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Return of the Gift

by Michael O'Neill

Michael O'Neill's Return of the Gift is a volume about what is given and what is lost. Writing unsentimentally and with insight about powerful subjects such as the death of his mother, caring for his father, and his own recent diagnosis of cancer, the poet speaks of and to his personal and historical life and also explores themes of elegy and friendship. Memories are woven vividly throughout a thematically varied yet coherent collection, in which a witty and moving pleasure in living and language is always to the fore.

Return of the Gift finds a compelling, exact language and form for the elusive and the quotidian, for humour and sorrow, for loss and resilience.

Jamie McKendrick

These are wonderful poems — wry, moving, wise — and written with a beautiful precision of language.

William Boyd

Paperback 978-1911469-46-9
Hardback 978-1911469-47-6
104 pages
Published April 2018

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