Once (24 page)

 

Andrew McNeillie is a Professor of English at the University of Exeter. He was born in 1946, in Hen Golwyn, in North Wales, and educated at the John Bright Grammar School, Llandudno, and Magdalen College, Oxford. He was until recently Literature Editor at Oxford University Press.

His new book is the belated prequel to an acclaimed memoir
An Aran Keening
(Lilliput Press, 2002), an account of his stay for just short of a year on Inis Mór, in 1968-69, one of the three Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay. He is the founder of the Clutag Press and of the literary magazine
Archipelago
, which provides the focus of a new MA at Exeter University's Cornish campus: Nature, Writing and Place.

His new poetry collection
In Mortal Memory
will appear in February 2010. He has published three volumes of poetry:
Nevermore
(2000), shortlisted for the Forward Prize best first collection;
Now, Then
(2002) and
Slower
(2006), all from Carcanet. His biography of his father the Scottish rural novelist and nature writer:
Ian Niall: Part of his Life
was published in 2007. He is a member of Academi Gymreig.

Notes

*
Folk-lore and Folk Stories of Wales
, by Marie Trevelyan.

* A story told in
But Hibbou was Special
(1964) which called attention to me.