Michael O’Neill 
Return of the Gift 

Michael O'Neill's Return of the Gift is a volume about what is given and what is lost. Writing unsentimentally and with insight about powerful subjects such as the death of his mother, caring for his father, and his own recent diagnosis of cancer, the poet speaks of and to his personal and historical life and also explores themes of elegy and friendship. Memories are woven vividly throughout a thematically varied yet coherent collection, in which a witty and moving pleasure in living and language is always to the fore.

About the author

Michael O’Neill was born in Aldershot in 1953 and moved to Liverpool in 1960. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, and from 1979 he lectured in English at Durham University, where he was Professor of English and Assistant Director of the Centre for Poetry and Poetics. He co-founded and co-edited Poetry Durham from 1982 to 1994.He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1983 for his poetry and a Cholmondeley Award for Poets in 1990. His four previous collections of poems are The Stripped Bed (Collins Harvill, 1990), Wheel (Arc, 2008), Gangs of Shadow (Arc, 2014) and Return of the Gift (Arc, 2018).Michael O’Neill died in December 2018, leaving a wife and two children.