Poems 2000-2005 is a transitional collection written while the author – also known to be W. J. Me Cormack, literary historian – was in the process of moving back from London to settle in rural Ireland. It is also a vigorous contribution to the age-old dialogue between Sacred and Profane themes, questioning beliefs and pleasures, guilts and landscapes, poetic methods and prosaic realities. Included are some of the most disturbing and accomplished meditations on communal violence in Ulster, the province where Hugh Maxton now lives. He is currently completing a new volume of poems and working – at age of 57 – on a first novel.
