Modern and contemporary poetry

Book SynopsisVan Winckel’s poems hover at the intersections of folktale and history, of past life regressions and future life visions, in a voice that is intimate, eerie, wry, and always strangely like a voice that has been going on in our heads without our noticing. The chill and pleasure it renders is a little like what one feels upon first reading Proust.

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Book SynopsisSelected Poems by John Pudney (1909 - 1977)

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Book SynopsisEntering its fifteenth year, Best New Poets has established itself as a crucial venue for rising poets and a valuable resource for poetry lovers. The poems included in this eclectic sampling represent the best from the many that have been nominated by the country's top literary magazines and writing programs.Trade Review"A reminder that contemporary poetry is not only alive and well but continuing to evolve." "This collection stands out among the crowd claiming to represent emergent poets. Much of the editing and preliminary reading was done by emerging poets themselves, which results in an anthology that’s fresh and eclectic, and may actually represent a significant portion of the best new poetry being written by the next generation."

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Book SynopsisEntering its seventeenth year, Best New Poets has established itself as a crucial venue for rising poets and a valuable resource for poetry lovers. The poems included in this eclectic sampling represent the best from the many that have been nominated by America’s top literary magazines and writing programs.Trade ReviewPraise for earlier editions:"[A] reminder that contemporary poetry is not only alive and well but continuing to grow." - Publishers Weekly"This collection stands out among the crowd claiming to represent emergent poets. Much of the editing and preliminary reading was done by emerging poets themselves, which results in an anthology that’s fresh and eclectic, and may actually represent a significant portion of the best new poetry being written by the next generation." - Virginia Quarterly Review

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewIn Paisajes con burro, the donkey is here converted into the incarnation of wisdom a corporeality in which the purity of childhood and the honorability of accumulated experience come together. -- Antonio Puente, La Provincia

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Book SynopsisMaterial Properties, Jacob Polley's fiith collection of poems with Picador, asks what it might mean to interpret and translate wildness into human language and human understanding. The book is a multi-faceted and vital exploration of the non-human, the elemental and the borders between existences. Through poems of parenthood at a time of environmental emergency, and poetic versions of Old English riddles in which animals, objects and natural phenomena speak, the book poses essential questions about our relationship with the living world and with each other.Praise for previous work, Jackself, from T.S. Eliot Prize judges: ‘a firework of a book, inventive, exciting and outstanding in its imaginative range and depth of feeling’.Trade ReviewThe poems have an unforced charm, delighting in the wonder that surrounds us * Guardian *Polley’s grasp . . . is masterful, and the book is a delight. He succeeds in echoing the texture of his poetic forebears, but with a wry panache which is all his own. -- Stephanie Sy-Quia * The Poetry Review *What sustains these playful, wise, gentle lyrics is Polley’s technical skill. Longer poems are activated and maintained by their musicality and by a particular way with syntax that seeks to give texture and topography to the poems. One feels them as one is delighted by them -- Stephen Sexton * The Irish Times *How often do you come across a book you read again and again and always with increasing pleasure? It’s the quality of the writing that draws me back, both rooted and adventuring, elegant yet at ease in different registers and vocabularies … Jacob Polley’s language reaches to the heart of his subjects -- Jane Routh * The Friday Poem *

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Book SynopsisFormally ambidextrous, teethed with wit and uncompromising dignity.' – Ocean VuongBread and Circus is a hybrid and palimpsestic memoir-in-verse: it combines poetry, photography and spectral imaging to explore the realities of economic necessity and marginal poverty through a personal lens.Examining the experience of the US urban Black community from a variety of perspectives, it draws heavily on Airea D. Matthews's archival research on Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish economist, as well as his magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations.As the perspective shifts from watchful child, to teacher, mother, writer and citizen, Bread and Circus asks what it is to have survived, indeed to have flourished, and at what cost.Trade Review'This book enacts, with tenderness and intelligence, an erudition that matches the capacious love of its ambitions. Formally ambidextrous, teethed with wit and uncompromising dignity, Matthews engages the archive as a breathing document, refusing to let history be done with itself, and thereby accomplishes what I love most about poetry— especially hers—that it lives, is living.' -- Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous 'Matthews's writing is bold, innovative and complex.' * Washington Post *'Matthews is virtuosic, frantic, and darkly, very darkly, funny.' * New Yorker *'Discerning and significant' * Poetry Foundation *'Unflinching. . . Full of humane wisdom, this powerful volume forces readers to acknowledge systemic inequality.' * Publishers Weekly *'Matthews has earned a place in the accomplished company of Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser.' * Booklist *'When sinking into the work of Airea Matthews within Bread and Circus, "gratitude" is the word that most eagerly leaps to mind. I am grateful to be witness to a writer dismantling the boundaries of form, shape, and language, while not sacrificing any brilliance on the page. This is a stunning collection of work, which feels both ahead of its time and also abundantly on time.' -- Hanif Abdurraqip, author of The Little Devil in America 'From page to unrelenting page in this fierce and brilliant book, Airea Matthews shows us just how high the stakes of poetry should be. If you are not writing to save your life, you are not writing in Airea Matthews’ league.' -- Linda Gregerson, author of Canopy 'Roman poet Juvenal criticized a public distracted with free wheat and mindless entertainment. Toni Morrison said the point of racism is to keep us distracted from fully living our lives. With the genius and ferocity of mother love, Airea Matthews’s Bread and Circus shreds our expectations of what poems can be and do while clearing the air of the illusions that cloud our understanding of past, present, self and other. Lift the cover and breathe in the clarity concentrated on these pages." -- Gregory Pardlo, author of Digest

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Book SynopsisI can’t undo all I have done to myself,what I have let an appetite for love do to me.I have wanted all the world, its beautiesand its injuries; some days,I think that is punishment enough.Maya C. Popa's poems explore the capacity of wonder to reawaken our appetite for the world, at a time that is fraught with the threat of endings, engaging lucidly with the most profound questions we face in our collective responsibilities and our relations with each other.She writes with love and wonder of a world poised at a perilous moment: “My children, will they exist by the time / it’s irreversible?” she asks. “Will they live / astonished at the thought of ice / not pulled from the mouth of a machine?” Popa takes seriously the poet’s duty to pay attention, to seek what Seamus Heaney called “the images... adequate to our predicament”.To read her poems is to pause again and again aTrade ReviewWhitman declared ‘what I assume you shall assume’ and Popa’s audacious reply is to transcend deadlock and reveal beauty wherever her gently subversive lyric freely wanders, with phrases freshly minted in lines whose intensity is as impactful and affirmative as lived experience. -- Daljit NagraBeautiful, musical, imaginative and blink-back playful poems. A very original voice in real lyric conversation with the self, with the other, with life and the creaturely world. A joy of a book. -- Ruth PadelMaya C. Popa’s new book is an astonishment. In ravishing, formally exploratory poems, Popa wields the lyric like a reparative scalpel, evoking wonder and woundedness in equal measure . . . Wound is the Origin of Wonder reflects to us our own historical moment with unusual clarity, even as its lyric exploration of psychic and social landscapes stand outside of time. -- Meghan O'Rourke''Wound Is the Origin of Wonder is stunning for how it miraculously balances tenderness and terror, poems of hovering anxiety and longing that also allow themselves to be turned toward pleasure. I am now, as always, thankful for poems that balance the fullness of the human experience. Maya C. Popa has done that here.' -- Hanif Abdurraqib, author of The Little Devil in America 'I am stuck in an almost life, / in an almost time,’ Maya C. Popa writes in the titular poem from Wound Is the Origin of Wonder. Suspended in the uncanny amber of such a time, such a place, we readers encounter ourselves, endlessly reprocessing our own pasts and worrying our futures as the vast roiling moment corrodes both. Still, Popa insists upon, if not hope exactly, then a world beyond the hopelessness this one inspires: ‘There are still things that cannot be imagined.’ Wound Is the Origin of Wonder is a complex, searching collection, one I will be returning to for years.' -- Kaveh Akbar, author of Pilgrim Bell '"Dear Life," the opening poem of Maya C. Popa’s stunning Wound Is the Origin of Wonder, is worth the price of entry on its own. If I’d stopped there, this book would have given me more than I’d hoped for, but who could stop? Each poem, every single one, startled me with its precision and clarity. At times I gasped. Of course wonder is related to wound, awe to pain, and ‘every bright thing has at its heart a hiddenness / it offers when you’ve just about stopped looking.’ So we keep looking. We keep going. When I reached the end of this book, I wasn’t ready for its spell to be broken, not yet, so I began it again. -- Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod 'Wound is the Origin of Wonder showcases Popa’s ability to weave together rich internal reflections with finely wrought observations of the natural world. True to its title, Popa’s collection traces the titular emotion all the way back to its origins, shedding light on the wound so that we may look with wonder on the fuller picture that emerges' * Harvard Review *'In Wound Is the Origin of Wonder, Popa's elegant and moving exploration of grief and its causes and manifestations is more nuanced than simply observing that loss and living go hand-in-hand.' * New York Journal of Books *'Subtle and gorgeous... The ecstatic language of these meditations and confessions is animated as much by pain as by joy.' * Publishers Weekly *A reader will leave these poems hungry with the desire to see, to notice wildly – not only as a writer, but as a human being. * Mslexia *

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Book SynopsisFrom the former United States Poet Laureate and New York Times bestselling author of Aimless Love comes a collection of more than 125 small, incisively brilliant poems which, in his own words, “begin in Kansas and end in Oz.”Trade Review'America's favourite poet' * Wall Street Journal *‘Billy Collins’ medium is a rare amalgam of accessibility and intelligence. I’d follow this man’s mind anywhere. Expect to be surprised’ -- Michael DonaghyBilly Collins 'puts the "fun" back in profundity' -- Alice Fulton'Chatty, witty, wholly dependable' * Guardian *'Collins remains the most companionable of poetic companions' * The New York Times *'The treat of treats. Unlike the wedding guest waylaid by Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, the reader emerges from encounters with Collins as a wiser and far happier person.' * New Statesman *'A writer . . . fully aware of his work’s power to delight' * The New York Times *‘A poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace’ * New Yorker *‘Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world’ -- Carol Ann Duffy‘Delightfully direct, he won’t lose you in his lyricism but will transport you to a better place’ * The Times *‘The most popular poet in America’ * The New York Times *‘Billy Collins writes lovely poems . . . Limpid, gently and consistently startling, more serious than they seem, they describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides’ -- John Updike‘Smart, his strings tuned and resonant, his wonderful eye looping over the things, events and ideas of the world, rueful, playful, warm voiced, easy to love’ -- E. Annie Prolux'Imaginative thinking gives this collection its richness.... The work also shows a variety of styles...[that] provide both pleasure and a vivid example of how one's thoughts, when unrestrained, can lead to unexpected destinations' * The Washington Post *‘Funny but serious, accessible but rich in meaning, consistently surprising – the world looks slightly different after reading a Billy Collins poem. He’s a one-off, an American treasure’ -- Nick Laird

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

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Book SynopsisA moving and incandescent volume from a poet celebrated for her “unfailing mastery of her medium” (New York Times Book Review).

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Book SynopsisA magnificent selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet.

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Book SynopsisOne of NPR's "Books We Love" in 2023 Acclaimed poet Nick Laird reflects on the strange and chaotic times we live in with singular precision, clarity, and daring.Trade Review"Ruminative and daring…Laird [is] a wild poet-soul attentive to everything in poetic omniscience, challenging readers to see what he sees in the double witnessing of art’s power…This is mastery over formal limitation—a kaleidoscope of perfectly calibrated chains of attention, constraints that break, release and re-form." -- Carol Muske-Dukes - Washington Post"Up Late is an incredible book. It finds a music for our moment—its fragilities and terrors, it sets restlessness to a rhythm. It finds a new kind of irony, one that confronts our endless gallop into a mechanical, artificial, made-up idea of future, and asks instead why are we here in the first place, asks so without patronizing, almost without irony itself. There is an honesty in the tone of this book that stays in mind days after the last page is turned." -- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic"With Up Late, Nick Laird has stepped into his own future and produced a daring new poetic idiom that is all his own. His fortunate readers will be delighted and amazed." -- Billy Collins, author of Musical Tables

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Book SynopsisA text for practiced poets, this book offers a springboard beyond the basics into more daring poetic traditions, experimentation and methods. It lays out the myriad conversations influencing contemporary poetics, paying attention to its roots in historical and theoretical thinking. With a focus on innovation and breaking established boundaries, Advanced Poetry introduces you to the poetics shaping the contemporary literary moment, first guiding you through the contexts and principles of these forms using a range of practical examples, before prompting you to pick up the pen yourself. Spanning decades and continents, and covering the rich field of poets writing today, this book shows how to read, explicate, and write poetry and includes discussion of: - received traditions and innovative forms- confessional and epistolary poetry - aesthetic experimentation with voice - methods and theories developed by early Surrealists-deep image and the poeticTrade ReviewIn the charged intimacy of whispered dish or conspiracy, Nuernberger and Zeller geek with robust gusto and gleeful rigor over poetry: its making and what it makes of us. Here’s a fleet textbook that inspires possibility, offers generous guidance with a light-touch, and in the process, sneaks in a sly, keen, and often subversive anthology of poems gathered from a wide view of time and place. This is more than a textbook; it’s a compelling invitation. * Douglas Kearney *Advanced Poetry “offers readers a radical methodology to studying poetics, one that simultaneously breaks boundaries for what textbooks might achieve (similar, perhaps, to Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey), while also harkening back to formal and historical poetics.” It is “conversational, and it somehow simultaneously introduces you to new poets and traditions without ever making you feel inadequate for not knowing something.” I “love that it starts each chapter with poems” and that these poems are “diverse and contemporary.” And “while some craft books feel technical and dry, this one never loses its focus on poetry’s magic.” * From Laura Read’s M.F.A. Poetry Workshop students (Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA) *Advanced Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology authored by Kathryn Nuernberger and Maya Jewell Zeller offers readers a way to think about our own work in the context of our collective lineage as poets. I love the way each chapter opens with a diverse selection of poems, which allows the reader the chance to experience the poems before reading the editors’ discussion of them. And I also loved the writing in this book: it is both scholarly and accessible, poetic and sometimes personal. I will read and teach this book for the rest of my career. * Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA *Table of ContentsCONTENTS PATHWAYS INTO POETIC LINEAGES Foreword: The End and the Beginning An Invitation to Compose an Ars Poetica Before Reading Introduction and Notes to Readers, Writers, and Teachers Who is this book for? How is this book organized? Why begin each chapter with poems . . . ? Do I need to read the book in order? What pedagogical principles guide this textbook? Some Notes on Teaching This Book Chapter 1: Sound, Shape, & Space: Received and Invented Forms Chapter 2: Telling Secrets: Confessions, Epistolaries, & the Lyric I Chapter 3: The Poem in Telephone Lines & Other Thoughts on Tone, Talk, and Voice in Poetry Chapter 4: Writing Out of Surrealism Chapter 5: Duende, Deep Image, & The Poetics of Spells Chapter 6: The Poetics of Liberation Chapter 7: Writing the Body Chapter 8: The Racial Imaginary Chapter 9: Writing in the Field Chapter 10: Docupoetics & Other Forms of Lyric Research APPENDICES: MAPPING YOUR WRITING LIFE Practical Matters Creating an Inspiring and Supportive Workshop Community Strategies for Revision Some Notes on Assembling a Collection Potential Assignments & Professional Materials Submitting Poems for Publication Writing an Artist Statement Acknowledgements Index

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Book SynopsisA text for practiced poets, this book offers a springboard beyond the basics into more daring poetic traditions, experimentation and methods. It lays out the myriad conversations influencing contemporary poetics, paying attention to its roots in historical and theoretical thinking. With a focus on innovation and breaking established boundaries, Advanced Poetry introduces you to the poetics shaping the contemporary literary moment, first guiding you through the contexts and principles of these forms using a range of practical examples, before prompting you to pick up the pen yourself. Spanning decades and continents, and covering the rich field of poets writing today, this book shows how to read, explicate, and write poetry and includes discussion of: - received traditions and innovative forms- confessional and epistolary poetry - aesthetic experimentation with voice - methods and theories developed by early Surrealists-deep image and the poeticTrade ReviewIn the charged intimacy of whispered dish or conspiracy, Nuernberger and Zeller geek with robust gusto and gleeful rigor over poetry: its making and what it makes of us. Here’s a fleet textbook that inspires possibility, offers generous guidance with a light-touch, and in the process, sneaks in a sly, keen, and often subversive anthology of poems gathered from a wide view of time and place. This is more than a textbook; it’s a compelling invitation. * Douglas Kearney *Advanced Poetry “offers readers a radical methodology to studying poetics, one that simultaneously breaks boundaries for what textbooks might achieve (similar, perhaps, to Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey), while also harkening back to formal and historical poetics.” It is “conversational, and it somehow simultaneously introduces you to new poets and traditions without ever making you feel inadequate for not knowing something.” I “love that it starts each chapter with poems” and that these poems are “diverse and contemporary.” And “while some craft books feel technical and dry, this one never loses its focus on poetry’s magic.” * From Laura Read’s M.F.A. Poetry Workshop students (Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA) *Advanced Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology authored by Kathryn Nuernberger and Maya Jewell Zeller offers readers a way to think about our own work in the context of our collective lineage as poets. I love the way each chapter opens with a diverse selection of poems, which allows the reader the chance to experience the poems before reading the editors’ discussion of them. And I also loved the writing in this book: it is both scholarly and accessible, poetic and sometimes personal. I will read and teach this book for the rest of my career. * Laura Read, Professor of Poetry, MFA program at Eastern Washington University, USA *Table of ContentsCONTENTS PATHWAYS INTO POETIC LINEAGES Foreword: The End and the Beginning An Invitation to Compose an Ars Poetica Before Reading Introduction and Notes to Readers, Writers, and Teachers Who is this book for? How is this book organized? Why begin each chapter with poems . . . ? Do I need to read the book in order? What pedagogical principles guide this textbook? Some Notes on Teaching This Book Chapter 1: Sound, Shape, & Space: Received and Invented Forms Chapter 2: Telling Secrets: Confessions, Epistolaries, & the Lyric I Chapter 3: The Poem in Telephone Lines & Other Thoughts on Tone, Talk, and Voice in Poetry Chapter 4: Writing Out of Surrealism Chapter 5: Duende, Deep Image, & The Poetics of Spells Chapter 6: The Poetics of Liberation Chapter 7: Writing the Body Chapter 8: The Racial Imaginary Chapter 9: Writing in the Field Chapter 10: Docupoetics & Other Forms of Lyric Research APPENDICES: MAPPING YOUR WRITING LIFE Practical Matters Creating an Inspiring and Supportive Workshop Community Strategies for Revision Some Notes on Assembling a Collection Potential Assignments & Professional Materials Submitting Poems for Publication Writing an Artist Statement Acknowledgements Index

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Book SynopsisUsing side-by-side pairings of first drafts and final versions, including full-page reproductions from the poets' personal notebooks, as well as an insightful essay on each poem's journey from start to finish, The Art of Revising Poetry tracks the creative process of twenty-one of the United States' most influential poets as they struggle over a single word, line break, or thought. This behind-the-scenes look into the creative minds of working poets, including African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native poets from across the US, is an essential resource for students practicing poetry, and for instructors looking to enliven the classroom with real world examples. Students learn first-hand from the deft revisions working poets make, while poetry teachers can show in detail how experienced poets self-edit, tinker, cut, rearrange, and craft a poem. The Art of Revising Poetry is a must-have for aspiring poets and poetry teachers at all levels.Trade ReviewThe Art of Revising Poetry is excellent, rigorous, useful, diverse, and entertaining by turns. Content and style are of the highest caliber. There is no question that this book is a compelling addition to anthologies of writing in contemporary US poetry and poetics, demystifying and diversifying ideas about the all-too-important process and method of revision. This is a wonderful companion and ally for engaged writers and readers in the academy and beyond. * Dr Heather Yeung, Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing, University of Dundee, UK *Table of ContentsPoet Biographies Introduction: Charles Finn & Kim Stafford. SECTION I: "I riffed, following the language where it led" Chapter 1: Bedtime Story, Joe Wilkins, Linfield University, USA. First Draft: "My Son Asks for the Story About When We Were Birds" Final Draft: "My Son Asks for the Story About When We Were Birds" Essay: Finding the Language, Finding Story: Revising "My Son Asks for the Story About When We Were Birds" Chapter 2: When Thought's Slope Steepens, Jane Hirshfield, Author and Poet. First Draft: "Counting, New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me" Final Draft: "Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me" Essay: Stepladder, Vinegar, Persimmons: Revising "Counting, This New Year's Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me" Chapter 3: Increasing The Stakes, CMarie Fuhrman, Western Colorado University, USA. First Draft: "Land Acknowledgment, Valley County, Idaho" Final Draft: "Land Acknowledgment, Valley County, Idaho" Essay: Rhythm, Repetition, and the Drumbeat of Poetry: Revising "Land Acknowledgment, Valley County, Idaho" Chapter 4: Researching The Mystery, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Author and Poet. Passage from First Draft: "River Run" Passage from Third Draft: "River Run" Essay: What it Took to Get Here: Revising "River Run" Chapter 5: Creating a More Beautiful Story, Sean Prentiss, Norwich University, USA. Intermediated Draft: "The Constellations of Slate Belt, Pennsylvania" (with notes) Final Draft: "The Constellations of Slate Belt, Pennsylvania" Essay: Without Myths or Constellations: Revising "The Constellations of Slate Belt, Pennsylvania" Section II: "My first draft was a word tornado" Chapter 6: Inheritance, Frank X Walker, University of Kentucky, USA. First Draft: "InHerit" Final Draft: "InHerit" Essay: Revisions in Life and Poetry, Revising "InHerit" Chapter 7: A Matter of Inquiry, Rose McLarney, Auburn University, USA. First Draft: "The Collectors of Local Minerals Are Likelier to Find What They Seek" Final Draft: "The Collectors of Local Minerals Are Likelier to Find What They Seek" Essay: Identifying Gems: Revising "The Collectors of Local Minerals Are Likelier to Find What They Seek" Chapter 8: Gift From an Older Self, Naomi Shihab Nye, Texas State University, USA. Final Draft: "Tears, Appropriate" Essay: Gravity Changes: Revising "Tears, Appropriate" Chapter 9: A Poem's Truest Expression, Yona Harvey, University of Pittsburgh, USA. First Draft: "Hickory Street, New Orleans" Final Draft: "Hickory Street, New Orleans" Essay: True Expression as the Last Trolley Stop: Revising "Hickory Street, New Orleans" Chapter 10: An Inward Dissection, Terry Tempest Williams, Harvard Divinity School, USA. Original Prose Paragraph: "When Women Were Birds" Revision Into Poetry: "When Women Were Birds" Essay: Once Upon A Time: Revising "When Women Were Birds" SECTION III: "It felt clunky, false, but I knew I was close" Chapter 11: To See Again, Paulann Petersen, Stanford University, USA. Intermediate Draft: "A Furrier's Grandchild" Final Draft: "A Furrier's Grandchild" Essay: I Hear the Poem Speak For Itself: Revising "A Furrier's Grandchild" Chapter 12: Radiant Associations, Philip Metres, John Carroll University, USA. First Draft: "Ashberries: Letters" Final Draft: "Ashberries: Letters" Essay: Letters I Must Wait to Open: Revising "Ashberries: Letters" Chapter 13: An Act of Faith, Abayomi Animashaun, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, USA. First Draft: "Exodus" Final Draft: "Exodus" Essay: Discipline and Unknowing: Revising "Exodus" Chapter 14: Removing Details, Tami Haaland, Montana State University Billings, USA. First Draft: "Deer on Crazy Creek" Final Draft "Deer on Crazy Creek" Essay: Making the Local Exact: Revising "Deer on Crazy Creek" Chapter 15: Forging Something New, Charles Finn, Author and Poet. First Draft: "Memory's Anvil" Final Draft: "Memory's Anvil" Essay: The Winch of Imagination: Revising "Memory's Anvil" Chapter 16: Maintaining Fidelity, Shin Yu Pai, Author and Poet. First Draft: "Empty Zendo" Final Draft: "Empty Zendo" Essay: Emptying the Zendo: Revising "Empty Zendo" SECTION IV: "I asked my dreams." Chapter 17: What's at Stake, Kim Stafford, Lewis & Clark College, USA. Final Draft: "Lost in Snow" Essay: Getting More Intimate with Pain: Revising "Lost in Snow" Chapter 18: Zeroing in on Intent, Prageeta Sharma, Pomona College, USA. First Draft: "The Witness" Final Draft: "The Witness" Essay: The Poem's Psychic Center: Revising "The Witness" Chapter 19: In Thick Darkness we Listen, Shann Ray, Gonzaga University, USA. First Draft: "God of my abandonment" Final Draft: "God of my abandonment" Essay: Obscuring a Formidable Power: Revising "God of my abandonment" Chapter 20: The Serpentine Path, Todd Davis, Pennsylvania State University, USA. First Draft: "Tributary" Final Draft: "Tributary" Essay: Following a Tributary to Find a Poem: Revising "Tributary" Chapter 21: Dreaming Poetry, Beth Piatote, University of California, Berkeley, USA. First Draft: "Because our Roots are in Rivers, Not Latin" Final Draft: "Because our Roots are in Rivers, Not Latin" Essay: How Not to Write A Sonnet: Revising "Because our Roots are in Rivers, Not Latin" Index

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Book SynopsisEsra Plumer completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK, on the work of Unica Zürn and her development of the technique of automatism as an artistic strategy. Dr Plumer is the leading expert on the artistic work of Zürn with an extensive background in the history of psychoanalysis and psychiatric treatment methods. She has taught at the University of Nottingham, the European University of Lefke and The Courtauld Institute of Art.Trade ReviewThe first significant and sustained English language study of the writer and artist that attempts to explicitly remove her from Bellmer's leaden shadow and show her as significant in her own right... The result of Plumer's careful and exhaustive scholarship is an image both of Zürn as an individual separate from the better known Bellmer, as well as her body of work as a distinct and unique contribution to postwar arts and literature. Plumer’s book is itself a superb and groundbreaking contribution to scholarship on Zürn and postwar Surrealism generally. In particular, Plumer provides great insight and methodological clarity into how to examine the relationship between mental illness and artistic creation without reducing one to the other, an activity that has, unfortunately, been the standard approach for so long. * Journal of Modern Literature *‘Esra Plumer’s illuminating study swiftly escapes the claws of psychobiography. Instead, she opts for an informative account of Unica Zürn’s oeuvre (both visual and textual) as an outcome of a conscious artistic strategy, at times infused by her mental illness, rather than a product of such illness per se. What emerges is a well-overdue portrait of an exceptional artist who was far more than just la femme de Bellmer, as demonstrated in Plumer’s astute analysis of the complexities of artistic and personal collaboration.’ * Kamila Kuc, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in New Media, Goldsmiths, University of London *‘Esra Plumer’s comprehensive study of the literary and artistic works of Unica Zürn is highly informative. She presents Zürn as an autonomous artist and also reviews her early period in Berlin. One particular merit is that it at last enables the English-speaking world to share an insight into the surrealistic oeuvre of an exceptional German-French artist.’ * Dagmar Schmengler and Isabel Fischer, curators of the exhibition 'Unica Zürn – Camaro – Hans Bellmer in Berlin: Early works at Camaro Haus, Berlin' (2016) *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgements Foreword by Mary Ann Caws Introduction 1. Beginnings of Change 2. Exhibitions and Exposure 3. ‘Femme de Bellmer’: Critical Reception from 1984 to 2014 4. Anagrams 5. Automatism after 1945 6. Notes on Unica Zürn’s The Man of Jasmine and Other Narratives Epilogue Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRupi Kaur presents an all-new performance of milk and honey, her #1 New York Times bestselling collection of poetry and prose about survival, the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. This new production was recorded in 2021 along with the first-ever recordings of her #1 bestsellers the sun and her flowers and home body, all of them performed by Rupi Kaur. The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes listeners through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them—because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.  

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Book SynopsisRupi Kaur performs the first-ever recording of the sun and her flowers, her second #1 New York Times bestselling collection of poetry and prose. This production was recorded in 2021 along with the brand-new audio edition of milk and honey and the debut audio recording of home body. Divided into five chapters, this volume is a journey through the life cycle of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. It is a celebration of love in all its forms.  

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Book SynopsisFrom Kate Baer, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Woman, comes her much anticipated second full-length traditional poetry collection, And Yet.I will love and be loved. Save and be saveda thousand times. I will let the want intomy body, bless the heat under my skin.My life, I will not waste it. I will enjoy this life.And Yet dives even deeper into the themes that are the hallmarks of Kate''s writing: motherhood, friendship, love, and loss. Taken together, these poems demonstrate the remarkable evolution of a writer and an artist working at the height of her craft, pushing herself and her poetry in a beautiful and impressive way.In this collection, Kate offers much needed inspiration to find the joy, and the hope, in all of life''s mess and miracles.

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Book SynopsisIf I should die, think only this of me:That there''s some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England.From The Soldier to Anthem for Doomed Youth Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen are two of the best-loved poets from the heroic lost generation of the First World War. Brooke''s work was well-known before the war, with the now iconic lines:''Stands the Church clock at ten to three?And is there honey still for tea?'' from The Old Vicarage, Grantchester. And Wilfred Owen, awarded the Military Cross, had been writing poetry since he was ten years old.This superb collection is the perfect introduction to two of our greatest poets.

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Book SynopsisCollecting poetry written in the years 2011–2014, Sentenced to Life sees Clive James look back over his extraordinarily rich life with a clear-eyed and unflinching honesty.After falling dangerously ill in 2010, Clive James did not expect to live to see this volume published. But live he did, and these poems see James writing with his insight and energy not only undiminished but positively charged by his situation.There is no sense of self-pity in this collection, which includes the internet sensation ‘Japanese Maple’ and which deals openly with regret, death and his own illness,. With a great breadth of subject matter – taking in Hollywood, travel, art and politics – it is his fascination with humanity that shines through. It is, above all, a celebration of life – all that is treasurable and memorable in our time here.Rich in wisdom and sharp of thought, Sentenced to Life represents a career high poiTrade ReviewMany of these poems are an appeal to the heart, and in particular to the heart of his wife. The collection’s defining quality is gallantry and it is this that makes it so moving * Observer *Clive James is courageously fighting his dark future with that most powerful of weapons: poetry. He may lose the battle but his words will linger * Daily Express *

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Book Synopsis From the beloved author of Whiskey, Words, and a Shovel comes the first volume in an all new series. r.h. Sin returns with a force in Planting Gardens in Graves: a powerful collection of poetry that hones in on the themes dearest to his readers. This original volume celebrates connection, mourns heartbreak, and above all, empowers its readers to seek the love they deserve.Trade Review"That [past] relationship continues to fuel his writing, which encourages women to dump lesser men, avoid jerks, and stand up for what they want." (Sheila Marikar, The New Yorker)

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Book SynopsisFrom beloved Malawian storyteller Upile Chisala comes the revised and expanded edition of her second collection of poetry. In Nectar, Chisala guides readers through a beautiful process of growth and renewal. These poems celebrate our always complex, sometimes troubled roots while encouraging us to grow through and beyond them toward a passionate self-love. Chisala’s hope is that her words will encourage readers to sow seeds of change in their own lives and the lives of others.

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Book SynopsisAn anthem for the modern woman, Unfollowing You serves as a true companion for those who seek a voice that explores the complexities and absurdity of contemporary romance. Komal Kapoor uses her personal experience and astute social awareness as mechanisms to empower self-acceptance and promote cultural transparency.After prolific growth on social media, Komal Kapoor is utilizing her perceptive understanding of romance in the digital age to present her first collection of poems. Unfollowing You tells a chronological tale of a modern love through a series of poems, prose, texts, screen grabs, and unsent letters. Exploring digital phenomena like swipe culture and technological realities, Kapoor’s words affirm experiences and sentiment echoed across many media platforms. Unfollowing You is separated into two parts: “Following You” details how the two protagonists fall in love and “Unfollowing You” shares their heartbreak.  The realism of this collection will encourage readers to normalize growth and indulge in their feelings, even finding strength in them. 

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Book SynopsisCritics have called Else Lasker-Schuler the greatest of all German women poets and one of the finest Jewish poets. This selection of translations by Robert Newton, supplemented by a biographical and critical introduction and a selected bibliography, was the first substantial presentation of her works in English at its original publication in 1982.Trade ReviewWith Robert W. Newton's collection of poems by Else Lasker-Schuler in translation, there is now available to the English reading audience a representative selection of this unique poet who is usually classified as a precursor of German expressionism and yet defies all classification." - German Studies Review

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'And just like that, like a simpleneighbourhood event, a miracle istaking place.''If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere, it might be about love, not anger,' Mary Oliver once said in an interview. Finally, in Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these poems, she describes - with joy - the strangeness and wonder of human connection.

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Book SynopsisI go down to the shore in the morningand depending on the hour the wavesare rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable,what shall-what should I do? And the sea saysin its lovely voice:Excuse me, I have work to do.Whether studying the leaves of a tree or mourning her treasured dog Percy, Mary Oliver is beautifully open to the teachings contained within the smallest of moments. In A Thousand Mornings she explores, with startling clarity, humour and kindness, the mysteries of our daily experience.Trade ReviewMary Oliver's poetry is fine and deep it reads like a blessing. Her special gift is to connect us with our sources in the natural world, its beauties and terrors and mysteries and consolations. - Stanley KunitzThe gift of Oliver's poetry is that she communicates the beauty she finds in the world and makes it unforgettable. - Miami HeraldOliver's poems are thoroughly convincing - as genuine, moving and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring. - New York Times Book ReviewMary Oliver teaches us the profound act of paying attention - a living wonder that makes it possible to appreciate all the others. - Boston Globe

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 2019Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation . . . a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability'' Tracy K. Smith, Guardian''Vulnerable, tender, acute . . . The Carrying is a gift'' Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate''Exquisite poems'' Roxane GayFrom National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ada Limón comes The Carrying - her most powerful collection yet.Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility - ''What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?'' - and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: ''Every song of this country / has an unsung thiTrade ReviewI was ambushed by her power to move - several poems brought a lump to my throat. She never hides behind words but reveals herself through them . . . It describes an effortful time that makes these apparently effortless, quick-release poems all the more merciful and beautiful. There is nothing self-indulgent here but there is humorous self-assertion . . . Part of the pleasure of reading Limon is the way she transports you to a Kentucky punctuated by the noise of trains, the presence of horses, the planting of seeds. This is as-the-crow files poetry - it goes straight to the heart. * The Guardian *Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more -- Roxane GayIn her dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying, Ada Limon offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How should we treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer. Like humans -- Jami AttenbergIn these poems, joy and longing and grief sing with a music that- regardless of what I am burdened or blessed to carry - makes me want to live passionately and fully in the difficult world. The Carrying is a gift -- Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet LaureateI am thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction -- Celeste Ng, on Bright Dead ThingsAda Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet's perspective into themes of loss, chronic pain, fear of the 21st century's ongoing devastations, concern for the natural world. It's a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart -- Tracy K. Smith * Guardian *One of the best books of the year * The Millions *[Ada Limon's] new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot if not of hope, then perseverance amid much uncertainty * NPR *Her poems masterfully weave those quiet moments of grief and strength with expansive questions about life and womanhood. It's a privilege to witness her work * LitHub *

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

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Book Synopsis''We knew that black and brown bodies, working class voices, women''s voices, did not have a space where they could be heard - and so this writing collective was a necessary and political act''In the early years of the new millennium, poets Malika Booker and Roger Robinson saw the need for a space for writers outside of the establishment to grow, improve, discuss and learn. One Friday night, Malika offered her Brixton kitchen table as a meeting place. And so Malika''s Poetry Kitchen was born.''Kitchen'', as it became known, has ushered in a new generation of voices, launching some of the most exciting writers, books and initiatives in British poetry in the past twenty years. Today, Kitchen is a thriving writers'' collective, with a wealth of talented poets and branches in Chicago and India.Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different is a celebration of Kitchen''s legacy, an appreciation of its foundational spirit and a rallying cry for all writers to dreTrade ReviewThis magnificent book is a celebration of community, collectivism, reading, rereading, learning, talking, thinking, drafting and redrafting. Above all it's a song of praise to the power of poetry to remind us who we are and who we can become -- Ian McMillanA critical and urgent moment . . . Malika's Kitchen is as much a gift to poets of colour in the UK as it is a gift to British poetry . . . this anthology is a loud proclamation of the aesthetic value of embracing difference -- Kwame DawesLike the best kitchens, Malika's fills and satisfies with a mixture of the raw and the sizzling. The tastes are new, the fusion is fun and the heat is transformative -- Samuel WestFor two decades now, British poetry has been flavoured by the products of Malika's Kitchen. Without that Kitchen we would have been blander; we would not have understood as deeply, how much craft and urgency and ambition belong in the same pot. Gather now at this most important table. Sit. Feast. -- Kei Miller

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE T S ELIOT PRIZE 2020''Out of personal history, out of the history of an enduringly fractured nation, and out of the deep history of language, Shane McCrae is writing the most urgent, electric poems of his generation'' Garth Greenwell''Shane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis'' Rabih AlameddineI think now more than halfOf life is death but I can''t dieEnough for all the life I seeIn Sometimes I Never Suffered, Shane McCrae remains ''a shrewd composer of American stories (Dan Chiasson, New Yorker). Here, an angel, hastily thrown together by his fellow residents of Heaven, plummets to Earth in his first moments of consciousness. Jim Limber, the adopted mixed-race son of JeffeTrade ReviewOut of personal history, out of the history of an enduringly fractured nation, and out of the deep history of language, Shane McCrae is writing the most urgent, electric poems of his generation -- Garth GreenwellShane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis -- Rabih AlameddineShane McCrae is a shrewd composer of American stories . . . He is a prospector for speech rhythms, collecting his material wherever he can. But American attics are full of old boxes of diaries and letters; and testimony, no matter how arresting, is not itself poetry. What makes McCrae's compositions so ingenious are their marvels of prosody and form, learned from the English Renaissance poems that he read in libraries when he was just starting out. The result is beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality - and often the brutality - of American speech -- Dan Chiasson * The New Yorker *Shane McCrae has many gifts as a poet, but among his most hypnotizing is his ability to create poems that simultaneously blare and beacon . . . McCrae has been creating ambitious work that demands - earns - our attention. I often feel out of time when I am reading his words; they arrive with a Miltonic fury, and yet they are so contemporary and critical for our present, strange world -- Nick Ripatrazone * The Millions *This sprawling yet astute collection revisits the brutal history that enabled the election of Trump . . . In McCrae's timely observations, the American Dream is an illusion that silences its victims * Publishers Weekly *

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Book Synopsis''Beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality - and often the brutality - of American speech'' Dan Chiasson, New Yorker''Shane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis'' Rabih AlameddineI''m made of murderers I''m madeOf nobodies and immigrants and the poorand a whole / Family the mother''sliver and her lungsIn The Gilded Auction Block, the acclaimed poet Shane McCrae considers the present moment in America on its own terms as well as for what it says about the American project and Americans themselves. In the book''s four sections, McCrae alternately responds directly to Donald Trump and contextualizes him historically and pTrade ReviewOut of personal history, out of the history of an enduringly fractured nation, and out of the deep history of language, Shane McCrae is writing the most urgent, electric poems of his generation -- Garth GreenwellShane McCrae is one of our best, a great poet who mines the rhythms and vernacular of America, excavating the most exquisite of poems. His work is risky, not risqué; intelligent, not clever; deep, not jocular surface play. He is sui generis -- Rabih AlameddineShane McCrae is a shrewd composer of American stories . . . He is a prospector for speech rhythms, collecting his material wherever he can. But American attics are full of old boxes of diaries and letters; and testimony, no matter how arresting, is not itself poetry. What makes McCrae's compositions so ingenious are their marvels of prosody and form, learned from the English Renaissance poems that he read in libraries when he was just starting out. The result is beautifully up-to-date, old-fashioned work, where the dignity of English meters meets, as in a mosh pit, the vitality - and often the brutality - of American speech -- Dan Chiasson * The New Yorker *Shane McCrae has many gifts as a poet, but among his most hypnotizing is his ability to create poems that simultaneously blare and beacon . . . McCrae has been creating ambitious work that demands - earns - our attention. I often feel out of time when I am reading his words; they arrive with a Miltonic fury, and yet they are so contemporary and critical for our present, strange world -- Nick Ripatrazone * The Millions *This sprawling yet astute collection revisits the brutal history that enabled the election of Trump . . . In McCrae's timely observations, the American Dream is an illusion that silences its victims * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisLONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD''[Promises of Gold] has put Olivarez at the forefront of not only first-generation poetics, but of all poetry. This one here is for us -- the ones who hide garden shears in their poems'' Javier ZamoraLove is at the heart of everything we do, and yet it is often mishandled, misrepresented, or narrowly defined. In the words of José Olivarez: ''How many bad lovers have gotten poems? How many crushes? No disrespect to romantic love -- but what about our friends? Those homies who show up when the romance ends to help you heal your heart. Those homies who are there all along -- cheering for us and reminding us that love is abundant.''Written in English and combined with a Spanish translation by poet David Ruano, Promises of Gold explores many forms of love and how ''a promise made isn''t always a promise kept,'' as Olivarez lays bare the ways in which ''love is complicated by forces larger thTrade Review"My people I am poly with the tortillas" might be my favorite single sentence I have ever read in a poem. Get the book for that line alone. Promises of Gold is a heartfelt and hilarious series of odes to the large and small joys of life. It is also a battle rap and a clapback to all the death-making institutions we live under at every level. I could call this book soft and I would only be telling a half-truth. This is a collection that delights in the softness of every kind of love from familial to homie to culinary to romantic. But this is also a book that is hard on colonizers, and cruel billionaires, and capitalist exploitation. This book shines bright as the gold that got us into all this colonial mess. -- Nate Marshall, author of FINNAVisceral and moving -- Kate Baer, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of What Kind of WomanIn his preface, José Olivarez writes: "despite my best efforts, I am who I am". And what we see unfold through the book, who we see José is through his writing, is someone who is charting a journey of complicated love - sometimes specific, sometimes funny, sometimes cutting, sometimes bitter, sometimes angry, sometimes soft, sometimes yearning - but always, love. A love built in honesty, a love built without myth or fable. This book pushes us to think beyond love as we've known it, as the overly romantic always lighthearted love that's been sold to us for generations. Instead, it shows us a map into loving at the end of the world, in isolation, in fear, when our backs are cornered to the wall. And still then, Olivarez chooses to love, to hope, to dream. This book is a necessary dream, one that is a gift to the world -- Fatimah Asghar, author of When They Come For UsThe truth is: Technically, I don't understand poetry. I never have. I miss everything in it. It's a language I can't process. And, for me anyway, that's what makes Jose special. Because when he writes poetry, I don't need to understand it - at least, not in the traditional sense - because I FEEL it. I feel his words under my fingertips like velvet. I feel his words in my chest like I'm looking at a painting that moves me in a way I can't fully explain. And, again, for me anyway, that's more important -- Shea Serrano , NYT Bestselling author of The Rap Year BookOut of Calumet City, weighing in at around 160 plus Promises of Gold, in both English and Spanish, the one that's poly with his tortillas, the masterfully playful, the uniquely imaginative, the one that bets everything he has on his people, the one, the only, José Olivarez is the undisputed Mexican champ. The cypher that straddles between dólares and dolores, this quintessential second collection has put Olivarez at the forefront of not only first generation poetics, but of all poetry, in and outside the stringent confines of academia. This one here is for us -- the ones who hide garden shears in their poems -- Javier Zamora, author of The New York Times bestselling memoir, Solito

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Book SynopsisA TELEGRAPH BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023''One of the most erudite and inventive poets of our time'' GuardianShane McCrae, one of the most powerful voices in contemporary poetry, returns with The Many Hundreds of the Scent, an urgent new collection that brims with lyric force. He expands both the poetic and the personal mythologies that he has been constructing over the course of his career; in addition to introducing his readers to ''the thin king / who eats the world,'' McCrae invites them to bear witness to his tangle of childhood memories. In brutal, sorrowful lines, he recounts being kidnapped by his white supremacist maternal grandparents from his Black father as a boy. ''O reader, listener, stay,'' McCrae writes. ''You are now evidence.''In The Many Hundreds of the Scent, Homeric figures mingle with those that populate the poet''s world. Helen weighs Paris''s spear in her hand and bloodies a raging Achilles; PenelTrade Review'In McCrae's hands, words are like tea leaves he will steep until every scent and flavour is extracted... This poet cannot be paraphrased; he must be read' * Guardian, Poetry Books of the Month *

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2025''Gub is unlike anything I have ever read. In a playful demotic that is exhilarating, hilarious and never forced, Scott McKendry makes magic of a Belfast that in other hands would make grim reading. The most exciting poet to come out of the north of Ireland in many years'' Louise Kennedy, author of Tresspasses''There is nothing else like this in Irish poetry. A lyrical savant of the highest level, and one of the most exciting writers in Ireland today, McKendry is utterly his own beast'' Michael Nolan, author of Close To Home''A distinctive and energetic voice'' Sunday Times Ireland''McKendry is a joyful liar, a storyteller... McKendry writes "life''s not synonymous with pain" and it''s this sense, of a kind of all-encompassing appetite, that marks him out as fine company'' Declan RyanDemons, geese, The Laughing Cow, marching bands, LSD and pistols smuggled home from the USSR. You''ll find all these in Scott McKendry''s GUB. Rooted in the language of working-class Belfast, and slipping between eras and time zones, closing the gap between the real and the fantastical, the academic and the everyday, the parish and the polis, McKendry''s exhilarating debut collection comes to terms with generational trauma, social decay and the rituals of a place with a fraught history and an uncertain future. Invoking the balaclava''d gunmen, urban warlords and explosions which gripped the decades either side of the Good Friday Agreement, GUB drags the language of ghettoised Belfast into serious Irish poetry. Wearing the lyrical influences of his ''ugly city'' lightly - Carson, McGuckian, Longley - McKendry''s tightly-wrought structures weave an unprecedented verse of mourning, witness, alter ego, class alienation and aesthetic turmoil. Noisy, dark and witty, GUB is an utterly new voice out of Belfast, but one posting bulletins across inner-city neighbourhoods everywhere.Trade ReviewGub is unlike anything I have ever read. In a playful demotic that is exhilarating, hilarious and never forced, Scott McKendry makes magic of a Belfast that in other hands would make grim reading. From surreal, almost fabulous - in its purest sense - encounters with birds and animals, to trippy interrogations of identity and tradition, he makes the most surprising connections. If there is sometimes the sense that no one is more surprised than McKendry - one poem is subtitled 'Somehow after Cezanne' - this should not be confused with a lack of confidence; these poems have a formal elegance so assured as to feel utterly organic. The most exciting poet to come out of the north of Ireland in many years -- Louise Kennedy, bestselling author of TRESPASSESMcKendry does something truly radical with this book. Even at its most phantasmagorical, it combines intense philosophical inquiry with a profound familiarity with the terrain on which his world is built and the people who populate it. Gub is a work comparable in scope and import to Ciaran Carson's Belfast Confetti. Like Carson, McKendry's ear is attuned to the cadence of the city's "speech and slabber", which he transposes, with great aplomb, to the upper echelons of contemporary poetry. Gub is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and one of the most moving. It parses the ironies, contradictions and shortcomings of the working-class Belfast I know with moments of incredible beauty. There is nothing else like this in Irish poetry. A lyrical savant of the highest level, and one of the most exciting writers in Ireland today, McKendry is utterly his own beast -- Michael Magee, author of CLOSE TO HOMEWhat makes McKendry's work so interesting, so important, is how he captures, with anecdotal specificity, one anabranch of somewhere that all too often has its stories told for it. Gub avoids homogeneity of experience, but this virtue is secondary to the collection's scansion, wit, and hypnogogic deployment of language. McKendry understands that a place's lexicon can become conative, indifferent and even deleterious to its speakers' intentions ... He fishes from a polymathic frame of reference, and the result is poetry that reaches far beyond a place's geographical parameters, achieving a complex North Belfast psychogeography. This collection is sharp, maximalist, and phonetically and formally buoyant. -- Susannah Dickey, author of TENNIS LESSONS[Gub] is exhilarating: I think of Blake's 'Energy is an Eternal Delight' but it comes here with tremendous sophistication, flair and originality -- Ian Duhig, author of THE BLIND ROADMAKERScott McKendry's poems are exhilarants; richly textured, gregarious, sublimely sophisticated. The extraordinary ambit of his language ... is interwoven, irrevocably, with its pleasures. Gub, as noun, carries the trace of its verb: it is gastronomic and discerning, but it makes no bones about how the sausage is made. And rather than bend the local to the universe, the universe is drawn to these poems: migratory geese, the Flintstones, the small delinquencies of childhood and teenhood. And the author's new orthography for his 'Belfastois'. Gub is a world you don't know and don't know you know. In the company of these magisterial, unique, frequently hilarious poems, you'll wonder where you've been -- Stephen Sexton, author of IF ALL THE WORLD AND LOVE WERE YOUNGThe poems are brutally eloquent, and with a fierce cultural commentary running through them, from the carry on in the hut at the Twelfth bonfire site to a satire on the secret inauguration rituals of loyal orders. There is a streak of surreal hilarity in those that involve the poet as a childhood 'oddity' observing the out and out craziness of the Troubles -- Susan McKay, author of BEAR IN MIND THESE DEADFresh, inventive, authentic and brilliant. McKendry is witty, intelligent and utterly original. We need this poetry; he is of here, but with a boundary-bursting world view, that changes how we see ourselves and our sense of our place in the world. Bravo -- Maria McManus

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Book SynopsisFrom the internationally bestselling author of Love Her Wild, The Dark Between Stars, and The Truth About Magic comes LVOE., a dazzling new journey into the great unknown by Atticus. Featuring over 250 brand new poems, this sees Atticus take his readers on an enthralling, unforgettable new adventure. For the first time since he began writing, three-time New York Times bestselling author Atticus is inviting readers to take a look behind the mask as he embarks on a powerful journey inward in search of love, peace, and acceptance.His fourth poetry collection, LVOE., is a study into himself. Using his instantly recognisable lyrical style, gorgeous black-and-white illustrations, and relatable themes, Atticus will once again dazzle readers, inspiring them to also look within. This collection will feature all-new poems, each paired with beautiful sketches that bring the words alive from the page.An exploration of self-love, meditation, m

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Book Synopsis''Tread softly because you tread on my dreams'' is one of the most well-known and repeated lines of poetry ever written. Less haunting, but still so relevant: ''Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.''W B Yeats was one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. Winner of a Nobel prize, he was also a political figure, and, as is evident from his earlier work, fascinated by Irish folklore and the occult. He was also deeply affected by the First World War and the Anglo-Irish and Irish civil wars. It is a testament to the greatness of Yeats'' poetry that he attempts to bear witness to these emotional and historical forces.This perfectly pitched collection includes some of the greatest poetry of the 20th century.

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Book SynopsisThis anthology of Moroccan poetry by over seventy contemporary poets presents a significant contribution to the field of Moroccan literature in translation and will appeal to readers with an interest in Arabic poetry in general and the Moroccan dialect inTrade ReviewKapchan’s collection brings together a rich and varied tapestry of Morocco’s many poetry traditions, addressing themes as various as desire, political prisons, and spirituality. * Al-Fanar Media *Table of Contents Acknowledgments On Translation and Ethnography Abdelghani, Mahmoud Achaari, Mohammed Adnan, Taha Adnan, Yassin Aissa, Idriss Akhrif, Mehdi Alahyane, Ayad Arouhal, Khadija Ammach, Jamal Azaykou, Ali Sedki Azrhai, Abdelaziz Barakat, Ahmed Bassry, Aicha Benchemsi, Rajae Benjelloun, Abdelmajid Benjelloun, Abdelmajid Ben Jelloun, Tahar Benmoussa, Ouidad Bennis, Mohammed Bentalha, Mohammed Berrada, Omar Bouanani, Ahmed Boudouma, Jamal Bouhlal, Siham Boujbiri, Mohamed Boussrif, Salah Chebchoub, Fatima Chouhad, Moulay Ali El Aoufi, Boujema El Assimi, Malika El Hajjam, Allal El Khassar, Abderrahim El Khayat, Rita El Maïmouni, Mohamed Elmannani, Abdellah El Ouadie, Salah El Ouazzani, Hassan Farid, Mohamed (Zalhoud) Guennouni, Mohammed-Khammar Hamrouch, Abdeddine Hmoudane, Mohamed Houmir, Mostafa Ikbal, Touria Jouahri, Abderrafi Kadiri, Mourad Khatibi, Abdelkébir Khaïr-Eddine, Mohammed Khaless, Rachid Khoudari, Najib Laâlej, Ahmed Tayeb Laâbi, Abdellatif Lahbabi, Mohammed Aziz Lamrani, Wafaa Lemsyeh, Ahmed Loakira, Mohamed Maadaoui, Mostafa Madani, Rachida Majdouline, Touria Mansouri, Zohra Mejjati, Ahmed Meliani, Driss Mesnaoui, Driss Amghar Mesnaoui, Nafiss Morchid, Fatiha Moumni, Rachid Mourad, Khireddine Moussaoui, Abdesselem Moussaoui, Jamal Najmi, Hassan Nissabouri, Mostafa Ouagrar, Mohamed Ouassat, Embarek Oussous, Mohamed Rabbaoui, Mohamed Ali Rajie, Abdellah Salhi, Mohammed Sebbagh, Mohamed Serghini, Mohamed Serhane, Abdelhak Serhani, Mounir Souag, Moha Tebbal, Abdelkrim Zrika, Abdallah

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Book SynopsisRenato Rosaldo's new prose poetry collection shares his experiences and those of his group of twelve Mexican-American Tucson High School friends known as the Chasers as they grew up, graduated, and fell out of touch, conveying the realities of Chicano life on the borderlands from the 1950s to the present.Trade Review"The Chasers is at once a snapshot of Chicano culture in the '50s, and contemporary in its humanity." -- Meredith O'Neil * Tucson Weekly *"The Chasers is a must read." -- Margaret Randall * World Literature Today *"Rosaldo’s antropoesía is an emerging hybrid genre, a method of knowledge production that cannot be codified. It insists on highlighting nuances rather than erecting schemas. It is precise in its ability to articulate the uncategorizable." -- Tara Westmor * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrelude xi Cast of Characters xiii Part I. Walnuts 3 Never Chicano Enough 5 Suddenly Blank 7 Nice Meals 8 Down the Little Arroyo 9 Never Dreamed 11 A Dark Side 13 Talking with Mom 16 Fastest Naked Sprinter 19 In the Cactus Chronicle 21 The Chaser Mystique 23 Part II. Playing Bull 27 Sports People 29 All about Fun 32 A Quiet Guy 34 In Formation 35 Champagne in a Martini Class 38 White, Black, or Blue 41 My Inner Mexican Comes In 42 No More Oranges 45 No Emblem 46 Ode to Ralph 48 I'd Like the Job 50 Part III. Not from Tucson 55 Ornamental Oranges 57 I Never Liked You 60 A Place to Stand 62 Fiftieth Reunion 64 I Was Shaking 69 Three Months Older 71 Guys on One Side 74 In the School Yard 76 Erased 77 You Won't Do Well 78 Part IV. Observing 83 Never a Fighter 85 Papa y yo hablamos 86 Dad and I Talk 87 You Were or Were Not 89 Raw Eggs 90 My Brother Raul 92 I Remember 93 An Old Story 97 I Am a Chaser 99 My Dad Died When I Was Six 101 Packager 103 Sure Hope We Can Enjoy a Few More Years 107 Acknowledgments 109

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Book SynopsisRenato Rosaldo's new prose poetry collection shares his experiences and those of his group of twelve Mexican-American Tucson High School friends known as the Chasers as they grew up, graduated, and fell out of touch, conveying the realities of Chicano life on the borderlands from the 1950s to the present.Trade Review"The Chasers is at once a snapshot of Chicano culture in the '50s, and contemporary in its humanity." -- Meredith O'Neil * Tucson Weekly *"The Chasers is a must read." -- Margaret Randall * World Literature Today *"Rosaldo’s antropoesía is an emerging hybrid genre, a method of knowledge production that cannot be codified. It insists on highlighting nuances rather than erecting schemas. It is precise in its ability to articulate the uncategorizable." -- Tara Westmor * Los Angeles Review of Books *Table of ContentsPrelude xi Cast of Characters xiii Part I. Walnuts 3 Never Chicano Enough 5 Suddenly Blank 7 Nice Meals 8 Down the Little Arroyo 9 Never Dreamed 11 A Dark Side 13 Talking with Mom 16 Fastest Naked Sprinter 19 In the Cactus Chronicle 21 The Chaser Mystique 23 Part II. Playing Bull 27 Sports People 29 All about Fun 32 A Quiet Guy 34 In Formation 35 Champagne in a Martini Class 38 White, Black, or Blue 41 My Inner Mexican Comes In 42 No More Oranges 45 No Emblem 46 Ode to Ralph 48 I'd Like the Job 50 Part III. Not from Tucson 55 Ornamental Oranges 57 I Never Liked You 60 A Place to Stand 62 Fiftieth Reunion 64 I Was Shaking 69 Three Months Older 71 Guys on One Side 74 In the School Yard 76 Erased 77 You Won't Do Well 78 Part IV. Observing 83 Never a Fighter 85 Papa y yo hablamos 86 Dad and I Talk 87 You Were or Were Not 89 Raw Eggs 90 My Brother Raul 92 I Remember 93 An Old Story 97 I Am a Chaser 99 My Dad Died When I Was Six 101 Packager 103 Sure Hope We Can Enjoy a Few More Years 107 Acknowledgments 109

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