Chris McCully

2008 looks set to be an exciting year for new books by Chris. A little angling book appeared from Westerlaan here in the Netherlands (Sketches with Fishing Rods, with illustrations by Ad Swier). We launched this at the Dutch FlyFair (24-25 May 2008). And then there's a small collection of translations from Old English published by Carcanet/Fyfield, a title which was launched at the 'Bone Dreams' conference in Oxford, 26 April 2008.

In 2009, the Medlar Press are bringing out another fishing book, Pike Lures, which is an account of my pike fishing from its beginnings at the turn of the millennium until now. Although the focus throughout the work is on....well, pike lures, as the title suggests...there are also accounts of how and why it was I came to love pike fishing, particularly pike fishing with the streamer, and an analysis of angling obsessions and compulsions as well as an analysis of the contexts in which today's pike fishing takes place. I was pleased with this book, I must admit, and was absolutely delighted when the Medlar Press decided to take it on.

Then there's a textbook on English phonology (The Sound Structure of English, CUP).

In 2009 Carcanet are bringing out a new collection of poems, Polder. (A 'polder' in Dutch is an area of farmland, often farmland reclaimed from the sea, which is drained by canals.) This work contains a handful of my own favourites from among my work in verse, notably some of the 'Torquatus' poems written in 2006-2008, and 'Dust', a poem composed in rhythmically-emphatic word-blocks.

Proposed cover image for Polder (2009).