Book description
A to B began as a poem about a journey: it became a journey in
itself, a collection that travels through emotions and places,
unfolding to the rhythms of discovery and memory. Places and people
reveal their secrets; fragile bonds of love link past to present. In
the book's first part, an elusive pattern is glimpsed in fragments: a
plane climbs into a clear evening sky, the year turns to spring, a
father's voice is remembered after his death. The second part is
marked by meticulous observation. A man watches daylight creep across
a room. And the concluding section celebrates a quality of silence in
which imagination grows. Gerry McGrath extends our understanding of
what it is to travel through the world.
Gerry McGrath was born in Helensburgh, near Glasgow, in 1962 and
studied at Strathclyde University before becoming a teacher. He now
lives in North Ayrshire with his wife, Kate, and young son, Liam. He
worked as a teacher of modern languages for seven years until 2000. He
received a Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award in 2004. His poems have
appeared in The Edinburgh Review, Being Alive, in Painted, Spoken and in
PN Review, and a selection were published in Carcanet's New Poetries IV:
An Anthology (2007). A to B is his first collection.
