Shell Island is Ian Parks's second full collection of poems, and it extends and develops themes that were present in his previous work: those of love, loss, and the relationship that exists between the individual and society. Themes of encounter – particularly with the miraculous – and of the resonating quality of history are juxtaposed with a series intense love lyrics.

Shell Island is being launched at the Flux Gallery, 16a Midland Road in Leeds, on Saturday 10th June at 7.30 p.m.

The main preoccupation of Shell Island is with the transitory nature of human experience and how that experience informs our perception of 'the rule of love and politics'.

IAN PARKS was born in 1959 in Mexborough, Yorkshire and was one of the National Poetry Society New Poets in 1996. He was writer-in-residence at North Riding College during 1986-88 and received a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1991 and a Travelling Fellowship to the USA in 1994. A Climb Through Altered Landscapes was published in 1998.

Recent poems have appeared in Poetry Review, Poetry (Chicago), London Magazine, and The Observer, and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3. He currently teaches creative writing at Leeds University and serves on the judging panel for the TMA theatre awards.