Modern and contemporary poetry

Book SynopsisGrammar of Passage details a German family’s quiet lives as they are pulled into the gathering maelstrom of the first half of the Twentieth Century. Monika Cassel’s attention to detail in this début, tempered with a deep empathy brings individual moments to vivid life, deftly demonstrates how poetry can excavate and reinvigorate history.

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Book SynopsisIn Say, Sarala Estruch explores the limits of language in the face of overwhelming loss and attempts to forge a language with which to probe subjects that still remain largely taboo: grief, childhood bereavement, the challenges and possibilities of cross-cultural and interracial relationships, mixed-race identity, colonialism and its aftermath. A pamphlet that exists in the spaces left vacant by the silences in the stories that parents and grandparents tell us; Say casts a slant light on the scars our ancestors carry, both those we inherit and those we choose to leave behind.Trade Review"Sarala Estruch’s extraordinary debut flows from the question posed by Audre Lorde: 'What do you need to say?' From these engrossing, wise, surprising poems, we learn about the poet’s struggle to 'coax words from hiding', but also about need: the need to speak, the need to hold back, the need for closeness - whether across the threshold of the page, or across the gulf of death. Say is the work of a spellbinding storyteller, who pieces together a cloth shot through with silences: old griefs, family secrets, the blindspots around race and colonial history from which our culture still turns away. 'Still, I’m not brave enough to ask', the poet regrets of her younger self. These poems shine with that bravery: I will come back to them again and again." -- Sarah Howe; "Sarala Estruch's Say grieves, is grief, gives grief its echo. Here a father is not lost but binds the daughter in an intricate web of mourning for home, language, belonging as well as love. The poems make uncanny crystalisations in a transformative image, a rhythm, a fragment, swelling with empathy. The poet speaks with two voices, wishes them into one, and what is said fractures language in its frame." -- Sandeep Parmar

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Book SynopsisThe poems in The Past Is a Dangerous Driver is inspired by Neal Mason's fascination with the past, not only in the way it exists as general history but also as it is formed by one's own personal recollection. Through his poems, Neil links the past to the present, in a way that puts events in a new light and exposes discovery of hidden complexities. History is no longer seen as being made up of facts and artefacts but instead it is presented as the manifestation of the human spirit. The poems also conjure up an eclectic view of Britain, its values, history and even future. The title of collection is a hint that the past does affect the present, not always for the best, but its influence needs to be acknowledged.Table of ContentsAfter Dunwich Derelict Classroom The Long Campaign 7th December Holiday Romance Martello Tower Wooden Ruler Mendel, Shopping Affinity Reflected on Water S.S. Saxon Star The Figure Not as a Medal Slowing Down World War II Bomb Lineage Journal of a Tree The Stratagem Breakages Submersion The Grand Nitrator The Museum of Lost Art The Pied Piper SPQR Contiguity

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Book SynopsisA remarkable new book in praise of marine fauna. Of Sea takes the form of a poetic bestiary of creatures living beneath, beside and above the water: in wetlands, salt marshes and the intertidal zone. In a sequence of 46 poems, Burnett captures the world of cockles and clams, rare moths and the humble earwig (to name a few) with a precise and dynamic lyric that seems always on the verge of music. 'Burnett is one of the UK's most original poets of the nonhuman world, and of our environmental moment. Innovative, dazzling, affecting poems that shimmer with intellectual acuity and emotional resonance.' - Rebecca TamasTrade Review'Burnett is one of the UK's most original poets of the nonhuman world, and of our environmental moment. Innovative, dazzling, affecting poems that shimmer with intellectual acuity and emotional resonance.'- Rebecca Tamas; '[Burnett's] stunning new collection explores the sea - its creatures, sounds, language. Many pieces are meant to be sung, or clicked (like a beetle) and it cumulates into an epic maritime lyric.' -Sinéad Gleeson

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Book Synopsis'My poor old heart, I've left its drawbridge down' Divorced, and perhaps a little bruised, Luke Wright journeys off the sunken roads of southern England and into himself, pursued by murderous swans, empty car seats, and his father's skeleton clocks. Both brazen and elegiac, these poems pull on the 'tidy hem' of responsible existence, unravelling the banal frustrations of online outrage and ageing friends, and grasping at something 'beyond our squeaky comprehension'. Wright files through the shackles of cynicism to ask how can we let go without giving up. 'Luke Wright is one of the greats. A poetic pugilist. Beguiling, hypnotic and master of the emotional sucker-punch. The Feel-Good Movie of the Year is his best yet.' - Carl BaratTrade Review'Luke Wright is one of the greats. A poetic pugilist. Beguiling, hypnotic and master of the emotional sucker-punch. The Feel-Good Movie of the Year is his best yet.'- Carl Barat; "In Luke Wright's long awaited third collection of deeply personal, elegiac but optimistic poems, he writes with such wit, wisdom and detailed observation about contemporary life online and on the road; in his head and in his Suffolk home. Wright's images are unforgettable, his wry insights are original and his expertly crafted lines sing, gallop and throb with feeling" - James McDermott; ‘This is a terrific new book: subtle, nuanced and movingly personal ... A hurt man, taking stock in fresh words.’- Ian Duhig

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Book Synopsis*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION* *A Poetry Book Society Special Commendation* Seaweed and sunburn. The death of a fridge. A 'pie-faced' St George upstaged by the horse. The English Summer confronts the illusions and paradoxes of history in poems that reimagine medieval anchorites and 18th-century follies, zombies and the Megabus. This is a landscape populated by overcrowded urban bedsits and burnt-out country piles, where ghosts of the past are sensed beneath dual carriageways and old gods emerge from rotting bindweed. Visceral and analytic at turns, Hopkins' startling collection probes at the undergrowth of English culture; a white-hot debut by a poet of singular vision.Trade Review'When I read a poem by Holly Hopkins, I feel as if I'm eavesdropping on the secrets of life itself - The English Summer shimmers with exquisite revelations. Whatever she writes about, whether it's global warming, a country church, or the death of a fridge, however down-to-earth the subject, there's a pin-sharp clarity, matched with a sleight of hand in the machinery of each poem, that gives us an original look at the world.' Pascale Petit; 'Unlike the holiday downpours wryly presaged by its title, nothing disappoints in this nimble, humane, and brilliantly inventive debut. The English Summer has the instincts of an archaeologist, the eye of a sell-out comic, and the soul of an itinerant philosopher. Whether leading us down history's forgotten byways, or skewering the quirks of contemporary life, Hopkins is an enchanting guide: a poet of rare talents, who will make you chuckle, stop in your tracks, then question everything you know.' Sarah Howe; 'From Lady Godiva to the Green Man, Holly Hopkins takes on the stories England tells about itself. I love Hopkins' tragicomic vision: vicious snobbery coexists with great tenderness, in an England tense with 'thunderclouds of gorse'. A lacerating and truly lovely debut.' Clare Pollard; 'Much alive poetry is written from the margins. Holly Hopkins does write feminist poems: about, for instance, domestic labour done by women. But as a whole, this scrupulously precision-built collection (the lines shine, but in a way that pulls you up short and makes you think) doesn't speak from the margin but the missing centre -- of Englishness itself. These poems are particular and humane. They show it is possible to be contemporaneous without being presentist; to be simultaneously, singingly, topical and historical; and they reconnect to a real, abiding world emotional highs and lows that have become politically untethered.' Vidyan Ravinthiran; 'A poem by Holly Hopkins always reminds me of some sort implement, which looks to be quite practical, but - well now, just look at that, you've cut yourself. Tsk. Whatever this implement is, she uses it to worry the joins between all manner of polite hypocrisies: between what we say and what we mean; between the spaces we inhabit and the way they're sold to us; between an ornamental wall and a property boundary. Yet somehow - I'm not sure how she's pulled this off - this is a collection about hope.' Abigail Parry

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Book SynopsisIain Morrison's debut collection I'm a Pretty Circler is experimental without being intimidating; conversational without being casual; and outrageous without shedding tenderness. Within its pages, Emily Dickinson rubs shoulders with drag queens, while nineteenth-century German composers are as likely to be referenced as dating apps. Morrison balances punchy, patterned short poems with longer more conversational or collaged works that explore ways in which sex, class, technology and religion intertwine in contemporary Britain.Trade Review"A vast and vigorous vivisected joie de vivre. Although the poetry always flows forth according to its own autonomous and inimitable sprung algorithms, it is also incisively open to the world's detritus, including voices that are carefully unassimilated into the poet's voice. But no matter who or what it makes present, it is all made out of music: mostly, it erects a lattice of stents within the pre-existing musicality of speech. This is life, writing (noun, verb), ever infectiously brave in its self-probing and self-enabling: shucking off your hackles as it sucks off its shackles. Mobile, shrewd, obstinate, grand, and sexy, singing not only with its mouths but with its wounds." - Jow Walton

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Book SynopsisIn Joie de vivre, Bailey continues to celebrate the living and the dead with 'measured sorrow and delight'. The poems both mourn and laugh, giving age and illness more than a good runfor their money.

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Book SynopsisIan House’s writing begins in memory and experience, the variousness of living, and the tangles of thinking and feeling. As the poems acquire shape, detail and voice, they become celebrations of beauty and energy, examinations of cruelty and mortality. Ranging from Stevens’s blue guitar to a child drawing, from a medieval monk cataloguing saints’ bones to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the new work in Just a Moment: New and Selected Poems probes the transformations wrought by aging and poetic creation, exploring the nature of art through a central sequence on the paintings of Paul Nash. ‘Ian House’s new book is full of wry, thoughtful, fine lyric poetry. It concerns itself with absence and elusiveness, age and mortality but is never elusive or lacking in vigour. His poetic voice is fluent with anger, passion, hope and resounding clarity’—Sasha Dugdale From reviews of Nothing’s Lost (2014): ‘These poems invigorate the imagination, inviting the reader to join in their verbal aerobics. Like the peregrine, House can “strip life / to the bone like poetry”’—The North ‘House’s eye is clearly focused and his ear finely attuned. Like MacNeice he revels in “the drunkenness of things being various”’—London MagazineTrade Review'Ian House's New and Selected is full of wry, thoughtful, fine lyric poetry. It concerns itself with absence and elusiveness, age and mortality but is itself never elusive or lacking in vigour. It is full of anger, passion and hope. His poetic voice is fluent and full of resounding clarity.' ~ Sasha Dugdale

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Book SynopsisTwo Girls and a Beehive offers a minutely observed exploration in poetry of the life and work of Stanley Spencer and his two wives, Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece, engaging readers with the particular unease that must trouble any follower of Spencer's paintings, with their human dramas and contradictory beatitudes. 'Nothing less than a masterpiece of ekphrasis, this is a work of extraordinary unity, daring and emotional breadth... These poems reconfigure Spencer's tawny pigments, scenes of warfare and bohemian domesticity, couplings in low-ceilinged rooms, flowered prints, the strange militancy of his Christian faith and, above all, the annihilation of a woman artist on the altars of desire, betrayal and art. I was smitten from the first page to the last.' ~ ANNIE FREUD 'A marvellous act of dual authorship by two poets at the top of their game. Something magical happens in these pages. Works of visual power exchange speech with poems written in response to them. Biographical poems thoroughly inhabit and re-imagine the minds of Stanley and Hilda Spencer. The book is an act of what Dante called visible speaking (esto visible parlare): visual practice takes on a refreshed verbal life; the landscapes of paintings rise clear in the mind's eye; and their subjects speak newly to the mind's ear.' ~ DAVID MORLEY 'An original and impressive collection, varied yet unified.' ~ ANTHONY THWAITE

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Book SynopsisTurning Manet on his head, entering the thoughts of a post prandial lion, viewing and buying a ‘snorting’ Hot Rod, imagining life on a modern-day Titanic, wondering what happens to the story after a book is finished or what a sonnet written by a modern day Shakespeare might look like, 'The Weather on the Moon' ranges across art, music, philosophy, literature and poetry, politics, history, science and the natural world to encounter what it’s like to be alive. Bubbling away throughout this intense, sometimes humorous, sometimes quirky, always compassionate poetry is a joy in language, its possibilities, and music. As Graham Hardie writes, his work ‘fuses many elements into one short space: pathos; wit; dexterous use of simile and metaphor; a heightened imagination; an ability to make poetry from the commonplace.’Trade Review‘The humanity of the poems lies in the “momentary turmoil” that for Robin Thomas characterizes life, and which his cast of real and imaginary characters share. History becomes a matter of moments – of awareness, suffering, injustice but also absurdity and beauty’ – Janice Dempsey; ‘The “homely” formal qualities of these well-made poems belie a mystery, a strangeness, a reckoning. The speaker at the end of “Danger Zone” advises us not to spend too long in a place of sanctuary: it’s amongst "the danger and delight of the world you need to be”’ – Julian Stannard;

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Book SynopsisPoems about the universe: from the sub-atomic level to the cosmic, from bacteria to complex life and exoplanets.The physicist Richard Feynman challenged poets to step aside from metaphor and capture the stark magnificence of the universe. Spurred to action, James Thornton opened himself to wonders and dived deep into the intricacies of science.Let his poetry open your eyes.Complete with an essay on Poetry and Science.Trade Review"In this unusual and exceptionally interesting work, James Thornton speaks as both a poet who has colonized science and a scientist who speaks a poetic tongue." - Edward O. Wilson"A brilliant introduction to the endless wonders of our universe, from quantum levels to the cosmos. It opened my eyes to many marvels and oddities." – Eberhard Fetz, Professor of Physiology, Biophysics, University of Washington"Poets sometimes flinch at the idea of footnotes. Poems, they think, should be perfect small worlds of their own. The Feynman Challenge upends this aesthetic. Like the Pompidou Centre, it wears all its workings on the outside. Plunging into the sea of scientific knowledge, it comes up grinning and glittering with droplets of lovely information. This is a generous book, happy to serve the curiosity, the wonder and humility of science, happening here and there in words that simply send a shudder -Two black holes are about to marry, a billion years ago - through our sense of time and space." – Philip Gross, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize Table of ContentsContentsIntroductionCensus of deep lifeEmbodied semanticsOf mice and scorpionsRumination and forest bathing A dozen ways to make a living The future of clouds The jaguar sometimes bites Symbiont real estatePáramosThe apex predator guildYour inner fishTomb blossomsLong ago and under water Traumatic matingsQuartet with parasitesThe dead fish of ChadThe lodgerLike milkshakesHungry daughtersThe rolling of the dungballHead of glassFringed with teethE.O. Wilson’s favourite antEminent BritonsAerial warsPenis EnvyThe news about NeanderthalsConquering EarthA century of gorgingA bulletin from our branchWarm wet and quantumNew equilibriaThe rules of lossSpat 1ChiropteransCount those lostCoelacanths among usQ is for cryptographyRingdownThe end of time Too few to fill the skyNever forget red dwarfs The biggest star Cosmonautika A time will come By grace of the solar wind A map of peculiar velocities

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Book SynopsisTaking in the years of the pandemic, McMillan’s poetry takes us on a trip through his life and imagination, his hopes, observations and dreams. It’s never less than an interesting journey. He is an accessible, humorous and tender writer. He is one of Scotland’s best.

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Book SynopsisHugh McMillan’s first collection in Scots, Whit if? poses the questions that you never thought to ask about Scottish history like ‘Whit if Alexander haed Twitter?’, ‘Whit if John Knox haed fawen in luve wi Mary Queen o Scots?’ and ‘Whit if Jacques Brel haed jynt the Corries?’ As both poet and long-time student of Scotland’s strange and undervalued history, McMillan is the ideal guide to all the micht-hiv-bins of Scottish history, as well as all that wis. Humour is guaranteed, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be digging up many an educational gem along the way!Trade ReviewThere is more than an air of fun in the concept but to file this book under ‘whimsy’ or ‘nonsense’ would be to completely miss the careful craft and considered structure that is so emblematic of Hugh’s poetry and which makes Whit If worth of your attention and yer bawbees. NORTHWORDS NOWTo hear Hugh McMillan read his poems is to be in the presence of a comedian of genius, as he delivers line after line of punching humour in a slightly surprised, smiling voice, so that we laugh and laugh but are left well aware that life isn’t funny. TESSA RANSFORD, Author of Not Just MoonshineHugh McMillan’s poetry... works like resonant and intricately packed short stories. LESLEY GLAISTER, Author of Blasted Things

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Book SynopsisIn rural Wales, wandering the dunes west of Pwllheli, John Fuller has composed a letter on the subject of travel: warning against it, wondering about people’s presences and absences, and serenely admiring ‘the Wales of sheep and song’. His correspondent, young Andrew Wynn Owen, replies with friendly enthusiasm, matching John’s poetic form while flouting his advice and hopping from gallery to garret via Luxembourg and Venice. Between them, they consider: is it better to risk seeming ‘stay-at-home, A stick in mud’ or ‘to pass life scared Of stillnesses’ AWOL is an infinitely charming collaboration between the eminent poet John Fuller, with a career spanning over 50 years, and bright young poet Andrew Wynn Owen, whose first pamphlet was published in 2014. Beautifully produced in a large square format, this book is illustrated throughout in full-colour with watercolours and line drawings by Emma Wright. The epistolary poems are composed in terza rima in tetrameter lines, reflecting both poets’ love of metre and formal challenges.

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Book SynopsisIt is generally accepted that Paul Celan is a notoriously ‘difficult’ poet to understand, yet this small collection, with an introduction by a leading expert on Holocaust poetry, and with each of the ten poems accompanied by a brief note which acts as a contextual orientation for the reader, is an excellent starting-point for anyone who is not familiar with his poems.

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Book SynopsisAn unsentimental, forensic account of the breakup of a marriage, told without rancour and with a humanitarian resolution. An exceptional first book.

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Book Synopsis"The world of Little's poems is a dark one, for sure, where "the harm / the damage" we humans inflict - on the environment, on one another - is rendered unflinchingly. Her poems about family, for instance, make it clear that 'social distancing' is not just a phenomenon of the past two years. Love is present too, often inextricably bound up with the pain it can cause ("I keep loving you like an old bruise / still tender") but expressed in such rich and startling language, it is its own reward." Esther Morgan "Opening a book by Pippa Little I know I will find the kind of directness one can trust. There will be images that make the world of a page real... That is what Pippa Little does so well. And she does it with wide range, with different modes, various poetics... we find that the landscape therein is our solitude: however inventive it is also bare, like a person who cannot sleep and stares and stares all night at a blank wall. Which is to say, we recognize ourselves in these pages, our days, our questions. And the pages fortify. Why? Because they are honest." Ilya Kaminsky

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Book SynopsisKevin Crossley-Holland’s name will be familiar to readers of all ages for his historical novels, his re-telling of the Norse myths and his many volumes of poetry. Previously published by the late Enitharmon Press, he is a very welcome newcomer to Arc with his twelfth collection – his first for six years – inspired by the “heavenly squelch” of his own north Norfolk where “the word on the tip of your tongue may be sacramental”. As Ronald Blythe puts it: “His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself, and has the polish of split flint.”

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Book SynopsisThis bilingual (German / English) chapbook of 20 poems makes for an exciting introduction to Kathrin Schmidt's work. Thanks to Sue Vickerman's daring translations, we are able to appreciate Schmidt's irrepressible poetic style as she ranges across the themes of gender, identity, the body, eroticism, her own personal history and language itself.

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Book SynopsisHouse Arrest, comprising poems selected from Alizadeh’s two collections, Diary of a House Arrest,1956-1967 (2003) and Blue Bicycle (2015), takes as its central theme the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, during an American and British-led coup in 1953. After being removed from power, Mosaddegh was forced to live in exile in Ahmadabad castle near Tehran, and in these poems, Alizadeh imagines himself in Mosaddegh’s place, in exile, and allows his imagination to take him wherever it pleases. In the dream-like atmosphere of his poems, times and places melt into each other like magma, blending Greco-Roman mythology, ancient Iranian folklore, the Christian New Testament, the Old Testament, European fairy tales and Persian Sufism. Yet his work is thoroughly modern; mythical figures live alongside contemporary humans, and classical forms are transformed into modernist experiments.Hasan Alizadeh was born in 1947 and embarked on a literary career, initially as a short story writer, but since the 1990s, he has focused mostly on poetry. His talent is widely recognized in Iran, as shown by his having won the Modern Iranian poetry Prize in 2002, but very little is known about him personally as he declines to give interviews or talk about himself.

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Book SynopsisIn its geographical sweep - from Israel / Palestine westward across Europe, then circling back to Greece - No Cherry Time reflects a personal tale of alienation, departure and quest. Fine-tuned to the natural world, sustained by its fragile continuities, the poems play out a restive music. As the focus comes to settle on Greece, it is above all the Mediterranean ("sea between the lands") that buoys the imaginative spirit, blurring East and West. It brings back a "world still wide, blissfully unknown".

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Book SynopsisIn 2020, Amanda Dalton participated – for the second year running – in National Poetry Writing Month, a project that challenges the public to write a poem every day throughout the month of April. Each midnight, new instructions are posted informing participants what they should write about in the next 24 hours – anything from an ode to life’s small pleasures to a concrete poem, to a poem from the viewpoint of a figure in Bosch’s ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’. This chapbook contains the unedited versions of the thirty poems that Amanda wrote. By turns witty (often very funny), clever, moving and erudite, this short collection represents an astonishing achievement by an outstanding writer.

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Book Synopsis"Forrest Gander knows that the poet''s first duty is ''to see what''s there and not already patterned by familiarity'' - and in Your Nearness he brings to that task a combination of vision, generosity of spirit and humility in the face of wonder that singles him out as one of the fi nest, and most vigilant, poets working in English today." - JOHN BURNSIDE "There''s a deep personal feeling found in Forrest Gander''s desperately beautiful ''Librettos for Eros'' [in which] feeling masters the poems, and it is feeling about self, desperate, squandered, willful, all but out of control - and ultimately uncivilized...." - THOM GUNN

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Book SynopsisMPT’s spring issue, ’The Fingers of Our Soul‘, includes a focus on bodies guest edited by Khairani Barokka and Jamie Hale, featuring signed languages such as ASL, BSL, LSF and BISINDO, Anthony Price’s translation using the medium of eye-gaze, and Salma Harland on the blind poet al-Maʿarrī. Poetic forms include dagli from Filipino poet Stefani J Alvarez and the picture-poems from Hoshino Tomihiro. Also: long poems from Geet Chaturvedi and Shooka Hosseini, Andrew Nielsen’s version of Du Fu in tribute to Roddy Lumsden, and Dzifa Benson reviews Maria Stepanova’s War of the Beasts and Animals. All this and more in the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.

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Book SynopsisMPT’s summer issue, ’The Previous Song: Focus on Somali Poetry’ includes new poems by Asmaa Jama and Hibaq Osman, translations of Amran Maxamed Axmed and Xasan Daahir Ismaaciil ‘Weedhsame’, an introduction to the lyrics of Qaraami - the popular music of Somali culture - and Ayan Salaad’s translations of Ali Osman Drog’s womens’ songs. Also: new translations of Tove Ditlevsen, Meret Oppenheim and Mona Kareem, poems in response to the invasion of Ukraine, and Olivia McCannon translates Louky Bersianik’s Cold War sequence ‘Ruins of the Future’. All this and more in the ground-breaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for the best in world poetry read MPT.

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Book Synopsis‘Measureless Melodies’, MPT’s April issue, highlights Vietnamese poetry in translation, in a jam-packed issue including translations spanning centuries of verse, with work by Hồ Xuân Hương, Nguyệt Phạm, Hàn Mặc Tử, Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Chế Lan Viên, and both a poem and essay by Nhã Thuyên, the latter speaking poetically to the resistances and resiliencies of the Vietnamese language. Plus: an interview with Najwan Darwish and Kareem James Abu-Zeid on ‘attunement’ in their collaboration, and winners of the Stephen Spender Trust Prize and the MPT/YPN Young Poets’ Challenge—Jonathan Bastable’s translation of Joseph Brodsky, and Kexin Huang’s poetic self-translation of her name, respectively. We also have a self-translation by Dzifa Benson, coincidentally centred on naming conventions, and translations of César Dávila Andrade by Jonathan Simkins, Barbara Gruszka-Zych by Halina Maria Boniszewska, Fabio Franzin by André Naffis-Sahely. This and much more in our new issue of the groundbreaking magazine dedicated to poetry in translation: for a poetry magazine belonging to the world, read MPT.

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Book SynopsisAlan Riach’s The MacDiarmid Memorandum is a work of epic, category-defying scope; blending biography and national history, poetry and prose; an intimate portrait of an old friend and mentor, and a political manifesto calling for revolution. Riach’s poems begin with MacDiarmid’s childhood in Langholm and his first attempts to navigate the Scottish landscape. We travel from the Borders to Shetland, from Edinburgh to rural Lanarkshire. The poems map a nation where nature is inseparable from political history. They explore a peculiarly Scottish kind of consciousness, willing itself to be free yet bowed under the weight of self-suppression. There is confrontation on various fronts. MacDiarmid experienced trauma, divorce, breakdown, wildness and later, domestic affection. At the same time, Scotland endured two world wars, each triggering a continuing renaissance of Scottish artists and intellectuals, struggling to regenerate international recognition and self-determination. Alongside Riach’s poems, the book includes reproductions of paintings by the artists Alexander Moffat and Ruth Nicol, focusing on some of the landscapes, friends and associates MacDiarmid knew most closely through his long life, plus a frontispiece portrait by William Johnstone and a song-setting by Ronald Stevenson.

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize‘Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition.’ New YorkerAn extraordinary debut from a young Vietnamese American, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other. Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects – love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire – and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention: ‘…the chief of police/facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola./A palm-sized photo of his father soaking/beside his left ear.’ This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years.‘These are poems of exquisite beauty, unashamed of romance, and undaunted by looking directly into the horrors of war, the silences of history. One of the most important debut collections for a generation.’ Andrew McMillan Winner of the 2017 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection A Guardian / Daily Telegraph Book of the YearPBS Summer RecommendationTrade ReviewNight Sky With Exit Wounds…startled me with its urgency and its relevance. A eerily sure-footed debut. -- Rupert Thomson * Observer, Books of the Year *Vuong writes with a piercing, dreamlike clarity. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year *Reading Vuong is like watching a fish move: he manages the varied currents of English with muscled intuition … His lines are both long and short, his pose narrative and lyric, his diction formal and insouciant. From the outside, Vuong has fashioned a poetry of inclusion. * New Yorker *Ocean Vuong is one of my auto-buy authors. I keep recommending his Night Sky With Exit Wounds to everyone; I can’t shout loud enough about it… I have quite a complicated relationship with what’s considered "classical poetry" but then someone like Ocean Vuong comes along, and he’s doing something so exciting that you can’t help but get caught up in it. -- Sara Collins * Refinery29 *The poetry is a conduit for a life in which violence and delicacy collide… I like the fragility, resilience and the sense that the stories that need telling are hardest to tell – a difficulty Ocean Vuong is courageously minded to overcome. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *There is a powerful emotional undertow to these poems that springs from Mr Vuong’s sincerity and candour, and from his ability to capture specific moments in rime with photographic clarity and a sense of the evanescence of all earthly things. -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times *Ocean Vuong is the Walt Whitman of Vietnamese American literature. Lyrical, expansive, sexual, provocative, he sings of the Vietnamese body and of Vietnamese history. -- Viet Thanh Nguyen * Literary Hub *The operatic voice of the book is vulnerable and unpredictable. Some of its strongest poems are also the strangest… It is an impressive, uneven, moving book about painful and important subjects – and is the work of a young poet who might, excitingly, say anything next. -- Jeremy Noel-Tod * The Sunday Times *Many of the poems in this, Vuong’s debut collection, achieve lift-off amid comparable scenes of drama and desperation… This is a book full of promise. -- David Wheatley * Literary Review *Vuong writes in what may be one of the most unfashionable modes of recent decades, in the richly meditative style of Rainer Maria Rilke. And, almost unbelievably, he does so successfully… Vuong’s roomy, cool, risky poems are more than promising, and this is an exciting and compelling book. -- John McAuliffe * Irish Times *Taking war and cultural upheaval in its stride, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is an assured but open debut collection. It’s accessible to non-poetry readers while offering sufficient depth to keep the experts engaged. -- Aimee Grant Cumberbatch * Evening Standard *If you only read one new book of poetry this year, make it Ocean Vuong’s game-changing debut collection. Night Sky With Exit Wounds is breathtakingly beautiful, gut-wrenching and sublime… Phenomenal. * Attitude *One of the most extraordinary first collections of poems in recent memory… The poems sear through the heart, Vuong finding the words and feelings to capture moments with complete clarity. -- Alex Scott * Cent *His style is not unlike a wall of sounds, a relatively consistent, arrestedly pubescent palette of desire and obsession, turned up high enough to hit the pulse. -- Declan Ryan * Times Literary Supplement *From its opening lines...the book brims with precise, surreal, erotic imagery… Vuong authoritatively lays claim to a range of symbols and tropes... Vuong possesses a large and unusual imagination… Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a remarkable debut. Where Vuong is headed is anyone’s guess, but you’ll want to go with him. -- Paul Batchelor * New Statesman *Vuong’s intimate lyrical voice, his precise, stark imagery and engagement with gay sexuality construct a familiar story of loss… Balancing memory and silence with erudition, Vuong’s poetry resists being so easily pinned down… Vuong’s poems, written with intelligence and tenderness, offer new spaces for becoming. -- Sandeep Parmar * Guardian *His debut collection, praised for its “precise, stark” imagery, can be read both as a personal story – of gay sexuality, absent fathers and hyphenated identities – and as a highly erudite exploration of poetry’s possibilities. -- Martin Doyle * Irish Times *His debut collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, is the work of a man with history on his back, even if he has had to imagine some of it into being again. He brings a mythmaker’s insistence on being seen and heard to subjects ranging from the death of Telemachus’s father, from Homeric myth, to the fall of Saigon and common-or-garden masturbation. -- Claire Armistead * Guardian *Vuong’s words writhe and spin – his use of English is astonishing. He’s a smelter at his poetry, making words transform into something other than letters and meaning…. His gay love poems are stark, beautiful and utterly unnerving in their uncompromising adoration… A magical journey into Vuong’s imagination and talents and an astonishing debut collection. * Gscene *Night Sky With Exit Wounds…contains poems of finely pitched, operatic feeling that unpick the violence and fragility of masculinity with wisdom and humour. -- Jeremy Noel-Tod * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisThis sequence of poems (taken from Florczyk's full-length collection From the Annals of Krakow, published in the USA in 2106) is based on the testimonies of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust. Florczyk, who was born and raised in Krakow, wanted to retell their story of persecution and perseverance and luck so that, with the passing of time, it wouldn't be forgotten; he wanted to keep their memory alive. These sensitive, closely observed and deeply moving poems do just that.

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Book SynopsisThe late 1980s witnessed two devastating chemical attacks by the Saddam régime on Iraqi Kurdistan. The first of these, in 1988, known as the Anfal campaign, saw the destruction of 3000 Kurdish villages, over 40 chemical attacks launched, and 100,000 civilians buried in mass graces, with hundreds more dying of exposure to chemical weapons. The second attack was on the town of Halabja where over 5000 people died instantly. Thousands of people who had survived the attacks in both Anfal and Halabja but had been mildly affected by the gas later died from cancer and other diseases. Butterfly Valley is Sherko Bekes’ response to these atrocities. Stunned by the world’s silence in the face of this genocide, Bekes – in exile in Sweden at the time – longs to go home and mourn the victims. He laments the repetitive cycles of continuous oppression and suppressed revolutions in Kurdish history, and in his despair speaks to other exiled Kurdish poets (Nali, Hani and Mawlawi among them) from the sixteenth century to the present day. This long poem unfolds in beautifully-drawn images of the poet’s homeland – mountains and forests, rivers and villages, meadows and flowers – which are juxtaposed with scenes of death, destruction and suffering. This is an immensely powerful poem, at once lyrical and heart-rending, and Choman Hardi’s fine translation at last gives the English-speaking reader the most extensive example yet of his outstanding writing.

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Book Synopsis“Boy Thing is a thing of wonder. These are poems that negotiate anew the tender, hurt territory of a boy abruptly unfathered with every fresh reading; and that travel into the wonderment of becoming a father of boys. We are given a boy’s-eye-view of 1970s Cornwall with a music and detail so meticulous that we yearn with Clarke for its lost territories. But these are not just poems of archive or archaeology; they are revelatory, dynamic and raw. Clarke is crucially attuned to the secret messages received in boyhood – its preoccupations and awakenings, epiphanies and abuses, and its shames. This book is unmissable: human and humane, grimy and sublime.” - Fiona Benson “Boy Thing is a beautiful book – sensual, atmospheric, full of nature and ritual. These poems while formally precise, possess a rawness that is startling and utterly compelling.” - Ella Frears

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Book SynopsisThese poems were written to accompany the Los Caprichos images, originally published by Francisco Goya on February 6th, 1799. The images are part of the original `Prado' manuscript, republished by Dover Publications in 1969. Excerpts from this sequence first appeared in Ambit, Buenos Aires Poetry, Blackbox Manifold, Granta, The Common, Long Poem Magazine, Morning Star, Poetry Review and on University of Liverpool's `Citizens of Everywhere' blog. The author is grateful to the editors of these publications. A brief selection also appeared in Everything Broken Up Dances (Tupelo Press, 2015).

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Book SynopsisThese poems were written to accompany the Los Caprichos images, originally published by Francisco Goya on February 6th, 1799. The images are part of the original `Prado' manuscript, republished by Dover Publications in 1969. Excerpts from this sequence first appeared in Ambit, Buenos Aires Poetry, Blackbox Manifold, Granta, The Common, Long Poem Magazine, Morning Star, Poetry Review and on University of Liverpool's `Citizens of Everywhere' blog. The author is grateful to the editors of these publications. A brief selection also appeared in Everything Broken Up Dances (Tupelo Press, 2015).

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Book Synopsis"Invisible is a teasing title for a collection of poetry. [Wallace] Stevens, with whose work Jacek Gutorow has a deep and sustained engagement, suggested in ‘The Creations of Sound’, that poems should ‘make the visible a little hard / To see’ […] Both Gutorow and Stevens develop a poetic medium that maintains an oscillating dialectic between the seen and the unseen. The invisible operates not as an occlusion of reality, but as an aura saturating what is described; images are gently prised from the contexts of time and place and invested with a mysterious in-between life..."- Mark Ford, from the Introduction to Invisible.

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Book SynopsisFor younger years and ageless imaginations, this collection pulls together the most fitting pieces from Ash’s two Burning Eye releases, plus others. In 2018, Ash saw eighty-eight different schools, the majority of the pupils being too young for either Slinky Espadrilles or Strange Keys. This collection is for them.

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Book SynopsisMolly Naylor is a poet, scriptwriter, performer and director. She is the co-writer of Sky One comedy After Hours. Theatre work includes Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think of You (writer/performer), My Robot Heart (writer/performer) and LIGHTS! PLANETS! PEOPLE! (writer/director). She has written for a range of organisations including BBC Radio 4, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the British Film Institute. Her first poetry collection Badminton was also published by Burning Eye Books. She is the co-director of True Stories Live. Stop Trying to be Fantastic is her second poetry collection.Trade Review'Molly makes me laugh and her poetry makes my heart grow plumper and more confident. I love her words and her honesty.' Sara Pascoe

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Book SynopsisAfshan D'souza-Lodhi's debut poetry collection 're: desire' explores the yearning to love, be loved and belong from a desi (South Asian) perspective. Her work sits on the intersections of flash fiction, poetry and script, echoing the hybridity of the worlds that many young British desis find themselves occupying. Drawing on the poetry of many different languages and cultures - Urdu, English, Konkani, Islamic and Christian - this collection explores how we access our traditions from a distance. 're: desire' is a collection of poetry that draws upon literary traditions and cultural references to flip the male gaze common in mushairas on its head. Common themes for mushairas are love, God and being drunk or intoxicated by love and God - but is usually seen from a male perspective. The pieces in re: desire are mainly told from a female perspective, and question the gender given to particular acts, objects and ideas.Trade Review'A beautiful and poignant collection that speaks to the internal lives of British people of colour.' - Nikesh Shukla (author of The Good Immigrant and The One Who Wrote Destiny)

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Not Dancing with Ingrid Pit is an honest and personal collection capturing missed opportunities, those unstructured moments and nostalgic, half recalled memories which skulk at the periphery of an increasingly confusing current world state. Andrew Graves circumnavigates his modern worries and presents his own uniquely crafted narratives which utelise estranged family members, eccentric strangers and forgotten Hollywood cast offs in his fascinating line up of unconventional protagonists. This is a dark, funny and bewitching paean to the cult, disregarded and devalued, a chaotic and comforting monochrome tome inscribed with both hope, fear and a thinly veiled longing for something better.

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Book SynopsisManatomy is a collection of wry, witty and cheeky poems exploring how nature, nurture, pop culture, prejudice and politics shape the identity of camp gay man James McDermott. Structured in three parts - 'Boy', 'Youth' and 'Man' - Manatomy interrogates how the experiences of growing up gay in a homophobic world and in rural millennial England affect a gay man's relationships with himself, his partners, the LGBTQ+ community and the wider worldTrade Review"McDermott's debut collection delivers us his heart, his terrors and his triumphs. Posh Spice, Hooch, shower room headlocks, and a Daewoo Matiz all feature as he paints his passions on a quotidian backdrop. An honest and direct account of growing up gay on the very edges of England" Luke Wright; 'A work of great intimacy. Utterly contemporary and impressively confessional. A book that was missing from the lives of many youths of my generation. May it reach many.' - David McAlmont; 'This funny, frank and filthy debut begs to be shared with friends, lovers and homophobic relatives.' - Molly Naylor

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Book SynopsisThe second volume of poetry by Gruffudd Owen, Chaired Bard of Cardiff National Eisteddfod 2018.

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Book SynopsisA volume of poetry by a new poet, Tegwen Bruce-Deans. The poems discuss nature, people, relationships and much more. Tegwen is part of the current, daring poetry scene and reveals a mature voice in her first volume.Trade ReviewRhan o’r gyfres Tonfedd Heddiw gan Barddas yw cyfrol gyntaf Tegwen Bruce-Deans ac mae’n berl o gyfrol – bychan, cyflawn a pherffaith o ran ei maint. Enillodd Tegwen gadair Eisteddfod Genedlaethol yr Urdd 2023 yn Llanymddyfri gyda’r dilyniant ardderchog o gerddi ‘Rhwng Dau Le’, sy’n ymddangos yn y gyfrol hon. Ganwyd Tegwen yn Llundain a’i magu yn Sir Faesyfed ar aelwyd ddi-Gymraeg. Cafodd ei harwain at y Gymraeg yn yr ysgol a rhannu’r daith tuag at yr iaith gyda’i thad. Roedd medru mynegi ei hun yn llwyr drwy gyfrwng y Gymraeg yn ddyhead dwfn ynddi. Dywed yn ei rhagair: ‘Roeddwn i eisiau hangofyrs yn Gymraeg ... Roeddwn i eisiau blasu bywyd yn Gymraeg, cydio ynddo â’m dwy law a’i sawru hyd at y briwsionyn olaf un.’ Gallaf ddweud, heb yr un amheuaeth, fod Tegwen wedi llwyddo i ddala rhin y Gymraeg yn ei barddoniaeth hi. Yn ei cherdd ‘Ymbarél’ i’w thad mae’n defnyddio delwedd yr ymbarél i gyfleu’r Gymraeg fel man i gysgodi rhag yr elfennau: ‘A dyna lle’r oedden ni, / yn rhannu ymbarél mewn storm, / dafnau’n disgyn fel nodau piano / a’n geiriau ni mewn cyngerdd, / yn uno dan gawod o law ... Ac mae’n fy nharo i’n sydyn: nad oes ’na fyth ddigon o le / i ddau dan ymbarél ...’ Mae Tegwen bellach yn byw ym Mangor ar ôl graddio o’r brifysgol yno ac mae ôl ei thaith drwy Gymru a’r Gymraeg yn ei cherddi, sy’n beth pert ofnadwy. Cyfrol sy’n rhannu ei cherddi gyda ni yw hon; does dim gweiddi na phregethu yma, maent yn ymestyn allan o’r dudalen yn ofalus ond bwriadol ac yn cyrraedd at y galon. Ie, bardd ifanc yw Tegwen, ond eto mae’n aeddfed a llawn ei mynegiant, mae ganddi arddull hyfryd o uniongyrchol wrth gyfleu teimladau a phrofiadau, ac mae ei gwaith hi’n hynod ddynol, yn annwyl ac yn dyner hefyd. Efallai mai bardd yn ei hugeiniau yw hi ar hyn o bryd ond y mae’n medru crisialu sut beth yw hi i fod yn fyw heddiw i’r dim, ac wrth gwrs mae byw heddiw’n brofiad oesol, yndyw e? Eto i gyd, mae’n dangos ei bod hi’n deall pethau nad ydynt o’r byd hwn chwaith. Gall gydio yn y pethau hynny na ellid eu gweld, deall pethau nad oes esboniad arnynt. Mae ganddi lygad bardd. Ymhlith y pynciau a drafodir y mae magwraeth a dylanwadau, glasoed a chyfnod coleg, cyfeillgarwch, cariad a theulu, rhyfel a pherthyn – a’r cyfan yn cael ei glymu ynghyd â darluniau du a gwyn hardd o waith yr artist talentog Freya Richards, sy’n ffrind ysgol i Tegwen yn Sir Faesyfed. Y mae Tegwen hefyd yn artist, oherwydd hi ddarluniodd y clawr seithliw trawiadol, a’r dyfyniad ar gefn y clawr yn ategu’r cysyniad gweledol: ‘Achos beth yw gwawrio / heb yr holl liwiau, wedi’r cyfan?’ Yn union. Cyfrol delynegol yw Gwawrio, ac mae’r geiriau’n canu oddi ar y dudalen. Mae’r bardd yn gweld pethau a chlywed pethau, yn teimlo’i ffordd drwy ei hemosiynau ac yn ein cymryd ni gyda hi bob cam o’r ffordd. Yn y gerdd ‘Garn’ dywed: ‘Tyrd ar y ffordd hir adra gyda fi / hyd lonydd fy mebyd a’m henaint, / cerddwn yn nhraed ein sanau, / ein gwadnau’n brifo, gan ysu am yr hyn a fu, / a rhyw ddydd, mi neidia i i’r ffrwd newydd / i waltsio o’r diwedd â chymhlethdod yfory.’ Mae Tegwen yn ymwybodol o amser, o ddechrau ac o ddiwedd hefyd. Yn ei cherdd ‘Gadael’ dywed: ‘Does ’na’m byd ’swn i’n licio’n fwy / na phlygu cornel ar dudalen bywyd, / crychu’r meingefn nes bod y llyfr / wastad ar agor yn y fan yma ...’ sy’n bendant yn atseinio’r ffordd y mae’r rhan fwyaf ohonom ni’n meddwl am bethau. Dyma gyfrol i fynd gyda chi ar eich taith i ble bynnag – dydy hi ddim yn pwyso llawer. Caiff lithro i’ch poced yn hawdd neu eistedd yn eich bag. Pan gewch chi funud, mi gydiwch ynddi, agor y clawr a chael eich swyno a’ch synnu gan waith y bardd ifanc, gloyw ei mynegiant – wy’n addo. Ac mi fyddwch chi’n falch i chi fynd â hi gyda chi. Does dim dau na chlywn ni eto gan Tegwen, a bydd ei gwaith hi ond yn dyfnhau a chyfoethogi wrth iddi fagu profiad bywyd. Yn y cyfamser, mwynhewch Gwawrio. -- Elinor Wyn Reynolds @ www.gwales.com

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Book SynopsisIn Phenomena (translated from the Latvian, Paradibas) Eduards Aivars' wry observations transform the mundanity of the everyday into words of quiet, thought-provoking beauty. Following his innovative principle of composition, the collection features many poems with long, expositional titles, which then culminate in a select few words, for example, 'The sad tale of the long-anticipated air pump', or 'The intense, but fleeting urge for domesticity and commitment'. Aivars talks about people, love and the life of a poet in this witty, reflective and unique collection. Phenomena is part of the 'Parthian Baltic' project. The project was launched at the Parthian poetry festival at the Wheatsheaf and the London Book Fair 2018 (focus region: Baltics).

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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