Polder Format: Paperback

Connecting themes of exile, submergence, and reclamation, this imaginative poetry collection explores a variety of complex topics, from a harrowing battle with alcoholism to a redemptive love for Dutch landscapes. Constructed around a series of dialogues between Dutch histories, dialects, faces, and voices both past and present, the volume includes a section entitled "Masterpieces," which imagines conversations with and between paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt, and other Dutch masters on display in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Written on the occasion of the poet’s 50th birthday, the final poem of the book, "Vinegar Days," recalls his drinking days—a period he associates with ambition, pride, and failure.

Chris McCully is a freelance writer, a translator, a teacher, and a director of the Modern Literary Archives program at the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. He is the author of the poetry collections The Country of Perhaps, Fly-fishing: A Book of Words, Not Only I, The Poet's Voice and Craft, and Time Signatures.