Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the last
twenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with the
assistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine the
relationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought together
established and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the study
of islands, coasts and waterways. It journeys from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from the
Aran Islands to the coast of Yorkshire, tracing the cultures of diverse zones through some
of the best in contemporary writing about place and people.
This collection gathers poetry, prose and visual art in clusters grouped around the Irish
and British archipelago, with contributions from an array of significant artists. It includes
newly commissioned work as well as an interview between Andrew McNeillie and
Robert Macfarlane on the development of Archipelago across the years.
Andrew McNeillie is a Welsh poet, and current Literature Editor at Oxford University Press. His memoir An Aran Keening is published by The Lilliput Press, and he is founder of the Clutag Press.
Seamus Heaney was born in Northern Ireland in 1939, and died in Dublin aged 74. His career included teaching at Harvard and Oxford, and receiving the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the EM Firster Award, the PEN Translation prise, the Golden Wreath of Poetry. The T.S. Eliot Prize, two Whitbread Prizes, and the Griffin Poetry Prize.
Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish writer, whose writing has appeared internationally. She has taught poetry at the University of Stirling since 2010.
Michael Longley is a Northern Irish poet, and winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and the PEN Pinter Prize in 2017.
Robert Macfarlane is a Writing Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His work has won him the EM Forster Award for Literature.