The Burning Perch - Grand Format

The Burning Perch was published in 1963 and turned out to he Louis MacNeice's last published collection. On receiving that year's Autumn Poetry Book Society Choice, MacNeice described the poems as "ranging from bleak observations to thumbnail nightmares", but went on to say : "I would venture the generalisation that most of these poems are two-way affairs or at least spiral ones : even in the most evil picture the good things, like the sea in one of these poems, are still there round the corner." "...
the most remarkable Indian Summer in the century's poetry." Bernard O' Donoghue. "The urbanity and period detail mask a lyrical intensity and philosophical seriousness matched by few twentieth-century poets. This has grown clearer with the passage of time, so that the importance of his work is only now fully apparent. He is, quite simply, one of the giants of modern poetry." Derek Mahon