Beyond the Border

Content in wide, accustomed landscapes

I hear the same wind songs there and bird calls too.

My wanderings have brought me home, a closing

spiral towards the centre of everything I've known.

A new poetry collection from master writer Owen Marshall is always to be celebrated, bringing the welcome promise of the same wisdom, subtlety and wit that have won him such admiration for his award-winning short fiction and novels. Beyond the Border is no exception. These are poems about the loss of close friends, poems full of memory—and sometimes of regret, poems marked by wry humour and rueful self-deprecation.

Many are rich in colour and sensation and close observation of the natural landscape. Many speak of the lasting consolations and pleasures of marriage and family, and of both the vicissitudes of old age and its unexpected joys. There is a deeply elegiac quality here, but there is also hope, acceptance, and contentment in a life widely and thoughtfully lived, and the recognition that what lasts, and what means most, is love.