Rockall

Rockall: an island some 230 miles off the west coast of Scotland, just 60 feet above sea level. The highest peak of a submerged continent, thrashed by a stormy ocean. An isolated and dangerous place, a sea rock of roaring /smoke and mirrors. In Rockall, Anne Osbourn takes us on a poetic journey, guiding us through historical encounters from the first recorded British landing in 1811, through shipwrecks which eventually led to the establishment of a light on Rockall in 1971, to its occupation in 2014 by the adventurer Nick Hancock. It is a polyphonic collection in which the voice of the Rock is joined by a range of vibrant characters – bustling guillemots, flashy gannets, a talking buoy, not to mention puffins, barnacles, scientists, and government officials. Begun during Covid Lockdown in 2020, these poems shift between moods, forms and perspectives. Poignant, lyrical, factual and often very funny, Anne Osbourn’s Rockall is a guide unlike any other, a living history which explores human curiosity and resilience, isolation and survival.

Anne Osbourn is a poet and professor of biology at the John Innes Centre, Norwich. Her first poetry book Mock Orange was a winner in the 2018 Sentinel Poetry Book Competition, and her other poems have been published in poetry magazines including The Rialto, Orbis, The Lighthouse, Smiths Knoll, Amberflora, Steel Jackdaw, The Ekphrastic Review, as well as in a variety of international science journals. Poems commended/shortlisted in competitions include the York Literature Festival, the Flambard Poetry Prize, the Second Light Poetry Competition, and the National Poetry Competition. She has always been drawn to the natural world, and in Rockall, her professional and poetic interests find exuberant expression.