Rooster, Gerry McGrath’s second book of poems, observes with painterly precision the commonplaces of our experience, creating landscapes of emotional range and intensity. Biography, history, geography are interwoven in potent new forms: a lover’s fragile caress, the ‘expeditionary skill’ of a dentist, the death of irony celebrated by crows ‘helpless with laughter’, a green tree burning in a red room.

In its second and third sections the book is emboldened by novel experiences and ancient panoramas: the isle of Arran is transmogrified, and a collaboration inspired by the bosky latitudes of the French artists’ commune Grez-sur-Loing adds colour, scope and depth. In the two concluding sections Rooster is at its most ambitious, sketching expansive, rehabilitated vistas of a world that is haunting and new.

Intimate Expanses    
Snow    
White Sail    
The Opposite of Goodbye    
Only Light    
The Telling    
St Petersburg    
Element    
The Beach at Irvine    
The Photographer    
Pale Cup    
No Maybes About It    
You Are    
Lightning    
Changed Days    
The Guests    
Summer’s End    
First    
Blue Box    
Open Wide    
Kisses    
Loose Ends    
Wheat    
Magic    
He Says    
In Itself    
La Stanza Rossa    
Born    
Fragment (of a Chorale)    
Eldest    
Blue    
Roses    
Two Words    
Report from a West Highland Funeral    
I Hope    
You Were    
Tell Me    
Ask    
Standing    
Script    
Zero    
Steps    
Moon    

Goat Fell    
Audience of One    
Imperfect    
Suite No. 1
    Wordleft    
    Elephant Hide    
    Spheres    
    Two Rivers    
    Silence Cut    

Wave    
A Man of Good Fortune    
The Morning of Forgetfulness    
Dutch Interiors    
Faith    

Return to the City    
Foreign Travel    
Rooster    
Suite No. 2
    I – VIII    

West Coast Colloquy    
American Bestiary    
Horse Feathers    
Purple