In Crash & Burn, Michael O'Neill describes his treatment for cancer of the oesophagus. The volume has four parts - devoted, in turn, to the preoperative chemotherapy; the operation; the post-operative chemotherapy; and a coda. Everywhere life and death are in close contact in a volume that is uncompromisingly unafraid to deal with the realities of illness while retaining humour, grace and eloquence. The collection, though emotionally devastating, still discovers and celebrates beauty sought and found in the act of writing, and reading, poetry.

About the Author
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.


Book Information
ISBN 9781911469667
Author Michael O'Neill
Format Paperback
Page Count 106
Imprint Arc Publications
Publisher Arc Publications