Modern and contemporary poetry

Book Synopsis**WINNER OF THE COSTA POETRY AWARD 2018****SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION**A war-poem both historic and frighteningly topical, Assurances begins in the 1950s during a period of vigilance and dread in the middle of the Cold War: the long stand-off between nuclear powers, where the only defence was the threat of mutually assured destruction.Using a mix of versed and unversed passages, Morgan places moments of calm reflection alongside the tensions inherent in guarding against such a permanent threat. A work of variations and possibilities, we hear the thoughts of those involved who are trying to understand and justify their roles. We examine the lives of civilians who are not aware of the impending danger, as well as those who are. We listen to the whirring minds of machines; to the voice of the bomb itself. We spy on enemy agents: always there, always somewhere close at hand.Assurances is an intimate, dramatic work for many voices: lyrical, anxious, fragmentary and terrifying; a poem about the nuclear stalemate, the deterrent that is still in place today: how it works and how it might fail, and what will vanish if it does.Trade ReviewI seriously doubt I will read a more significant book of poetry this year. The finale is truly affecting, a plangent and profound speck of light. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *[JO Morgan's] remarkable new book Assurances [is] a gripping narrative poem. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThis impressive and enjoyable debut poetry collection by American-Tamil poet Selvi M. Bunce and Ugandan poet Mimi Mutesa is enriched with unique illustrations by Mimi. It is a fiery challenge to preconceptions of race and relationships through poems of autobiography and self-empowerment.These poems are bold, humorous, and uninhibited, charting revelatory journeys through the complexities of identity, family, love, and independence. Dedicated to all of us who are bad, brown and brazen.'

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Book SynopsisThe #1 New York Times bestselling poet returns with his most ambitious collection yet. In this third and final installment of his poetic trilogy, Yung Pueblo expands upon favourite themes while guiding readers further, toward a life lived authentically, intuitively, and in harmony with others. In these rapidly changing times, it is more important than ever to know ourselves well and fully, even and especially in the face of turmoil. The Way Forward encourages readers to connect more deeply to their intuition, using it to remain focused and grounded amidst a world in constant flux. In his latest collection of poetry and short prose, Yung Pueblo offers clear strategies for managing the unknown, inhabiting your personal power, and bringing your truest, healthiest self to relationships. Progressing naturally from both Inward and Clarity & Connection, The Way Forward is exactly that­­—an inspired beginning.

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Book Synopsis'Orpheus, the pagan saint of poets, went through hell and came back singing. In twentieth-century mythology, the singer wears a steel helmet and makes his descent "down some profound dull tunnel" in the stinking mud of the Western Front. For most readers of English poetry, the face under that helmet is that of Wilfred Owen.' Professor Jon Stallworthy, from his Introduction.When Wilfred Owen was killed in the days before the Armistice in 1918, he left behind a shattering, truthful and indelible record of a soldier's experience of the First World War. His greatest war poetry has been collected, edited and introduced here by Professor Jon Stallworthy. This special edition is published to commemorate the end of the hellish war that Owen, though the hard-won truth and terrible beauty of his poetry, has taught us never to forget.Trade ReviewOthers have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers. * Guardian, 1920 *For me, he is the greatest of all the war poets.... it is Owen's intense respect for the soldier that makes his poetry so powerful. Those who did not return have their meticulously maintained stone memorials on the fields of Flanders. But their memorial in our minds is largely built by Wilfred Owen -- Jeremy Paxman * Spectator *The greatest of all the War Poets… This edition…is a must for every poetry lover -- Emma Lee-Potter * Independent *

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Book Synopsis‘Bilston is a magician with words’ - GuardianThe perfect, witty gift for Valentine’s and beyond. Alexa, what is there to know about love? is a wonderful collection of poems by Brian Bilston, Twitter’s ‘unofficial poet laureate’, in which he frets over the challenges of modern life, extols the pleasures of books, broods over politics, and ponders the curiosities of language.But at its heart, this is a collection of poems about love. From our caveman days to the internet era, from first dates to love in old age, Alexa, what is there to know about love? has a love poem for every time, place and occasion – and will stir the soul of even the most jaded romantic.‘Brian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times.’ - Ian McMillan‘Someone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative.’ - The Times‘Part John Cooper Clarke, part Frank Sidebottom . . . all brilliant.’ - EsquireTrade ReviewBrian Bilston is a laureate for our fractured times -- Ian McMillanSomeone who knows their way round both a joke and a bittersweet narrative -- The TimesPart John Cooper Clarke, part Frank Sidebottom . . . all brilliant. * Esquire *Bilston is a magician with words * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisFrom TikTok phenomenon Whitney Hanson, a brand-new collection of poems exploring the progression of a life through the elements of musicIn this collection of all new poems, Whitney Hanson explores the progression of a life through the lens of music. We each begin with a simple note, but as life progresses, we're led to the next note, and the next - all of which combine to form the melody of a song and the cadence of a life. As life becomes more complicated and complex, we find that loss, grief, and heartache can muffle our music, making the world go silent. But as Whitney's poems show, all of these rests and pauses in the music are part of the magnificent composition of life.Broken into four sections - melody, rest, crescendo, and harmony - the poems in Harmony explore childhood, friendship, grief, acceptance, and peace. The result is a collection that emphasizes the beauty of living a life at peace with all its musical variations.

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Book SynopsisThe Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller''Gorgeous.'' Glennon Doyle''Sharp observations on modern womanhood.'' Sunday Times''Exquisite.'' Fi GloverA stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend.''When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.'' So ends Kate Baer''s remarkable poem ''Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.'' In ''Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels'' she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother''s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem ''Deliverance'' about her son''s birth she writes ''What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?''Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Baer prov

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Book SynopsisIncludes all the poems from Henry's collections Strikingly Invisible, The Beauty Within Shadow and The Distance Between Clouds, and features many of the poems from his award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, 'A Normal...'.Trade Review“The master of balancing laugh-out funny with acute poignancy.” - The i / “Shove up National Treasures. We need to make room for Henry Normal.” - Radio Times / “Succinct, heartrending and peppered with gentle punchlines.” - The Guardian / “Henry Normal’s observational poems are always a delight.” - Write Out Loud / “He loves the little things in life because he knows that really they are the big things.” - The i / “Warm, accessible, and never wantonly oblique, but deep beyond measure.” - Northern Soul / “Witty and uncannily accurate with his observations.” - The Stage / “The Alan Bennett of poetry.” - The Scotsman / “The funniest man you’ve never heard of.” - The Telegraph

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Book SynopsisLynne?Hjelmgaard? s?The Turpentine Tree ?offers ?portraits of family, friends and relationships ? of? Hjelmgaard? s uprooted life, including a life at sea, subsequent displacement, widowhood and search for connections.

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Book SynopsisThese poems take the reader on a fantastic journey through the first season of the hit 1960s TV series I Dream of Jeannie. Each poem corresponds to an episode in that season, originally aired in 1965. Watching on the black and white set from her loungeroom in Perth, Western Australia, the poet, like millions of other little girls, dreamed of being the sultry Jeannie who lived inside a glass-stoppered bottle in a bachelor''s house in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Revisiting the series as an adult, the poet recreates a world in which a woman searches for love with a surly astronaut, using her superpowers to further her quest.

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Book SynopsisI want to sing you early songs. Go deeper.I want to take you back where you began,Find the scraps of you you hid in secretAnd bring them back to life beneath my tongue.Divisible by Itself and One is the powerful new collection from our foremost truth-teller Kae Tempest. Ruminative, wise, with a newer, more contemplative and metaphysical note running through, it is a book engaged with the big questions and the emotional states in which we live and create. Some of the poems experiment with form, some are free, and yet all are politically and morally conscious. Divisible by Itself and One is also a book about human form, the body as boundary and how we are read by the world. Taking its bearings - and title - from the prime number, Divisible by Itself and One is concerned, ultimately, with integrity: how to live in honest relationship with oneself and others. “Tempest delivers their thoughts gorgeously, rhythmically, but also with clarity and a fierce grace” Observer Trade ReviewA winning wielder of words * Observer *Tempest has forged their own voice, unlike anything else in the mainstream poetry world * Independent on Sunday *One of the brightest British talents around * Guardian *[Tempest] has made history, transcending the line between poetry and music * The Telegraph *‘Like the great Philip Larkin, Tempest has an ability to write about big, metaphysical subjects in the most vernacular language, while conjuring a sense of contemporary English life with a handful of chiselled lines . . . shuttles easily back and forth between the mundane and the mythic, the banal and philosophical’ * The New York Times *Dazzling wordsmithery. . . As anyone who has seen them perform will know, they don't just paint pictures with words when they perform, they paint fireworks in the night sky * Metro *Tempest's lyricism is inherently musical . . . the cadence conveys the confidence of a writer who not only knows exactly what they wish to articulate, but more importantly, how to articulate it' * Poetry London *

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Book SynopsisIn Late Shift at the Pickle Factory Mary Dickins presents the reader with an intensely crafted patchwork of stories, reminiscences, observations and whimsy. These poems are tender, sad, joyful, surreal and ridiculous and always characterised by Mary's distinctive blend of wordplay, humour, poignancy and politics. Mary believes that there is nothing stranger, more intriguing and revealing than the everyday life, people and places that we take for granted. She invites you to explore and enjoy this book as part of her poetic legacy drawn from an exuberant and challenging life well lived.Trade ReviewAn understated pathos and a highly politicised mind at work. - Jacqueline Saphra

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Book SynopsisThe Art of Coming Undone is American poet Christie Collins''s first full-length collection of poems, which includes artwork by Dutch artist Erna Kuik. At its core, this collection is a celebration of the self, of imagination, and of reinvention. Based largely on autobiographical events that trace a life-changing move from Louisiana to Wales, Collins''s poems also weave a narrative about the different kinds of love that shaped her story: love that is lost, unrequited love, the possibility of new love after heartbreak, and perhaps most importantly, learning to love and value the self. This collection reminds readers that while loss, setbacks, and struggles are an inevitable part of life, they are not defining. We each have the power to reshape ? and retell ? our stories and to start again.

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Book SynopsisFROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER''Wildly entertaining, deeply affecting'' Ali SmithLondinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. She''s a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and she''s just been married off a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts...Silver-tongued and merry-eyed, this is a story in song and verse, a joyful mash-up of today and yesterday. Kaleidoscoping distant past and vivid present, The Emperor''s Babe asks what it means to be a woman and to survive in this thrilling, brutal, breathless world.

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Book SynopsisThe complete and definitive edition of poems from the greatest poet of WW1, Wilfred Owen2018 marks a hundred years since the end of the First World War. Owen's death in battle, a few days before the Armistice, was a disastrous loss to English letters and left a legacy of the finest poetry that vividly captured the unimaginable horrors of the Great War. This volume, edited by Oxford Professor Jon Stallworthy, gathers together the poems for which Owen is best known, and which represent his most important contribution to poetry in the twentieth century. The greatest of all the war poets.... it is Owen''s intense respect for the soldier that makes his poetry so powerful. Those who did not return have their meticulously maintained stone memorials on the fields of Flanders. But their memorial in our minds is largely built by Wilfred Owen' Jeremy Paxman, SpectatorTrade ReviewOthers have shown the disenchantment of war, have unlegended the roselight and romance of it, but none with such compassion for the disenchanted or such sternly just and justly stern judgment on the idyllisers. * Guardian, 1920 *For me, he is the greatest of all the war poets.... it is Owen's intense respect for the soldier that makes his poetry so powerful. Those who did not return have their meticulously maintained stone memorials on the fields of Flanders. But their memorial in our minds is largely built by Wilfred Owen -- Jeremy Paxman * Spectator *The greatest of all the War Poets… This edition…is a must for every poetry lover -- Emma Lee-Potter * Independent *

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Book SynopsisA celebration of the journey that started it all.

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Book SynopsisFrom early, rhyming works in Love Poems and Others (1913) to the ground-breaking exploration of free verse in Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923) the poems of D. H. Lawrence challenged convention and inspired later poets.This volume includes extensive selections from these and other editions, and contains some his most famous poems, such as ''Piano'', a nostalgic reflection on lost youth and love for his mother; ''Snake'', exploring human fear of the natural world; the short, cutting comment on sexual politics of ''Can''t Be Borne''; and the quiet philosophical resignation of ''Basta!''. Using the revised poems, but in the order in which they appeared in their original collections, this selection offers a fresh perspective that reveals an innovative poet who gave voice to his most intense emotions.

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Book SynopsisA tiny book with a big heart - a favourite gift for weddings, best friends and Valentines When I think something is important You think it's important too We have good ideas When I say something funny You laugh I think I'm funny And you think I'm funny too This is the book that Thelma would give Louise, Bill would give Ted, Charlie Brown would give Snoopy, and you can give to whoever you love. Adorable, a little bit spiky, with lovely illustrations, this is a classic reading for weddings, a charming book for kids and the perfect present for the people who love you best.Trade ReviewAn almost unbearably lovely vintage illustrated ode to friendship ... one of the tenderest and most touching presents I've ever gotten, from one of my dearest friends ... love - that sweetest, most knotless and untroubled kind - is what radiates from these simple, surprisingly profound verse-like meditations on friendship, illustrated with the kindred sensibility of Chwast's simple yet richly expressive black-and-white line drawings. -- Maria Popova * Brain Pickings *

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Book Synopsis**WINNER OF THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION 2019****WINNER OF THE ROEHAMPTON PRIZE FOR BEST POETRY COLLECTION 2019**Violence hangs over this book like an electric storm. Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a long sequence of graphic, stunning pieces about Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom woman are prey and sex is weaponised. These are frank, brilliant, devastating poems of vulnerability and rage, and as Zeus is confronted with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. A disturbing contemporary world is exposed, in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily – hourly – basis. The book shifts, in its second half, to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. It sounds out the complex and ambivalent terrain of early motherhood – its anxieties and claustrophobias as well as its gifts of tenderness and love – reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life, and the right to raise children in peace and safety. Vertigo & Ghost is an important, necessary book, hugely impressive in its range and risk, and dramatic in its currency: a collection that speaks out with clarity, grace and bravery against the abuse of power.**SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE****SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 T. S. ELIOT PRIZE** ‘Misogynistic violence, ancient myth and modern rage confront each other in moving and dynamic verse’ Financial TimesTrade ReviewVertigo & Ghost explodes into furious life with a series of poems and fragments about the Greek god Zeus... jagged, staccato poems that shoot down the pages like lightning bolts... an addictive, thrilling, sickening experience. * Guardian *Vertigo & Ghost knocked the breath from me. Such furious, fierce, ecstatic poems, at once brutal and heartachingly tender; I lay awake at night unable to stop thinking about them. Mothers and children, girls and women, their vulnerabilities and sorrows, fears amidst grave danger, their beautiful animal selves. Against a frightening darkness, these "sore jewels" radiate wild white-heat.This extraordinarily moving collection is a bold confrontation of violence against women. Vertigo & Ghost is one of the darkest, bravest and most unsettling collections I have read in a while. * Observer *An exceptional achievement. -- Paul Bailey * Literary Review *[A] tour-de-force... [Vertigo & Ghost] has generated a lot of (justified) buzz... poems of lasting power. * Telegraph *Poetry Book of the Month* *

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Book SynopsisA huge book, an immense book. Such adventure and variety, such industry, such subjugation of self.' Michael Hofmann, TLSHeaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also poems from a great number of ancient and modern European languages, not least translations from the Old, Middle and Modern Irish of his homeland. The breadth and depth in evidence here is extraordinary from monastic hymns and prayers, to the civic and familial tragedies of Sophocles and Kochanowski; from Virgil and Dante's living underworld to the stark landscapes of Sweeney's Ireland. As editor, Marco Songzogni frames the translations with the poet's own writings on his works. Collectively these bring us closer to an understanding of the genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguished Heaney as one of the great poet-translators of all time.The Translations . . . is a landmark volume, a striking testament to the particular and generous

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Book SynopsisA wise, rude, sharp poetry collection encompassing a life from childhood to attempted adulthood, from one of the most important poets of the new generation.'She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love. She points out the absurdities we've grown too used to and lets us see the world with fresh eyes.' – Kae TempestHollie McNish, winner of the Ted Hughes Award for Poetry, has thrilled and entranced audiences the length and breadth of the UK with her compelling and powerful performances. Plum, her debut for Picador Poetry, is a wise, sometimes rude and piercingly candid account of her memories from childhood to attempted adulthood. This is a book about growing up, about flesh, fruit, friendships, work and play – and the urgent need to find a voice for the poems that will somehow do the whole glorious riot of it justice.Throughout Plum, McNish allows her recent poems to be interrupted by earlier writing from her younger selves – voices that speak out from the past with disarming and often very funny results. Plum is a celebration, a salute to a life in which we are always growing, stumbling, falling, changing and discovering new selves to add to our own messy store. It will leave the reader in no doubt as to why McNish is considered one of the most important poets of the new generation.Trade ReviewPlum is certainly brave...The poems are refreshingly funny, angry, contemplative and personal. A sense of wanting the world to be a better place shines out. * The Telegraph *She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love. She points out the absurdities we've grown too used to and lets us see the world with fresh eyes -- Kate TempestHer rhymes have a driving quality, urgent words pinning down fleeting feelings * Observer *The acclaimed Hollie McNish’s Plum immediately establishes an intimacy between the poet and the reader. A collection recounting McNish’s memories of growing up, Plum is charismatic for its revelations of warmth; hilarious and moving. Frank, rude, and innocent, this likeable voice makes for an entertaining read. * Poetry Book Society *‘[Plum] proves poet’s voice is one that needs to be heard…she continues to let it all hang out in fearless and often amusing style.Much of what McNish has to say urgently needs saying’ * The Scotsman *

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Book Synopsis"I see the hut, its weathered state a focus for an artist's eye; worn and brown amid white-gold sand, a shape to break blue sea and sky ..." Cumbria, Spain, Devon and France - a beautiful poetry collection written on location. Hilda Cochrane sets out on a journey filled with humour and a magical sense of place.

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Book SynopsisThe best poet in America' Jean GenetHe brought everybody down to earth, even the angels' Leonard CohenThe definitive collection from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing has left an enduring markHere is Bukowski eating walnuts and scratching his back, rolling a cigarette while listening to Brahms, showering with Linda in the mid-afternoon.Here is Bukowski knowing that the secret is beyond him, that people who never go crazy live truly horrible lives, that there's a bluebird in his heart that wants to get out.Here is Bukowski at his most hilarious and heart-breaking, his most raw and profound; here is Bukowski at his best.Trade Review‘The best poet in America’ Jean Genet ‘He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels’ Leonard Cohen

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Book SynopsisBrian Bilston has been described as Twitter's unofficial Poet Laureate. With over 400,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community. He has published three collections of poetry, You Took the Last Bus Home; Alexa, what is there to know about love?; and Days Like These. His novel Diary of a Somebody was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. He has also published a collection of football poetry, 50 Ways to Score a Goal, and his acclaimed poem Refugees has been made into an illustrated book for children.

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Book SynopsisNigel Planer has been writing poetry for over fifty years. Now he has corralled many of his poems into one volume, Making Other Plans - as in 'poetry is what happens when you're busy making other plans.' This collection forms a poetic memoir, richly articulating humorous and serious observations on life, love, ageing, society and the human condition, recounted with emotional tenderness and warranted vexation.Trade Review"A unique piece of poetic time travel. Frequently funny, sometimes alarming, always honest and constantly surprising." -Tim Firth / "Intelligent, inventive and always engaging." -Henry Normal / "Planer's poetry is marked by a true emotional tenderness; he effortlessly weaves together profound insights into the journey of his life with his quick wit." -Shobna Gulati

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Book SynopsisWhat has happened to the lost art of memorising poems? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language ''by heart''? In his introduction Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The collected 101 poems are both personal favourites and particularly well-suited to the method Hughes demonstrates. Spanning four centuries, ranging from Shakespeare and Keats through to Thomas Hardy and Seamus Heaney, By Heart offers the reader a ''mental gymnasium'' in which the memory can be exercised and trained in the most pleasurable way. Some poems will be more of a challenge than others, but all will be treasured once they have become part of the memory bank.This edition is part of a series of anthologies edited by poets such as Don Paterson and Simon Armitage and features an attractive new design to complement an anthology of cl

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Book SynopsisNamed A Most Anticipated Book by: LitHub * Vulture * Time *A PW 2022 Holiday Gift PickOne of: Time''s 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 * NPR''s 2022 Books We Love Vulture''s 10 Best Books of 2022A Goodreads Readers Choice Award SemifinalistFrom acclaimed poet Franny Choi comes a poetry collection for the ends of worlds?past, present, and future. Choi?s third book features poems about historical and impending apocalypses, alongside musings on our responsibilities to each other and visions for our collective survival.Many have called our timedystopian. ButThe World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples.With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time--from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, to children wandering a museum in the future. These poems explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. As she wrestles with the daily griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest--could look like. Bringing together Choi''s signature speculative imagination with even greater musicality than her previous work,The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes Onultimately charts new paths toward hope in the aftermaths, and visions for our collective survival.Trade ReviewNamed A Most Anticipated Book by: LitHub * Vulture * Time * Lambda Literary One of Time's "100 Must-Read Books of 2022" * One of NPR's 2022 "Books We Love" * One of The Boston Globe's "Best Books of 2022" * A PW 2022 Holiday Gift Pick A Goodreads Readers Choice Award Semifinalist An Atlantic "Best Poetry Collections to Read Again and Again" — "Franny Choi’s poems are both of the world and transport us to another. I’ve taught her writing in multiple contexts for years. I’m thrilled to now have this new collection of her poems to savor and to share. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On is a luminous, jarring, and gorgeous gift. Grateful to have these poems as a compass in these times" — Mariame Kaba, author of the NYT bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us "In their arresting poetry collection, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, Choi considers the many ways in which the unthinkable has already happened for the most marginalized around the world by way of catastrophe, war, and devastation." — Time “Capturing the painful truths about surviving this world that seems to care very little about the lives of communities of color, [Choi's] poetry inspires us to continuously fight for a different world--one that would be informed by generations of loss, lessons, and collective movements. Her poetry identifies why it is that our hearts and bones have been aching for so long. We have been at war and the world keeps ending. Franny’s collection is an homage to where we have been and how we must continue--injured, determined, beautifully and together.” — Connie Wun, PhD, co-founder of AAPI Women Lead "Franny Choi’s latest collection of poetry...neutralizes the feeling of apocalyptic panic by showing that xenophobia and brutality within an unequal society are, indeed, nothing new. Compounding the weariness of the past several years with that of the ages flies rather close to despair, but World eludes cynicism to cast generational trauma as a paean to survival." — Vulture “It was Franny Choi who first taught me the truism that every utopia requires an attendant dystopia, and here she catalogues them both with aplomb. Choi charts a path through the gloom and ecstasy of everyday catastrophe, always more mundane than we expected. It’s dull and violent and lined with ancestral memory and mushrooms ready to forage. Anyone who has lived through the daily absurdity of disaster— which is to say, all of us— can find a home here.” — Eve L. Ewing, author of 1919 and Electric Arches “Virtuosic visionary Franny Choi beholds brutal reality and, with uncanny and singular genius, transforms it into revolution. Choi believes community, family, history, eros, truth, and love demand change worth living for/through. This book gives blood, voice, and generations of memory to the slim chance that we can change this world enough to survive its endless dystopia, war, violence. Somehow this poet still believes in us: that we might read this work and, made bold with desire, love the world so deeply it has to love us back.” — Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museumi and Tanya "Franny Choi’s poems are arresting, sharp; they demand we listen and follow her where she wants to take us." — Literary Hub “Science Fiction Poetry” isn’t just the title of one poem from Franny Choi’s collection; it’s also a goal the whole volume undertakes. Effusively angry visions of near-future apocalypse and violent collapse make way, first, for Korean historical memory, and then for brighter visions of a rebuilt society. —Stephanie Burt — Boston Globe "In this new collection, Franny Choi brings her fierce intelligence, ferocious humor, and tonal virtuosity to new ground, imagining and reimagining utopia, dystopia, ongoingness, ending, and the end of ending. First loves, lost mothers, forever wars, 'little nevers' – the temporal vertigo of grief for country and kin, the anguish of failing to protect elders from being attacked – all are voiced in indelible song.... Choi doesn’t flinch from 'what we had to survive/ to make paradise/ from its ruins,' but, with equal bravery, insists on conceiving new communities, new possibilities, new tomorrows.... Her vision is luminous." — Suji Kwock Kim, author of Notes From the Divided Country "Franny Choi is one of my favorite poets and her new collection does not disappoint. These are incisive, elegant poems. There is a throughline of grief in many of the poem but the work demonstrates both stylistic and intellectual range. So excited for people to get into this book." — Roxane Gay “Choi has crafted a fight song for the apocalypse. Musical, defiant, queer, pushing — Choi dances with language at the protest to invite us to save each other. You will read this, read it again aloud, and copy down poems to send to your friends.” — Fawzy Taylor, A Room Of One’s Own Bookstore, Madison, WI "A marked attentiveness to craftsmanship and the niceties of language enlivens the poems in Franny Choi’s urgent, stirring [collection]. A fearless shifter of form, Choi switches moods and modes to tackle such topics as social unrest, climate change and her Korean heritage. Formidable themes like the nature of tragedy and the human capacity for renewal lend a timelessness to her work. Choi’s collection will awaken and inspire readers...her attitude is contagious." — BookPage (starred review) "Lines like these--poems like these--remind readers of what is possible in poetry. " — Shelf Awareness "If you are only going to read one book of poetry this year, or assign one book of poetry for your next class, make it this one. Choi leaves nothing on the table, offering a collection that will satisfy students of poetry and casual readers with equal fervor. This is one collection you will want to carry with you for months to come." — The Poetry Question "A collection that will startle readers." — Library Journal (starred review) "Choi calls upon apocalypses of the past, present, and future to imagine a picture of what survival through community could look like." — Chicago Review of Books, " 12 Must-Read Books of November" "In these ecstatic lyrics, Choi explores what it means to survive in an era that teeters on the edge of apocalyptic doom." — Poets & Writers "The paradox of how we can live in this disastrous world, and handle our own culpability, burns through this collection.” — Poetry

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Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER''A glimpse to the person behind the glamour and drama . . . you get a real sense of the beating soul of Megan Fox'' ? Glamour''A wry and moody meditation on sadness and heartbreak'' ? Vogue''[Fox] opens up in poetic detail and remarkable honesty about the hardest times in her life'' ? Good Morning America''Not an expose, but rather a message to other women about speaking up'' ? USA TodayMegan Fox showcases her wicked humour throughout a heart-breaking and dark collection of poetry. Over the course of more than 80 poems, Fox chronicles all the ways in which we fit ourselves into the shape of the ones we love, even if it means losing ourselves in the process.''These poems were written in an attempt to excise the illness that had taken root in me because of my silence. I''ve spent my entire life keeping the secrets of men, my body ach

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Book SynopsisSelected by Seán Hewitt as a Granta Book of the Year In trailblazing poet, essayist, teacher and activist June Jordan's poems, love is a vision of revolutionary solidarity, crossing borders both emotional and literal with an outstretched hand. Haruko traces the faltering arc of a passionate love affair with another woman while Love Poems encompasses relationships with men and women, political resistance, the need for self-care in a demanding, uncaring world and apocalyptic visions of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. A contemporary of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, June Jordan's spectacular poetry remains profoundly politically potent, lyrically inventive and breathtakingly romantic. First published in 1994, Haruko/ Love Poems is a vitally important modern classic.Trade ReviewPraise for June Jordan: Jordan puts love and delight in her poems, not just vengeance and justice... Writing is an act of faith in a future where meaning is possible. -- Elisa Gabbert * The New York Times *A powerful voice for radical love and justice. June Jordan is a poet for the ages. * Poets.org *A wonderfully direct and heartfelt love poet... the poetry of June Jordan is fully alive, set free in brilliant, timeless flight. -- Carol Rumens * Guardian *A depth of feeling and a vibrancy which just sings out from the page ... lucid, strong, and accessible, singing of sexual desire and resistance against tyrannies * Buzz Books *

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Book SynopsisCharm Offensive, Ross White''s debut poetry collection, explores the space between Dickinson''s directive to tell the truth slant and the universal reality of seeing the truth slant without knowing it. Charting the ways that tenderness can resolve into dissonance and uncertainty can resolve into transcendence, Charm Offensive crackles with the dangers of being alive and the joys of remaining defiant. At turns playful and surreal, exuberant and somber, these poems urge readers to find something new to trust in the world.

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Book SynopsisIn The Blue Armchair, his third collection, John Froy seeks to rediscover his mother after her death in poems widely and wildly various. But which mother? The inspiring painter he hardly saw, a reckless mother he saw too much of? Or an ill, unhappy woman? These complications provide the background, but others too often take centre stage. We meet father, siblings, step-parents, a grandmother and a tragic grandfather, lovers and friends. In poems written over twenty years that don't flinch from pain, loss, and mental health issues, we also find much family love, art, colour, scented flowers, food and wine. We travel across the world, encounter the earth mother, Gaia, get up to hear the dawn chorus. An artist stepfather shines through, as we end with the joys in being a grandfather.Trade Review‘A complicated mother provides the impetus for these beautifully crafted poems. The poet moves from a fractured childhood to maturity with honesty and intelligence. A first-rate volume of poetry. Do read it!’ — Myra Cottingham; ‘This mosaic of poems, a loving attempt to gather the shards of life of a tantalising woman. The writer uses a very delicate touch in evoking amusing, disturbing and richly rewarding moments in the life of a diasporic family’ — Elke Asmus

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Book SynopsisThe final installment in this bestselling series completes the journey that Courtney Peppernell began with Pillow Thoughts. With 600,000 copies sold across the series, Pillow Thoughts continues to inspire all who dip into Courtney's encouraging words.Self-healing is the theme of the entire Pillow Thoughts series. While books II and III focus on healing the heart and mind, respectively, Pillow Thoughts IV offers a balm for healing the soul. Have a cup of tea and let yourself feel.

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Book SynopsisA revised hardcover edition of the Number One Sunday Times bestseller home body by rupi kaur, author of the Number One Sunday Times bestsellers milk and honey and the sun and her flowers. Rupi's long-awaited hardcover edition debuts exclusive poems and is beautifully clothbound and foil stamped. rupi kaur constantly embraces growth, and in home body, she walks readers through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present and the potential of the self. home body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself – reminding readers to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. illustrated by the author, themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.   i dive into the well of my body and end up in another world everything i need already exist

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Book SynopsisLemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries. He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the London Olympics, and to millions across our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one of the nation's best-loved voices.Trade ReviewLemn Sissay is a passionate and powerful voice whose performances are humbling and exhilarating -- KAE TEMPESTHugely enjoyable, inventive, funny and touching * * Guardian * *One of the most original, challenging poets writing in Britain today, and his extraordinary, heart-breaking, courageous life story is the stuff of legend . . . The collection showcases his breadth, his passion, his anger and his humanity . . . Full of light and hope . . . A prodigious talent * * Daily Mail, Poetry of the Year * *A tremendous selection of his poetry . . . His gift as a writer - of plays, poetry, documentaries - is for turning life's base metal into gold * * Observer * *This volume of selected and new poems traces [Sissay's] path from gifted adolescent to accomplished poetic voice, railing with passion and prowess against the "quiet violence of the day-to-day" * * Financial Times * *A collection of the poet's best-loved works . . . The performative element to his poetry is evident but no vibrancy or emotion is lost on paper, where his honesty, charm and humour prevail . . . Gold from the Stone maps Sissay's development as a poet and writer but also his many personal triumphs, even when the odds were stacked against him **** * * The List * *A literary institution * * Big Issue * *A lyrical genius * * The Voice * *His name is magic, his poems are songs on the street * * Independent * *

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Book SynopsisSturge Town is a stunning collection of poems that connects with the earliest days of Kwame Dawes’ work as a poet, from the roots of childhood in Ghana to the reflections of a man turned sixty who is witnessing his children occupying the space he once considered his own. It ranges from poems that make something special of the everyday, to poems of the most astonishing imaginative leaps. There are poems that speak most movingly of moments of acute self-reflection, family crises and losses through death, and there are the inventive poems of the dramatist drawn to create the stories of a rich variety of characters, many springing from the observation of paintings. Metrically careful and sonorous, these poems engage in a personal dialogue with the reader, serious, confessional, alarmed and sometimes teasing. They create highly visualised spaces, observed, remembered, imagined, the scenes of both outward and inner journeys. Organised in five sections, Sturge Town is a collection of finely shaped individual poems with the architecture of a densely interconnected whole, with the soaring grandeur and intimacy of a cathedral – both above and below ground. As the site of the ruined ancestral home of the Dawes, in one of the earliest post-slavery free villages in Jamaica, Sturge Town is both an actual place, a place of myth and a metaphor of the journeying that has taken Kwame Dawes from Ghana, through Jamaica, through South Carolina and now to Nebraska. It parallels a journeying through time, both personal, family and ancestral in which a keen sense of mortality makes life all the more precious.Trade ReviewA richly intelligent, deeply descriptive exploration of home and identity... this personal odyssey becomes a universal journey. * The Guardian *

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Book SynopsisUnrivalled for its range and intensity, the poetry of the First World War continues to have a powerful effect on readers. This title reflects the diverse experience of those who lived through the war - bringing together the words of poets, soldiers and civilians affected by the conflict.Table of ContentsThe Penguin Book of First World War PoetryIntroductionAcknowledgementsA Note on the TextPreludeI. Your Country Needs You'Let the foul Scene proceed''Who's for the khaki suit'In Training2. Somewhere In FranceIn TrenchesBehind the LinesComrades of War3. ActionRendezvous with DeathBattleAftermath4. BlightyGoing BackThe Other WarLucky Blighters5. PeaceEveryone SangThe Dead and the Living'Have you forgotten yet?'CodaNotesA Glossary of the Western FrontBiographiesFurther ReadingPoem AcknowledgementsIndex of Titles and First Lines

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Book SynopsisIn her first collection of new poetry since 2011's acclaimed Family Values, Wendy Cope celebrates the half-forgotten stories of our lives' with compassion, wisdom and wit. Cope continues to be the most generous of authors, sharing her experience of childhood and marriage and writing poignantly about the passing of time. In several of the poems she reimagines Shakespeare in unorthodox fashion; in others she offers heartfelt tributes to friends and to public figures including Eric Morecambe and John Cage. Anecdotal Evidence demonstrates the formal brilliance and empathetic insight which have delighted readers for years, and shows why Wendy Cope is one of our best-loved poets.

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Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated collection brings together, for the first time, Carol Ann Duffy’s much-celebrated festive poems.For a decade, while she was Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy gifted her thousands of readers an illustrated poem every Christmas, transporting them in one year to a seventeenth-century festival on the frozen Thames, in another to Western Front to witness the famous 1914 truce, then to a sweet winter’s night in the South of France with Pablo Picasso and his small dog.Christmas Poems showcases Duffy’s bold and innovative voice, alongside gorgeous artwork from Rob Ryan, David De Las Heras and Lara Hawthorne, amongst others. These ten much-loved poems are gathered together for the first time in this compendium to make a perfect gift for old friends celebrating a decade’s tradition or those experiencing the magic of Duffy’s festive verse for the first time.Trade ReviewDuffy's spellbinding verse, spiced with witty, wintry illustrations, recaptures a magic most of us left behind in childhood * Intelligent Life *

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Book Synopsis''Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I''m thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.'' Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, Bright Dead Things considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact - tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker''s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth and falls in love. In these extraordinary poems Ada Limón''s heart becomes a ''huge beating genius machine'' striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. ''I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,'' the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O''Hara, Sharon OldsTrade ReviewBelongs to [...] a new poetry that is readable, heartfelt and full of vivid imagery * the Times *I am thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction -- Celeste NgIn Ada Limón's Bright Dead Things, there's a fierce jazz and sass ("this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrow's tug") and there's sadness - a grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns "stay safe and seek shelter" and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangeness - and finds it everywhere. -- Gregory OrrA masterpiece. * Shondaland *Effortlessly lyrical. * New York Times *The best compliment one can give a book of poems is that the book loves the reader. Bright Dead Things doesn't just love poetry; it loves the reader. My hunch is, Reader, you'll love it too. * Huffington Post *Bright Dead Things breeds a particular mixture of wildness. The mixture is by turns melodious and tight. Limón's poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book. * The Millions *

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Book SynopsisThe writing of Fernando Pessoa reveals a mind shaken by intense inner suffering. In these poems he adopted four separate personae: Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos, Ricardo Reis and himself, using them to express ''great swarms of thought and feeling''. While each personae has its own poetic identity, together they convey a sense of ambivalence and consolidate a striving for completeness. Dramatic, lyrical, Christian, pagan, old and modern, Pessoa''s poets and poetry contribute to the ''mysterious importance of existence''.

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Book SynopsisNew Selected Poems 1988-2013 provides an unrivalled account of a period of work that was crowned by the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. Together with its earlier, sibling volume, it completes the arc of a remarkable career.Shortly before his death in 2013, Seamus Heaney discussed with his publisher the prospect of a companion volume to his landmark New Selected Poems 1966-1987 aimed at presenting the second half of his career, ''from Seeing Things onwards'', as he foresaw it. Although he was unable to complete a edition/selection, he left behind selections that have been followed here. New Selected Poems 1988-2013 reprints the author''s chosen poems from his later years, beginning with his ground-breaking volume Seeing Things (1991), his two Whitbread Books of the Year, The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999), and his multi-nominated, prize-winning volumes, Electric Light (2001), District and Circle (2006) and Human Chain (2010). The edition concludes with two post

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Book SynopsisThe centenary of Patrick Kavanagh''s birth in 2004 provides the ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland''s greatest poets. From a harsh, humble background that he himself described so brilliantly, Kavanagh burst through immense constraints to redefine Irish poetry - a poetry appropriate for a fully independent country, both politically and culturally. Moving beyond Irish verse''s preoccupation with history, national politics and identity, he turned to the land and scenery of his native Inniskeen, portraying the closely-observed minutiae of everyday rural and urban life in an uninhibited, groundbreaking style. Lucid, various, direct and engaging, Kavanagh''s poems have a unique place in the canon and a unique accessibility. This major new edition is the culmination of many years of work by Antoinette Quinn in creating authoritative texts for Kavanagh''s poetry - from his early works such as ''Inniskeen Road: July Evening'' to his masterpiece, the epic ''The Great Hunger'', allowing us to see the development of Kavanagh''s genius as never before.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry Here at the turn of the leaf a horseman is ridingthrough the space between one world and another . . .' The Mabinogi is the Welsh national epic, a collection of prose tales of war and enchantment, adventure and romance, which have long fascinated readers all over the world. Matthew Francis's retelling of the first four stories (the Four Branches of the Mabinogi) is the first to situate it in poetry, and captures the magic and strangeness of this medieval Celtic world: a baby is kidnapped by a monstrous claw, a giant wades across the Irish Sea to do battle, a wizard makes a woman out of flowers, only to find she is less biddable than he expected. Permeating the whole sequence is a delight in the power of the imagination to transform human experience into works of tragedy, comedy and wonder.The Mabinogi is an important contribution to the storytelling of the British Isles.''I have waited a life for this book: our ancient British tales re-told, in English, by a poet, as they were in their original Welsh. This is more than translation. It picks up the harp and sings.'' Gillian Clarke

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2023. Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2023. A The Irish Times Book of the Year. In his disquieting third collection The Ink Cloud Reader, Kit Fan takes enormous risks linguistically, formally and visually to process the news of a sudden illness and the threat of mortality, set against the larger chaos of his beloved city Hong Kong and our broken planet. These shape-shifting poems are sensitive to anxiety and to beauty, questioning the turbulent climate of our time while celebrating the power of ink - of reading and writing.Trade Review'In The Ink Cloud Reader, Kit Fan's moving, wise and fluid poems grapple with the forces "converting loss to some form / of chaos". The book's vivid portrait of a marriage, quickened by sickness and the threat of separation, presents love as a play of shadow and light. Fan gets stranger, more daring, with each successive book: he is an essential poet, and one I will always return to.' - Sarah Howe; 'The compressed narratives in The Ink Cloud Reader demonstrate both lyric intensity and a remarkable dramatic reach. In this impressive third collection, Kit Fan's restless, explorative, compositional impulse is evident from first to last [...] The poems in this collection - personal, political, edgy, sometimes provocative - have a unifying voice both intriguing and wholly original.' - David Harsent; 'Kit Fan's poems are a kind of lyric vortex: imagistic fictions that wrap themselves around a hard, lyrical, personal centre, something like the complexity of a seed. This collection holds at its core the tension of what to say and how to say it, gloriously in celebration of ambivalence, and questioning.' - Rachael Allen

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