Modern and contemporary poetry
Faber & Faber Brother
Book SynopsisA dual-authored volume of poems from the multi-award winning Dickman twins - leading voices in America''s outstanding generation of younger poets.Although the brothers extol differing inspirations (Matthew writes with the ebullience of Frank O''Hara, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Michael with the control of William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson), they are unified by the unflinching, remarkable verse they wrote when their older sibling tragically took his own life. It is these moving, grieving but life-affirming poems that solely comprise this dual-authored volume. Published in an inventive tête-bêche edition, the poems appear head-to-toe, communing in the middle, making Brother a searing but ultimately up-lifting journey of grief, love and family.''Michael''s poems are interior, fragmentary, and austere, often stripped down to single-word lines; they seethe with incipient violence. Matthew''s are effusive, ecstatic, and all-embracing, sp
£10.44
Faber & Faber Doves
Book SynopsisDoves is Lachlan Mackinnon's most candid and affecting volume of poems to date, and follows on from Small Hours, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry in 2010. Formally dexterous and inventive, these inclusive, approachable poems welcome all-comers in their broad-minded address: refugees, reality television, detective shows, number-theory, Shakespeare's brothers, ecology, a marriage. Wherever it turns, the poetry remains courageously sociable and moral, ever concerned with honouring lives and good deeds, and asking what can be saved from the ruins of what is lost by individuals, cultures and civilisations. But for all its outward gaze, its cares speak privately too of crises in personal action and belief, of friends and intimacies disturbed and renewed and, underpinning it all, an urging to account for our behaviour and to start to answer / to ourselves for what we have made of life.'Doves is an uplifting account of recovery that makes n
£10.44
Faber & Faber Enter Fleeing
Book SynopsisExhilarating fourth collection of poems from the ''intriguing, funny, prophetic'' man of letters Mark Ford.
£10.44
Faber & Faber One Lark One Horse
Book SynopsisMichael Hofmann is renowned as one of our most brilliant critics and translators; that he is also regarded as among our most respected poets one of the definitive bodies of work of the last half-century', TLS is all the more impressive for his relatively concentrated output. One Lark, One Horse will be his fifth collection of poems since his debut in 1983, and his first since Approximately Nowhere in 1999. But it is also one of the most anticipated gatherings of new work in years. In style, it is as unmistakable as ever: sometimes funny, sometimes caustic; world-facing and yet intimate; and shows a bright mind burning fiercely over the European imagination. Approaching his sixtieth birthday, the poet explores where he finds himself, geographically and in life, treating with wit and compassion such universal themes as ageing and memory, place, and the difficulty for the individual to exist at all in an ever bigger and more bestial world. One Lark, On
£10.44
Louisiana State University Press Atomizer
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£16.95
Amazon Digital Services LLC - Kdp The List of Shit That Made Me a Feminist
Book SynopsisN.B. No men were harmed in the writing of this list.
£15.42
WW Norton & Co Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light Fifty Poems
Book SynopsisA magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.
£18.99
House of Anansi Press Let the World Have You
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThere’s magic here, a towering and welcoming imagination, the best kind, the kind that takes your hand into strange places, knows that fear makes sense, and helps you see what’s here. * The Boston Globe *Strange and sly, the poems in Mikko Harvey’s collection Let the World Have You are mocking, hopeful, and entertaining … Moving from the absurd image to the sharp and piercing comment, Harvey’s poems are always a pleasure here. * The Miramichi Reader *Dazzling, heartfelt poems populated by inventive narrative and uncanny imagery. Let the World Have You is a treasure trove of playfully serious odes to being. -- Mark Leidner, author of Returning the Sword to the StoneMikko Harvey is a poet with a quirky sensibility. To me, his casual, melancholic, funny poems are like sugar water for the hummingbird. -- Henri Cole, author of BlizzardMikko Harvey’s Let the World Have You is a catalog of (im)possibility that makes the dead world new again … Offering a language for our shared bewilderment in this life, this is a vulnerable work, equally brutal and gentle as it keeps turning toward the most remarkable things. * Orion Magazine *
£12.34
Michaela Angemeer Poems for the Signs
£14.43
Canterbury Press Norwich The Singing Bowl
Book SynopsisMalcolm Guite’s eagerly awaited second poetry collection includes poems that seek beauty and transfiguration in the everyday; sonnets inspired by Francis and other outstanding saints; poems centred on love, parting and mortality. A further group, ‘Word and World’, searches for the life of the spirit in the midst of modernity and includes an ode to an iPhone, while others wrestle with the problem of evil and the difficulty of prayer. Throughout, the poet seeks to celebrate the world of which he is made, find heaven in the ordinary and echo a little of its music.Trade Review'The Singing Bowl celebrates the recovering of what was never lost. Over and over, Malcom Guite invites us to rediscover what is most constant. These poems are a mantra, a chorus, a celebration and a lyrical reminder to pay attention to what is most important.' -- Pádraig Ó Tuama
£21.53
Shearsman Books Time Will Show
Book Synopsis"Poetry is the antagonist of denial. Complicating the familiar world purely with the evidence of eye and insight, it insists upon the Spirit of things, even as life desolates our spirits with coarse familiarity. Pam Rehm, in this magnificent book of Showings, reveals new content and new contours in the breaking day. Her voice is a guide and guarantor." -Donald Revell
£13.22
Shearsman Books The Voronezh Workbooks
Book SynopsisOsip Mandelstam spent three years in internal exile in the city of Voronezh, in south-western Russia, after someone in his circle of acquaintances had informed the Soviet authorities of his “Stalin Epigram” in 1934. The ninety-odd poems he wrote there are the pinnacle of his poetic achievement, bearing witness to Mandelstam’s consistent independence of mind and concern for the freedom of thought. More covertly and controversially, however, they also bear the marks of Mandelstam’s attempts to somehow reinstate himself back into Soviet society. In addition to all the poems that Russian editors have suggested constitute the sequence Mandelstam would have wished to see into print, this edition includes the main variants and exclusions preserved in manuscripts and in the memory of Mandelstam’s wife and executor, Nadezhda. Alistair Noon’s translations of Osip Mandelstam, Concert at a Railway Station: Selected Poems, appeared from Shearsman Books in 2018, with two further volumes, in 2022 – the current volume and Occasional and Joke Poems. His own poetry has appeared in two collections, Earth Records (2012) and The Kerosene Singing (2015), both from Nine Arches Press, and a dozen chapbooks from various presses. He lives in Berlin. Praise for Concert at a Railway Station “To my mind this is the best Mandelstam ‘selected’ yet and belongs on the bookshelves of everyone with an interest in 20th-Century Russian verse.” —Ross Cogan, Poetry Wales “Alistair Noon’s translations of Mandelstam are an important contribution to the study and appreciation of this vital writer.” —Anton Romanenko, B O D Y “Noon daringly replicates Mandelstam’s formal stanzas, using slant rhymes with a zingy freshness of diction that stops the poems from ever sounding like trans-lationese.” —Henry King, Glasgow Review of Books The cover design is based on that for the Soviet Museum Bulletin published in 1930 by the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and designed by artist Boris Ender. Ender also designed the cover for Mandelstam’s children’s book, Two Trams, in 1925.
£12.95
Independently Published The sun will rise and so will we
£8.06
Independently Published You Matter
£10.09
Independently Published The Feels The Moon and My Soul
Book SynopsisThe Feels The Moon & My Soul is a collection of raw vulnerability. Covering topics of self-love, self-accountability, love, heartbreak and more. Each page you flip is a different story. Some you may find yourself in and some you may sympathize with the pain the writer endured. It''s a collection of poems, journal entires, quotes, and free thoughts. Take a ride, one with many emotions, and discover how beautiful it is to love and let go.
£11.26
Pan Macmillan The Brink
Book SynopsisThough still in his mid-twenties Jacob Polley is already in possession of a remarkably mature talent. Formally graceful, but unself-conscious, his poems come at the reader from all angles, wholly alive to the unique possibilities of their subjects - the sea, the land, the home, the very brink of things. This debut collection gives us the first opportunity to see his transforming imagination in action, where a jar of honey becomes '... the sun, all flesh and no bones / but for the floating knuckle / of the honeycomb / attesting to the nature of the struggle'.
£9.49
Pan Macmillan Downriver
Book SynopsisWhile Downriver contains the English urban pastoral and hymns to the Northern deities for which Sean O’Brien is justly celebrated, the poet has always been more a singer than even his many admirers have sometimes conceded: here, that lyric note is sounded more openly than ever before. With Downriver, his fifth collection, O’Brien has produced his most various and mature work yet. This is a poetry of both delicacy and gravity, assuagement as well as agitation, rivers that start in hell but later fall as rain - and will only strengthen his reputation as one of the most gifted English poets at work today.
£8.54
Fajr Noor Through His Eyes
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£17.00
David Paul Love Death and Other Joys
Book Synopsis
£11.77
Dare-Gale Press Selected Poems
Book SynopsisSelected Poems by John Pudney (1909 - 1977)
£12.34
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Advanced Poetry
Book SynopsisA text for practiced poets, this book offers a springboard beyond the basics into more daring poetic traditions, experimentation and methods. It lays out the myriad conversations influencing contemporary poetics, paying attention to its roots in historical and theoretical thinking. With a focus on innovation and breaking established boundaries, Advanced Poetry introduces you to the poetics shaping the contemporary literary moment, first guiding you through the contexts and principles of these forms using a range of practical examples, before prompting you to pick up the pen yourself. Spanning decades and continents, and covering the rich field of poets writing today, this book shows how to read, explicate, and write poetry and includes discussion of: - received traditions and innovative forms- confessional and epistolary poetry - aesthetic experimentation with voice - methods and theories developed by early Surrealists-deep image and the poeticTrade ReviewIn the charged intimacy of whispered dish or conspiracy, Nuernberger and Zeller geek with robust gusto and gleeful rigor over poetry: its making and what it makes of us. Here’s a fleet textbook that inspires possibility, offers generous guidance with a light-touch, and in the process, sneaks in a sly, keen, and often subversive anthology of poems gathered from a wide view of time and place. This is more than a textbook; it’s a compelling invitation. * Douglas Kearney *Advanced Poetry “offers readers a radical methodology to studying poetics, one that simultaneously breaks boundaries for what textbooks might achieve (similar, perhaps, to Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey), while also harkening back to formal and historical poetics.” It is “conversational, and it somehow simultaneously introduces you to new poets and traditions without ever making you feel inadequate for not knowing something.” I “love that it starts each chapter with poems” and that these poems are “diverse and contemporary.” And “while some craft books feel technical and dry, this one never loses its focus on poetry’s magic.” * From Laura Read’s M.F.A. Poetry Workshop students (Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA) *Advanced Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology authored by Kathryn Nuernberger and Maya Jewell Zeller offers readers a way to think about our own work in the context of our collective lineage as poets. I love the way each chapter opens with a diverse selection of poems, which allows the reader the chance to experience the poems before reading the editors’ discussion of them. And I also loved the writing in this book: it is both scholarly and accessible, poetic and sometimes personal. I will read and teach this book for the rest of my career. * Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA *Table of ContentsCONTENTS PATHWAYS INTO POETIC LINEAGES Foreword: The End and the Beginning An Invitation to Compose an Ars Poetica Before Reading Introduction and Notes to Readers, Writers, and Teachers Who is this book for? How is this book organized? Why begin each chapter with poems . . . ? Do I need to read the book in order? What pedagogical principles guide this textbook? Some Notes on Teaching This Book Chapter 1: Sound, Shape, & Space: Received and Invented Forms Chapter 2: Telling Secrets: Confessions, Epistolaries, & the Lyric I Chapter 3: The Poem in Telephone Lines & Other Thoughts on Tone, Talk, and Voice in Poetry Chapter 4: Writing Out of Surrealism Chapter 5: Duende, Deep Image, & The Poetics of Spells Chapter 6: The Poetics of Liberation Chapter 7: Writing the Body Chapter 8: The Racial Imaginary Chapter 9: Writing in the Field Chapter 10: Docupoetics & Other Forms of Lyric Research APPENDICES: MAPPING YOUR WRITING LIFE Practical Matters Creating an Inspiring and Supportive Workshop Community Strategies for Revision Some Notes on Assembling a Collection Potential Assignments & Professional Materials Submitting Poems for Publication Writing an Artist Statement Acknowledgements Index
£70.00
Little, Brown Book Group The Gilded Auction Block Poems
Book Synopsis''Beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality - and often the brutality - of American speech'' Dan Chiasson, New Yorker''Shane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis'' Rabih AlameddineI''m made of murderers I''m madeOf nobodies and immigrants and the poorand a whole / Family the mother''sliver and her lungsIn The Gilded Auction Block, the acclaimed poet Shane McCrae considers the present moment in America on its own terms as well as for what it says about the American project and Americans themselves. In the book''s four sections, McCrae alternately responds directly to Donald Trump and contextualizes him historically and pTrade ReviewOut of personal history, out of the history of an enduringly fractured nation, and out of the deep history of language, Shane McCrae is writing the most urgent, electric poems of his generation -- Garth GreenwellShane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis -- Rabih AlameddineShane McCrae is a shrewd composer of American stories . . . He is a prospector for speech rhythms, collecting his material wherever he can. But American attics are full of old boxes of diaries and letters; and testimony, no matter how arresting, is not itself poetry. What makes McCrae's compositions so ingenious are their marvels of prosody and form, learned from the English Renaissance poems that he read in libraries when he was just starting out. The result is beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality - and often the brutality - of American speech -- Dan Chiasson * The New Yorker *Shane McCrae has many gifts as a poet, but among his most hypnotizing is his ability to create poems that simultaneously blare and beacon . . . McCrae has been creating ambitious work that demands - earns - our attention. I often feel out of time when I am reading his words; they arrive with a Miltonic fury, and yet they are so contemporary and critical for our present, strange world -- Nick Ripatrazone * The Millions *This sprawling yet astute collection revisits the brutal history that enabled the election of Trump . . . In McCrae's timely observations, the American Dream is an illusion that silences its victims * Publishers Weekly *
£10.44
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc One Hundred Years of Surrealist Poetry
Book SynopsisGiven that the Surrealists were initially met with widespread incomprehension, mercilessly ridiculed, and treated as madmen, it is remarkable that more than one hundred years on we still feel the vitality and continued popularity of the movement today. As Willard Bohn demonstrates, Surrealism was not just a French phenomenon but one that eventually encompassed much of the world. Concentrating on the movement's theory and practice, this extraordinarily broad-ranging book documents the spread of Surrealism throughout the western hemisphere and examines keys texts, critical responses, and significant writers. The latter include three extraordinarily talented individuals who were eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (Andre Breton, Pablo Neruda, and Octavio Paz). Like their Surrealist colleagues, they strove to free human beings from their unconscious chains so that they could realize their true potential. One Hundred Years of Surrealist Poetry explores not only the birthTrade ReviewOne Hundred Years of Surrealist Poetry is at once an anthology and a beautifully accessible handbook, providing guidance, insights and information on essential aspects of surrealist theory and practise. From automatic writing and objective chance to mad love and black humour, the topics explored are exemplified by astonishing poems and oneiric prose from French, Hispanic and Portuguese writers, all translated by Willard Bohn with characteristic flair and empathy. * Peter Read, Professor Emeritus of Modern French Literature and Visual Arts, University of Kent, UK and author of Picasso and Apollinaire The Persistence of Memory (2008) *With his characteristic clarity, as well as formidable aesthetic and linguistic breadth, Bohn has produced a major work for serious students and scholars of Surrealism. Using important examples from many different cultural and theoretical sources, he offers new, wide-ranging perspectives on the origins and later history of the movement throughout the world. He also presents close readings of several key texts, many of which incorporate, and often surpass, analyses published by some of the most influential critics (Riffaterre, Bonnet, Balakian, Jenny, Caws, Murat ) who have worked on these often mysterious, enigmatic works. I highly recommend it, therefore, to anyone working in comparative literature, art history, even film studies, thanks to his explanations of surrealist images in a variety of art forms. * Stamos Metzidakis, Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature, Washington University in Saint Louis, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. André Breton and Automatic Writing 2. Revisiting the Surrealist Image 3. Paul Eluard and Surrealist Love 4. Surrealism and the Poetic Act 5. José María Hinojosa and Early Spanish Surrealism 6. Federico García Lorca 7. J. V. Foix and Catalan Surrealism 8. Portuguese Experiments with Surrealism 9. Octavio Paz 10. South American Surrealists Coda Acknowledgments Bibliography Index
£23.21
Pan Macmillan Collected Poems: 1958 - 2015
Book SynopsisSpanning fifty years of work, Collected Poems sees Clive James make his own rich selection from across his exceptional career in poetry.From his debut collection in 1986 to his dazzling achievements in the 2010s, Clive James steadily built his reputation as one of the nation's best-loved and most highly-acclaimed poets. In this selection, made by the author himself, the very best of his talents are on show.From his early satires to heart-stopping valedictory poems, Clive James proves himself to be as well suited to the intense demands of the tight lyric as he is to the longer mock-epic. Included is perhaps amongst his finest works, 'Japanese Maple', a poem which became a global sensation upon its publication in the New Yorker.Collected Poems displays James's fluency and apparently effortless style, his technical skill and thematic scope, his lightly worn erudition and his emotional power; it undoubtedly cements his reputation as one of our most versatile and accomplished writers.'He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time' – Bryan Appleyard, Sunday TimesClive James (1939–2019) was a broadcaster, critic, poet, memoirist and novelist. His acclaimed poetry includes the collections Sentenced To Life and Injury Time and a translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy, a Sunday Times bestseller. His passion for and knowledge of poetry are distilled in his book of criticism on the subject, Poetry Notebook, and, written in the last year of his life, his personal annotated anthology of favourite poems, The Fire Of Joy. Trade ReviewJames writes with exquisite perception and surgical precision; he is a poet of powerful argument and emotional force * The Times *A writer whose commanding voice contains a constant variety of colour and tone -- Robert McCrum * Observer *After writing poems for 50 years, his technique is deft and assured * Independent on Saturday *He is a unique figure, a straddler of genres and a bridger of the gaps between high and low culture. He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *A verse highlight of my year -- Keith Bruce * Herald *
£22.50
Pan Macmillan Hotel Raphael
Book SynopsisHotel Raphael, Rachael Boast’s fourth collection, charts a journey through heat, drought and pain, and describes not only the reality of chronic illness, but living with it at a time of global crisis.Raphael is the patron saint of travellers and pilgrims, and also of healing; in the search for remedy, we pass through the balm of landscape, and brush against the worlds of artists, writers and filmmakers, whose angels broadcast to us from other rooms. We also encounter the biblical figure of Job, who poses the question of a terrible forbearance: how much suffering can we take, and what can we realistically change?While we fight to relieve our own pain, address the planet’s ecological imbalance and make efforts, large or small, to right its shocking injustices, we must also simply find a way through. Hotel Raphael sees Boast compose an extraordinary travelling song, one that shows us how to bear our pain without trying to erase its source.
£10.44
Pan Macmillan The Readiness
Book SynopsisAlan Gillis – one of the most admired Irish poets of his generation – addresses some of the most pressing concerns of the age: how can we live at the centre of our contemporary paradox, disconnected and hyper-connected as we are? A poet of thresholds and crossings, Gillis finds his answers in the suburbs and edgelands, at the hesitation before the doorstep or the gate. The Readiness sites itself at the heart of our human contradictions, and explores their meaning. These poems form a series of bad dreams and clear visions that speak to the chaos and fragility of both self and society: the childhood innocence that persists into the resignation of adulthood; the beauty of nature in an age of environmental ruin; the terrible isolation of contemporary life – and the live-streamed, advert-laden over-wiring that springs from its digital commons. It does this with a formal confidence, a dry wit and often astonishing lyricism that marks Gillis as one of the most individual and vital poetic voices now at work.Trade ReviewFizzing with vernacular and bounding rhythms, yet also precisely lyrical, the poems in The Readiness frequently run away with themselves, attempting to keep up with, and make some sense of, the often digital babble and information overload of our age. . .The Readiness impresses, but more importantly moves and surprises, given Gillis’s ability to combine dry humour with insight, vibrant description with direct address, and contemporary relevance with lasting concerns * Ben Wilkinson *
£10.44
Pan Macmillan The Problem of the Many
Book Synopsis'The best collection I've read in ages: every poem contains something unexpected and unexpectedly powerful. This is serious, modern, ambitious and bold work – the kind of poetry you hope to find, and rarely do' – Nick LairdJohn Ashbery called Timothy Donnelly’s previous collection, The Cloud Corporation, ‘The poetry of the future, here today’. The Problem of the Many sees Donnelly, one of the most influential poets of his generation, focused less on the future than the end of history: these richly textured and intellectually capacious poems often seem to attempt nothing less than a circumscription of the totality of human experience. The book contains the already widely praised ‘Hymn to Life’, which opens with a litany of what we have made extinct; elsewhere, from an immediately contemporary vantage, Donnelly confronts the clutter and devastation that civilization has left us as he strives towards a beauty that we still need, along the way enlisting agents as various as Prometheus, Jonah, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, NyQuil, Nietzsche, and Alexander the Great.The Problem of the Many refers to the famous philosophical problem of what defines the larger aggregate – a cloud, a crowd – which Donnelly extends to address the subject of individual boundary, identity and belonging. Donnelly’s solutions may be wholly poetic, but he has succeeded in speaking as deeply to these profound and urgent issues as any writer currently at work.Trade ReviewThe best collection I've read in ages: every poem contains something unexpected and unexpectedly powerful. This is serious, modern, ambitious and bold work - the kind of poetry you hope to find, and rarely do -- Nick LairdOmnivorous, fast-forward, bull-in-a-china-shop poems that deliver more beauty per minute than can comfortably be withstood. If Whitman had had a young kid and a Brooklyn apartment, too many bills, and a stack of takeout menus in the top drawer of his Ikea desk, he would have written these poems. * New Yorker *Donnelly is a poet everyone should read. * Guardian *Dramatic tension, humor, lyrical profundity. This is an utterly ingenious and proudly inclusive voice . . .a sensibility so urgent we find ourselves momentarily re-inventing the term Poet. -- Carol Muske-Dukes * Huffington Post *A Stevens of the Anthropocene -- Douglas Crase * Artforum *
£10.44
Pan Macmillan New and Selected Poems
Book SynopsisIan Duhig’s effortlessly fascinating and endlessly quotable verse has had a shaping influence on UK poetry for more than thirty years. This eclectic gathering of Duhig’s best work draws on material from his acclaimed debut, The Bradford Count, to the present day: the book collects a number of fine new pieces, including an elegy for the late Ciaran Carson. Duhig is contemporary poetry’s social historian; he has wise and powerful things to say about the relationship between community and family, racism and justice, place and folklore, music and language. For Duhig fans, the book will offer a mesmerising retrospective of the career one of our most highly regarded poets; for those yet to discover him, New and Selected Poems represents a marvellous introduction to a radical social conscience, an archivist of strange tales, and one of the most skilful writers now at work.Trade ReviewThe most original poet of his generation -- Carol Ann Duffy * Guardian *'Duhig telescopes topical allusions, scholarly references and coarse humour into tightly-shaped, surreal poems which burst open with explosive moral force' -- Alan Brownjohn * Sunday Times *'His poetry is learned, rude, elegant, sly and funny, mixing gilded images, belly-laughs and esoteric lore about language (including Irish), art, history, politics and children's word-games' -- Ruth Padel * Independent on Sunday *. . .one of Duhig's charms is that, for all his learning, he retains humility -- Kathryn Gray * Magma Review *Ian is a one-off, a true original. -- Jackie Kay * Herald *
£13.49
Central Avenue Publishing Heavy is the Head
Book Synopsis“Where does all the grief go when it’s not tugging at your wrist?” Enyegue’s debut collection is an ode to girlhood, to Blackness, to generational trauma, sexual assault, and mental health. This collection does not aim to heal anyone who reads it, but instead help them confront their own healing. Rather than sugar-coated bullets that enter you lightly, these poems are designed to hurt. They are for the girls with difficult names, the boys with softness at their core, and the people with neither. They are meant for the people who are Black, and the people who are not—because we are all tethered together by the heaviness of the human experience.
£13.46
Te Herenga Waka University Press The Artist
Book SynopsisIn a Southern land, where the veil of time and space has worn thin, twins with otherworldly ways are born to a stone carver and his wife. As they grow into themselves, the landscape and its histories will rise up to meet them and change their whānau forever. Cave art leaps from walls, pounamu birds sing, legends become reality, and history becomes the present in this verse novel by Ruby Solly (Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu). The Artist brings to life the histories of our great Southern iwi through the whakapapa of its characters and the rich world they and their ancestors call their tūrakawaewae—their place to stand, their place to sing.Trade Review“For readers with an interest in innovative poetry -- in New Zealand literature, Indigenous literature, Maori literature -- this book is significant and needed. The Artist is an ahuru mowai, a shelter made from poetry, and is to be celebrated for its craft and heart, and for its whakapapa.” - Robert Sullivan, Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books“A mesmerising verse novel that weaves together the history and traditions of Southern iwi. Solly's evocative storytelling brings to life cave art, pounamu birds, and legendary tales. This enchanting book immerses readers in a rich cultural tapestry, celebrating the whakapapa and heritage of its characters.” - Avenues Magazine“Deeply evocative -- cave art leaps from walls, pounamu birds sing, legends become reality, and history becomes the present.” - Neil Johnstone, Wellington City Libraries
£17.95
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Collected Poems
Book SynopsisKen Smith (1938-2003) was a major voice in world poetry, his work and example inspiring a whole generation of younger British poets. His politically edgy, cuttingly colloquial, muscular poetry poetry shifted territory with time, from rural Yorkshire, America and London to the war-ravaged Balkans and Eastern Europe (before and after Communism). His early books span a transition from a preoccupation with land and myth to his later engagement with urban Britain and the politics of radical disaffection. The pivotal work marking this shift was his long poem Fox Running (1980), brought to recent attention when an archive recording of him reading it was broadcast by BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please in 2016. His Collected Poems brings together poetry from four decades, including all the work from two earlier retrospectives, The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (1982) and Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (2002), together with the posthumously published You Again: last poems & other words (2004). The book is introduced with essays by Roger Garfitt and Jon Glover. Publication coincides with his 80th birthday and with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Bloodaxe’s first title, Ken Smith’s Tristan Crazy (1978).Trade ReviewKen Smith brought an original and memorable voice to poetry in Britain. He spent his writing life not so much swimming against the tide as ignoring the stream’s existence… He was one of those by whom the language lives.’ – Sean O’Brien, Independent
£13.49
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Negative of a Group Photograph: نگاتیو یک عکس
Book SynopsisNegative of a Group Photograph brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country. Negative of a Group Photograph runs the gamut of Ghahreman’s experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran's book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love. The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar. Farsi-English dual language edition co-published with the Poetry Translation Centre.Trade ReviewThese poems are a wonderful mixture of the bodily, the earthy and the transcendent, the metaphysical; they have lyricism and a sense of elegy and a wonderful sense of defiance. -- Boyd Tonkin * Judge, Warwick Prize for Women in Translation *
£10.80
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Is, Is Not
Book SynopsisTess Gallagher’s new poems are suspended between contradiction and beauty. Is, Is Not upends our notions of linear time, evokes the spirit and sanctity of place, and journeys toward discovering the full capacity of language. Gallagher’s poems reverberate with the inward clarity of a bell struck on a mountaintop and hover daringly at the threshold of what language can nearly deliver while offering alternative corollaries as gifts of its failures. Guided by humour, grace, and a deep inquiry into the natural world, every poem nudges us toward moments of awe. How else except by delight and velocity would we discover the miracle within the ordinary? Gallagher claims many Wests – the Northwest of America, the north-west of Ireland, and a West even further to the edge, beyond the physical. These landscapes are charged with invisible energies and inhabited by the people, living and dead, who shape Gallagher’s poems and life. Restorative in every sense, Is, Is Not is the kind of book that takes a lifetime to write – a book of the spirit made manifest by the poet’s unrelenting gaze and her intimate engagement with the mysteries that keep us reaching.Trade Review'The book itself is dedicated to two great loves (the American writer Raymond Carver, and the Irish painter and storyteller, Josie Gray) and its narratives echo through time... Beneath all the places, stories and loves, this poet finds that deep resonance of common essence. There is beauty and grief and humour here; there is a gentle wisdom; there is a quiet, incremental insight that sings us awake. I treasure these poems.' - Jane MeadTable of ContentsRecognition 1 i In the Company of Flowers 5 Almost Lost Moment 6 Ambition 7 Your Dog Playing with a Coyote 9 Ability to Hold Territory 10 Blind Dog/Seeing Girl 12 Doe Browsing Salal Berries 14 ii Little Inside Out Dream, 17 Dream Cancel 19 Stolen Dress 21 Glass Impresses 23 Hummingbird-Mind 25 One Deer at Dusk 26 iii Correction 31 Sully 33 Retroactive Father 36 Earth 38 The Seemingly Domesticated 39 Reaching 41 Right-Minded Person 44 In the Too-Bright Café 45 iv Let’s Store These Hours 51 Season of Burnt-Out Candelabras 53 The Branches of the Maple 56 Yet to Be Born Weather 57 I Want to Be Loved Like Somebody’s Beloved Dog in America 59 While I Was Away 63 v Without 67 Deer Path Enigma 69 The Favorite Cup 70 What Does It Say 71 vi Bus to Belfast 75 Is, Is Not 76 As the Diamond 78 During the Montenegrin Poetry Reading 81 Curfew 83 Eddie’s Steps 84 Four-Footed 86 The Gold Dust of the Linden Trees 88 Blue Eyelid Lifting 91 vii Button, Button 95 Breath 99 To an Irishman Painting in the Rain 100 Encounter 102 Planet Greece 103 Cloud-Path 105 viii Oliver 109 A “Sit” with Eileen 112 Remembering Each Other While Together 115 Opening 117 Word of Mouth 118 Daylong Visitor Caress 123 March Moon Three Stars 125 Afterword: Writing from the Edge: A Poet of Two Northwests 127 Notes 135 Acknowledgments 139
£10.80
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Mercy
Book SynopsisIreland. Night. A grotto to the Virgin Mary illuminates a deserted road. Overhead, the soundless roar of the Milky Way’s glittering traffic reminds us of a past that runs parallel to our own uncertain times. Olives ripen in a Portuguese valley. The sound of gunfire approaches a Paris café. Irish women revolutionaries march towards their future. Tigers prowl through County Leitrim's rural townlands, whose old names emerge like neon signposts from the dark: Red Marsh, Small Watery Place, Round Hill of the Boys. Róisín Kelly’s Mercy is an attempt to reconcile her Catholic background with her pagan heritage, transcending the limits of a world in which everything is connected. Both intimate and political, this powerful debut collection combines a passionate exploration of self with an awestruck confrontation of wilderness. Róisín Kelly was born in west Belfast, raised in Leitrim, and now lives in Cork. Her pamphlet Rapture (Southword, 2016) was described by Leanne O’Sullivan as ‘fierce and mysterious, beautiful and compelling’.Trade ReviewRóisín Kelly hauls the mythological up into the contemporary world in this fiercely tender collection. Love and loss are laid bare again and again under constellations new and old, in skies above Greece, Portugal, America, France, and Ireland. Kelly’s intelligence and wisdom ignite each of these poems, whether funeral pyre or beacon in the dark light. Mercy burns with ruthless beauty. -- Zsuzsi Gartner * author of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives *What is striking about Kelly’s writing is that she intentionally situates herself within Ireland’s literary tradition, frequently drawing on Yeatsian images like the rose. She is unswerving, however, in her desire to draw romance and realism together, and Kelly revives the symbols of old so that they might be re-spoken in a brazen, drunken voice… Kelly’s poetry is at once tender and savage, steeped in tradition yet brave in expression — she takes readers where they don’t want to go, a feat that most writers attempt, but few achieve. -- James O’Sullivan * Los Angeles Review of Books *Unafraid of sentiment, these twenty poems meditate on lost love, longing, and the tendency of intimacy to arrive as an utter surprise, and dissolve just as swiftly. -- Grace Wilentz * Poetry Ireland Review (on Rapture) *This brief collection shows remarkable emotional range. Kelly leaves the reader afloat on a tide of colour.’ -- Alison Brackenbury * PN Review (on Rapture) *Table of Contents9 Mercy 10 Leave 11 Mars in Retrograde 12 Tom Barry 13 Chameleon 15 Penelope 16 Domínio Vale do Mondego 18 Guarda 20 A Massage Room in West Cork 21 Rapture 22 In America 23 Mary Anne MacLeod 25 Mar-a-Lago 27 La Chalupa 28 At a Photography Exhibition in New York Public Library 29 Rose 30 Glenveagh 31 Storm Warnings 32 Paris, 13 November 2015 34 Tropical Ravine House in Belfast Botanic Gardens 35 Eden 37 The Cave of Melassini 39 Ithaca 41 Oranges 43 Easter 44 Miracle at Standing Rock 46 The Unicorn Children 47 Tigers in Leitrim 48 Poem for a Friend’s Unborn Baby 50 Northern Lights 51 Cosmic Latte 52 irish coffee 53 Mercury in Retrograde 54 Ophelia 56 Amongst Women 59 Wedding Below the Perseid Meteor Shower 60 Tuam 62 Granuaile 64 Notes
£9.45
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Between the Islands
Book SynopsisThe two searching sequences that bookend this collection are not so much elegies as unfinished conversations with friends no longer living – friendships lost or neglected, with their closeness and distances sensitively mapped. This is Philip Gross’s writing at its most hospitable, lit up by a sense of personal address, both tactful and deeply engaged. The sea that is always in sight, between us and beyond us, is more than a metaphor. It is another conversation – with the real sea of this planet, used and abused and in need of our care. Between the Islands is Philip Gross’s 26th book of poetry, and his 11th from Bloodaxe.Trade ReviewAt the heart of all of Gross's collections has been his deep enquiry into and fascination with the nature of embodiment and existence – what water is and does in The Water Table, the role of language, and speech especially, in identity and the self in Deep Field and Later. Now in Love Songs of Carbon Gross tests and feels his amazed way through the mysteries of the multiple manifestations of love and ageing... Such exactitude of feeling and image is typical of all Gross's work, and no less inventively in this new collection. Characteristic too is his focused, sustained approach across the whole book: Love Songs of Carbon asks to be read as a song-book, to use the terms of its presentation, curated for the reader to turn and return to. From poem to poem, pace and metrics quicken and still and quicken again as the book progresses. -- John Burnside & Jane Draycott * PBS Bulletin *Table of Contents11 Edge States 14 Erasures 15 Nocturne with a View of the Pier 23 The Age of Electricity 24 Touched 25 A Wave… 28 Shag, Rampant 30 Himself 32 Firepower 34 Pyroglyphs 37 Three Fevers and a Fret 40 Equator 41 Southern Cross 43 The House of Innumerable Things 45 Canberra Rising 48 The Day of the Things 50 The Floes 51 Restoration 54 Bay Laurel 56 A Kind of Rapture 57 Sea Koan 59 How He Lay 60 Flugelhorn on a Pembrokeshire Beach 62 Dear Barber 63 Of the Silence at the Heart of Pyrotechnics 64 Between the Islands 79 Towards a Line from Guillevic
£10.44
Bloodaxe Books Ltd The Golden Thread
Book SynopsisBlending the sacred and the everyday, Amali Gunasekera’s second collection The Golden Thread is a search for grace through the deep process of transmuting emotional trauma into peace. She takes up Muriel Rukeyser’s famous line: ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.’ Her book’s central sequence, Nine [Miscarried] Methods, considers the challenge of asserting a woman’s equal status within a patriarchal objectified culture. Approaching the polemic or the existential with a gentle touch, this is poetry as lyric essay, mysterious and shapeshifting as sunlight on water. Formally, the poems explore the instability of the lyric ‘I’ and the addressed ‘You’. Often there is no static vantage point; instead, the ‘I’ and ‘You’ are verbs in a state of becoming. Their very unfixity reflects dynamic systems in the natural world where elements are constantly interacting and altering their natures. These poems also respond to Wilfred Bion’s notion of ‘Thoughts Without a Thinker’ and Carl Jung’s ‘Collective Unconscious’: through a rich symbolic system they simultaneously hold two dimensions of time; the linear Chronos of our material world, and the vertical Kairos or spiritual time. Thus, the field of this collection is holographic, in search of new co-ordinates, always beholden to something just beyond sight. Amali Gunasekera was born and grew up in Sri Lanka. She works in the field of Archetypal Psychology. After living in Mozambique, Kenya and India, she is now based in Cumbria. Her first collection, Lotus Gatherers, was published by Bloodaxe in 2016 (under her former name of Amali Rodrigo).Trade ReviewAmali Gunasekera's second collection is a beautiful examination of the separateness and union of "I" and "You", rooted in an English pastoral tradition reminiscent of Wordsworth and the Lake Poets. Myth, the natural world, the ephemeral beauty of music or the filter of light on a wintry morning, unite to articulate love for the "Beloved". These are masterful poems of intimacy and joy leading to places of stillness and wisdom. -- Shash Trevett * PBS Bulletin *What makes [Gunasekera] a truly remarkable poet? In part, it's the breadth and intelligence of her vision (and broad and intelligent it certainly is, taking us to Japan, Kenya, the North Pole; from Kintsugi and Ikebana to whirling dervishes and meteor showers); in part, the deftness with which she can work that vision into a world we can marvel at, but also recognise. This is a world of paradoxes - exotic and familiar, a deeply spiritual world which delights in passion; that celebrates love, but does not hesitate to focus on unsettling histories of gender violence. Lotus Gatherers is an astonishingly sensual book, in the literal sense – these are poems we can feel; poems we can hear resonating on the page, aromatic poems, laced with breathtaking imagery; poems we can hold up to our lips and taste. -- John Glenday * on Lotus Gatherers *The first full collection from [Amali Gunasekera] – a poet who has lived between Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Kenya and India – is both formally sophisticated and impressively diverse, reflecting the breadth of cultures and traditions informing its contents. -- Daisy Lafarge * The Poetry Review *A native of Sri Lanka, [Gunasekera] writes complex iridescent poems that sidestep any routine post-colonial interpretation...This is beautiful work, unlike anything out there, wonderfully alive and so deserving of wider attention. -- Conor O'Callaghan * Poetry, The Reading List *Table of ContentsKasturi Mrugam 11 I Reading James Merrill at Curwen Woods 14 Worry Doll 20 Beloved 28 Variation on the Fact of Spring: One for Sorrow Two for Joy 35 II from Nine [Miscarried] Methods 48 III Spiegel im Spiegel 56 Bend in the River 63 Variations on the Fact of Spring 69 The Great Pause 80 Bonsai 89 Notes 93
£10.44
Salt Publishing White Noise Machine
Book SynopsisWhere Richard Skinner’s previous pamphlets, Invisible Sun and Dream into Play, were primarily concerned with the play of light and playfulness respectively, White Noise Machine is mainly concerned with sound. A white noise machine is a device that produces a noise that calms the listener, which in many cases sounds like a rushing waterfall or wind blowing through trees, and other serene or nature-like sounds and Skinner has used this idea to try to create this effect in many of the poems.
£10.44
Legend Press Ltd Coffee Days, Whiskey Nights
Book SynopsisCoffee Days, Whiskey Nights is a collection of poetry, prose, and aphorisms that juxtaposes the hopefulness a brand new day can bring with the lingering thoughts that keep us up into the late-night hours. A lot can happen between the first sip of coffee and the last taste of whiskey, and this book takes a look at the way a single day can change our outlook on everything from relationships with others, to our relationships with ourselves, and everything in between. Ultimately, it illustrates that no matter how hopeless we may feel at the end of a day, a new one is only a few hours away.
£9.49
Bonnier Books Ltd Every Day is a Fresh Beginning: The Number 1
Book Synopsis'A soothing collection to comfort and inspire in those quieter moments of reflection and searching' Cecelia AhernEvery Day is a Fresh Beginning: Meaningful Poems for Life is a stunning collection of poetry chosen by Aoibhín Garrihy to uplift and inspire, delight and comfort. These powerful verses will guide you through the stresses of modern life, touching on themes such as friendship, love, home, parenting, and grief. With lines of classic and contemporary wisdom taken from a wide range of poets including Emily Bronte, W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, Anne Casey and Jan Brierton, this anthology will bring joy to every reader.'It's mind-blowing how ordinary words in the hands of poets can create such powerful magic. As a lover of language Aoibhín has gathered the most beautiful collection of poetry. Now I just need her to read it to me every night!' Kathryn ThomasTrade Review'It's mind-blowing how ordinary words in the hands of poets can create such powerful magic. As a lover of language Aoibhín has gathered the most beautiful collection of poetry. Now I just need her to read it to me every night!' -- Kathryn Thomas'A soothing collection to comfort and inspire in those quieter moments of reflection and searching' -- Cecelia Ahern
£12.34
Taproot Press Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds: Li Bai an Du Fu
Book SynopsisThe latest book by the Sarah Maguire Prize-winning poet and translator Brian Holton, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds is a collection of Scots translations of poetry by Li Bai and Du Fu, two of the most renowned poets of Ancient China. By bringing two of the world’s great poets – from the oldest continuous literary tradition in the world – into the library of Scots writing, Brian Holton creates a text as valuable in its own way to the literary tradition as Lorimer’s wonderful ‘New Testament in Scots’. Published in stunning hardback with calligraphy by Chinese artist Chi Zhang, Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds was the beneficiary of a Scottish Book Trust Scots Publication Grant.Trade Review‘What a wonderful book this is. Brian Holton is the living master of literary Scots, and though 1300 years separate their times from ours, Holton’s translations of Li Bai and Du Fu speak to our own age. They are perennial poems of love and war and exile, youth and age, by turns wistful, moving, vivacious and sad. Brian Holton’s Scots is playful and unforced. Translating directly from the Chinese, he demonstrates the vigour and subtlety of which Scots is capable, relishing a language as well-resourced and malleable as any other. These are beautiful lyric poems.’ Kathleen Jamie; ‘It is a singular stroke of imaginative genius to translate the poems of Du Fu and Li Bai into Scots, one which, perhaps, only Brian Holton is capable of. His longtime familiarity with and comprehensive knowledge of these ancient yet still-intimate texts, together with his deep knowledge of the border ballad tradition and its foundational role in Scottish literature, has created a curious and compelling hybrid realm, in which the reader’s imagination dwells as vividly as in a work of historical fiction, Ossianic forgery, or compelling fantasy.' Bill Herbert; 'Published in a fine pocketbook-sized bilingual hardback edition Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds brings into synthetic Scots the work of two great 8th century lyric poets, Li Bai and Du Fu. Holton is a scholar of and specialist in the Chinese language, and the work is a really welcome addition to the repertoire of published literature in the Scots language. The poems are delight to read and that has no doubt been facilitated by the particular ease and grace with which that countrified peasant nature of Scots (as noted above) can carry the lyrics from 8th century China. Holton speaks of the ‘hamelieness’ of Scots in reference to this point, and one can’t but feel that modern English might indeed strike a tone to knowingly distant from the culture here to bring these ancient Chinese poems alive. The important point about Holton’s expertise in both languages – Chinese and Scots – here, is that these are not adaptations, whereby some anonymous translator has put the Chinese into some basic English (or Scots) and Holton as poet has then jazzed them up. What we have here are ‘versions’, as Holton calls them, calling on a citation from fellow poet Don Paterson to define such ‘versions’ as ‘trying to be poems in their own right’.' Bella Caledonia
£15.19
Flapjack Press Speaking in Tongues
Book SynopsisLaura’s third collection with Flapjack Press is a rallying call for action and challenges inequality, oppression and division with passion, objectivity, empathy and humour. This is socially conscious and uncompromising poetry, which explores the slippery and inconclusive condition of language, the power of ideology and the process of myth-making, addressing the wellbeing of a diverse nation governed by a political and social elite and their culpability.Trade Review"This is Taylor at her best. Her energy, anger and passion are apparent in every word. Her writing is urgent, powerful and her punches land. A must-have collection. Buy this book." Emma Purshouse, poet laureate for Wolverhampton; "Poems to have a beer with, to sit round a fire and keep warm with, to rage against the system with, to take to the streets with." Steph Pike, poet; "Tongues of fire in a time of plague. Raging against conspiracy theorists, defending the vulnerable, the homeless, the old, the hardest hit in the worst of times. A supremely clever working-class poet." Attila the Stockbroker, poet & musician; "If there was an equivalent of Masterchef for cooking words into exquisitely tasty and surprising dishes, then Taylor would win it. Hot. Flavourful. Authentic. Instant pleasure with a long, lingering aftertaste." Janine Booth, poet & writer; "At times forceful, at others lyrical ... crosses from personal to political and cross-examines who we were and who we have become." Winston Plowes, poet; "This is Taylor's best yet. Her language is lush and confident, and her range is limitless ... wise, honest, funny, angry, mature and assured. This book is the tonic we all need." Cathy Thomas-Bryant, poet & writer
£9.00
Flipped Eye Publishing Limited Grammar of Passage
Book SynopsisGrammar of Passage details a German family’s quiet lives as they are pulled into the gathering maelstrom of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Monika Cassel’s attention to detail in this début, tempered with a deep empathy brings individual moments to vivid life, deftly demonstrates how poetry can excavate and reinvigorate history.
£6.96
Holland Park Press The The Past Is a Dangerous Driver: Poems
Book SynopsisThe poems in The Past Is a Dangerous Driver is inspired by Neal Mason's fascination with the past, not only in the way it exists as general history but also as it is formed by one's own personal recollection. Through his poems, Neil links the past to the present, in a way that puts events in a new light and exposes discovery of hidden complexities. History is no longer seen as being made up of facts and artefacts but instead it is presented as the manifestation of the human spirit. The poems also conjure up an eclectic view of Britain, its values, history and even future. The title of collection is a hint that the past does affect the present, not always for the best, but its influence needs to be acknowledged.Table of ContentsAfter Dunwich Derelict Classroom The Long Campaign 7th December Holiday Romance Martello Tower Wooden Ruler Mendel, Shopping Affinity Reflected on Water S.S. Saxon Star The Figure Not as a Medal Slowing Down World War II Bomb Lineage Journal of a Tree The Stratagem Breakages Submersion The Grand Nitrator The Museum of Lost Art The Pied Piper SPQR Contiguity
£11.78
Vagabond Voices I'm a Pretty Circler
Book SynopsisIain Morrison's debut collection I'm a Pretty Circler is experimental without being intimidating; conversational without being casual; and outrageous without shedding tenderness. Within its pages, Emily Dickinson rubs shoulders with drag queens, while nineteenth-century German composers are as likely to be referenced as dating apps. Morrison balances punchy, patterned short poems with longer more conversational or collaged works that explore ways in which sex, class, technology and religion intertwine in contemporary Britain.Trade Review"A vast and vigorous vivisected joie de vivre. Although the poetry always flows forth according to its own autonomous and inimitable sprung algorithms, it is also incisively open to the world's detritus, including voices that are carefully unassimilated into the poet's voice. But no matter who or what it makes present, it is all made out of music: mostly, it erects a lattice of stents within the pre-existing musicality of speech. This is life, writing (noun, verb), ever infectiously brave in its self-probing and self-enabling: shucking off your hackles as it sucks off its shackles. Mobile, shrewd, obstinate, grand, and sexy, singing not only with its mouths but with its wounds." - Jow Walton
£11.74
Arc Publications Diary of a Divorce
Book SynopsisAn unsentimental, forensic account of the breakup of a marriage, told without rancour and with a humanitarian resolution. An exceptional first book.
£7.46
Arc Publications Gravity for Beginners
Book SynopsisKevin Crossley-Holland’s name will be familiar to readers of all ages for his historical novels, his re-telling of the Norse myths and his many volumes of poetry. Previously published by the late Enitharmon Press, he is a very welcome newcomer to Arc with his twelfth collection – his first for six years – inspired by the “heavenly squelch” of his own north Norfolk where “the word on the tip of your tongue may be sacramental”. As Ronald Blythe puts it: “His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself, and has the polish of split flint.”
£10.44
Arc Publications No Cherry Time
Book SynopsisIn its geographical sweep - from Israel / Palestine westward across Europe, then circling back to Greece - No Cherry Time reflects a personal tale of alienation, departure and quest. Fine-tuned to the natural world, sustained by its fragile continuities, the poems play out a restive music. As the focus comes to settle on Greece, it is above all the Mediterranean ("sea between the lands") that buoys the imaginative spirit, blurring East and West. It brings back a "world still wide, blissfully unknown".
£10.44
Modern Poetry in Translation The Fingers of Our Soul: MPT No.1 2022
Book SynopsisMPT’s spring issue, ’The Fingers of Our Soul‘, includes a focus on bodies guest edited by Khairani Barokka and Jamie Hale, featuring signed languages such as ASL, BSL, LSF and BISINDO, Anthony Price’s translation using the medium of eye-gaze, and Salma Harland on the blind poet al-Maʿarrī. Poetic forms include dagli from Filipino poet Stefani J Alvarez and the picture-poems from Hoshino Tomihiro. Also: long poems from Geet Chaturvedi and Shooka Hosseini, Andrew Nielsen’s version of Du Fu in tribute to Roddy Lumsden, and Dzifa Benson reviews Maria Stepanova’s War of the Beasts and Animals. All this and more in the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.
£9.95