Description
Reviewing Mairi MacInnes's Elsewhere & Back, Helen Dunmore praised her 'restless, ranging poems', noting how her poems 'hint at rather than state in order to create a powerful sense of the identity of place. Place always seems more important than the characters who are temporarily rooted in it' (Observer). Mairi MacInnes wrote of her work: 'Like most women, I put my hand to what paid, to help out and to buy time and liberty. Retirement to the North Riding with my husband has brought with it not only time and liberty, but also a chance to seize and understand at leisure the things that have always pressed to be written about. Yet as far as poetry goes, I've never believed in an Atlantic divide. At the extremes there are two distinct styles. They meet, however, in a middle ground of a hundred common concerns, some of which are reflected here.'
