His poetry is distinguished by its precision. There is no surfeit to it. His poems are short and taut as well-set sails. - Robert Macfarlane. After the success of his first novel, the much-lauded A Book of Death & Fish, Ian Stephen returns to poetry and his passion for all things marine with a collection that evokes the dramatic waterscapes, rocky shores and wind-blasted textures of his native Hebrides. A natural-born son of the sea, Ian writes with an intensity, spareness and precision that echoes the turmoil, the beauty - the essential character - of the northern seas and their liminal coastlines.