Content in wide, accustomed landscapes
I hear the same wind songs there and bird calls
too.
My wanderings have brought me home, a closing
spiral towards the centre of everything I’ve known.

A new poetry collection from master writer Owen
Marshall is always to be celebrated, bringing the
welcome promise of the same wisdom, subtlety
and wit that have won him such admiration for his
award-winning short fiction and novels. Beyond
the Border is no exception. These are poems about
the loss of close friends, poems full of memory –
and sometimes of regret, poems marked by wry
humour and rueful self-deprecation. Many are
rich in colour and sensation and close observation of the natural landscape. Many speak of the lasting consolations and pleasures of marriage and family, and of both the vicissitudes of old age and its unexpected joys. There is a deeply elegiac quality here, but there is also hope, acceptance and contentment in a life widely and thoughtfully lived, and the recognition that what lasts, and what means most, is love.