In Love Goes North Julie McNeill takes her reader on a journey across Scotland and beyond, tracing memories that are both sentimental and bittersweet in poems that offer glimpses of a life lived intentionally. McNeill curates a collection that prioritise attentiveness, connection and care – for oneself, for others and for the natural world – in which memory is a source of familiarity and dependability, providing comfort amidst life’s many uncertainties and irregularities. People and places are preserved as they are remembered and transformed into poetry, yet these preservations are tinged with loss and longing as McNeill captures the unsettling feeling that accompanies the realisation that these moments cannot be repeated. As such, she explores how the act of remembering can be at once fulfilling and frustrating, as the memories themselves begin to slip away despite her best efforts to hold onto them through writing.
Motifs such as windows recur throughout the collection, acting as borders between past and present and as portals into memories and reflections. These are particularly central to the opening section, ‘Trying to Remember’, in which these moments of stillness interrupt and contrast the bustle of modern life. The figure in ‘Abbotsford Bar, Rose Street’ embodies such consistency – ‘always waiting at the window’ (15), ‘even in new windows / when he was too old to stay far away’ (15) – and illustrates how this continues to act as a comfort even when the person is no longer with us. Such figures are looked back on fondly but are not overly romanticised, as McNeill presents nuanced and realistic relationships that are not always smooth-sailing. Within these memories of individuals, physical details – particularly hands – recur and make her reflections more tangible. Across various poems hands are ‘traced’ (16), ‘reached for’ (19) and appear identified by certain rings (26), in each case grounding the poems in real tactile experiences. McNeill’s attention to such details throughout the collection reinforces her message that life is made up of the ‘Ordinary things’ (23) and the ‘small’ things that are ’not so very small, / at all’ (46) but that develop meaning through the familiarity of their intimacy.
In the second section, ‘Birthing’, McNeill turns to a reflection of motherhood, exploring the nostalgia of watching her children grow up. Their young lives are shown in the flashes of formative moments, from the anticipation of a positive pregnancy test through to sleepless nights, school routines and the development of individual adolescent personalities. Here, McNeill toes the line between protection and exposure, capturing the competing urges that she experiences: to shelter her innocent children from the world – the son who ‘believed so strongly / that the world was good’ (33) and the daughter who ‘is still young enough to want / to hold my hand’ (34) – or to let them experience it for themselves. As she quotes from Maggie Smith’s ‘Good Bones’, ‘life is short but I keep that from my children.’ (49) The inclusion of ‘Sweet Pea’ (47), a poem on pregnancy loss, expands the scope of motherhood, sensitively affirming that those who do not get the opportunity to watch their children grow up are no less parents than those who do.
Ideas of home – as people and as places – permeate throughout the collection. ‘Home’, as McNeill illustrates, is not fixed, but is made up of shifting emotions and relationships: ‘I think I’ll take the long way home / and see if you are waiting for me there.’ (24) The significance of such attachment is strongest in the titular section, ‘Love Goes North’, in which McNeill journeys between urban and countryside environments. Here, the act of travelling itself becomes a metaphor for emotional change or transition – ‘I’m running away again, / between this place and that’ (53) – and stations play out ‘the soundtrack /of welcomes and goodbyes’ (60). Throughout these journeys, Glasgow retains a special place in the collection, remembered and returned to as a vivid and ‘gleaming’ (69) city filled with affection, affinity and community: ‘I am in love’ (69). The places that McNeill describes most fondly are brought to life by sensory imagery that is both specific and recognisable, allowing readers to connect with the poems regardless of their familiarity with the setting in question.
The fourth section, ‘Shame Must Change Sides’, opens the collection up to an outside world of social expectation and political challenge, disrupting the comparative softness of the world of memory with a the reality of unrest, resistance, and tension. In ‘Future’, McNeill explores the challenge of balancing an understanding of global issues with the desire to appreciate the small positives in every day: ‘I would take holding you / in my arms’ (93), ‘I’d take dinner parties; / pubs / film nights’ (95). These simple joys are the focus of the final section of the collection, ‘Lost in Sleep’, in which McNeill ends on a reminder of the beauty to be found in human connection. Meaningful gifts are exchanged (104), intimacy manifests in shared meals (105, 113) and shared views of the night sky (106, 108), and peace is found through a closer relationship with, and greater respect for, nature.
As you move through the poems in this collection there is the strong feeling that, whilst McNeill’s writing is guided by her own personal encounters and feelings, it is not confined by the limits of her individual experience or understanding. Her poems look and gesture outwards, not only presenting private memories and confessions but celebrating the variability of the human experience and the common threads that bring people together in spite of their differences. As such, in its exploration of the intimacy and universality of love, loss and change, Love Goes North presents a poignant meditation on the shaping, remembering and continual reimagining involved in the making and living of a life.
Love Goes North is published by Luath Press.
