Westerly Rising

Like the landscapes they explore, these poems are shaped by wind, tide, and human history. Oak trees surrender to the sea; a river is forced beneath city streets.

Running through the collection is a quest for rootedness in a dislocated world. Without a given destination, a pilgrim wanders the Tramuntana mountains of Mallorca, the ancient woodlands of Sussex, and the battered coast of County Down. There is no shrine. He puts his trust instead in close attention to the world as it is found, and to what history and myth reveal, as he turns to face the west wind -- elemental harbinger of rain and change.

Paul O'Prey's most recent collection of poems is Pilot Songs for a Phantom Island, published by Dare-Gale Press in September 2024.collections include Fleet (The Melos Press, 2021) and Mappa Mundi (The Melos Press, 2023). He has edited two best-selling anthologies of poetry, First World War: Poems from the Front (Imperial War Museum, 2014) and Counter-Wave, Poetry of Rescue in the First World War (Dare-Gale Press, 2018).In 2024 he translated Slow Burn, a sequence of poems by Jordi Doce (shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Prize, 2024).He has edited the Selected Poems of Robert Graves, Mary Borden and Laurence Binyon. Other works include a study of the novels of Graham Greene and a translation from the Spanish of Emilia Pardo Bazan's novel, The House of Ulloa (Penguin Classics, 2013, with Lucia Graves). Paul O'Prey is Emeritus Professor of Modern Literature and University Fellow at the University of Roehampton, LondonHe is Chair of Trustees at West Dean.Author website: www.pauloprey.com