Crash & Burn by Michael O'neill

Crash & Burn by Michael O'neill

In this book, Michael O’Neill documents in poetry the course of the medical treatment of an illness – cancer of the oesophagus – diagnosed in September 2017. Following diagnosis and staging (the theme of the final poems in Return of the Gift, Arc, 2018), the treatment fell into three main phases (corresponding to this volume’s sometimes overlapping three sections): a course of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (involving emergency hospitalisation during the first of three cycles); the decision to operate, the operation, and the immediate aftermath; convalescence after leaving hospital and a further course of adjuvant chemotherapy (stopped after two cycles). There is a ‘Coda’ at the end of the book, which contains poems alluding to the fact that the fears expressed specifically in two poems earlier in the sequence were subsequently realised, and the last two poems in the collection were written in the last week of Michael O’Neill’s life.

Michael O’Neill was born in Aldershot in 1953 and moved to Liverpool in 1960. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, and from 1979 he lectured in English at Durham University, where he was Professor of English and Assistant Director of the Centre for Poetry and Poetics. He co-founded and co-edited Poetry Durham from 1982 to 1994. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1983 for his poetry and a Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1990. His four previous collections of poems are The Stripped Bed (Collins Harvill, 1990), Wheel (Arc, 2008), Gangs of Shadow (Arc, 2014) and Return of the Gift (Arc, 2018). Michael O’Neill died in December 2018, leaving a wife and two children.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781911469674
ISBN 10	1911469673
Title	Crash & Burn
Author	Michael O'neill
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Arc Publications
Year published	2019-04-01
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable