A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Carcanet Press Ltd Last Poems
Book SynopsisLast Poems brings together the poems from Thomas Kinsella's five final Peppercanister pamphlets, originally collected as Late Poems (2013), along with a selection of new poems, fragments and revised work which the poet completed before his death in December 2021. An iconic figure in Irish literature, Thomas Kinsella was one of the great poets of the last century: his poems' concern with elemental questions, and a poetics which could be equal to them, is evident here in poems drawn from student publications, in his characteristically meditative sequences and in glittering late fragments. His work was compared to Joyce's by the New York Times for 'its sense of place [and] quest for coherence and meaning in a dark and precarious world': throughout, the poems face up to pressing concerns, age and mortality, the savage waste of war, the opposing ways in which religion and science frame the human predicament, and how the artist may creatively redeem and, in their work, 'offer the Gift onward'.Trade Review'Thomas Kinsella is the most important and the most compendious Irish poet since Yeats.' - Thomas H. Jackson; 'A glowing powerful source in Irish poetry.' - Eavan Boland
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd For the Unnamed
Book SynopsisFor the Unnamed was originally entitled 'For the Unnamed Black Jockey Who Rode the Winning Steed in the Race Between Pico's Sarco and Sepulveda's Black Swan in Los Angeles, in 1852'. That title provided the full narrative in a nutshell: we know the names of the owners of the two horses, we know the horses' names, the place and date of the race. But apart from his colour, and his victory, we know nothing about the jockey who made the whole thing happen. Fred D'Aguiar's new book recovers and re-imagines his story. It was the most publicised race of its era with numerous press notices but he remained unnamed. We are given several perspectives on the action – owner's, trainer's, the horse Black Swan's, the jockey's lover, the jockey himself. But one crucial element of identity is forgotten, and that forgetfulness speaks eloquently about the time and the freed man's circumstances in the mid-nineteenth century. Fred D'Aguiar's previous collection, Letters to America (2020), was a Poetry Book Society Winter Choice and a White Review Book of the Year.Trade Review'one of the most important Guyanese writers of the twentieth century.' - Leo Boix, Poetry London
£13.49
Carcanet Press Ltd From Our Own Fire
Book SynopsisA The Telegraph and Observer Book of the Year. This prose and poetry tour de force of storytelling has the narrative punch of a novel. It is a new departure for the poet, and for poetry itself. It takes the reader into the not-too-distant future: an artificial intelligence rules the world, and a working-class family use their wits to live off the land. William Letford blends prose and his inimitable poetry: sci-fi and hunter-gatherer are merged into a coherent story in the pages of a stonemason's journal. 'You won't see the best of a Macallum until you put something in their fist,' says Letford, introducing the family. 'Joiner, nurse, stonemason, hairdresser, plumber, gardener. Lorna even repairs vintage watches. That's the quantum mechanics of manual labour.' We join the Macallum family as they combine their skills to reconnect with the land in a world where the empowered are hell-bent on creating a new utopia. Joe, the stonemason, records in his journal the struggles and successes of a carnival of characters. They hurl grace and humour at a future that is being shaped by a single, powerful entity. Letford's storytelling is gritty and beautiful. 'A Macallum, it seems to me now, is made to move, to think on the run. The sofas in our houses were sinkholes. The actors on a fifty-two-inch flat screen - shadows on a cave wall.'Trade Review'The pleasure I have gained from William Letford's poems... will, I am confident, stay with me for ever.' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian; 'William Letford is the future of Scottish poetry.' - Mark Buckland, Cargo Publishing
£13.49
Carcanet Press Ltd The Coming Thing
Book SynopsisA TLS and The Irish Times Book of the Year. The Coming Thing is a brilliant long narrative poem. It is not Evans's first: she has become celebrated for work on this scale, spoken, dramatic, abundant. She has been justly acclaimed by, among others, Colm Toibin. He says of her inimitable narrative style, 'Slowly, a poem that seems animated by random thoughts and images takes on a strange, concentrated power; the lines begin to feel like pure style, the narrative voice holding and wielding the hidden energies that Martina Evans consolidates, and then releases with such energy and confidence and verve.' Imelda, the book's central character, is immersed in challenging new worlds where old customs still somehow survive. It is the 1980s and the poem takes shape among punks in Cork City. The 'coming thing' refers to the arrival of computers which were taking hold and beginning to effect their transformations of data and then of lives; but ultimately the title identifies the abortion which Imelda will have in a Brixton clinic. Imelda, who Evans's regular readers will recall from her earlier narrative Petrol (2012), narrates the story with a light touch, even when the book's preoccupation with abortion, suicide and euthanasia provides a strong and compelling undertow. The Coming Thing looks hard at the duplicity surrounding received ideas about the sacredness of human life and how economic change runs counter to the values of 'old' Ireland.
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd Paterson
Book SynopsisWilliam Carlos Williams (1883–1963), like his friend Ezra Pound, never finished his magnum opus, a poem as impossibly ambitious as the Cantos, but richly invested in the present world. It was published over a period of a dozen years (1946–1958) in five books, the sixth left incomplete. The first book was welcomed by the great American poet-critic Randall Jarrell. He called it 'the best thing Williams has ever written' – 'how wonderful and unlikely that this extraordinary mixture of the most delicate lyricism of perception and feeling with the hardest and homeliest actuality should ever have come into being! There has never been a poem more American.' He was disappointed with the books that followed. But he was expecting an American epic while Williams was delivering something more original, Whitmanesque, an evocation of a New Jersey community (Paterson), a great American river (the Passaic) that powered its mill wheels, a confluence of human and natural worlds in conflicts and harmonies. It is a great poem about humankind and the environment it finds, exploits but cannot dominate. The style has been called documentary, but that hardly does justice to its subtleties of tone and its American patterns of sound. Williams trained as a physician and practised as a doctor all his life. His double vocation produced a poetry different in kind from the erudite and culturally knowing and allusive work of his contemporaries. Its subtleties are of another kind.
£999.99
Carcanet Press Ltd From From
Book SynopsisA Publishers Weekly and New York Times Book of the Year. Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry 2023. Monica Youn's first UK collection is her fourth and most ambitious book. It ends with prose, or at least with paragraphs, the long lyrical essay 'In the Passive Voice', and the intense 'Detail of the Rice Chest', explorations of race, identity and belonging seldom so directly broached in poetry, though they are the unspoken theme of much of our silenced discourse. Monica Youn is an undefended poet, which is not the same thing as defenceless. On the contrary, the undefended poet speaks truths without defensive irony. When there is humour it disarms the reader, until we too are undefended and can confront some of the themes we are reluctant to speak of. The poems recast classical myth in the light of coloniality, otherness and desire, juxtaposing figures which elicit one another's deeper natures. There are metamorphoses, fables. In place of Wallace Stevens's blackbird, Youn proposes 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Magpie', the two-hued bird with a bad reputation.Trade Review'From From is equal parts comic and tragic, clinical and wrenching. Monica Youn's parables and studies are devastating meditations on the sadism of whiteness and the abjection of racial containment. From the personal, to Du Soon Ja, to beloved icons like Dr Seuss, Youn examines how complicity gestates and develops, how unexamined desire and fear lead to the hatred of the other and oneself while yanking up the roots of words to unearth the hidden biases built into the way we speak. [...] From From is unforgiving and horrifying, singular and absolutely extraordinary.' - Cathy Park Hong; 'In reflecting and refracting the fantasies and absurdities, dark secrets and blatant cruelties by which American racism invents and maintains itself, Youn counters our brutal imagination with flammable, superior dreams.' - New York Times
£13.49
Carcanet Press Ltd Poems, Stories and Writings
Book SynopsisMargaret Tait (1918–1999) was a pioneering filmmaker for whom words and images made the world real. 'In a documentary', she wrote, real things 'lose their reality... and there's no poetry in that. In poetry, something else happens.' If film, for Tait, was a poetic medium, her poems are works of craft and observation that are generous and independent in their vision of the world, poems that make seeing happen. Sarah Neely, Professor in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow, draws on Tait’s three poetry collections, her book of short stories, her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to make available for the first time a collection of the full range of Tait's writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture, and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.
£13.49
Carcanet Press Ltd Eleanor Among the Saints
Book SynopsisA Poetry Book Society Recommendation Spring 2024. In her second collection, Mann wrestles with the questions and possibilities raised when trans identity, faith and the limits of myth and language intersect and are tested. Eleanor Among the Saints is a study in the queer joy found in counter-factuals and fantasy, shaped through the prism of the disputed story of Eleanor Rykener, a medieval trans woman, seamstress and sex worker.Trade Review'All poetry has something to do with bodies being transformed - whether in violence and grief, or in hope, in embrace, in miracle. Rachel Mann's brilliant collection is about these transformations, realised for us here with exhilarating verbal energy and emotional subtlety, a poetry that is solid and fluid at the same time, as bodies are.' - Rowan Williams;'Rachel Mann weaves an intricate web of language to examine the intimate relationship between the transforming, transformative body, between sexuality and spirituality, between religious ecstasy, fear and love. When Eleanor 'John' Rykener - a trans person living in medieval England - says 'I am not code for another's sins' she becomes utterly contemporary and timeless at the same time and we would all do well to listen.' - Kim Moore;'Nobody else could have written this: poems formed in the space where divinity, the body, trans identity and history fold together. A singular, sensational collection.' - Andrew McMillan
£10.79
Carcanet Press Ltd NearLife Experience
Book SynopsisThe poems in Near-Life Experience consider, above all, ideas of attentiveness: to art and experience, to nature and imagination; to the present moment as it happens, what it offers, leaves behind, and means.
£10.79
Carcanet Press Ltd The Iron Bridge
Book SynopsisFrom Sussex to Mexico, the poems in Rebecca Hurst's debut collection travel far and wide, documenting tensions between embodied and inherited landscapes.
£11.39
Carcanet Press Ltd PN Review 279
Book SynopsisThe September-October 2024 issue of PN Review, one of the most outstanding poetry journals of our time.
£10.79
Carcanet Press Ltd Tablets
Book SynopsisThese short poems, considered as Iraqi haiku, reflect an urgent wisdom beyond their original borders.
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd One Little Room
Book SynopsisThe poems in One Little Room enter and explore confined spaces in history and personal memory.
£10.79
Carcanet Press Ltd Invisible Dog
Book SynopsisA selected poems in translation by one of Mexico's leading poets, taken from five collections of verse across five decades, addressing issues of migration, duality, language loss and the mutability of identity.
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd Patternbook
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£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd Selected Poems and Essays
Book Synopsis
£15.29
Carcanet Press Ltd Men of the Same Name
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd Slow Puncture
£11.69
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC On the Line
Book SynopsisA celebrated French bestseller, this novel in verse that captures the mundane and the beautiful, the blood and sweat, of working on the factory floor in the processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Unable to find work in his field, Joseph Ponthus enlists with a temp agency and starts to pick up casual shifts in the fish processing plants and abattoirs of Brittany. Day after day he records with infinite precision the nature of work on the production line: the noise, the weariness, the dreams stolen by the repetitive nature of exhausting rituals and physical suffering. But he finds solace in a life previously lived. Shelling prawns, he dreams of Alexandre Dumas. Pushing cattle carcasses, he recalls Apollinaire. And, in the grace of the blank spaces created by his insistent return to a new line of text – mirroring his continued return to the production line – we discover the woman he loves, the happiness of a Sunday, Pok Pok the dog, the smell of the sea. In this celebrated French bestseller, translated by Stephanie Smee, Ponthus captures the mundane, the beautiful and the strange, writing with an elegance and humour that sit in poignant contrast with the blood and sweat of the factory floor. On the Line is a poet's ode to manual labour, and to the human spirit that makes it bearable. Praise for On the Line: 'Poetic and political, lyrical and realistic, Joseph Ponthus' spirited elegy is at once surprising, captivating and affecting' Télérama 'It is not every day that one witnesses the birth of a writer' France 5 La Grande Librairie 'A work that is powerful, clever, benevolent, optimistic even. Essential reading' Causette 'Be prepared for a battering of the senses with vivid, grisly prose' France MagazineTrade ReviewPoetic and political, lyrical and realistic, Joseph Ponthus' spirited elegy is at once surprising, captivating and affecting * Télérama *It is not every day that one witnesses the birth of a writer * France 5 La Grande Librairie *A work that is powerful, clever, benevolent, optimistic even. Essential reading * Causette *Be prepared for a battering of the senses with vivid, grisly prose * France Magazine *A lasting gift to the French – and now the English – literary landscape. You don't need to be a poetry aficionado to be stirred by the understated beauty of Ponthus's writing, and Stephanie Smee's superb translation, nor to be moved by the world that Ponthus paints and probes. A world in which the vicissitudes of factory life are illuminated with wit and wisdom, and joy can be found twinkling where you least expect it * European Literature Network *Writing from real-life experience, Ponthus details the drudgery, exhaustion, frustration, horror, stress, satisfaction and occasional joy found working in an industrial food factory. Using an experimental style that's half verse, half prose, he makes this refrigerated, sanitised, fluorescent-lit world feel beautiful, even romantic. I found myself dropping the book into my lap for minutes at a time just to process just how fucked-up his experience is. This is a powerful – but not preachy or guilt-tripping – window into an ugly, opaque system we're all part of * Broadsheet *
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Mental Fight
Book SynopsisAn epic poem touching on issues of racism, intolerance and environmental destructions from Booker Prize-winning author Ben Okri. There is much to celebrate in the human journey so far – art in all its forms, advances made in the fields of technology and medicine and, for many of us, the miracle of freedom. But there is also much to regret – racism, intolerance, the destruction of our environment, the reality and the legacy of slavery. In this long, sustained consideration of the state we find ourselves in, Ben Okri invokes the past to explain the present, and sings out a message of hope. The future is still ours to make. This epic poem, an anthem for the twenty-first century, first appeared in The Times in January 1999. Its message could hardly be more relevant to our present condition. Discover this revised edition of an inspiring and extraordinarily tender work. 'Ben Okri is that rare thing, a literary and social visionary, a writer for whom all three – literature, culture and vision – are profoundly interwoven' Ali SmithTrade ReviewPRAISE FOR BEN OKRI: 'Ben Okri is that rare thing, a literary and social visionary, a writer for whom all three – literature, culture and vision – are profoundly interwoven' Ali Smith. 'Where fiction's master of enchantments stares down a real horror, and without blinking or flinching, produces a work of beauty, grace and uncommon power' -- Marlon James on The Freedom Artist
£7.59
Canelo Shadow of the Eagle: 'A terrific read' Conn
Book SynopsisWill Britain take him in... or mark him as its enemy?'A brilliantly realised world of Imperial ambition and native resistance' Simon Scarrow'Wonderful, distinct characters' Conn IgguldenFaustus Valerianus is the son of a Roman father and a British mother, a captive sold among the spoils after Claudius’s invasion.Now both parents have died within a month of each other, and so he sells the family farm and enlists, joining legendary general Agricola’s campaign to conquer the entirety of the British Isles culminating in a devastating battle amongst Caledonia's dark mountains.But Faustus will have to contend with more than ferocious British warriors and whip-cracking elements. For the bonds of blood can weigh heavy on one’s soul. The call of his mother’s true people. His father’s restless shadow. Faustus must carry them with him…A deeply moving, gripping, epic historical drama, perfect for fans of Rosemary Sutcliff, Ben Kane and Simon Scarrow.Praise for Shadow of the Eagle 'Faustus is a fascinating character and it’s a treat to see how he negotiates the challenges he faces. His duties in the service of Rome comprise a truly Faustian pact!' Simon Scarrow'I adored Faustus and Constantia in particular. Great sense of humour throughout. This is a terrific read' Conn Iggulden'I only need one word to describe this stunning novel: masterful' Anthony Riches, Sunday Times bestselling author of Wounds of Honour‘Blood, steel, honour, and a deep and gripping tale of the Roman army on the frontier of the empire. Hunter has created an instant classic' S J A Turney, author of the Marius' Mules series'A haunting, historical epic' Gordon Doherty, author of Sons of Rome'Enthralling and authentic historical roman fiction, that brings the period alive and keeps you turning the page' Alex Gough, author of Emperor's Sword
£17.09
Liverpool University Press Sidonius Apollinaris Complete Poems
Book SynopsisSidonius Apollinaris was an inhabitant of southern Roman Gaul in the mid fifth century AD, when it was threatened by invasions from beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire and by competing warlords. His many poetic works include three panegyrics to emperors at the beginnings of their reigns; these are carefully translated and annotated, and provided with comment and synopses. His multiple shorter poems, in a variety of metres, are translated into good and lively English and given separate introductions and notes of various kinds, historical and literary. There is an extensive and informative introduction to the whole work.This book by Roger Green, a lifelong expert in Late Antiquity, gives a firsthand account of the political strife and manoeuvring of the times but also a vivid picture of the lives of Sidonius’s like-minded friends in an almost post-Roman episode of Rome’s existence. Sidonius was read widely in the Middle Ages, with a golden age in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and also in the fifteenth century revival of Late Antique literature. Today his poetry will awaken new study and interest, without the archaism of many older translations and with a fresh and updated approach to many issues.
£98.55
Troubador Publishing The Colour of Hope: Poems of Happiness in
Book SynopsisThe Colour Of Hope is a poetry collection with happiness at its heart. The 45 poems inside were created during lockdown, at a time when finding beauty and comfort in the everyday seemed at once fraught with difficulty and vitally important. Each was written for a specific recipient, based on three things they guaranteed would make them feel happy. I received a wonderful range of briefs. From the beautifully universal – a longing for nature and freedom, time spent with family, summers spent in other lands – to the gloriously specific – snaffling a Toffee Crisp from the fridge late at night, Fleetwood Mac songs, making the perfect scrambled eggs, and Ceilidh dancing. The result is a collection of poems that serves both as a record of this intense and intensely strange year, and as an uplifting reading experience that will connect and resonate with a much wider audience than the individuals they were initially written for. 2020 will be one for the history books, a year that has created emergencies on many fronts, not least the emotional. 60% of adults, and 68% of young people in the UK reported a decline in their mental health during lockdown. Mental health charities are working harder than ever to provide support to the vulnerable and in need, and every little helps. As such, 20% from the sale of this book will be donated to Mind, to help provide a bit of light in these uncertain times. Hope comes in many shapes and colours, and it’s my hope that you’ll find some of your own pieces of happiness, comfort and, yes, hope within these pages.
£10.44
Troubador Publishing Trilussa, Aesop of Rome: Roman, poet, satirist,
Book SynopsisOften history is told by the victors, or by those who did not witness it. Trilussa was a witness, and through his art, a victor. He documented Roman and Italian society in poems and fables, from Italy's birth in the late nineteenth century, to its rebirth after the Second World War. In 1950, the nascent Republic acknowledged Trilussa's importance and values by making him Senator for Life. He enjoyed this accolade for only three weeks before he died on 21 December 1950: the same year as another great fabulist, George Orwell. Trilussa's popularity in Italy has not diminished. Fans to this day take to YouTube, where they delight in reciting a large grain of truth wrapped in one of his fables. This bilingual book aims to prove his appeal is universal, and he is worthy to be "crowned" Aesop of Rome. Leaving school at sixteen, without a qualification, he told his mother he was going to be a poet. He would become more than a poet. Under his pen name, Trilussa, he wrote perceptively, amusingly, lovingly, cuttingly, and cunningly in good times and hard. He appealed to all classes, saints and sinners, and even to a dictator who Trilussa would defy through fables, and satires. Within hours of Trilussa's death, Senator Bergamini declared in the Senate, Trilussa "had an aura of popularity that it would have been imprudent to harm or confront." He was right. In his way, the poet and fabulist won; the dictator and fascism lost.
£9.50
Olympia Publishers I Wrote A Lesson in Poetry
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£13.16
Olympia Publishers Wonderboy
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£6.99
Olympia Publishers Love is Fcking Hard
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£8.54
Olympia Publishers 101 Animal Universes
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£6.99
Olympia Publishers Little Lost Girl
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£7.59
Olympia Publishers Love Your Memories -- To Begin
£6.99
Olympia Publishers Like a mad woman shitting
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£7.59
Liverpool University Press The Room Between Us
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022 A PBS Recommendation Summer 2022In her debut collection, Denise Saul explores family and identity as she tells the story of a mother’s illness and subsequent aphasia, and a daughter's ongoing role as carer. At the heart of their relationship is an awareness of the inadequacies of language to name painful experiences as together they start to know the world afresh. Deeply affecting, the book finds a space for both the extraordinary and the ordinary, balancing all that is between. Such betweenness creates a space to explore wider dynamics of power, and the epiphanies and aftershocks of ongoing loss.Trade ReviewReviews'With the intent gaze and bold grace of the lover and mystic, Denise Saul reveals the beauty and bravery inherent in the humblest everyday objects and actions. These vital poems address a fundamental enigma of human experience – how words bring order to the chaos of the cosmos, and the surreal shapes and unfathomable lacunas the world assumes when language goes into hiding. The Room Between Us is a devastating debut collection and a profound lesson in the subtle art of listening.' Nancy Campbell'Denise Saul’s book The Room Between Us is an in depth examination of different forms of care; care for the unwell and also self care. All told with an underlying relationship to mortality and all its reflection, rumination, regret, and fevered dream in the cared for, as well as in the carer. A commanding book on illness, survival and life that speaks directly to the current times we all now live in.' Roger Robinson'An achingly tender debut, a rare gem of a book. Each of these lines contains essential grains helping us to deepen our understanding and teach us so much about complicated love.' Mona Arshi'In the title poem of in The Room Between Us, Denise Saul strikes her minimalist, eerie unforgettable note. A true stylist, Saul is somehow both delicate and bold, her prose poems studied, her lines impeccable. [...] As in a fairytale, language is power and sometimes withholding is the only power left to the patient, "The women hid their tongues when men did not listen to them . . ." Like Lilith in Eden, Saul doesn’t name like a coloniser, she listens, her silences are powerful.'Martina Evans, The Irish Times'The book explores the ways families go on interacting with each other when language fails, collapses or is rendered insufficient. [...] As the collection develops, we become aware of how bodily agency, a looming sense of frustration and hope, all work together to complicate individualism. [...] Silence is part of the caregiving experience. The gaps or spaces between lines, horizontally and vertically, are used to build boundaries between body and language. Some poems in the collection follow other experiences of loss: the death of a parent and sibling. In The Room Between Us, what is said and unsaid also invokes a close connection with nature and sound.'Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin'The relationship between a carer and a sick person can be one of the most intimate of our lives; The Room Between Us encourages us to consider how language transforms a personal experience into a universal one.'SK Grout, The Alchemy Spoon'Denise Saul’s The Room Between Us is, among many things, a liminal space. Rather than simply recreating the four walls of her mother’s care home room, and then adorning them with lyric and imagery, Saul conjures a boundlessly expansive territory that imagines the gardens, sitting rooms, and attics of the mind.'Ariana Benson, Magma Poetry'Experimental in its use of voice, ellipsis and elegiac prose poetry, The Room Between Us offers a poignant narrative of love and grief, of speech recovery and of silence, capturing the unspeakable and inconsolable across physical, temporal and emotional spaces.' Jennifer Wong, The Poetry Review‘In Denise Saul’s The Room Between Us, “room” becomes a metaphor for the physical four walls in which carer and cared for are contained… serious illness can be a period when time appears to slow down and all the tiny and previously unconsidered details of life: sights, sounds smells become increasingly intensified. Capturing this in unsentimental language is what makes this collection so compelling.’ Susan Jane Sims, ARTEMISpoetry‘Family and sickness are also at the heart of Denise Saul’s The Room Between Us… A numbed blankness is what gives these poems their poignancy.’ Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph‘Denise [Saul] rewrites the narrative for women in mourning... ultimately, Saul's collection is a reclamation that makes time for mundanity and complexity.’ Holly Moberley‘Beyond the literal, there is also magic, brightness and colour in these poems... Saul’s style is condensed and thoughtful; a reader may sense loss and emotive power, and may find themselves engaging with a poem after it has ended... a beautiful collection, which is layered and imagistic in its interpretation of deeply personal experience.’ Maria Taylor, Under the Radar‘The Room Between Us is energetic but delicate, covering issues of care, family love, dread, and reflection in a very personal and contemporary way.’ Lauren-Marie Kennedy, Dundee University Review of the Arts
£13.49
Liverpool University Press Keats’s Negative Capability: New Origins and
Book SynopsisIn late December 1817, when attempting to name “what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature,” John Keats coined the term “negative capability,” which he glossed as “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.” Since then negative capability has continued to shape assessments of and responses to Keats’s work, while also surfacing in other contexts ranging from contemporary poetry to punk rock. The essays collected in this volume, taken as a whole, account for some of the history of negative capability, and propose new models and directions for its future in scholarly and popular discourse. The book does not propose a particular understanding of negative capability from among the many options (radical empathy, annihilation of self, philosophical skepticism, celebration of ambiguity) as the final word on the topic; rather, the book accounts for the multidimensionality of negative capability. Essays treat negative capability’s relation to topics including the Christmas pantomime, psychoanalysis, Zen Buddhism, nineteenth-century medicine, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. Describing the “poetical Character” Keats notes that “it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.” This book, too, revels in such multiplicity.Trade Review‘That this book ranges so richly, so variously, and so widely will be welcome to all readers, not least because it embodies the Shakespearean aspects of negative capability.’ Nicholas Roe, Wardlaw Professor of English Literature at the University of St Andrews‘Keats's Negative Capability will ... prompt [its readers] to think again and anew and unceasingly on what negative capability was, is, and can become.’ Jonathan Mulrooney, Associate Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross‘[A] wonderfully diverse collection that equally tells the story of Keats while profitably poking and probing the discursive, diffusive, and cultural powers of the term [negative capability]… in the spirit of an intelligently designed Keatsian smorgasbord, the collection has something for everyone.’ G. Kim Blank, The Wordsworth Circle'This book significantly and provocatively reconfigures our understanding of Keats's poetry and letters, his authorial intentions, his aesthetic philosophy, and his global legacy.'Rebecca Nesvet, Review 19'[A] thought-provoking collection of commentary and innovative thinking... The work here will not provide statements of ‘fact and reason’, but instead will stimulate future scholarship on Keats and Romantic legacy for many years to come.'Anna Mercer, The Hazlitt Review'[The essays'] disagreements about what negative capability can and can’t mean give the volume a conversational dynamism; even their anxiety resembles the urgency of a spirited argument between friends... As Jonathan Mulrooney’s afterward notes, the collection’s dissonance is “its most Keatsian” feature.'Brittany Pladek, European Romantic Review'The collection will be essential to students and scholars of Keats as Rejack's analysis of John Jeffrey's role in transcribing 'Negative Capability' refreshes our understating of the concept. Contributors to this collection have risen to Rejack's editorial challenge and, produced prominent and diverse readings, which extend in variety across a range of critical approaches, including feminism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. Keats's 'Negative Capability' remains a vital concept, which continues to provoke readers and writers alike to reflect on its myriad values and virtues in the present and will continue to do so in the future.'Amina Brik, The BARS ReviewTable of ContentsPreface - Nicholas RoeIntroduction. Disquisitions: Reading Negative Capability, 1817–2017 - Brian Rejack and Michael TheunePart I. ‘swelling into reality’: New Contexts for Negative Capability Keats’s Negative Capability: On Pantomime and ‘Irritable Reaching’ - Brian Bates John Keats’s Jeffrey’s ‘Negative Capability’; or, Accidentally Undermining Keats - Brian Rejack Keats’s ‘Negative Capability’ and Hazlitt’s ‘Natural Capacity’ - Michael Theune ‘that strong excepted soul’: Nineteenth-Century Women Read Keats - Carmen Faye MathesPart II. ‘examplified throughout’: Forms of Negatively Capable Reading’ Negatively Capable Reading - Cassandra Falke Knowledge’s ‘gordian shape’: Keats and the Disciplines - Kurtis Hessel ‘Irritable Reaching’ and the Conditions of Romantic Mediation - Jeanne Britton ‘uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts’: Pluralities and the Historical Present in Keats and Hazlitt - Emily RohrbachPart III. ‘pursued through Volumes’, Volume I: Negative Capability in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century American Poetry Beyond the Great Divide: Negative Capability and Postwar American Poetics - Robert Archambeau Versions of Negative Capability in Modern American Poetry and Criticism - Eric Eisner ‘giddily off into the unknown’: Negative Capability and Naturalism in Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetics - Arsevi Seyran ‘Darkling I listen’: Jorie Graham and Negative Capability - Thomas GardnerPart IV. ‘pursued through Volumes’, Volume II: Adaptations, Appropriations, Mutations Negative Capability in the Twenty-First Century and Romantic Self Annihilation in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials - Suzanne L. Barnett Negative Capability in Psychoanalysis: Keats and Retroactive Judgment in Bion, Freud, Lacan, and Milner - David Sigler Zen and the Art of Negative Capability - Anne C. McCarthy Negative Capability in Dialogic Context - Walter L. ReedAfterword: Reading Keats’s Negative Capability - Jonathan MulrooneyIndex
£30.25
Y Lolfa Cerddi Dic yr Hendre Detholiad o Farddoniaeth
Book SynopsisA collection of poems by the late Dic Jones, edited by Ceri Wyn Jones.
£12.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Speculations of Country People
Book Synopsis'Ruminative and enigmatic . . . powerful' Simon Armitage'Tenderly inquisitive . . . a powerful poetry of witness . . . full of discovery' Alycia Pirmohamed'Majella Kelly offers so much: ecstatic lyricism . . . emotional excavation and virtuosic skill' Kathryn Maris The astonishing poetry debut exploring hidden histories, mythical landscapes and self-discovery in the face of limits on women's bodily autonomyIn 2017, the presence of a mass grave was confirmed in a disused sewage system in Tuam, County Galway. In it were the bodies of infants - wards of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, where from 1925 to 1961 the children of unmarried women were sent to live their lives in the care of nuns. Their deaths were the result of a conservative culture which, under the influence of the Church, took a prurient interest in women's private lives and bodies.In The Speculations of Country People, her hauntingly lyrical debut collection, Majella Kelly reckons with that legacy. She traces the journeys of women in our own day, from controlling relationships to sexual reawakening and new happiness. The speculations of the title are in part those of gossip, the chatter of small communities everywhere; but they are also those of a local, very Irish mythos, in which pagan and Christian - and truth and legend - blend and blur.Here, then, are hares and selkies, a seductive 'master otter' of 'fabulous elegance' who might carry a woman away in the night; here is the last man on Omey Island; here a retired stuntman, dragging his bed of rusty nails along the beach. And here - quiet, against the beauty and loneliness of the Connemara landscape - are the little bones that wash up on shores or stick from the earth to speak of what has been.Trade ReviewThis tenderly inquisitive book . . . oscillate[s] between an intimate interiority . . . and a powerful poetry of witness. Along with its strong, lyrical voice, the book's sections are held together by evocative personifications of the natural world . . . Kelly attends carefully to the histories she writes about . . . [The section on the Tuam Mother and Baby Home] is a poetic inquiry, where skilful and moving language is a tool of investigation. Kelly probes at difficult questions of religion, legacy, grief, and the responsibility of memory and memorial. The poems are lucid with their remembering . . . full of discovery, [The Speculations of Country People gifts] us with the wisdom that the list of places we are from is not fixed, but rather textured with the continuous possibility of finding home in new people and new places -- Alycia PirmohamedMajella Kelly offers so much: ecstatic lyricism, historical fiction, genealogy, cultural observation, emotional excavation and virtuosic skill. Her poems have drive, empathy, pathos and joy -- Kathryn Maris
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Plot
Book Synopsis'Exquisite . . . readers will find themselves transformed by it' Claire Lynch'Stunning . . . dazzlingly laser-like and movingly original' Lara Feigel'Inventive and searching' Calvin Bedient'I am awestruck . . . a masterpiece' Mary GordonThe stunningly original exploration of pregnancy and childbirth by the acclaimed author of CitizenIn this, the landmark achievement that crowned the first phase of her writing career, Claudia Rankine invites us into the lives of Liv and her husband Erland, as they find themselves propelled into the classic plot: boy loves girl, girl gets pregnant. The couple's journey is charted through dreams, conversations and reflections, in a text like no other, deftly moulding language and crossing genres to arrive at new life: baby Ersatz.Plot is an inventive and engrossing meditation on pregnancy and the changes it heralds: the potential bodily cost, the loss of self, the sense of impending stasis. Each fear compounds Liv's reluctance to bring new life into a bewildering world. A profoundly daring collection, it explodes the emotive capabilities of language and form to achieve an unparalleled understanding of creation and existence.Trade ReviewExquisite . . . This collection is made from language to live on and in. It's the sort of book you read with your body as much as your mind. I'm quite sure readers will find themselves transformed by it -- Claire LynchIt's both stunning and utterly logical that before embarking on the landmark American Trilogy where she would tackle the largest themes of public life with such personal detail and vehemence, Claudia Rankine's writing was grounded in this dazzlingly laser-like and movingly original meditation on not so much motherhood or parenthood as pregnancy itself. Rankine slides from one form to another, and animates everyday domestic life with a grand sense of literary history and sensibility. It's as if this book is pregnant with her entire poetic project -- Lara FeigelPlot is inexhaustibly complex, varied, and difficult-and as fearlessly and even grimly inventive and searching as one can conceive any book of poems as being. It instantly joins the few contemporary works ... whose gravity is synonymous with the passion and integrity of their intelligence -- Calvin Bedient * Verse *To read her work is to be drawn deep into a thought's unfolding, into the eerie landscape of a dream; the dislocation one feels is tempered by the assurance of the writing, the deftness of Rankine's experiments with words and ideas * Indiana Review *I am awestruck. Quite simply, I have never read anything like Plot. Its stupendous intelligence . . . marks it as a masterpiece -- Mary Gordon, author of PAYBACKPlot moves as in a picaresque novel, in which the body schemes and frightens, accompanied by Claudia Rankine's instinct for poetic surprise -- Barbara Guest, author of THE RED GAZEA fiercely gifted poet . . . She knows when to bless and to curse . . . [and] makes you hopeful for American poetry -- Robert Hass, author of SUMMER SNOWA startling and eloquent exploration of states in, about, and around maternity . . . This is an unsettling poetry of the body wrestling itself in the making of thought -- Charles BernsteinSpiraling around the story of "Liv" and "Erland" and their future child, "Ersatz," this book-length poem embeds its loose "plot" in the sensations and anxieties of birth and child-rearing . . . striking . . . This book seems consciously aimed at the nexus of several different feminist avant-garde projects, from the nouveau roman of Monique Wittig to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee * Publishers Weekly *[Claudia Rankine's] books trace their own sort of movement . . . In Plot, the crisis sharpens, revolving around life and birth-the narrative center is a woman reluctant to give birth to a child who is already growing inside her . . . surprising -- David L. Ulin * Paris Review *
£10.44
Penguin Books Ltd Grand Tour
Book SynopsisA mesmerizing book, deeply original, one of the most profound reading experiences I've had in years one feels most urgently her extraordinary force, her dignity, her savage hunger, her sweetness. These poems make me feel as if poems have never before been written' Louise GlückGrand Tour, the debut collection of poetry by Elisa Gonzalez, dramatizes the mind in motion as it grapples with something more than an event: she writes of a whole life, to transcendent effect. By the end, we feel we have been witness to a poet remaking herself.Gonzalez''s poetry depicts the fullness of living. There are the small moments: white wine greening in a glass, trumpet blossoms panicking across the garden. Some poems adopt the oracular quality of a parable but invariably refuse a clear moral. The poet moves through elegy, romantic and sexual encounters, family history, and place--Cyprus, Puerto Rico, Poland, Ohio--all constellated in a chaos of faraway. The collection is
£10.44
Liverpool University Press Local Interest
Book SynopsisSituated where salt and freshwater meet, where floods and fields ‘mingle parts’, Emily Hasler’s second collection exposes the dailiness of disaster to chart the constantly shifting courses of rivers and lives. Taking its name from the sections of libraries where much of Hasler’s research began, Local Interest maps the friable and slippery landscapes of south Suffolk and north Essex: estuaries and water meadows, coastal defences and disused decoys, possible futures and forgotten pasts. This is a book of habitats lost, created and threatened, teeming with plants, people, animals and ‘legless, uneyed life’. Here are promontories, precarity and potential; the first English sea battle and a forgotten stuntman; rare and familiar birds; a fish die-off and a vanished world; a historic earthquake and continuous erosion. Moments and millennia are as muddled as the elements. In these poems nothing is pure and everything is borrowed. Language is hybrid; poems are ‘stolen’ and ‘observed’. Local Interest questions boundaries and belonging, squinting at ideas of invasion and migration, borders and crossings. It asks what is ‘local’ and to whom; how we might celebrate dwelling while looking beyond permanence and ownership. This is poetry that wallows at the muddy edges of things, that asks you to follow it ‘through every breach that was and could be’.Trade Review‘In Emily Hasler’s second collection the natural world is rendered in all its glory, its weirdness and its precariousness. Hasler’s craft is polished and still in places playful; poems like “Schreckstoff” achieve both at once, a delicate, excellent feat.’ Juliano Zaffino‘Hasler's poems in Local Interest… might at times be archaic or academic; dialect or dialectical; observations of the landscape at Wrabness or Fingringhoe or the dewy marshes of the River Stour from herself, or a century ago, or from some unnamed soul who understands the fleeting nature of our lives-in-place so well that it's not necessary to mention.’ Justin Hopper‘This spirited and wry collection is focused intently on the details of place… Hasler brilliantly builds this locality for her reader with delightful, sometimes comical specificity: “10 consecutive hot summers / 9 bagged dogshits / 8 CDs on string / 7 sets of Woolworths crockery / 6 pieces of oasis / The fifth rebuilding of the bridge.” She is sensitively attuned to the layers of human and natural history that are found in the smallest spaces. Her affectionate, practised eye brings the natural world around her to vivid life, in poems that celebrate the intimate beauty of dwelling.’ Rebecca Tamás, The Guardian‘These poems remind us that there is joy to be found through tuning into the world around us, taking stock of the smallest details, “O to be so charmed by the existence of things”. Hasler’s work has sent this reader down countless fascinating research rabbit holes, and that is part of the gift she imparts… a sensual patchwork composed of informational texts, polyphonic voices, thoughts, memories, borrowed terms and observations.’ Jess Mc Kinney, Caught by the River‘[“A Mud”] might be the textbook-perfect opening poem. It performs exactly that act of dwelling or inhabiting Hasler aims for, while being invitational, innovative (its subject matter is the co-mingling of mud and tidal seawater) and representative of the body of poems as a whole… [“Goosefoot”] is simultaneously a love poem, an annotation of birdwatching and an illustration of (benign) obsession – an entirely effective and affective combination. The personal, the emotional and the external are woven through the poem across time, memory and sensory experience whilst being rooted in location… a satisfying and skilful way to summarise and bring this collection to a close.’ Tamsin Hopkins, The Alchemy Spoon
£13.49
Seagull Books London Ltd Collected Poems
Book SynopsisBernhard’s Collected Poem is a key to understanding Bernhard’s irascible black comedy found in virtually all of his writings—even down to his last will and testament. Beloved Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931–89) began his career in the early 1950s as a poet. Over the next decade, Bernhard wrote thousands of poems and published four volumes of intensely wrought and increasingly personal verse, with such titles as On Earth and in Hell, In Hora Mortis, and Under the Iron of the Moon. Bernhard’s early poetry, bearing the influence of Georg Trakl, begins with a deep connection to his Austrian homeland. As his poems saw publication and recognition, Bernhard seemed always on the verge of joining the ranks of Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, and other young post-war poets writing in German. During this time, however, his poems became increasingly more obsessive, filled with undulant self-pity, counterpointed by a defamatory, bardic voice utterly estranged from his country, all of which resulted in a magisterial work of anti-poetry—one that represents Bernhard’s own harrowing experience with his leitmotif of success and failure, which makes his fiction such a pleasure. There is much to be found in these pages for Bernhard fans of every stripe.Trade Review"Fans of Bernhard already know him for having an incredibly idiosyncratic, hypnotic, philosophical style in his many novels, plays, and massive autobiography. This unprecedented (in the English language) collection of his poetic output now offers an entirely new vantage on what made Bernhard such a classic writer. A major book, and a long awaited one, this should not be missed." * LitHub *Table of ContentsEarly Poems (1952–1956)On Earth and in HellIn Hora MortisUnder the Iron of the MoonThe Insane The InmatesAve VirgilLater Poems (1959–1963)AfterwordAppendix: Frost (Manuscript C)
£14.24
Seagull Books London Ltd études
Book SynopsisA diary-like sequence of poems from one of Austria’s best-known contemporary voices. Exploring longing, lust for life, aging, mortality, grief, and flowers in her inimitable late style, études is a diary-like sequence of poems by one of the greatest living Austrian poets. Friederike Mayröcker’s almost daily entries give us a unique view into the interplay between desire and her motivation for writing. In Mayröcker’s case, she writes both to keep a vanished world present and to exploit the possibilities of being present for constant experimentation. The poems in this volume are not only studies of how the mind works, moving from fragment to fragment, but also experiments with techniques of repetition, typography, collage, and quotation. Mayröcker transforms the humble page into spaces of radical openness. After all, she says, a poem is that which “opens everything up.” Each poem is date-stamped, and each date acts as a kind of permission for Mayröcker to pour in everything from notes on doctor’s visits to gorgeously structured elegies to obsessively repeating fragments of memory that act upon the whole like bits of recurring melody. Rarely before has the intimate process of writing been so exquisitely laid bare than in études. Traversing the boundaries of literary forms with Mayröcker’s distinctive style, this important volume strikes an admirable balance between playfulness and serious inquiry.Trade Review"Mayröcker’s dense, allusive poetry, with all its alternatively beatific and disconsolate language, can be seen as a culmination of the European cultural tradition... richly passionate, elegiac, and mystically personal." * Rain Taxi *
£16.14
Seagull Books London Ltd Shining Sheep – Poems
Book SynopsisA collection of vital, melancholic, elemental, and vibrantly contemporary poems. In the beginning, was the light, or was it the Lumières? In Ulrike Almut Sandig’s latest volume of poetry, it is only a leap from the creation of the world to the symphony of the Berlin metropolis. And there is a question holding out off the coast of Lampedusa: Can shining sheep be used as night storage for the dark hours, when we are overwhelmed with fears of God, of a gym teacher with a whistle, of mothers with eyes as black as coal? In devastating sequences, Sandig charts the reality of an abused child, victims of contemporary war, or a fourteenth-century Madonna. Full of humor, musicality, lightness, and rage, Shining Sheep is not just visual poetry—it has loops in your ear and filmic explosions of imagery for all your senses.Table of ContentsZippelonikaO awakeZ how to wake her loser mamaI the problem isP grownP on good days Zippelonika is a bouncy castle / with crenelations, a slide and flat blue insides E because L ZippelonikaO PixiN ChoraleI why is everything starting to swayK Drinking SongA QuestionSeven Marian Songs with HyenaVII KapuzinerbergVI of HélèneV song for two voicesIV over your little faceIII maulsII look here!I EchoThe Silent Songs of the WallsIIIIIIFire Earth Water LeapI FireII EarthIII WaterIV LeapRhapsody of LosingShining BodiesMurmurations. Little Choral Piece with BracesGuidance on Laughing at a DistanceClimate change is here, now. But we are also here, now. And if we don’t act, who will?From the WaterOf LosingThe Tongue is a Needle. And I am True North. Telling lies.Open ArmsInternal Report of a Russian spy-software on the up to the minute state of its unsuspecting informant, Codename: Cents (leaked) sa?nd 'b?dizwe were herebittersweet ode-zine 1 (N)bittersweet ode-zine 2 (J)Friedrich Hölderlin, reworkedDaniel dreamsLamentations in VI RoundsRound IRound IIRound IIIRound IVRound VRound VIThe Songs of the Radio TowerAct IAct IIAct IIIAct IVAct V? Closing CreditsShining ThanksTranslator’s Acknowledgements
£16.14
Seagull Books London Ltd Save Yourself If You Can – Six Plays
Book SynopsisA collection of six Bernhard plays, all in English for the first time.Save Yourself if You Can is a collection of six plays that span the entirety of Thomas Bernhard’s career as a dramatist. The plays collected in this long-awaited addition to Bernhard’s oeuvre in English—The Ignoramus and the Madman, The Celebrities, Immanuel Kant, The Goal Attained, Simply Complicated, and Elizabeth II—traverse somber lyricism and misanthropy to biting satire and glorious slapstick. They explore themes that will be familiar to longtime readers of Bernhardt, but here they are presented in a subtly different register, attuned to the needs of the stage. Table of Contents1.The Ignoramus and the Madman2.The Celebrities3.Immanuel Kant4.The Goal Attained 5.Simply Complicated6.Elizabeth II
£23.74
Seagull Books Solio
Book SynopsisPoetry that serves as an evocative portrayal of diverse landscapes and cultures. In these otherworldly poetry sequences, Samira Negrouche reminds us that all life is movement, where time passes through me / beings pass through me / they are me / I am them. The I is representative of one voice, three voices, all voices, all rooted in movement as their bodies brush past one another, brush against thresholds of time and space. Everything is in fluxincluding the dream-like landscapes at the borders of bordersas the poet seeks to recover parts of self and memory, on both a personal and universal level. In these poems, history-laden locales such as Algiers, Timbuktu, N'Djamena, Cotonou, Zanzibar, Cape Town, and Gorée are evoked. Even the language, expertly and sensitively translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, refuses to be pinned down, as it loops back on itself. At times contradictory, at times fractured in meaning, syntax, and diction, the playful language is riddled with restless verbs.
£14.24
Seagull Books What Now Is Now Is Now
£16.14
Troubador Publishing An Inevitable Journey
Book SynopsisThe sadness of losing a pet affects people from all walks of life, ages and situations. Pet ownership enriches people’s lives, and so the loss of a pet – a member of the family – can be devastating. While there is an abundance of advice discussing pet care, training, the idiosyncrasies of particular animal breeds and celebrations of the lives of pets, the loss of a pet is often seen as ‘inevitable’ and left unaddressed. This can be a shattering experience and not always recognised by those with less understanding of the bond between humans and their animal companions. An Inevitable Journey seeks to reassure owners that it is perfectly natural to grieve the loss of a much-loved pet through a collection of prose, quotations and poetry through each stage of the process, for example: Grief, Missing, Strength, Guilt, Depression, Longing, Acceptance, Memories, and finally, Moving On. Each page is flagged for easy reference, depicting each particular stage of this journey. The greater the love we have for our pets, the greater our grief upon losing them. The aim of this anthology is to guide bereaved owners from despair through to hope.
£12.59
Independent Publishing Network Amends
Book Synopsis
£11.40
The History Press Ltd Danish Folk Tales
Book SynopsisA collection of tales that grew out of the sprawling flatlands, the oozing fjords, the dark forests and the waves that crash on the shores of Denmark.How a Viking ship carried a future king into Roskilde Fjord, how a mermaid’s laughter brought fortunes to her fisherman host, how the people of Lolland survived a flood with waves 3m high and how a princess found her freedom in becoming a prince.Experience the history, landscapes, stories and fairy tales brought to life by a storyteller who called this country home for nearly sixty years.Trade ReviewFeatured in the Winter issue of Simply Scandi magazine * Simply Scandi magazine *
£13.49
Wild Goose Publications Lent
Book SynopsisPoems embracing the Lenten season not just as a Christian observance but as a state of being one of wilderness, waiting and transformation.With a journalist's eye and a poet's heart, Martyn Halsall guides readers through Lent's deeper resonances. Life itself, he suggests, is something we are lent a gift, a process, a question still unfolding.
£9.49
