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In this collection, prize-winning Irish essayist Chris Arthur ranges over subjects as various as a girl's ear, a vulture's egg, the letters in a Scrabble game, a sprig of witch-hazel, and the chasms of complexity contained in an ordinary moment. Whether he's writing about owls, leaves, a street in his hometown, the symbiotic interrelationships in the stomach of a termite, a souvenir cigarette box from a ship sunk in World War II, or the coincidence of three hearts beating simultaneously together, what gives these unorthodox meditations their appeal is the way they tap into unexpected seams of meaning and mystery in our everyday terrain. HIDDEN CARGOES offers a virtuoso demonstration of the potential of the creative essay.
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Chris Arthur is the author of seven previous essay collections, most recently HUMMINGBIRDS BETWEEN THE PAGES (2018) and READING LIFE (2017). He was born in Belfast and grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Following a period working as warden on a nature reserve on the shores of Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles and Northern Ireland's enigmatic geographical heart, he went to university in Scotland. After completing his MA and PhD, he spent some time as a TV researcher and then as a schoolteacher, before taking up academic posts at the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews. On being appointed to a lectureship at what was then St David's University College (later the University of Wales, Lampeter), he moved to Welsh-speaking rural Ceredigion and lived there for over a decade before returning to Scotland to concentrate full-time on his writing. In 2014 he became a Fellow with the Royal Literary Fund. His writing has resulted in numerous prizes, including the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award, the Monroe K. Spears Essay Prize, the Akegarasu Haya International Essay Prize, Times Higher/Palgrave Macmillan Writing Prize in the YYUH Humanities, and the Gandhi Foundation's Aitchtey Memorial Essay Prize. Publishers Weekly called Arthur's work "proof that the art of the essay is flourishing," and Robert Atwan described him as "among the very best essayists in the English language today." Further information can be found at www.chrisarthur.org.
