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. Noctuary was shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
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 GBP20,000 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 (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He lives in Leeds.
Title: Noctuary
Author: Niall Campbell
ISBN: 9781780374659
Binding:
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publication Date: 2019-04-25
Number of Pages: 64
Weight: 0.1000 kg
Full of striking moments, the poems of Moontide are illuminated by powerful lyric impulses. -- David Wheatley * Guardian *
In his understated debut collection, Campbell, who spent his childhood on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, draws on an intimately known landscape as witness to solitude and shared lives. -- Maria Crawford * Financial Times, Summer books 2014 *
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 *