'A path headed off underneath a row of low-lying bushes, below the tangle of old trees, small splashes of yellow paint indicating a direction of sorts, and silvery rays of light revealed a creek moving under the branches. And, for you, behind it all there was this conviction that something would always lead somewhere – as if feeling the sun for one moment on your body wasn’t enough ...
'Ideas of Travel builds in significant ways on Peter Boyle's previous two books, his award-winning Enfolded in the Wings of a Great Darkness and Notes Towards the Dreambook of Endings. This collection again taps into a deep dreamlike symbolism and directs this to great existential effect. Even staying still we are travelling—across the seasons, across the day, across a life. Written over fourteen months of the pandemic, Ideas of Travel subverts the boundaries between the living and the dead, the human and the non-human, ourselves and others. In this sequence of 140 new poems acclaimed poet Peter Boyle examines our sense of what it is to be alive.' (Publication summary)