It was a pleasure to be in the audience at a recent St.Cuthbert's Senior Common Room reading where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Neill_(academic)" class="extiw" title="w:Michael O'Neill (academic)">Michael O'Neill</a> and Jacek Dehnel the Polish poet, translator and editor read from their works.  Here Michael O'Neill is signing my copy of his collection; The Stripped Bed.  He read from that and from his later collection: Wheel, from which his following poem is an exampler:
<p>NORFOLK
</p><p>Sand-martins whirling out of cliffs.
Hay trussed in roly-poly bales.
</p><p>Stalled windmills.  Big Skies.
A place for weather-watching rites, for money
</p><p>to invest in, rewarding itself
with the obligatory boat and a lawn
</p><p>that tapers off in search of water, life's
elixir, leisure's mirror... Walsingham
</p><p>and Cromer: the manufactured shrine with
something - nothingness?  -- candled at its heart,
</p><p>the deft resort with one eye on your wallet
and one on the enigma of the sky
</p><p>that bends above the threatened beach
where if, as they heap and spill, drag and heap,
</p><p>the waves are trying to communicate - 
some maxim, perhaps concerning survival,
</p><p>the need to endure, to hope just enough - 
to find you're baffled, you can't hear a word.
</p>
Michael O'Neil is Professor of English at Durham University, his poetry has been recognised by an Eric Gregory Award and a Cholmondeley Award.
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