems return to themes of wealth and poverty, love and loss, and the alienation and puzzlement of age. Throughout the book, form is ghosted by the formless, hovering just beyond the frame; and Fortune vies with Fate, quite another force.
'McDonald [...] is a poet of fierce feeling - moved and often moving.' - The TLS
Peter McDonald was born in Belfast in 1962. His first book of poetry, Biting the Wax, was published in 1989, and since then six volumes of his verse have appeared, including his Collected Poems (2012). He has written four books of literary criticism, including Mistaken Identities: Poetry and Northern Ireland (1997) and Sound Intentions: The Workings of Rhyme in Nineteenth-Century Poetry (2012). He is Professor of British and Irish Poetry in Oxford University.
Status: No local stock, title imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781784109431
Published: 28 May 2020
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Carcanet Press
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 216mm
Width: 135mm
Spine: 9mm
Pages: 98

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