Beyond The Ninth Wave: Selected Poems of Gordon Meade – Pre-Order

Beyond The Ninth Wave: Selected Poems of Gordon Meade

Published by: Into Poetry
Format: Paperback
Pages: 112
Publication: May 2025
ISBN: 9781738514953

Beyond The Ninth Wave: Selected Poems of Gordon Meade contains poems chosen by the celebrated Scottish poet himself from his twelve previous collections as well as new poems of his, covering subjects as diverse as the sea, nonhuman animals, and the poet’s experience of Stage Four Cancer.

Water has always been a constant theme in Gordon Meade’s poetry, from his earliest memories of the West Sands at St Andrews, through the Northumberland coastline, via County Cork and the canals of Venice, to the beaches and harbours of the East Neuk of Fife. Another prevalent theme in his work is the experience of a variety of non-human animals, whether encountered in the wild or in captivity, either free or abused. A more recent theme has been the poet’s own
experience of Stage Three and Stage Four Cancer; its diagnosis, its treatment, and life with a terminal illness. All of the above areas are represented in Beyond the Ninth Wave which closes with over a dozen new poems published here, in book form, for the first time.

Cover illustration by Malcolm Reid.

Gordon Meade

Gordon Meade is a Scottish poet based in the East Neuk of Fife. Although he studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, he first started to take his own poetry ‘seriously’ while recovering from a severe head injury which initially left him with very little memory or speech. He is the author of 12 collections of poems starting with Singing Seals (1991) and ending, so far, with EX-Posed: Animal Elegies (2023) and Beyond The Ninth Wave: Selected Poems (2025). At present, he is working on a new collection, The Resurrectionists, with the Scottish artist Doug Robertson, which looks at the ethical issues of de-extinction from the perspective of a number of non-human animals. In the past, Meade has been the Creative Writing Fellow at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Writer in Residence for Dundee District Libraries, and the Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee. He has also worked as a Poet in Residence at a number of Primary Schools in Fife, as well as being part of the Royal Literary Fund’s project, The Bridge, based at a number of secondary schools in Fife. He has read extensively from his own work throughout the UK and Ireland and, up until COVID and his own health issues with cancer, had taken part in numerous reading tours of Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg with fellow poet, Desmond Graham. More recently, he has presented his work online at a number of human and animal studies conferences throughout the world.

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