Poetry Books

A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.

19125 products


  • Love's Victory: By Lady Mary Wroth

    Manchester University Press Love's Victory: By Lady Mary Wroth

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisLove’s Victory by Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1651) is the first romantic comedy written in English by a woman. The Revels Plays publishes for the first time a fully-authorised, modern spelling edition of the Penshurst manuscript, the only copy of the play containing all five acts, handwritten by Wroth and privately owned by the Viscount De L’Isle. Edited by Alison Findlay, Philip Sidney and Michael G. Brennan, their critical introduction provides details of Wroth’s remarkable life and work as a member of the Sidney family, tracing connections between Love’s Victory, her prose and poetry and her family’s extensive writings. The editors introduce readers to the influence of court drama on Love’s Victory and offer a new account of the play’s stage history in productions from 1999–2018. Extensive commentary notes guiding the modern reader include explanatory glosses, literary references and staging information.

    1 in stock

    £19.00

  • Geoffrey Hill and the Ends of Poetry

    Manchester University Press Geoffrey Hill and the Ends of Poetry

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThis book shows that the poems of Geoffrey Hill (19322016) are characteristically end-directed', tending constantly towards prosodic and thematic consummations. It offers a new thematic reading of Hill's entire body of work and touches on questions of poetry's ultimate value. -- .

    1 in stock

    £81.00

  • Manchester University Press Dido Queen of Carthage

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe first single-text scholarly edition in English. An indispensable resource for scholars, students, and theatre practitioners. Edited by Ruth Lunney. -- .

    1 in stock

    £23.75

  • Here is the Beehive: Shortlisted for Popular

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Here is the Beehive: Shortlisted for Popular

    2 in stock

    Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARD What would you do if you lost someone the world never knew was yours? For three years, Ana has been consumed by an affair with Connor, a client at her law firm. Their love has been consigned to hotel rooms and dark corners of pubs, their relationship kept hidden from the world. So the morning that Ana’s company receives a call to say that Connor is dead, her secret grief has nowhere to go. Desperate for an outlet, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach - Connor's wife Rebecca… 'Utterly gripping' RODDY DOYLE 'A triumph – crackling with psychological and sexual ambiguity' JULIE MYERSON, OBSERVER 'This book is just sublime… I loved every page’ CAITRIONA BALFE 'Unmissable ... Incredible' STYLIST ‘Amazing ... I read it in one sitting, completely swept up in Ana’s fragmented narrative' EMMA HEALEY 'Dark, riveting, powerful' ELIZABETH DAY Trade ReviewAmazing ... I absolutely love the form, which breathes new life into a familiar story making it both more elegant and more brutal. I read it in one sitting, completely swept up in Ana’s fragmented narrative -- EMMA HEALEYExcellent ... An eviscerating account of modern marriage * INDEPENDENT.CO.UK *Sex, work and motherhood all come under the microscope in this vivid portrait of the agony of being "the other woman" * DAILY MAIL *This lyrical account of an adulterous affair and its brutal aftermath is all the more effective and affecting for the spare, sparse style and I expect it to win as many awards as Sarah Crossan’s YA fiction has done * RED *I absolutely gobbled it up: dark, riveting, powerful ... Delivers on a whole new level -- ELIZABETH DAYA stunner * Good Housekeeping *Raw, emotional and wistful * Woman & Home *I read this stunning book standing up in two hours. An eviscerating take on marriage and adultery -- ERIN KELLYA beautifully crafted sucker punch of a read. Sarah Crossan has always had an exquisite way with words and in this she uses poetic prose to craft an honest and oftentimes gritty exploration of two intertwined marriages, slowly unravelling. Painfully believable, passionate and occasionally heartbreaking, Here is the Beehive provides further proof that Sarah Crossan is an infinitely gifted writer. We're lucky to have her -- JAN CARSONA searing portrait of addictive love and grief and the devastation human beings can wreak on each other ... It is an addictive read, painful, unsettling, full of uncomfortable truths, yet the work itself resounds with its own unique bleak beauty -- LISA HARDINGDevastatingly honest, heartbreaking and tender ... This is the most extraordinary novel I have read in years in form, ambition and scope - an incredible achievement and an instant classic. I will read it again and again -- JANE CASEYHere is the Beehive is an unflinching take on the destructive power of obsessive love. It is also a highly original study of the grief that dare not speak its name – the grief of the other woman -- CHRISTINE DWYER HICKEYI couldn't put it down. I just loved it. The prose is clean yet rich, her dialogue ear-perfect -- LOUISE KENNEDYHow does she get so much emotion into so few words? Sarah Crossan is a miracle worker ... Utterly meaningful, original and accomplished -- SINEAD CROWLEYPRAISE FOR SARAH CROSSAN: ‘One of our most original writers. Sarah has almost created an entirely new form of writing in her novels that is hers and hers alone -- JOHN BOYNECompelling and beautifully wrought * SUNDAY TIMES *The princess of pacing … Crossan always finds humour and humanity in the darkness; it’s impossible not to read it in a single gulp * THE TIMES *Truly remarkable * IRISH TIMES *There are familiar flavours and notes and moments of powerful sweetness, but she complicates them with such power and subtlety, in a way that doesn't alienate the reader. The tang of fire is in there, always, leaving a unique aftertaste. You wouldn't mistake it for any other writer, and you won't soon forget it -- DEIRDRE SULLIVANUtterly sublime -- CECELIA AHERN

    2 in stock

    £8.54

  • Starry Night, Blurry Dreams: Visual poetry from

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Starry Night, Blurry Dreams: Visual poetry from

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis welcome to the beautiful universe of Henn Kim who are you when you're alone Starry Night, Blurry Dreams is a collection of visual poetry about loneliness, love and existing in our world. a heavy heart is hard to carry hold on When words aren't enough to describe our emotions, this book will offer comfort, joy and a friend in the dark. we all have our own beautiful universe 'An intoxicating mix of familiarity and surreality' - Creative Review Trade ReviewFilled with page after page of beautiful and painfully true words and artworks, this is a compelling and unique collection that is more than worthy of a place on your bookshelves * Red *Experiencing Henn’s work makes for a a surreal but serene whole . . . vulnerable, sweet yet complicated love stories that anyone can relate to. * WePresent *An intoxicating mix of familiarity and surreality, they offer a poignant commentary on the themes that affect all of us at one point or another, from heartbreak to fantasy to sorrow. * Creative Review *The evocative illustrations of Henn Kim form a new graphic poem [which] riffs off her teenage desire to connect to other, possibly lost souls, through words and images * Harper's Bazaar *

    1 in stock

    £11.69

  • A Method, A Path: Shortlisted for the Forward

    Bloomsbury Publishing PLC A Method, A Path: Shortlisted for the Forward

    Out of stock

    Book Synopsis**SHORTLISTED FOR THE FELIX DENNIS PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2023** An award-winning poet explodes the notion of translation, showing us the poem in a supple, malleable form 'Formally inventive, rich in aslant borrowings, unafraid of visual and textual experiment, it is an exhilarating debut' Guardian ________________________________ The poems at the centre of A Method, A Path explore the turbulent transmission of historical and mythic voices that ‘reach across’ time and place, and a fierce rejection of the nationalist ideologies that have sought to ‘island’ them. Here, translation is a lived and open-ended negotiation, invested in the potential for magic utterance and ritual action in spite of language’s violence: ‘words / tear their wing bones / and grow new heads / in the wound (‘On Eglond’). Each poem or sequence gathers around a different instance of dialogue or communication with others: with other voices and languages, with other authors and found texts, with other species. They also mark a record of Evans’ interdisciplinary collaboration with other artists and performers through his work both as writer and sound artist. The physical and textual landscapes of the book move from the flooded and wooded terrains of Somerset and East Anglia, to the burnt hills of Andalusía in the company of Federíco García Lorca, the poems always inhabiting a place between Evans' own words and external voices – whether via translation, haunting, or invocation. In this ‘tirelessly inventive, substantial collection of vivid lyrical work’ (Denise Riley, Eric Gregory Awards), the truant strangeness of the more-than-human world is made present in its ability to warp and transform the poet’s voice, where ‘even the ground under your feet is a fluid, malleable surface’ (Kayo Chingonyi).Trade ReviewFormally inventive, rich in aslant borrowings, unafraid of visual and textual experiment, it is an exhilarating debut * Guardian *Evans writes dispatches from a far country, where the English is Old, where the textures of life are an uncanny translation of our own political and existential divisions … Evans knows that language can soothe and inflame * Poetry Book Society *Praise for Rowan Evans: A tour de force of strategies pushing the lyric to its extreme; here, language is wrenched and stretched at every turn, and only in considering the sequence as a whole do we begin to comprehend the complex behaviours of its character, who is likewise driven to the limits ... Unnerving, disturbing and otherworldly, this is poetry of daring and, in spite of itself, sonic beauty -- Judges’ Comments, Michael Marks AwardsQuietly seething * Times Literary Supplement *In wave-gnawed whispers remnants of Gaelic, of Latin, of Old English are heard, words that survive only in manuscripts, or have shifted meaning, fallen out of use … a concern for language, for memory and for relations of person to place * Stride Magazine *A provocative and highly erudite work that can wrench our considerations to such a degree that we feel the need to consider our own standardizations of speech and their relation to the tongue of an other * 3:AM Magazine *An excellent collection of new poetry that is unusual, intelligent, evocative, and full of rich musicality * BUZZ MAGAZINE *

    Out of stock

    £9.49

  • A Poem or Two from Me to You

    Austin Macauley Publishers A Poem or Two from Me to You

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £6.99

  • Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

    Pan Macmillan Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisAimless Love is Billy Collins’ first compilation of poems in twelve years, and a wonderful successor to his first, the bestselling Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes. Aimless Love presents more than fifty new poems together with generous selections from his four previous books. No poet writing today communicates so directly and effectively, and no living poet has managed to both enrich the tapestry of contemporary poetry and expand it so dramatically: his poems appeal to readers and live audiences across the globe, and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. By turns playful, ironic and serious, Collins’s poetry unearths the wonder in the everyday: in his own words, his poems ‘begin in Kansas and end in Oz’. Weaving the themes of love, loss, joy and poetry itself, these poems showcase the best work of this ‘poet of plenitude, irony, and Augustan grace’.Trade ReviewThe 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. -- Geoff Dyer, Books of the Year * New Statesman *This collection of new and selected poetry is a perfect introduction for the reader . . . a wry, understated often dark humour emerges * Belfast Telegraph *

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • The Mizzy

    Pan Macmillan The Mizzy

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisPaul Farley is now widely recognized as one of the leading English poets writing today. As usual it is impossible to summarize in terms of theme, as his interests are too various: there’s an air of ‘the innocence of childhood’ being viewed through the corrective lens of worldly middle age, though, and also of mid-life, its creeping self-consciousness and decrepitude, and the distortions of perception that attend it; confusing encounters with tech, modernity and its accelerated rate of change; satirical excursions critiquing the way business and digital communications have debased language. Farley is also interested as ever in the peripheral and marginal and no-man’s-lands – the lives of others, and their strange occupations; the birds and unsung-by-the-pocket-guides fauna and flora you miss. The Mizzy encapsulates one of poetry’s most capacious and eclectic imaginations.

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • How The Hell Are You

    Pan Macmillan How The Hell Are You

    Book SynopsisA new collection from Glyn Maxwell – one of the great poetic stylists of the era, and one of its leading dramatic voices – is always a cause for celebration. Here, there are squibs and satires, lyrics and songs, poems written to family members and in memory of loved ones, a series of poems written by an artificial intelligence that will thrill and disturb in equal measure, and a chance for the blank page to finally speak for itself. But How The Hell Are You is, in its way, also a quietly political book: Maxwell regards poetry as truth-telling, and these poems – in their intimate, unsparing accounts and clear-eyed reckonings – recoil from the lies and fake news of the age to actually ‘tell it like it is’. How The Hell Are You shows a remarkable imagination and mind working at full tilt, and is the most powerful expression of Maxwell’s talent to date.Trade ReviewFormally dextrous, syntactically inventive, able to combine authentic emotion with self-reflexive dramatisation: for those in the know, a Maxwell collection is an event * Ben Wilkinson *A master stylist who shoots from the lip, Maxwell has a range and brio, from elegy to AI, that is constantly erudite and exhilarating * Carol Ann Duffy *It’s in distilling universal experiences that Maxwell shows the power of his oblique, understated approach and of his brilliant fusing of elaborate metrical patterns with the cadences of speech. Giving a pin sharp sense of the speaker’s feeling and tone, he can create emotions out of all proportion to their overt but not real object. By leaving it to us to find the real object behind the overt one, he makes the meaning and emotion rootthemselves more deeply in our minds. * Acumen Poetry *

    £10.44

  • She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom

    Pan Macmillan She Will Soar: Bright, Brave Poems about Freedom

    Book SynopsisA stunning gift book featuring 130 poems about wanderlust, freedom and escape written by women. With poems from classic, well loved poets as well as innovative and bold modern voices, She Will Soar is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf. From the ancient world right up to the present day, it includes poems on wanderlust, travel, daydreams, flights of fancy, escaping into books, tranquillity, courage, hope and resilience. From frustrated housewives to passionate activists, from servants and suffragettes to some of today’s most gifted writers, here is a bold choir of voices demanding independence and celebrating their hard-won power.Immerse yourself in poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Christina Rossetti, Stevie Smith, Sarah Crossan, Emily Dickinson, Salena Godden, Mary Jean Chan, Charly Cox, Nikita Gill, Fiona Benson, Hollie McNish and Grace Nichols to name but a fewTrade Review“this glorious, exhilarating anthology makes the perfect choice for any woman you know, of any age” * Daily Mail *on She is Fierce: this is a collection to stir the blood and resonate in the bones. * Guardian *A handsome hardback poetry collection featuring a wonderfully wide range of poems by female poets - many new to me like Wolves by Ruth Awolola. The perfect gift for a thoughtful teens who loves words. * Irish Independent *Those responsible for creating inspirational school assemblies should also make extensive use of it for outstanding models of courage, resilience, hope and determination. * ReadingZone *

    £13.49

  • Pygmalion & Other Plays

    Pan Macmillan Pygmalion & Other Plays

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisGeorge Bernard Shaw is one of the most famous and celebrated Irish playwrights and this new collection brings together the very best of his witty and entertaining comedies in one volume; Pygmalion, Major Barbara and Androcles and the Lion.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has a preface by Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench.Pygmalion was first performed in 1914 and was an instant hit which then inspired the hit musical and award winning film, My Fair Lady. It tells the story of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, who tries to elevate a feisty flower girl out of her working-class roots and into high society. In Major Barbara, idealistic Barbara is a major in the Salvation Army, at odds with her millionaire father as they war over the best route to salvation. Androcles and the Lion is a clever retelling of the Bible story about a gentle Christian who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw. All three plays are not only wonderfully amusing, they also showcase Shaw's intense concerns about poverty, class and inequality.Trade ReviewShaw's sparkling fable * New York Times on Androcles and the Lion *Major Barbara is a rich play, but also a peculiar one, made up in equal measures of drawing room comedy, philosophical debate and a tale of salvationism that wouldn’t embarrass Guys and Dolls. * Variety *

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Grimoire

    Pan Macmillan Grimoire

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Highland Book Prize 2020 ‘I’ve long admired Robin Robertson’s narrative gift . . . If you love stories, you will love this book.’ Val McDermidThe new book from the author of The Long Take, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of both the Walter Scott Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize.Like some lost chapters from the Celtic folk tradition, Grimoire tells stories of ordinary people caught up, suddenly, in the extraordinary: tales of violence, madness and retribution, of second sight, witches, ghosts, selkies, changelings and doubles, all bound within a larger mythology, narrated by a doomed shape-changer – a man, beast or god.A grimoire is a manual for invoking spirits. Here, Robin Robertson and his brother Tim Robertson – whose accompanying images are as unforgettable as cave-paintings – raise strange new forms which speak not only of the potency of our myths and superstitions, but how they were used to balance and explain the world and its predicaments.From one of our most powerful lyric poets, this is a book of curses and visions, gifts both desired and unwelcome, characters on the cusp of their transformation – whether women seeking revenge or saving their broken children, or men trying to save themselves. Haunting and elemental, Grimoire is full of the same charged beauty as the Scottish landscape – a beauty that can switch, with a mere change in the weather, to hostility and terror.Trade ReviewRobin Robertson is one of the finest contemporary poets. -- John BanvilleFew writers so expertly pull the curtains back on the many collective fictions, both ancient and new, that constitute our understanding of the world. -- Kevin Powers author of The Yellow BirdsRobin Robertson is a fearless and thrilling poet in what he confronts in himself as well as what he unearths from the commons of myth and balladry * Marina Warner *A major poet… Robertson remains an unequalled guide among the shamanistic roots of poetry. * Fiona Sampson, Independent *Robertson's lines have the luminosity of myth. * Adam Newey, Guardian *Robin Robertson is instantly recognisable as a poet of vivid authority, commanding a surprised, accurate language of his own. * W.S. Merwin *He’s a poet who takes enormous risks, not only as a writer, but as a man and I admire him enormously for that. * Kirsty Gunn, Scotsman *This is a book that will make you awaken at night . . . [Robinson's] poetry is unusual in that it is pointed – the glanced moment – and yet can be propelled narrative at the same time. Grimoire is a perfect encapsulation of both these talents . . . exceptionally impressive -- Stuart Kelly * The Scotsman *In this beautifully spare and distilled poetic form these new Scottish folk tales rise from the page like the supernatural beings they give voice to . . . The illustrations are like beautifully strange phantoms . . . unflinching, brutal and often movingly beautiful . . . With its wonderful illustrations, bold design and sumptuous production, it's also a gorgeous book to handle and treasure. * The Tablet *It is no wonder Roberston’s narrative poem-novel, The Long Take, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018. Grimoire is a collection which revels in this same talent for the tale; the reader is insistently drawn through these poems by the mythical narrative figure. Whether you read for the magic of the story, for the lull of beautiful language, or for the mysteries of the occult, Grimoire is a must-have for your poetry shelf this autumn. * The Skinny *Robertson does something exceptionally impressive with language here, in that the book twists around Gaelic, Scots and English. It does not feel forced, and if it makes a reader check the index, then all to the good. . . Robertson is somehow dapper in just using the right word in the right place for the right line. . . The linguistic inventiveness would mean little or nothing if it did not come with an emotional truth. Robertson doesn’t coax, but he does lure the reader, right up to the point when you are punched in the guts . . .There is a steeliness to Robertson’s work. I would like an audio-book version, as in performance, he is dreadfully still as he tells us dreadful things. This is the poetry of the pause, not the applause. But there is one hand clapping here. * Scotsman *Robertson’s finely wrought poems capture the tradition of shape-shifting inherent in such spirit stories – the slippery interface of human, beast, god/spirit – and explore it in conjunction with dark and troubling narratives that edge on violence, murder and reckoning. These poems are populated by ghosts, witches, selkies, doppelgangers and, as such, read as though they might be reworkings of ancient folktales that have only just been brought to light. The accompanying drawings, in their bold, monochromatic woodcut style, have the feel of cave paintings, or Blakean preliminary sketches for some more colourful works. All in all, it’s a lovely little coffee-table style book of poems, though don’t let that sound too cosy . . . The Robertson brothers’ book is a dark delight; a lexical and narrative cornucopia, full of uncanny and unsettling tales, rendered in a language that treads the line between viscerality and lyricism. * Stride *

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • Wonder: The Natural History Museum Poetry Book

    Pan Macmillan Wonder: The Natural History Museum Poetry Book

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisWonder: The Natural History Museum Poetry Book is a beautiful gift hardback collection of poetry with poems inspired by The Natural History Museum. It covers everything from the depths of space to the very centre of the earth - there are poems about the solar system, planet earth, oceans and rivers, birds, dinosaurs, fossils, wildlife, flowers, fungi, insects, explorers and palaeontologists. Each section includes an introduction and some footnotes about particularly interesting species. The museum has a collection of over eighty million objects and behind the scenes of its twenty-eight galleries crowd kilometres of preserved specimens, libraries of rare books and artworks, wonders gathered on some of the most famous voyages in history, rooms packed with pressed plants, warehouses teeming with stuffed animals and freezers full of DNA. As well as a museum, it is a state-of-the-art centre for discovery with over three hundred resident scientists and over ten thousand visiting researchers each year, investigating everything from dinosaurs to life on other planets.The collection is made up of brand new and classic poems and is illustrated with botanical drawings and engravings from the museum’s collections.This fantastic collection speaks of the wonder of nature and shows us why we need to look after our incredible planet.Trade Reviewoffers a cornucopia of words about bugs, birds, fossils, fish, plants, people and dinosaurs, of course. Marketed for children, it’s a wonderful, varied collection for all ages -- Bel Mooney * Mail Online *this gorgeously illustrated anthology covers everything from oceans and rivers to fossils. * Red magazine *it’s as awe-inspiring and thoughtful as you’d hope * Indybest *The book is a celebration of our planet and the natural world, and there’s plenty here to inspire children (and adults) to do all that we can to keep it safe, with Gerard Benson’s “A Small Star” and Pascale Petit’s “#ExtinctionRebellion” providing great talking points with our older readers about climate change and what we can all do to help make a difference. -- Sarah Dawson * The Independent *I can't recommend this collection highly enough and will be sharing with colleagues in school as well as suggesting it as a read for our teacher book groups. A WONDERful book! * ReadingZone *the book is a wonder indeed, the poetry giving a genuine sense of the magnificence of the museum’s collections; it’s surprising, inspiring, eye-opening. * Books For Keeps *

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • Oak

    Pan Macmillan Oak

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisOaks are some of our oldest companions, and have been rooted in human imagination and language for millennia. Their great, slow lives have always demanded our careful consideration (indeed Virginia Woolf’s Orlando took 300 years over their own quercian epic). Katharine Towers’ new sequence of poems accompanies the oak from acorn to grave, and into its afterlife; playful, lyric and lucid, Oak is also shot through with an ecocritical awareness that renders it utterly contemporary. Towers’ precise eye and gift for sharp comparison allows us to enter into the life of the tree, and the birds and insects and plants it hosts; it shows how its seven ages echo and rhyme with our own, and how, by implication, we may also be tied to the same cycle of death and renewal. Oak wins its power through an extraordinary act of imaginative voicing, and accomplishes the most important work of the nature poem: to take the reader out of themselves, and into the larger world they also inhabit.Trade ReviewInventive, capacious and full of the surprises witnessed only by the truly observant, Oak is an arboreous atlas for our age -- Sasha Dugdale * author of Deformations *In Oak, the poet's life is equal to the tree's, and the two meet in delicate reflection on the page. Like the acorn it begins with, this poem is a plucky epic -- Rachel Genn * author of What You Could Have Won *Oak is the most beautiful thing. A long poem at once fragmentary and whole, with all the sophistication of folklore and all the play of true poetry. Katherine Towers is one of the most original and gifted poets now writing. Her brilliant book is something no other could do, “an outburst of words” so old and English and fresh. -- Conor O'Callaghan * author of Nothing on Earth *

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Embark

    Pan Macmillan Embark

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisA new collection by Sean O’Brien – ‘Auden’s true inheritor’, and one of our wisest poetic chronographers – is not just a literary event, but also, invariably, a reckoning of the times. Given the nature of our times, his voice is an essential one: there is no other poet currently writing with O’Brien’s intellectual authority, historical literacy and sheer command of the facts. Embark also registers our unique cultural climacteric, where the larger crises of the planet – the pandemic and the terrifying spectre of revanchist nationalism among them – impact all of us, and where the illusion of a church-and-state separation of the personal and political can no longer hold. As the poet turns seventy, he shows us how the inevitable absences that age brings are assuaged by how we furnish them; the result is not just a logic made from loss and pain, but a music, a metaphysic, and finally a redemptive art. Embark reminds us of the enduring consolations of love, of friendship, of the freedoms and possible futures still afforded by the imagination – and, through O’Brien’s own exemplary model, of poetry itself.

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Elegies

    Pan Macmillan Elegies

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn Elegies Carol Ann Duffy, one of the English language’s best-loved living poets arrays from her own archives, in chronological order, her favourites among her poems on death, grief and loss, drawing on work written over four decades, and adds to her selection one wholly new poem. It makes for a sequence that is warm, vibrant, alive.

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Politics

    Pan Macmillan Politics

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn Politics, Carol Ann Duffy, one of the English language’s best-loved living poets presents from her own archives, in chronological order, her favourites among her poems on the theme of politics and protest, drawing on work written over four decades. Duffy also adds to the selection her poem written for Danny Boyle’s Pages of the Sea memorial for The Great War. It makes for a sequence that is searching, memorializing, healing.

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Our Times in Rhymes: Being a Prosodical Chronicle

    Vintage Publishing Our Times in Rhymes: Being a Prosodical Chronicle

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisA parliament of fools, or a confederacy of dunces? Blethering celebrities and blundering politicians, royal babies and right royal cock-ups, milkshake madness and vegan sausage rolls - and, of course, the long and winding road to Brexit. If ever the times were ripe for a return to the high days of Augustan satire, it’s now – and the Spectator’s literary editor Sam Leith provides it. Our Times in Rhymes is a waspish, affectionate and very funny look at the state of our nation as it – let's be even-handed - teeters on the cliff-edge of a marvellous opportunity. Here is all the insanity and inanity of 2019, month by cherishable month, rendered in galloping comic verse and paired with satirical drawings by the brilliant cartoonist Edith Pritchett. It makes the perfect Christmas stocking filler for anyone who needs a good laugh at the damnable times we live in.Trade ReviewSam Leith…has turned to verse to unpick the ‘insanity and inanity’ of the year that was 2019 so you can relive the madness and the hilarity month by month -- Emelia Hamilton-Russell * Spears Wealth Management Survey *A new Dunciad specifically for 2019. When times get weird what's the point of a million rancorous tweets? Far better to follow Sam Leith's lead and conduct our discourses solely in sonnets * Martin Rowson *A gloriously satirical take on a darkly savage year. Leith transforms 2019 from bad to verse * Ben Schott *

    1 in stock

    £9.49

  • Zeus Is A Dick

    Hodder & Stoughton Zeus Is A Dick

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisIn the beginning, everything was fine.* And then along came Zeus. *more or lessAhh Greek myths. Those glorious tales of heroism, honour and... petty squabbles, soap-opera drama and more weird sex than Fifty Shades of Grey could shake a stick at! It's about time we stopped respecting myths and started laughing at them. Did you know Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, was born of some discarded genitals? Or that Hera threw her own son off a mountain because he was ugly? Or that Apollo once kidnapped a boat full of people while pretending to be a dolphin? And let's not even get started on Zeus - king of the gods, ruler of the skies and a man who's never heard of self-control. In fact, if there's one thing most Greek myths have in common, it's that all the drama could have been avoided if SOMEONE could keep it in their toga...Horrible Histories writer Susie Donkin takes us on a hilarious romp through mythology and the many times the gods (literally) screwed everything up! Stephen Fry's Mythos by way of Drunk History, Zeus is a Dick is perfect for those who like their myths with a heavy dollop of satire.'Who knew mythology was so bonkers? I am grateful - it had me laughing from the first page to the last.' - Miranda Hart'It's about time someone called him out on all this' - Hera, goddess of marriage, wife of Zeus'Worst. Father. Ever.' - Artemis, goddess of the hunt, daughter of Zeus'Oh yeah, focus on him. I never did anything wrong. Nothing to see here' - Poseidon, god of the seas, brother of Zeus'Just a real dick, honestly' - Many, many peopleTrade ReviewWho knew mythology was so bonkers? I am grateful - it had me laughing from the first page to the last. -- Miranda Hart

    1 in stock

    £15.29

  • Surgically Enhanced: Gift Edition

    Hodder & Stoughton Surgically Enhanced: Gift Edition

    2 in stock

    This new gift edition is a must-have for Pam's many fans - and for anyone who enjoys beautifully crafted stories and poems to make you laugh and make you think.Pam Ayres is one of our most widely-adored poets throughout the world and is nothing less than a national treasure. Her work is popular with fans of all ages, and her wry observations on the peculiarities of modern life will raise a smile from even the most hardened cynic.

    2 in stock

    £13.49

  • Wildeana (riverrun editions)

    Quercus Publishing Wildeana (riverrun editions)

    3 in stock

    Book SynopsisOscar Wilde's early fame ensured that throughout his short life he was written about by many of those he met. He was celebrated - or mocked - as the master of the ingenious epigram, the provocative paradox, the witty aside or the extravagant conceit. In researching his monumental biography of Wilde Matthew Sturgis found, in every major archive, sheets of foolscap in Wilde's distinctive handwriting, setting down a series of unfamiliar epigrams - unpublished try-outs. There were fascinating new discoveries. He uncovered dozens of unfamiliar and previously ungathered anecdotes about Wilde: sidelights on his days in Oxford, London, America and Paris and beyond, by society hostesses, men-about-town, actors, lawyers, minor litterateurs, artists and politicians, diligently setting down his actions, his mannerisms and above all his sayings.The items in this volume are all small additions to the Wilde story: some unfamiliar, others unexpected, they enrich and alter the picture of his life.Trade ReviewWildeana is an intriguing, entertaining miscellany of recollections, letters, descriptions, skits, about Oscar Wilde by his contemporaries, as well as scraps of his own writing. An enlightening collection, perfect for dipping into, for Oscar Wilde fans and newcomers alike. * Tatler (Autumn books roundup) *

    3 in stock

    £10.44

  • How to Enjoy Poetry

    Quercus Publishing How to Enjoy Poetry

    2 in stock

    Book Synopsis'Someone recently said to me, in reference to my poetry podcast, that you'd think poetry would be more popular than ever, in the twenty-first century, because people don't have a lot of time and 'novels are often quite big while poems are often quite small'. I referred them to Doctor Who's Tardis.'Frank Skinner wants you to read more poetry. Wait, wait - don't stop reading. Whether you're a frequent poetry reader or haven't read any since sixth form, Frank's infectious passion for language, rhythm and metre will win you over and provide you with the basic tools you need to tackle any poem.In this short, easy-to-digest and delightful book, Frank guides us through the twists and turns of 'Pad, pad' by Stevie Smith, a short, seemingly simple poem that contains multitudes of meaning and a deceptive depth of emotion. Revel in the mastery of Stevie Smith's choice of words, consider the eternal mystery of the speaker of the poem and be moved by rhyming couplets like you never have before.Give it a go. You never know, you might even enjoy it.

    2 in stock

    £11.69

  • Cancer: A Journey of Attitude and Gratitude

    1 in stock

    £16.10

  • The Quiet in Me: Poems

    Harbour Publishing The Quiet in Me: Poems

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisA posthumous collection of poetry from Patrick Lane, compiled and edited by Lorna Crozier.In this final collection, Patrick Lane cultivates the quiet of living in a body amongst so many other bodies?the trout in the lake, geese arriving with the wind, a raccoon fishing in a river?ultimately revealing a tangled web of life and a speaker who sees both beauty and pain brimming around him.Together, the poems in The Quiet in Me are a clear-eyed and sharp meditation on existing in a world pulsing between life and death, death and life. When the body is ?a museum for what?s gone? and a heart is ?the sound of the wind seething,? there is no answer but to learn the language of quiet; the language of an earth unfolding itself perpetually in the dawn: ?the song of the falling water and wild birds.?With incredible poetic precision, this collection is an offering?to come back to yourself and to lose yourself in sight, sound and sense. Playing in paradoxes??empty marrow bones with their strings of red ants??these poems cultivate dualisms: intimacy and realism, vulnerability and the roughness of youth, a scar that is a father?s teaching, a blade that is a sigh.From one of Canada?s most lyric writers comes a book steeped in the wisdom of the natural world. Told by an eye that never ceases to observe and a heart that is willing to make itself known?to invite others into its warmth and wilderness?this collection transposes leaf to leaf, stone to stone, reminding us that water will always return to water and so will we.

    1 in stock

    £10.44

  • Tonguebreaker

    Arsenal Pulp Press Tonguebreaker

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisThe latest from a Lambda Literary Award-winning poet, about the way we survive, revolt, and thrive.

    1 in stock

    £12.59

  • Disintegrate/dissociate

    Arsenal Pulp Press Disintegrate/dissociate

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisAn incendiary debut poetry collection by Arielle Twist: an exploration of death, metamorphosis, and resurgence.

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers'

    Arsenal Pulp Press Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers'

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisA groundbreaking collection of sex workers' poetry from around the world.

    1 in stock

    £16.19

  • Beast At Every Threshold: Poems

    Arsenal Pulp Press Beast At Every Threshold: Poems

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £13.49

  • I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country

    Arsenal Pulp Press I Cut My Tongue on a Broken Country

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £15.20

  • Hello Serotonin

    Coach House Books Hello Serotonin

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisContemporary Canadian poetry got you down? Well, we'd like to prescribe a little Hello Serotonin, the latest in mood-enhancing poetry anti-depressants. This new book of poems from Jon Paul Fiorentino operates within the constraints of what he terms 'synaptic syntax' - poetry that performs the very nature of neuronal activity from the point of view of a mood-enhanced Human Comedy, which, with a quick turn of phrase, or missing neurotransmitter, could become Human Tragedy. Filled with a witty, self-deprecating and often Andy Kaufmanesque sense of humour, Hello Serotonin is today's generation of pharmaceutical poetry, and will alter your perception of therapeutic poetics. Get your prescription filled today!

    1 in stock

    £7.49

  • Fire Cider Rain

    Coach House Books Fire Cider Rain

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN AWARDPoetry that navigates the science of cold waterways to consider the warmth of the poet’s Chinese-Mauritian family ties Fire Cider Rain is about the limits to which shared cultural and geographic histories can hold a family together. It follows the lives of three Chinese-Mauritian women on the course of dispersing, settling, and rooting over northern landscapes, and the brittle family bonds that tie them to one another and to their home country. Told from the perspective of the youngest of the three women, the book follows the events leading up to and following the death of her grandmother, an ex-lighthouse keeper and matriarch whose fractured relationship with her own daughter haunts the narrator’s life in soft, painful aftershocks. As she navigates the cold cities and waterways of Southern Ontario, our narrator struggles with conflicting desires to run toward and flee from her island identity, which grows ever distant, ever more difficult to find her way back to. At its core, Fire Cider Rain is a book about parent-child relationships as vessels for cultural identity, and the ways in which expressions of love and non-love within those relationships can rupture sense of place, self, and at times, a collective diaspora. Throughout the book, Ng Cheng Hin explores the geopolitics of island nations, the dilution of family histories over time, and the experience of water as a medium for the cyclical movement of island bodies, stories, and cultures. The Mauritian landscape and waterways of southern Ontario recur through the book as convergence points for its many themes."In this stunning debut, Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin weaves wondrous verse across geological spaces that extend from Mauritius to Canada. In this poetry, the Indian Ocean converses with northern landscapes to give voice to the (un)settling of diasporic women in search of rootedness. Water becomes a medium, a metaphor, a rhythm, a motif, and a metamorphosing figure through which memory, loss and mourning become bodies. Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin's sweeping poetry is infused with dexterous and lavish verse that makes the reader want to live within the nuances of each line. Fire Cider Rain is a dazzling debut!" – Kama La Mackarel, author of ZOM-FAM“Mauritian waters of memory migrate through ‘imperial decay’ and ‘calcic dust’ to the cold northern continent where Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin’s lustrous poetic telemetry manifests a lexical biogeography of uprootedness—her lyrical ‘I’ the connecting thread between past and future, between mother and moth, grandmother and cyclone, selia lover and terra nullius. Fire Cider Rain erupts as ebb and swell, distilling belonging and meaning in postcolonial drift, filling absence with terraqueous inquiry and salvaged wake.” – Jeffrey Yang, author of Line and Light"In reading Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin’s poetry, I became immersed within a deep sense memory of why I came to love poetry in the first place. Her attunement to language and cadence vibrates, or as she writes 'love – or recognition, catches in my throat and stings.' Hers is a voice that can make nerve endings sing and one that speaks with such artful earnestness to the difficulties there are in a personal history. Ng Cheng Hin’s poetry is cousin to the spider's web, which belies a kind of vulnerability through its delicate beauty, yet each of its strands contains an exceptional tensile strength." – Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised CosmosTrade Review"Ng Cheng Hin’s writing is soft and intentional, with delicate and strong images of womanhood, generational teachings, and the lessons the land can teach us." – Namitha Rathinappillai, Canthius"The poems in Rhiannon Ng Cheng Hin’s capacious debut, Fire Cider Rain gather and constellate memory and migration, science and language, intimacy and political critique into a complicated love letter." – Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press

    1 in stock

    £11.04

  • Continuity Errors

    Coach House Books Continuity Errors

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisCBC BOOKS CANADIAN POETRY COLLECTIONS TO WATCH FOR IN SPRING 2023Feminist poems both serious and absurd that question our obsession with productivity instead of with care. Continuity Errors questions the privileging of work and productivity over rest and care from an ecological and feminist perspective. Written before and immediately after the birth of her first child, these poems try to imagine the future her son will inherit. Encounters with an unusual cast of characters – including lonely cryptids, unrepentant grifters, and persistent ghosts – provide incomplete answers, and while the continuity errors keep multiplying around her, Wright pauses to consider whether our devotion to innovation is keeping us stuck."Catriona Wright's Continuity Errors is a book of snaking moves and sneaking intellect, a book of style and fortitude and sass. Wright's always sharp and often eerie interrogations lead us through a world of cryptocurrency, grunt work, predictive policing, extinction, haute cuisine, billboard ads, smoke breaks, breast pumps; these are poems for our moment of onslaught and bewilderment that, having had the world forced down their throats, spit back." – Natalie Shapero, author of Popular LongingTrade Review"These feminist poems include the serious and the absurd and interrogate our collective obsession with productivity and work instead of with care. Wright’s lyric, prose, and persona poems are all located within the domestic sphere of childbirth and child care, using different voices to explore these issues." – Cassandra Drudi, Quill & Quire '2023 Spring Poetry Preview'"Capitalism, climate change, feminism and the gender binary — Catriona Wright’s Continuity Errors responds to these topics with dry humour and a vivid parade of aliens, robots, fae, and more though is still incredibly serious in its message." – Shaylyn Schwieg, CAROUSEL Magazine"Continuity Errors by Catriona Wright is excellent! I found the writing to be entrancing, truthful, and transformational." – Emma Sikora, Porter Square Books"Like a post-industrial feminist Rodney Dangerfield, the speaker in the poems of Continuity Errors can’t get no respect." – David Starkey, '31 Outstanding Poetry Books from 2023,' The California Review of Books"The super real, feminist, and sharp-edged poems of Catriona Wright’s Continuity Errors are at turns an 'embodied presence / in virtual environments,' a 'fever / dream of escape,' a 'walk through the cemetery,' and 'a scathing assessment' of our time." – Jami Macarty, NewPages.com

    1 in stock

    £11.89

  • Circumtrauma

    Coach House Books Circumtrauma

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £15.82

  • Calling Down the Sky

    Coach House Books Calling Down the Sky

    1 in stock

    1 in stock

    £13.29

  • King Lear

    Broadview Press Ltd King Lear

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisKing Lear is a play for our times. The central characters experience intense suffering in a hostile and unpredictable world. They face domestic cruelty, political defeat, and a stormy external environment that invades them 'to the skin.' They constantly question the meaning of their experiences as we watch their emotions range from despair to rage to unexpected tenderness and desperate hope as they are rejected, even tortured. Lear's daughters, as in a fairy tale, are three strong women. The elder two vie for sexual and political power, while the youngest, Cordelia, is initially banished because of her plain speaking, then returns in a doomed attempt to restore her father to his throne. King Lear has an unusual performance history. It was significantly revised, by Shakespeare or others, between its first two publications, and was then succeeded by an adaptation that softened the ending so that Lear and Cordelia survived. In our own times King Lear is performed around the world in productions that explore its relevance to contemporary political and environmental challenges. This edition offers a distinctive 'extended' text, taking the later Folio as a starting point and adding the lines that appear only in the Quarto, distinguished by a light gray background. Variations in individual words that are of critical interest are recorded in the margin.Trade Review“The Broadview King Lear is an excellent edition for students and readers of all ages. It provides a useful, unobtrusive view of the two early versions of Shakespeare’s play-text, a clear and perceptive introduction to some key aspects of that play and to Shakespeare in general, compact glosses of words that might puzzle modern readers, and a well-chosen array of relevant documents that put the play into its key contexts.” — Robert N. Watson, University of California, Los Angeles“This King Lear stands out for its educationally wise and theatrically astute text. The editors generously supply a cornucopia of supplementary material from historical documents, prior and contemporary historical narratives, and poetic and dramatic sources. The section on past theatrical productions is so well conceived and written that it creates a sense of eye-witnessed events for both new readers and experienced theater buffs. Unlike any previous edition I’ve seen, here the display and explanation of Quarto and Folio variants appear as imaginative invitations rather than as interruptions or confusions to a reader’s movement through the play. Because they are so well presented, these often small-scale but occasionally quite extended textual alternatives from the earliest versions will enlighten new readers and intrigue experienced teachers and players. The variant passages with their notes together reveal themselves as working guides through the practicalities and creative possibilities of staging plays in Shakespeare’s time.” — Steven Urkowitz, Emeritus Professor, English and Theater, City College of New YorkTable of ContentsAppendix A: Shakespeare's Sources 1. 'The Most Indispensable Thing': A Folk Tale from Germany 2. From Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain (c. 1136) 3. From John Higgins, The Mirror for Magistrates (1575) 4. From Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc (1562) 5. From Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587) 6. From Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590) 7. From The History of King Leir (c. 1594) 8. From Sir Philip Sidney, The Arcadia (1590) 9. From Samuel Harsnett, A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603) Appendix B: Literary, Social, and Historical Contexts 1. From Aristotle, Poetics (c. 330 BCE) 2. From Geoffrey Chaucer, 'The Monk's Tale' (c. 1400) 3. From Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of Poetry (1579) 4. From The Book of Job 5. From John Knox, The First Blast of the Trumpet (1588) 6. From King James, Basilikon Doron (1603) 7. Selections from Jest Books (a) From A Hundred Mery Talys (1526) (b) From Richard Tarlton, Tarlton's Jests (1638) 8. Attitudes to Bastards in Shakespeare's Time (a) A Ballad of the Birth of the Monstrous Child (1562) (b) John Lyly Passes on the Advice of Plutarch (sixteenth century) (c) From Richard Jones, The Book of Honor and Arms (1590) (d) Shakespeare's Bastards 9. Attitudes to Aging in the Renaissance (a) From Youth and Age (fifteenth century) (b) From Psalm 90 (c) Montaigne on Aging Parents (1580) (d) Shakespeare and Old Age Appendix C: Critical ReceptionAppendix D: King Lear's Afterlife1. From Nahum Tate, King Lear (1681)

    1 in stock

    £17.05

  • Lynn Riggs The Indigenous Plays

    Broadview Press Ltd Lynn Riggs The Indigenous Plays

    3 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    3 in stock

    £21.80

  • Nostalgia for Death & Hieroglyphs of Desire

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Nostalgia for Death & Hieroglyphs of Desire

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis Nostalgia for Death is the sole book of Villaurrutia, who was one of the few openly homosexual Latin American writers and one of Mexico''s most important authors of the early twentieth century. "The latest of Eliot Weinberger''s brilliant translations of Latin American poets brings to English the major volume of an impeccable Mexican modernist."--Booklist

    1 in stock

    £14.24

  • The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems of

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis "...spare, psalmlike poems....Together, the poems in this beautifully translated selection...provide us with the autobiography of a poet who felt most at home during winter, in solitude. Hauge deserves a larger American readership, and this book may summon it." —Publishers Weekly "(Hauge''s) poetry is miniaturist, pictorial, and ruminative; personal in that his experience, cognitive and sensual observations, and intentions are everywhere in it. Yet it isn''t at all confessional or self-assertive....He is a man who knows where he is and helps us feel that we can know where we are, too."—Booklist “If you have a tiny farm, you need to love poetry more than the farm. If you sell apples, you need to love poetry more than the apples.”—Robert Bly, from the introduction Olav H. Hauge, one of Norway’s most beloved poets, is a major figure of twentieth-century European poetry. This generous bilingual edition—introduced by Robert Bly—includes the best poems from each of Hauge’s seven books, as well as a gathering of his last poems. Ever sage and plainspoken—and bearing resemblance to Chinese poetry—Hauge’s compact and classically restrained poems are rooted in his training as an orchardist, his deep reading in world literatures, and a lifetime of careful attention to the beauties and rigors of the western fjordland. His spare imagery and unpretentious tone ranges from bleak to unabashedly joyous, an intricate interplay between head and heart and hand. The rose has been sung about.I want to sing of the thorns,and the root—how it gripsthe rock hard, hardas a thin girl’s hand. During a writing career that spanned nearly fifty years, Olav H. Hauge produced seven books of poetry, numerous translations, and several volumes of correspondence. A largely self-educated man, he earned his living as a farmer, orchardist, and gardener on a small plot in the fjord region of western Norway.

    1 in stock

    £18.90

  • Textu

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Textu

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis "Joudah''s poetry thrives on dramatic shifts in perspective, on continually challenging received notions."—The Guardian Emerging in the era of tweets and text messages, poet Fady Joudah has invented a new poetic form: textu. The "u" in textu echoes the one in haiku, and also emphasizes the intimate you. A textu poem has a single rule: be exactly 160 characters long. As theme, form, and style are wide opened, a textu reveals new possibilities and poetry in unexpected ways. Textu Your spine a river into the forestcan''t tell the neurons for the trees I light & lightyou up with sound profile threading the image habitof pleasure Conscience When we learn how an infant in the wombSleeps precisely in a parent''s pose say with fist closedpillowing the temple What will becomeof the poem "A collection of poems that takes its form from the text message necessarily raises similar questions about attention, and attendant questions about empathy. Each poem in Fady Joudah’s Textu was composed on a smart phone’s text message screen, and is “exactly 160 characters long, specific to text message parameters.” Aren’t text messages the epitome of what we glance at in passing, and then just as quickly forget, in that often-described stream of information and stimulation? This book is not a reductive critique of this stream, or what it is doing to us. Neither does the collection let its premise—the textu form—justify itself without inquiry, as though shaping a poem according to the strictures of a text message necessarily makes the poem interesting. Instead, the form feels central to these poems, and to what they are doing. Joudah has pointed out that for most people in the world who can’t afford unlimited texting, exceeding the character count means incurring additional costs; the character is a unit of economic value. The constraint of character count in the book, then, is not only a new kind of meter. It is also a metonym for the ways in which our language and our relationships are constrained by the world in which we live: by taking their form from one born of late capitalism, the text message, what these poems implicitly suggest is that all of our communication—and all of our poems—are shaped by this system, whether we would prefer to hold our attention on this fact or not. It is fitting, then, that even as Textu asks us to consider the context in which lyric poems are made, it draws on and locates itself within the lyric tradition. The textu form shares the lyric’s feel of intimate address, the “u” in “textu” suggesting an interlocutor to whom the poems are addressed. And the poems in the collection take on, among other subjects, the conventionally lyric subjects of natural beauty, loss, and desire." —Margaree Little, Kenyon Review Online Fady Joudah is a poet, translator, and emergency room physician. His first book, The Earth in the Attic, won the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He lives near Houston, Texas.

    1 in stock

    £10.99

  • Barbie Chang

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Barbie Chang

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £18.05

  • The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis A Zen-Taoist poetry classic, in a handsome Chinese-English format This definitive translation of Han Shan’s poetry appears in a bilingual Chinese-English format. Included are extensive notes, a preface by renowned translator Red Pine, a findings list, and photographs of the cave and surrounding area where Han Shan (“Cold Mountain”) lived. Cold Mountain is one of the most revered poets in China. He was a Taoist/Buddhist hermit who begged for food at temples, often sang and drank with cowherds, and became an immortal figure in the history of Chinese literature and Zen. His poems were written twelve-hundred years ago on the rocks, trees, and temple walls of China’s Tientai Mountains. This revised edition also includes poems by Han Shan’s colleagues, Pickup (Shih-te) and Big Stick (Feng-kan), translated here for the first time. As Red Pine begins his Preface, “If China’s literary critics were put in charge of organizing a tea for their country’s greatest poets of the past, Cold Mountain would not be on many invitation lists. Yet no other poet occupies the altars of China’s temples and shines, where his statue often stands alongside immortals and bodhisattvas. He is equally revered in Korea and Japan. And when Jack Kerouac dedicated The Dharma Bums to him in 1958, Cold Mountain became the guardian angel of a generation of Westerners as well.” Reviews of Red Pine''s Collected Songs of Cold Mountain: ”The translator’s preface describes his rendition of the life of Cold Mountain, offering an excellent historical and philosophical context for the simple yet profound poems attributed to the poet."—Library Journal “These are poems one must taste fully and drink whole... The poems of Han-shan read like a journal or memoir, and they often work as Zen koans, challenging the mind to go beyond the words and reason.”—Parabola “Red Pine... has given us the first full collection of Han Shan’s songs in an idiom that is clear, graceful, and neutral enough to last... His translations are accurate and mirror the music of the originals... The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain is a considerable performance and a truly valuable book. Thanks to Copper Canyon''s high standards of bookmaking, it is beautiful to hold and behold; thanks to Red Pine’s care, it will survive as the definitive text of Han Shan in English for many years. It belongs on the shelf of everyone with an interest in poetry and... should be opened often."—The Bloomsbury Review “An exquisite publication that captures the Taoist practice of passionate attention, of being still inside and relaxed in the comforts and discomforts around you, going nowhere else... We discover this in the poet’s vision and spirit, in the precision and balance of the translator’s scholarship and heart, and in the elegant wilderness of the bookmaker’s art around them. On every level this is a beautiful book.”—Judges’ comments on awarding the WESTAF Award in Translation “Cold Mountain’s colloquial poetry...sound like inspired raps—marvelously direct, with skips, jumps, verbal nudges and abrupt revelations... The volume is beautifully produced, with a long and careful introduction... This is an indispensable book.”—The Berkeley Monthly “More than anyone else, Red Pine has made [Han Shan’s] spontaneous poems accessible to Western readers... In this new, expanded edition, invaluable notes and an extensive new critical preface provide a contextual awareness, not just for the poems, but for their sources in Buddhist and Confucian culture.”—Inquiring Mind Red Pine is one of the world’s leading translators of Chinese literary and religious texts. His other translations include Lao-tzu’s Taoteching (isbn 9781556592904) and Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse (isbn 9781556591952).

    1 in stock

    £28.94

  • Obit

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Obit

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis

    1 in stock

    £12.34

  • Indigo

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Indigo

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis"Bass's workabout marriage and parenting, illness and recovery, small daily pleasurescultivates an exuberance that's born of, and balanced by, close watchfulness." The New York TimesA bold and passionate new collection Intimacy is rarely conveyed as gracefully as in Bass's lustrous poems. BooklistIndigo, the newest collection by Ellen Bass, merges elegy and praise poem in an exploration of life's complexities. Whether her subject is oysters, high heels, a pork chop, a beloved dog, or a wife's return to health, Bass pulls us in with exquisite immediacy. Her lush and precisely observed descriptions allow us to feel the sheer primal pleasure of being alive in our own succulent skin, the pleasure of the gifts of hunger, desire, touch. In this book, joy meets regret, devotion meets dependence, and most importantly, the poet so in love with life and living begins to look for the point where the price of aging overwhelms the rewards of staying alive. Bass is relentless in her advocacy for the little pleasures all around her. Her gaze is both expansive and hyperfocused, celebrating (and eulogizing) each gift as it is given and taken, while also taking stock of the larger arc. She draws the lines between generations, both remembering her parents' lives and deaths and watching her own children grow into the space that she will leave behind. Indigo shows us the beauty of this cycle, while also documenting the deeply human urge to resist change and hang on to the life we have, even as it attempts to slip away.

    1 in stock

    £12.34

  • Jim Harrison: Complete Poems

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Jim Harrison: Complete Poems

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisEditors'' Choice Selection, The New York Times Book Review** Starred Reviews ** in Library Journal and Booklist "This robust volume is a testament to the fortitude of a great American poet's work... [a] landmark collection."Raul Niño, Booklist, starred review"[E]ven the readers who know him may not know that Harrison began as a poet and remained one for the rest of his life. [Jim Harrison: Complete Poems is] a massive and bounteous body of work that would have made Harrison a significant American writer even if he had never published in any other genre."The New York Times Book Review, Editors'' Choice "In a collection that spans decades of living and writing, there are poems of every character, many of them superb."Library Journal, starred reviewThis densely rich book...places Harrison among the pantheon of our best American poets. New York Journal of Books"I''ve always loved Jim Harrison''s poetryso full of itself, so direct and hungry and angered and awed. I think of him in many ways as a religious poet and was surprised that he was excluded from Harold Bloom''s anthology American Religious Poems. It seemed quite the oversight."Joy Williams, The Paris Review"That's what makes his poetry so intimate: the sense that it comes to us without filter, without the expectations or necessity of narrative. It is why I will always think of Harrison, most of all, as a poet."David Ulin, AltaWhen [Jim Harrison: Complete Poems] arrives in the mail I stare at it for a time a little dumbfounded. It is gorgeous and it is massive. The next day I carried it north with me to the Flathead Indian Reservation. I am teaching poetry to fourth- and fifth graders there. At the beginning of each of four classes I held the book up for everyone to see. We passed it around so everyone could feel its heft, see the photo on the back cover of the grizzled poet, his eyes turned down, drawing on the ubiquitous cigarette. I described it as a physical representation of a life devoted to poetry and how wonderful that is. I was asked how long it will take me to read the whole thing. A lifetime,' I answer.Chris La Tray, The Missoulian"Harrison described his own work as (c)rude, holy, natural, political, sexual,' and page after page here he hits those notes time and again."Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"The publication of the Jim Harrison: Complete Poems will be the major poetic event of the season." Paul Yamazaki, City Lights BooksellersJim Harrison's poems have a vitality, range, and revelation equal in importance to the more widely known fiction. A pitch-perfect field guide, Harrison scouts with full sense of kinship and acrobatic powers of both language and imagination his life's landscapes, events, and fellow creatures. His direct, chiselled statements of thought, feeling, and invention make the world bigger in every dimension. Jane Hirshfield, Ploughshares"Some of the poems are funny, some are serious, and many are bawdy, but none will disappoint a reader." Bill Castanier, Lansing City Pulse"To say that Harrison's Complete Poems is Shakespearian in scope is probably an exaggeration, but only a little. Harrison certainly had far more time than the Bard to devote to his literary endeavors. . . . There is no denying the power and influence of his ghazals of the early 1970s, and if his voracious appetite for experience offends some readers, it's clear he was one of the major poets of the last six decades, someone who believed ''in the Resurrection mostly / because he was never taught how not to.''"California Review of BooksFrom the Introduction by Terry Tempest Williams: "Jim Harrison...was among the great onesan elevated soul in all his unruliness who favored his senses and courted the wild on the page and in the world. His was a storied life that loomed large, and we are the beneficiaries. ''Such a powerful wounded poetwrote as if he had to sing with a cut throat . . . and he did have to sing,'' said Jorie Graham."Jim Harrison: Complete Poems is the definitive collection from one of America's iconic writers. Introduced by activist and naturalist writer Terry Tempest Williams, this tour de force contains every poem Harrison published over his fifty-year career, as well as a section of previously unpublished "Last Poems." Here are the nature-based lyrics of his early work, the high-velocity ghazals, a harrowing prose-poem correspondence with a Russian suicide, the riverine suites, fearless meditations inspired by the Zen monk Crazy Cloud, and a joyous conversation in haiku-like gems with friend and fellow poet Ted Kooser.Weaving throughout nearly 1000 pages are Harrison's legendary passions and appetites, his love songs and lamentations, and a clarion call to pay attention to the life you are actually living. Jim Harrison: Complete Poems confirms that Jim Harrison is a talented storyteller with a penetrating eye for details, or as Publishers Weekly called him, an untrammeled renegade genius a poet talking to you instead of around himself, while doing absolutely brilliant and outrageous things with language.The Heart''s Work: Jim Harrison''s Poetic Legacy: The Heart''s Work is a multi-book, multi-year publishing project by Copper Canyon Press to secure and advance Jim Harrison''s poetic legacy. To date, books published as part of the The Heart''s Work include The Essential Poems, Collected Ghazals (with afterword by Denver Butson), Jim Harrison: Complete Poems (produced as both a single volume and a three-volume box set, with introductions by Terry Tempest Williams, Colum McCann, Joy Williams, and John Freeman), and the paperback printing of Dead Man''s Float. New projects forthcoming!Limited Edition Box Set: Jim Harrison: Complete Poems also appears as a three-volume box set. (The ISBN for the box set is 9781556596414.) Print run was limited to 750 copies. Each volume is introduced by a different writer: Colum McCann, Joy Williams, and John Freeman. As of March 2022, the box set is sold out and has been listed out-of-print. Copies may be available from the publisher.First Edition Points: Please note that there is no indication of first edition on the copyright page of the single volume of Jim Harrison: Complete Poems . To confirm a first edition, check the attribution on the poem "She" (page 886): First editions have only a single attribution, Alta, 2021, and all subsequent printings also include the attribution Bozeman Daily Chronicle, 2016.

    1 in stock

    £34.19

  • The World Has Need of You: Poems for Connection

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. The World Has Need of You: Poems for Connection

    1 in stock

    Book Synopsis?Poets feed us. They look where there seems to be nothing to see, and they see.??Alberto RíosIn times of joy and sorrow, celebration and confusion, people turn to poetry. Amid the initial uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, the staff and interns of Copper Canyon Press created The World Has Need of You, a response to our community?s need for balm, for fuel, for a sense of connection.Curated from our in-house catalogue of poems, this anthology is dedicated to our community of poets and readers with deep gratitude and awe: Your support and collaboration ensures that poetry will continue to flourish, bring comfort, and ignite change. We trust that, to weather any moment life brings, you will return to this collection to find the poets.But they could sit you downand tell you how poems are born in silenceand sometimes, in moments of great noise;of how they arrive like the rain,unexpectedly cracking open the sky.? Tishani Doshi, from ?Find the Poets?

    1 in stock

    £11.39

  • The Trees Witness Everything

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. The Trees Witness Everything

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisA lover of strict form, best-selling poet Victoria Chang turns to compact Japanese waka, powerfully innovating on tradition while continuing her pursuit of one of life's hardest questions: how to let go.In The Trees Witness Everything, Victoria Chang reinvigorates language by way of concentration, using constraint to illuminate and free the wild interior. Largely composed in various Japanese syllabic forms called wakas, each poem is shaped by pattern and count. This highly original work innovates inside the lineage of great poets including W.S. Merwin, whose poem titles are repurposed as frames and mirrors for the text, stitching past and present in complex dialogue. Chang depicts the smooth, melancholic isolation of the mind while reaching outward to namewith reverence, economy, and whimsythe ache of wanting, the hawk and its shadow, our human urge to hide the minute beneath the light.

    1 in stock

    £12.34

  • Diaries of a Terrorist

    Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Diaries of a Terrorist

    1 in stock

    Book SynopsisSexy, outspoken, and explosive, the terrorist of Soto's debut collection resists police violence with linguistic verve and radical honesty.This debut poetry collection demands the abolition of policing and human caging. In Diaries of a Terrorist, Christopher Soto uses the we pronoun to emphasize that police violence happens not only to individuals, but to whole communities. His poetics open the imagination towards possibilities of existence beyond the status quo. Soto asks, Who do we call terrorist, & why? These political surrealist poems shift between gut-wrenching vulnerability, laugh-aloud humor, and unapologetic queer punk raunchiness. Diaries of a Terrorist is groundbreaking in its ability to speakfrom a local to a global scaleabout one of the most important issues of our time.

    1 in stock

    £12.34

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