Modern and contemporary poetry

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

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Book SynopsisRelativism, the second poetry collection by Mary Ford Neal, a writer and academic from the West of Scotland, deals with themes of attachment, belonging, certainty, doubt, and our relationships to places, times, people, and ideas. Using different voices, and the lens of intimate relationships, the collection explores various stages of life (from youth to adulthood to older age) and states of self-knowledge (from confusion to enlightenment to doubt).Trade Review'Brave and gentle; both Venutian and urgently animal [...] Mary Ford Neal shows us just what magic and mystery sustains within the residual.' Janette Ayachi; 'Relativism crackles with energy and humour. Emotionally direct, at times risky, these poems reach across generations and place to remind us of our shared humanity.' Miranda Pearson

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Book SynopsisThis is a collection about the land. This land. It’s about the politics of the UK, its identity and how it can be re-defined. It’s about the environment, social disquiet, anger, intolerance and the rise of righteousness. It’s about love and intimacy, exploring change and the passing of time. This is a collection which embraces hope and creates the future.Trade Review“Its scathing view on climate, politics and culture is unflinching, but written with care and compassion. A powerful, timely collection … a warning and a carrion call to us all.” – Michael Wilson, poet; “Tony’s words dance off the page and into your bloodstream, leaving you pulsing with anger, humanity and love. This unique and beautiful collection is essential reading.” – Charlotte Oliver, writer; “All true artists are outsiders and any of us can find ourselves feeling as though we are on the outside. Tony’s insightful poetry expresses both the delight and the uncertainty of that position.” – Neil Bell, actor; “These are poems that shouldn’t just be read. These are poems to be belted out, or chanted in unison with our loved ones at protests, or spray-painted on t-shirts for gigs. Read these so loudly you offend the neighbours.” – Geneviève L. Walsh, spoken word artist

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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

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Book SynopsisDeeply attuned to those things that make and unmake us, Dylan Brennan's Let The Dead concerns itself with life's alchemical processes. A couple breathe life into a doomed poppet, a photographer immortalises a corpse, Joyce and Breton rub shoulders on the streets of the poet's adopted Mexico, where life is a tapestry of 'delicate anthers' and 'disembodied tongues'. These dark meditations are set against poems which consider love, miscarriage, childbirth and the daily miracle of family life. Beautiful and disturbing by turns, these reflections on Ireland and Mexico's shared colonial past invoke topographies both real and imagined, where 'things in the ground have a tendency to grow.' Let the Dead reminds us of the power of art to shape our perception of history, and of the artist's responsibility in a time of violence.

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Book SynopsisLimbic is Peter Scalpello's glittering ode to sex, intimacy, and queer discovery. Taking us on slippery nights out fuelled by chemsex, on drunken lads' holidays, and into the quiet violence of small domestic moments, this is a world where tracksuits hide queer desire, where shame masks vulnerability, where wallets hide wraps of crystal meth. From the eager trepidation of teenage sex, to the ecstasy of parties, to the stigma around HIV, Limbic is at once a therapy and a celebration, showing how queer learning can be both soft-edged and brutal at once. An exploration of masculinity, addiction and trauma, this is a revelatory collection of poems; wise, tender, and vital.Trade Review“Limbic is a stunning first collection from a breathtaking poet. Visceral, elegant and uncompromising; an important addition to the queer canon. Buy it a drink and let it talk to you late into the night.” – Joelle Taylor;“A moving collection which, through different forms, different narratives , and different encounters, speaks eloquently and dynamically to the multiplicities our own bodies contain.” – Andrew McMillan; “At once playful and devastating, raw and complex. These poems tear open the relationship between masculinity and sex, queerness, compulsions, addictions... It would be difficult not to be moved by this collection!” – Keith Jarrett; “All the superlatives for Peter Scalpello’s tender poems. I can’t stop thinking about them.” – Niven Govinden; "Peter Scalpello’s Limbic is an extraordinary book. At times riotous and celebratory as he explores queer desire in a complex and nuanced way; at other times introspective and even erased as Scalpello examines the impact of substance use on the self and on sexuality; and at other times bristling with poetic rage and protest! ‘Wounds need air’ he writes, finding a language, both noisy and translucent, to transform these wounds into poems – poems which ultimately transform and transcend themselves, as the poet even becomes his ‘own daddy’!" - Richard Scott

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Book SynopsisFrom the provincial peccadilloes of Prestwich in Manchester to coffee houses and bars by the Bosporus in Istanbul, John Darwin explores life's three stages of arriving, staying for a bit, and then leaving. A poetic reflection on the ennui of the everyday, intermittent pleasures, and the quest to understand love and belonging.Trade Review“I was sorry when I came to the last page. I enjoyed it that much.” - Greg Freeman, Write Out Loud; "A collection of acutely and fondly observed everyday acts by everyday people ... heartfelt and beautiful." - Chris Lloyd, Producer; "Bleak yet tender, littered with sadness and tinged with humour, Ultrasilence chronicles love, loss and yearning with searing honesty. A brave and compelling book." - Andrew Davies, Historian & Author; "Gets to grips with the parts of life we'd rather forget." - Dave Morgan, Write Out Loud Co-founder; "From early doors to last orders, John Darwin's poetry leaves us drunk on its honesty and thirsty for more." - Tony Walsh AKA Longfella, Poet; "Captures the mundane, the melancholy and the mellifluous ... makes the epic out of the humble. Poetry of the highest calibre." - Stephen Kingston, Journalist & Bury New Road Project Director; "With searching honesty and a rare eye for detail he offers up something irresistible ... a journey unknowable yet certain." - Winston Plowes, Poet & Educator

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Book SynopsisA SUNDAY TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEARIn this blistering anthology, poet, editor and DJ Kayo Chingonyi brings together a selection of exceptional Black British poets. This is his dream mixtape featuring a cross-generational span of current poets extending and inhabiting the spirits of the ancestors. Following in the tread of Lemn Sissay's The Fire People, More Fiya aims to lodge in the mind of its readers for a lifetime, radiating to touch the lives of many.Including work from: Jason Allen-Paisant, Raymond Antrobus, Janette Ayachi, Dean Atta, Malika Booker, Eric Ngalle Charles, Dzifa Benson, Inua Ellams, Samatar Elmi, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Joseph, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Vanessa Kisuule, Rachel Long, Adam Lowe, Nick Makoha, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Momtaza Mehri, Bridget Minamore, Selina Nwulu, Gboyega Odubanjo, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Roger Robinson, Denise Saul, Kim Squirrell, Warsan Shire, Rommi Smith, Yomi Sode, Degna Stone, Keisha Thompson, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Warda Yassin, Belinda ZhawiTrade ReviewBrings together a wonderful array of poets whose linguistic flair and wide-ranging perspectives excite, inspire and challenge in equal measure -- BERNARDINE EVARISTO * * Guardian * *Kayo Chingonyi's celebratory selection here has something for everyone * * Sunday Times * *[P]assionately curated . . . The collection is rich for its array of imagery, lyricism and rhythm which brings to life ancestral homelands throughout the African continent and Caribbean isles while also highlighting what it means to be Black and British in the 21st century . . . More Fiya serves as a powerful reminder of what is possible when communities are given the opportunity to champion and celebrate themselves outside the confines of homogeneous understanding of poetrics -- Andrés Ordorica * * The Skinny * *

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Book SynopsisA SUNDAY TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEARIn this blistering anthology, poet, editor and DJ Kayo Chingonyi brings together a selection of exceptional Black British poets. This is his dream mixtape featuring a cross-generational span of current poets extending and inhabiting the spirits of the ancestors. Following in the tread of Lemn Sissay's The Fire People, More Fiya aims to lodge in the mind of its readers for a lifetime, radiating to touch the lives of many.Including work from: Jason Allen-Paisant, Raymond Antrobus, Janette Ayachi, Dean Atta, Malika Booker, Eric Ngalle Charles, Dzifa Benson, Inua Ellams, Samatar Elmi, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Keith Jarrett, Anthony Joseph, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Vanessa Kisuule, Rachel Long, Adam Lowe, Nick Makoha, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Momtaza Mehri, Bridget Minamore, Selina Nwulu, Gboyega Odubanjo, Louisa Adjoa Parker, Roger Robinson, Denise Saul, Kim Squirrell, Warsan Shire, Rommi Smith, Yomi Sode, Degna Stone, Keisha Thompson, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Warda Yassin, Belinda ZhawiTrade ReviewBrings together a wonderful array of poets whose linguistic flair and wide-ranging perspectives excite, inspire and challenge in equal measure -- BERNARDINE EVARISTO * * Guardian * *Kayo Chingonyi's celebratory selection here has something for everyone * * Sunday Times * *[P]assionately curated . . . The collection is rich for its array of imagery, lyricism and rhythm which brings to life ancestral homelands throughout the African continent and Caribbean isles while also highlighting what it means to be Black and British in the 21st century . . . More Fiya serves as a powerful reminder of what is possible when communities are given the opportunity to champion and celebrate themselves outside the confines of homogeneous understanding of poetrics -- Andrés Ordorica * * The Skinny * *

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Book SynopsisThe slow decline and death of a partner from dementia is traumatic. The burden of care over those last few years increases steadily. When death comes it is, surprisingly, a huge shock, even though long anticipated. This collection of poems charts that journey into darkness, until the beginnings of healing appear. It is a catalogue of the progress of illness, death and the subsequence inevitable grief. To the many men and women who have suffered the loss of a partner, the poems will strike a chord and help them to understand that they are not alone.

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Book SynopsisThe book of peace that will open doors to new realities. Written in poetry form, short stories, a book of spells, bringing back old folk heroes Robin Hood and little Miss Riding Hood, along with shamans, angels, wizards and magicians. Questioning the way of life and its current state of affairs, whilst creating an opening for the reader to question their own mind and existence. The reader will be left with a personal choice as they enter a new future.

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Book SynopsisThe blues has left an indelible mark on the work of a diverse range of poets: from "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes and "Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden, to "Blues on Yellow" by Marilyn Chin and "Reservation Blues" by Sherman Alexie. Here are blues-influenced and blues--inflected poems from, among others, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, June Jordan, Richard Wright, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Wright, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Cornelius Eady. And here, too, are classic song lyrics-poems in their own right-from Bessie Smith, Robert Johnson, Ma Rainey, and Muddy Waters.The rich emotional palette of the blues is fully represented here in verse that pays tribute to the heart and humor of the music, and in poems that swing with its history and hard-bitten hope.

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Book SynopsisJames Merrill once called his poetic works 'chronicles of love and loss', and in twenty books written over four decades he used the details of his life - comic and haunting, exotic and domestic - to shape a compelling, sometimes intensely moving, personal portrait. Sophisticated, witty and ironic, his poetry also engages passionately with topical issues - war, terrorism, political corruption, AIDS, climate change and the destruction of nature. An admirer of Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and W. H. Auden, Merrill, like them, has left a legacy that will speak to readers for years to come.

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Book SynopsisDip into this inspired assortment of concise masterpieces, and draw out - a fragment of Sappho from ancient Greece, a perfect haiku from Japan; a brief nature poem by John Clare, Robert Frost, Ted Hughes or Boris Pasternak; a compact love poem by Alexander Pushkin or Anne Bradstreet, Robert Herrick or Carol Ann Duffy; a miniature story by Hardy, Rumi or Roethke; a pithy meditation by Wang Wei, Emily Dickinson, Tennyson or Lorca. Dip again, and discover the compressed wit of Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash; contemporary poets Simon Armitage and Moniza Alvi at their most succinct; short poems in very odd shapes from Apollinaire and Vaclav Havel ... So few lines, so much variety: epitaphs and epigrams; couplets and quatrains; lyrics, limericks and lullabies - go on, dip again.

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Book SynopsisThe Uyghur people of Central Asia have a long and distinguished tradition of poetry - indeed, their first oral epic was circulating as early as the 2nd century BCE. In the medieval period Sufi poetry flourished, embracing Persian forms such as the ghazal, which spoke eloquently of beauty, love, loss and separation. A major poet, Alshir Navayi (1441­-1501) fully established classical Turkic or Chagatai as a perfect vehicle for poetic expression. Some contemporary poets continue to find inspiration within the traditional forms, while others experiment with a freer style of verse.Uyghur poetry reflects the magnificent natural landscapes where the Uyghurs have lived for two millennia - endless steppes, soaring mountain ranges and mysterious deserts, crossed by the historic Silk Road. It is also shaped by their turbulent past, caught between warring empires or marauding warlords - and their deeply troubled present.The Uyghurs form a minority in China, where the government is now making a systematic attempt to erase their language and culture. Many intellectuals have been imprisoned, and many poets are now writing from exile, including the editor and translator of this volume, Aziz Isa Elkun, who lives in London. Uyghur Poems is not only a celebration of an ancient and vibrant poetic tradition, but also a vital witness to a culture under threat.

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Book Synopsis'She came in like a shadow. She slid and bore herself into my eye, between my eyelids which blinked against the dust.' She is Maud Gonne, the muse of writer William Butler Yeats. Yeats here returns as a ghost, after having been buried in France in 1939 in the cemetery of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, to be returned to Ireland a decade later. He emerges from his grave to recount his thwarted love with Maud, a story that merges with that of the independence movement of Ireland, of which they were both emblematic actors. Yeats' ghost has suddenly arisen because diplomatic documents long kept secret have resurfaced, casting doubt on the contents of the coffin brought back into Ireland for a state funeral. Where did the poet's body go? Does he still hover, as he wrote, 'somewhere above the clouds'? What remains of our loves and our deaths, if not their poetry? Besserie's exciting new novel follows on from Yell, Sam, If You Still Can (Le Tiers Temps), translated by Cliona Ni Riordain. In Maylis Besserie's second novel, she turns her attention from Samuel Beckett to another iconic Irish writer, W. B. Yeats. The connection between France in Ireland is once again explored in the context of art, culture and the days at the end of life.Trade Review'Scattered Love is a haunting and immersive read, written with the kind of lyricality and depth of tone appropriate for a novel infused with the presence of Yeats. Besserie is almost painterly in the way she employs words, drawing her readers deep into the story she's telling. This is a poem of a novel; the perfect vehicle for capturing Yeats in all his rich complexity.' JAN CARSON 'Maylis Besserie's beautiful novel casts a brilliant light on life and love and death and what remains of us ... The elegant prose and fluid translation have a balming, soothing quality. It is strange and fascinating to read Yeats's sublimely ventriloquised voice, and Madeleine's quest is absorbing, comedic, touching and true. The magic of Yeats has new life here.' DONAL RYAN 'A truly beautiful literary novel from a wonderful storyteller.' JOSEPH O'CONNOR

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Book SynopsisA collection of poetry witnessing celebrations both private and public, from the author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS.'A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman' BARACK OBAMAMaya Angelou's poetry has stirred our souls, energized our minds and healed our hearts. Celebrations is a collection of timely and timeless poems: the inspiring 'On the Pulse of Morning', read at President William Jefferson Clinton's 1993 inauguration; the heartening 'Amazing Peace'; 'A Brave and Startling Truth', which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations; and 'Mother', which beautifully honours the first woman in our lives. 'She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds' OPRAH WINFREY'She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate' TONI MORRISON

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Book SynopsisThis compendium of Edgar Mittelholzer’s uncollected by Juanita Cox, brings together his early collection of sketches of Georgetown life, Creole Chips, his speculative novella, The Adding Machine, twenty-four short stories, two short plays, his published and unpublished poetry and essays covering travel, literature and his personal beliefs. This is mostly work written before Mittelholzer came to England in search of publishing opportunities. It shows a writer still deeply concerned with the Caribbean, a writer of playful humour who is committed to entertain, not to preach as his later work tends to do, and a writer who wrote in a variety of genres (speculative fiction, crime, and the Gothic) that contemporary Caribbean writers are rediscovering.

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Book SynopsisPatterflash embraces the performative, self-ironising aesthetic of campness but, as a mask, it is a complex and very malleable one, capable of showing features of tenderness, bravery, righteous anger and sometimes sadness and alarm – as well as the comedic. Within a collection that displays an engaging variety of language registers, both ‘high’ and ‘low’ in tone, the masking sometimes makes use of Polari, the gay street language that simultaneously reveals and conceals, excludes and invites, estranges and makes familiar. The collection connects the poet as a wry, humane observer of the scene, particularly as conducted in Manchester, and the persona of “Adam Lowe” as both actor in and narrator of his own dramas, who performs, exults and sometimes suffers in a wide range of guises and disguises. What unites them is the urge to embrace the possibilities of being exactly who you want to be whatever the complications or consequences of your choice. From the four-year-old boy who, though always easy in his mixedness of race, also wants to wear a blonde woman’s wig without any angst of self-contradiction, through the poems delighting in the frank physicality of gay sex, to the mature man experiencing domestic contentment, Adam Lowe takes us on a journey rich in observation and always in a poetry that makes an art of patterflash.Trade Review"A collection of ecstatic queer hymns that walk us through Leeds, through Manchester, with the unique laguage of being young and queer in the north.

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Book Synopsis'Honest, unflinching and unforgettable... one of Britain's best writers' Stormzy'You will come away bruised.You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry.'Raw and stark, the poems in Yrsa Daley-Ward's breakthrough collection strip down her reflections on the heart, life, the inner self, coming of age, faith and loss to their essence. They resonate to the core of experience. 'Yrsa's work is like holding the truth in your hands. A glorious living thing' Florence Welch 'yrsa daley-ward's 'bone' is a symphony of breaking and mending. an expert storyteller. of the rarest. and purest kind - daley-ward is uncannily attentive and in tune to the things beneath life. beneath the skin. beneath the weather of the everyday.' nayyirah waheed. author of salt. and nejmaTrade ReviewHonest, unflinching and unforgettable . . . one of Britain's best writersan expert storyteller. of the rarest. and purest kind--daley-ward is uncannily attentive and in tune to the things beneath life. beneath the skin. beneath the weather of the everyday.Yrsa's work is like holding the truth in your hands. It sweats and breathes before you. A glorious living thingYou may think poetry is not for you, but please push yourself a little, go out of your comfort zone and buy bone by Yrsa Daley-Ward ... You will thank us for it * BBC Radio 5 Live *[bone] will hit you like a gut punch ... Some poems had me weeping; I printed others to pin to my wall for daily inspiration * Elle *[Yrsa Daley-Ward] is at the realm of a new wave of contemporary poets who inspire an unprecedented level of empathy and accessibility through their honest and raw approach . . . [A] powerful collection of a woman facing tumultuous inner and external battles head on, delivered with a hard-hitting directness, yet with inflections of optimism throughout that are bound to touch readers to their core * i-D Magazine *One of the must-reads of the year * Evening Standard *Another stunning excavator of human heat and light, Yrsa Daley-Ward goes straight to the messy beating heart of animal attraction with bone, mesmerizing poems that strip bare the pain and beauty of negotiating longing, sex and love * Huffington Post *Beautiful ... Moving ... Touching

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Book SynopsisHope Against Hope recounted the last four years in the life of the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, and gave a hair-raising account of Stalin's terror. Hope Abandoned complements that earlier masterpiece, and in it Nadezhda Mandelstam describes their life together from 1919, and her own after Mandelstam's death in a labour camp in 1938. She also sets out his system of values and beliefs, and provides striking portraits of many of their contemporaries including Boris Pasternak and their champion till his own downfall, Nikolai Bukharin, as well as an astonishingly candid picture of Anna Akhmatova.Trade ReviewTwo of the most fortifying books of our times, Nadezhda Mandelstam’s Hope against Hope and Hope Abandoned ... were finally written in the late Sixties. In these books, we have a devastating indictment of most of what happened in post-revolutionary Russia -- Seamus Heaney * London Review of Books *A bursting compendium of glances at people, framed in essays of scorn for the inquisitors and compassion for the victims... If she is vinegarish, she is also powerful and enhancing -- V.S. PritchettDescribes the whole range of her life with Mandelstam, their travels, vicissitudes and friendships, above all the friendship with Akhmatova... a vivid triple portrait * New Society *Max Hayward's translation reads easily and seems to me to convey exactly the style and tone in which this great book is written * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisThese poems are alive with electricity, pulsating with a frequency that vibrates throughout. In a journey from there to here, The Bone Library examines and interprets all of human life. Throughout the collection Jenni Fagan responds to broader themes of identity, of place, of love and the unloved. Written in the old Dick Vet Bone Library during the author’s time as writer-in-residence there, this is a vivid exploration that is honest and searching and cuts to the very core of what it is to be alive.Trade Review'Thrilling, original and unexpected. It promises to take the reader on an unforgettable adventure through the most intimate and haunted secrets of human life.' -- Toni Velikova, Scottish Poetry Library'Thrilling, original and unexpected. It promises to take the reader on an unforgettable adventure through the most intimate and haunted secrets of human life' * Bookseller *'Excels in moments of tenderness, [and] tends to shine most in its wit' -- Stuart Kelly * The Scotsman *'Stunning... the vocabulary alone is so vivid, so visceral, and we feel it in the poem that gives the book its title' * BBC Radio Scotland Afternoon Show *'A stunning new collection' * Scots Magazine *'As brilliant, as sensual, as vivid and as thought-provoking as all the rest of her poetry' * Ileach *'Powerful and gritty writing that reflects many aspects of twenty-first century life' -- Peter B. Freshwater * University of Edinburgh Journal *

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Book SynopsisIn Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman’s body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing and separation just as often as it signals inheritance, revival, and recuperation. Language unfolds into unforgettable and arresting imagery, offering a map toward self-understanding that is deeply rooted in place. These poems are a lyrical exploration of how ancestral memory reforms and transforms throughout generations, through stories told and retold, imagined and reimagined. It is a meditation on womanhood, belonging, faith, intimacy, and the natural world. Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award 2023 and the Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year Award 2023 Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023, the Laurel Prize 2023 and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2023Trade Review'Pirmohamed writes with a flow which is rarely interrupted. She has a fine ear for the musicality in words and knows exactly where a line should turn' -- Susan Mansfield * The Scotsman *'Pirmohamed’s achievements speak for themselves ... each poem is crafted, each word perfectly placed, flowing into one another. Dreamlike, brimming with ideas, it’s a collection that engulfs you, invites you to read more, to discover new jewels on each read' -- Heather McDaid * The Skinny *'In Another Way to Split Water a reader gets to taste arrival before arrival, a form of tenderness that refracts: "an inherited vanishing/through the slit of a dream"' -- Bhanu Kapil'Pirmohamed is an immensely gifted poet' -- Eduardo C. Corral'An electric, taut, and glimmering achievement' -- Aria Aber'You will want to map the navigations of these poems. You will be compelled to orbit their magnetic and inimitable oscillations' -- Shivanee Ramlochan'[Another Way to Split Water] inspired me so much. So many things I will think about differently now, from nature to form' -- Tice Cin, author of Keeping the House'[Pirmohamed's] language flows in elegant, mysterious ways, telling tales of heritage, history and belonging.' -- Toni Velikova, Scottish Poetry Library'An extraordinary collection... it's one that I'm very much looking forward to returning to' * Glass Bookshop Radio *'Another Way to Split Water is an homage to family, the natural world, and storytelling' -- Rebecca Mangra * Room Magazine *'[a] lyrical exploration of stories told and retold, ancestral memories reformed and transformed, and the imagined and reimagined' -- Hari Alluri * Massy Arts *'Lyrical and achingly beautiful... Another Way to Split Water is shot through with love, beauty, and deeply tender moments that live on far beyond the page.' -- Roshni Gallagher * Gutter Magazine *'The poems in this book draw you in with their incredibly vivid imagery of wilderness and water' * Fourteen Poems magazine *'Alycia Pirmohamed's Another Way to Split Water is affecting, refined, and elusive in its invocations of environmentalism, circumventing cliché through sprezzatura' * Raymound Souster Award Panel (Shortlisted, 2023) *'I'm both struck and charmed by the slow progressions of lyric observation and philosophical inquiry throughout... Another Way to Split Water' -- Rob McLellan'Pirmohamed’s writing evokes tender emotions within readers by bringing a voice to those who search for a sense of identity and belonging in multiple places at the same time ... To read her book is to give form to the unappeased diasporic yearning that we continue to come to terms with' -- Michelle Lu * Surging Tide Magazine *'Rich, vulnerable and multi-layered, the poems engage with the subject’s relation to water environments in a climactically and politically turbulent world' * Poetry School *'A long love letter to not just water that takes a multitude of shapes, but also to grief, prayer, girlhood, wind, womanhood, Allah, elks, longing, and departures... The reader's bonding to these poems, in many moments, is meditative, and almost transcendent' * Wasafiri Magazine *'Her narrative is dynamic, a vibrant act of creating, undoing, transforming, and becoming. As you move through the book, the cyclical images of nature, gentle ebb and flow of rivers, rise and fall of storms, reflections of childhood and ruminations on the future, contribute to an emblematic growth of character and voice' * Outcrop Poetry *'Alycia Pirmohamed’s Another Way to Split Water is an exciting debut that explores connections between landscape, language and the body in a series of lyrical poems' * The Saltire Society *

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Book SynopsisFrom Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh’s Makar. 'Speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland ... with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' – The Scotsman In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers? Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are – exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020 but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars. Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined. In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring – into hope. The National Theatre of Scotland has launched a new digital visual album, Blood, Salt, Spring - a digital accompaniment to Hannah Lavery’s collection. You can view the visual album here.Trade Review'hers is a voice which speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland around issues of identity, race, justice and belonging with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' -- Malcolm Jack * The Scotsman *'moves from poignant lyricism to Informationist-style interrogation of language' -- Stuart Kelly'Much of it written through lockdown, it has an interesting take on a world of isolation' * Scots Magazine *'Blood Salt Spring offers a personal response to wider cultural conversations from national identity to personal autonomy, divisive politics to mothering during lockdown. Its terrain is vast. Its perspective unequivocal' -- Rachel Loughran * The National *'With much of the collection written in lockdown, it’s poetry that feels both of the moment while reaching out and attempting to find meaning, to move forward, and find hope' * Books From Scotland *'A terrific debut poetry collection' * BBC Radio Scotland, Afternoon Show *'Important issues including nation, race and belonging are at the heart of Blood Salt Spring.' * East Lothian Courier *'Hannah Lavery stole our hearts and set our minds alight with her breath-taking pamphlets and the astonishing Lament for Sheku Bayoh – for years we've been hungry for more & now finally: Blood Salt Spring is HERE! * The Lighthouse Bookshop *‘An absolutely amazing collection… it blew me away. It feels monumental and fleeting at the same time' -- Denise Mina'Hannah has been crucial in carving out spaces and stages for writers of colour in Scotland, and her own debut collection (Blood, Salt, Spring) is a triumph' -- Michael Pedersen * Electric Literature *'Hannah Lavery's debut collection shows her deft ability to marry the personal with the political' -- Andres N. Ordorica * The Skinny *

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Book SynopsisThis is an exclusive limited edition with a preface by Liz Lochhead and a new introduction by Ali Smith. Liz Lochhead is one of the leading poets writing in Britain today. This, her debut collection, published in 1972, was a landmark publication. Writing at a time when the landscape of Scottish poetry was male dominated, hers was a new voice, tackling subjects that resonated with readers – as it still does. Her poetry paved the way, and inspired, countless new voices including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy. Still writing and performing today, fifty years on from her first book of poetry, Liz Lochhead has been awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and was Scotland’s second modern Makar, succeeding Edwin Morgan. Memo for Spring is accessible, vital and always as honest as it is hopeful. Driving through this collection are themes of pain, acceptance, loss and triumph.Trade Review'A voice so fresh and relevant that it broke new ground, paving the way for the likes of Ali Smith, Jackie Kay, Kathleen Jamie and Carol Ann Duffy' * The Sunday Post *'Lochhead was a fresh, young female voice in the masculine world of Scottish poetry and these early poems are just as exhilarating and entertaining a read today' * Daily Mail *'An inspirational presence in British poetry – funny, feisty, female and full of feeling' -- Carol Ann Duffy'This is the work of a highly intelligent, sensitive, perceptive, and humorous young woman' -- George Mackay Brown'Liz Lochead made it possible to imagine being a poet' -- Kathleen Jamie'In Scotland’s literary world Lochhead was a pioneer, imprinting the female experiences of love and loss' -- Steven McGinty * The Sunday Times *'This new 50th anniversary edition celebrates Liz Lochhead’s seminal poetry collection' * Scots Magazine *'A book full of youthful hope and heartbreak' * The Herald *

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Book SynopsisIona Lee’s debut collection charts the journey of the writer, artist and performer into adulthood. Written in a unique voice, Iona playfully toys with thematic devices in this entertaining exploration of art and artifice, absence and impermanence, truth and tale telling. Characterised by a deep love of language, its music and its magic, these poems reflect on memory, the future and other hauntings. Wittily observed, this collection is an attempt to connect the stars into tidy constellations, and to join the tiny, inchoate dots of self into something traceable and translatable. Humorous and self-aware, gentle and philosophical, Anamnesis is written in the knowledge that in telling one’s life-story, one creates it.Trade Review'Dazzling. Witty. Playful. Wild. Ingenious. It’s easy to run out of adjectives when you’re describing Iona Lee’s astonishing first collection. ‘Is all fire the same fire?’ she asks. Definitely not. These are poems of such energy and brilliance they will continue to burn in the memory long after the book is closed.' -- John Glenday, poet'She writes elegiacally, hopefully... [the collection's title "Anamnesis"] is, like her poetry, clear and complex: remembering, an epiphany and not forgetting, as if the three were the same thing' -- Stuart Kelly * The Scotsman *'Her mindful treatment and adoration of language are like that of a chef handling their most cherished ingredients... deftly distils the collective consciousness into something precise and pleasurable' * SNACK Magazine *'A door, a window, a rupture? The familiar openings and outpourings of Anamnesis are made strange and sacrosanct by Iona Lee, a skilful poet with a mastery of language. This startling debut is equal part stained glass as it is blood-stained' -- Dean Atta'Iona's collection is a marvel. Full of beauty, wit, wisdom and surprise, delivered with the assurance of a poet who knows exactly what they are doing, it is to be treasured' -- Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh Makar'I was intrigued and delighted by the originality and wit, the here-and-now "peculiar Eden" of the world she creates. Youthful, sexy, sharp, ferally female, funny' -- Liz Lochhead'Iona's poems hatch plucky, ponderous and pulsing; or do I mean louche, lithe and lasering? They're all of that, maybe more' -- Michael Pedersen'Iona Lee is an exceptional poet; her work is articulate and perceptive and brimming with tenderness and authenticity. Anamnesis is compelling and beautiful, it is an exquisite poetry collection' -- Salena Godden'The standout voice of her generation, Lee performs open-heart surgery on the English language' -- Darren McGarvey'Artist and writer Iona Lee has long been considered one of the finest spoken word and live poetry performers around' * Snack Magazine,10 Best Scottish Books for 2023 *'the gorgeous, long-awaited debut collection from beloved poet and performer Lee... these poems are reflections and teachings, imbued with gentle humour and musicality' * The Bookseller *'a stunning debut... a collection that dissects memory, remembrance and the minutiae of life in ways that are equally eviscerating and elegant' -- Matt Macdonald * Glasgow Review of Books *'its craft is confident and assured... an immensely rich volume of poetry doing what poetry does best' -- Calum Rodger * Gutter Magazine *

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Book SynopsisThis collected editon of Sorley MacLean brings together published poetry from MacLean's own edited volumes of poetry, poetry previously published in various magazines, literary journals and anthologies, and poetry which has never been published before. The poems are given in their original Gaelic with English translations. The volume opens with a biographical summary of Maclean's childhood on Raasay, his life at university and war experiences, and examines MacLean's effect on Gaelic and Scottish literature, and his literary, political and philosophical influences, which included Gaelic traditional song, Romanticism and Modernism, as well as Communism and Fascism.

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Book SynopsisLiz Lochhead is one of the country’s leading poets. Her work has paved the way and inspired some of the most inspirational voices writing in Scotland today, including Ali Smith, Kathleen Jamie, Jackie Kay and Carol Ann Duffy. In A Handsel, the first new poems from Scotland’s second modern Makar since 2016’s Fugitive Colours, the poet celebrates people and those small momentous moments that encapsulate so much of her work. It is human relationships that sit at the heart of these poems; each one is a beautifully realised snapshot that explores the poet’s past, her friendships and revisits favourite characters from earlier collections. This landmark publication collects for the first time the poetry of Liz Lochhead. Bringing work back into print, this collected poems publishes all of the poet’s collections, presented in their entirety: Memo for Spring, Islands, The Grimm Sisters, Dreaming Frankenstein, The Colour of Black and White and Fugitive Colours, as well as poems from Bagpipe Muzak and True Confessions.Trade Review'This collection of Liz Lochhead’s poems is full of humour and a sheer joy in language, and allows for a deeper appreciation of her work to date' -- Stuart Kelly * The Scotsman *'this book is further revelation of the combined light touch and deep discipline of this poet and thinker who never sells us short and asks of everything with a tenacity that’s a gift of warmth, spirit, unending intelligence' -- Ali Smith * New Statesman *'A Handsel brings together her substantial body of poetry, allowing us finally to understand its coherence and seriousness... Lochhead is a deeply enjoyable writer - her storytelling blend of the confessional, the fabular and the lightly feminist is thoroughly more-ish' * The Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month *'Moving, revealing and remarkable in equal measure' * Scottish Field *'Liz Lochhead is the very epitome of an exceptional and versatile writer who has made an outstanding contribution to the Scottish literary ecology. She has been a literary trailblazer, inspiring generations of young people who study her work, and writers wishing to emulate her authenticity . . . We owe her a debt of gratitude' * Saltire Society, Lifetime Achievement Award *'An opus of her life's work... estimating Liz Lochhead in terms of her impact and her place in the national psyche isn't that tricky a job. Just look around you' -- Barry Didcock * Herald *

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Book SynopsisAfter her tragic death in December 1938 at the early age of twenty-six, Antonia Pozzi’s poems – which she had been secretly writing for years – were brought to light and became the object of great critical attention, going through several editions in Italy and being translated into all the major European languages. Since then, her reputation has risen steadily, and she is now considered one of the greatest Italian poets of the twentieth century. This new version by prize-winning poet and translator Peter Robinson perfectly renders the delicate undertones and that sense of longing which is such a distinctive feature of Pozzi’s poetry.Trade Review'Purity of sound and precision of imagery were her natural gifts.' Eugenio Montale

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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

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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

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Book SynopsisThis is the story of a baby coming into the world, and of her first year in that world altered beyond recognition by a virus born into our lives at nearly the same time. It is a song of breath, and of light. It is a collection of love poems, and a cry flung into the universe echoing the cry of all babies, a cry of loss and of nearly unbearable love. It is a book not just for pregnant women, or new mums and dads, but for all people who have entered through that small crack into the light of this life, and for all who have parents and have grappled with the joys and challenges of those most intimate of relationships. It is a song of light, and of breath. It is a story of where we come from. “This collection not only exalts, is frightened for, and treasures new motherhood, but allows for its complexities and the terrible potential for loss, and especially I like how it doesn’t amputate mother-love from just the way we love as humans, sensuously and sometimes messily. It never slips into ‘saintly mother’ territory – it seems to recognise the burden that particular role has placed on women – for those who chose to have kids and those who didn’t.” —Lynn Davidson

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Book Synopsis'When I write I take things from everywhere / like a magpie and twist them.' The lyrical verve, wit and tenderness of Love Letter to an Imaginary Girlfriend are signature qualities of Kenny Knight's poetry. He writes about lived experiences noticeably free of the self-important theorising in plentiful supply elsewhere in the House of Poesy. This does not indicate any sort of abandonment of artifice, that necessity in poetry like this is of a different kind. The artistry here is absorbed in the exchanges of human voices and graced with a magpie poetics, 'while the wind blows off the Atlantic/like one of Bob Dylan's songs.' This is also a world of the bright prospect at hand, of vivid childhood memory, rock'n'roll youth and intoxicating discoveries. It reaches out on 'three thousand miles of soggy paper/a poem that begins in Honicknowle/ and ends on Olson's doorstep in Massachusetts.' This requires that the sea-soaked paper holds out long enough to get us there. We might just make it, transported by 'that giraffe/driving a steam roller' pausing 'to let the shadow/of a crow and a swan/fly over the zebra crossing/outside the greengrocer's/at West Park.' Finally, Love Letter to an Imaginary Girlfriend, is a poetry of a particular type of flaneur, aware of time passing and engaged in a dialogue with a multitude of personae, of the self and others. Here is the poet in Plymouth encountering Eric Dolphy, the undercover cop, Geoffrey Hill, Buddy Holly, the supermarket worker, Cy Twombly, Van Gogh, Ornette Coleman, Pink Floyd, Matisse and Don McClean.

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Book SynopsisKjell Espmark (b.1930) was Professor of Comparative Literature at Stockholm University from 1978 to 1995 and has been a member of The Swedish Academy since 1981, serving as Chairman of The Nobel Committee from 1988 to 2004. He has published twenty volumes of poetry, ten novels, and over a dozen volumes of literary criticism. His many awards include The Bellman Prize, The Tranströmer Prize, Il Premio Capri and Il Premio Internazionale Camaiore. He is an officer of L'ordre de Mérite. He has been translated into over twenty languages. Of the Spanish version of his latest book of poetry, Martin Lopez-Vega wrote in El Mundo: "The Creation confirms that we are faced with one of the most important poets of our time." Many of Espmark's poems are dramatic monologues in which the dead, some famous, some anonymous, speak to us, hoping for our attention. Another consistent feature of his poetry, and one which we can see extending over six decades, is the coherence we find within each volume, echoes and cross-references linking poems not only within a single collection but from book to book.

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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.

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Book SynopsisA beautiful collection of poems to nourish, inspire and change the women who read them.This transformative collection of poems by female poets through the ages sing to us across the centuries. These poems span the worlds of desire, love and friendship, of responsibility, hardship and care, of family and friends and lovers. Their words empower us with strength and courage, fill us with verve and spirit, and inspire creativity and imagination.Contemporary voices of Fiona Benson and Jane Yeh join the evocative imagery of Christina Rossetti, Anna Akhmatova and Emily Dickinson. Even the haunting voices of ancient Sappho, Venmaniputti and Li Qingzhao touch today's generation. Here are poems written by women, with women's lives in mind. As Gertrude Stein writes, 'such a sweet singing' is in the poetry that comes to us clear and lovely from out of the dark. Read these poems aloud. Remember them. Share them.Trade Review‘Lavishly and strikingly illustrated, this book of poems holds at least eight times its weight in thirst-slaking nourishment.’ Northwords Now

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Book SynopsisCathal Ó Searcaigh is long regarded as the most innovative, gifted and productive Irish language writer from the past forty years, and in this collection he revisits and revises poems from his first collection which was published in 1975 and has been out of print for over 40 years.

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Book SynopsisThis collection radiates beauty, honesty, and an authentic poetic voice that seems to overturn everything ugly in human experience. Tender portraits of family roots accompany a kaleidoscopic Strabane and touch on the anxiety of growing up in fraught political times.

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Book SynopsisA leader of the twentieth-century Irish nationalist movement, who eventually became one of the Free States's senators, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is also the greatest poet that nation has yet produced. The present selection includes poetry from every period in life, dealing with all the topics closest to his heart: love, death, old age, ambition, the poet's craft, and of course the history and destiny of Ireland.

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Book SynopsisI am in bed with you. The room varies. But I'm always on the left. I am pulling the pieces of myself into myself. In the winter I left myself behind in the 90s. I'm coming back now. You can see the light touching me. I can see layers of tissue finally making a body. And once I have a body I have a head. And in my head are these thoughts. -From 'I am in bed with you' Playful and fluid but completely serious, Emma Barnes's surreal phantasmagoria I Am in Bed with You leads us through the very personal worlds of sex, gender and the body. Barnes cracks jokes, makes us uncomfortable, shows us a little tenderness, leaves a lot unsaid and does it all with language that provokes and confounds. 'I'm a mentally ill, / married, chronically ill, queer woman with two feet underground', the author reveals. 'I birth Sigourney Weaver's android baby', they tell us next. This collection is personal and fantastical, funny and excruciating. It's poetry in the process of unravelling most of what you thought you knew.Trade Review'I Am in Bed with You signals the arrival of an extraordinary talent. Not only does Emma Barnes have the brainpower to interrogate notions of personal identity and interconnection incisively as we enter the 2020s but the sense of humour to see the comedy in our conundra and the emotional range to grasp the heartbreak in our yearnings, conflicts and confusions. Packed with quotable bons mots, quirky observations, agony aunt tips, enigmas and apophthegms, this is a book that rewards frequent re-reading.' -- Iain Sharp; 'From the first line of 'This is a creation myth', this work is stubbornly brave. Barnes stomps with bright boots over the territory of motherhood, womanhood, gender, and - unquestionably and timelessly - Sigourney Weaver. Everything is new and a little bit disgusting.' -- Sophie van Waardenberg

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Book SynopsisWhat, then, for the work of poetry? It’s at the very periphery of popular speech, niche even among the arts, yet it’s also rooted in the most ancient traditions of oral storytelling, no matter where your ancestors originate from. And, as we were reminded by an audience member at the New Zealand Young Writers Festival in 2020, who are we to say poetry cannot change the world? A poem may not be a binding policy or strategic investment, but poems can still raise movements, and be moving in their own right. And there is no movement in our behaviours and politics without a shift in hearts and minds. Whether the poems you read here are cloaked in ironic apathy or bare their hearts in rousing calls to action, they all arise from a deep sense of care for this living world and the people in it. Our poets are eulogists and visionaries, warriors and worriers. Most of all, they’re ordinary people prepared to sit and stare at a blank page, trying to do something with the bloody big troubles looming over our past, present and future. (from the introduction by the editor)

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Book SynopsisA collaboration by a legendary artist and a writer hailed by David St. John as “a poet of lasting beauty and relentless invention” Gronk was raised in East Los Angeles and lives in downtown LA. Gail Wronsky was raised in suburban Detroit and lives in the hippie haven of Topanga Canyon. But as artists they have found common ground—a shared commitment to the offbeat and the beautiful, to the slightly absurd and the slyly surreal, to blurring the distinction between our inner lives of dreams and imagination and our daily realities. Wronsky’s poems and Gronk’s drawings are equally grounded in poetic imagery. Wronsky mixes vernacular diction, or spoken language, with a more formal style in a way that is entirely unique; Gronk’s signature style alludes to both street art and classical art. Both are committed to making memorable work that surprises and delights, that sharpens and feeds our everyday lives as well as our deepest selves.Trade ReviewPRAISE FOR GAIL WRONSKY “Wronsky is unafraid to try to nail down feelings that are part of the eternal, macabre romance between life and death . . . her project is important."—Karen Kevorkian, Los Angeles Review of Books “Nerve, wit, dazzle, shape-shifting, a painful clearness; an urgent, generous, funny, dreadful intensity of imagination.” —Robert Hass

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