Poetry Books

Book SynopsisThroughout history, poets have felt the ancient pull of the sea, exploring the full range of mankind's nautical fears, dreams, and longings. The colorful legends of the sea-pirates and mermaids, phantom ships and the sunken city of Atlantis-have inspired as many imaginations as have the realities of lighthouses and shipwrecks, of icebergs and frothing foam and seaweed.This marvelous collection includes classics old and new, from Homer and Milton to Plath and Merwin. Here are Tennyson's seductive sea-fairies next to Poe's beloved Annabel Lee. Here is Coleridge's darkly brooding "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" alongside the grandeur of Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five." And here is Masefield's "I must go down to the seas again" alongside Cavafy's "Ithaka" and Stevens's "The Idea of Order at Key West." In the wide variety of lyrics collected here-sonnets and sea chanteys, ballads and hymns and prayers-we feel the encompassing power of our planet's restless

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Book SynopsisThe arc of poetry of the South, from slave songs to Confederate hymns to Civil War ballads, from Reconstruction turmoil to the Agrarian movement to the dazzling poetry of the New South, is richly varied and historically vibrant. No other region of the United States has been as mythologized as the South, nor contained as many fascinating, beguiling, and sometimes infuriating contradictions. Poems of the American South includes poems both by Southerners and by famous observers of the South who hailed from elsewhere. These range from Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Francis Scott Key through Langston Hughes, Robert Penn Warren, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, James Dickey, and Donald Justice, and include a host of living poets as well: Wendell Berry, Rita Dove, Sandra Cisneros, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, C. D. Wright, Natasha Trethewey, and many more. Organized thematically, the anthology places poems from past centuries in fruitful dialogue with a diverse array of modern voices who are redefining the South with a verve that is reinvigorating American poetry as a whole.

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Book SynopsisFor centuries poets in all the world's cultures have offered eloquent thanks and praise for the earth and its people. Both an emotion and a conscious practice, gratitude is a cherishing of what is over what has been or could be. It celebrates the joy in our lives while acknowledging the sorrows and losses that give that joy its keenness. The voices collected here range from Horace to Herrick, from Wordsworth and Keats, Yeats and Frost, to Czeslaw Milosz, Constantine Cavafy, Primo Levi, Langston Hughes, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, and many many more. Devotional lyrics drawn from the major religious traditions offer their perspectives, alongside poetic tributes to autumn and the harvest season that draw our attention to nature's bounty and poignant beauty as winter approaches.

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Book SynopsisThe language of flowers is as old as language itself. In the earliest poetry familiar plants were used to represent simple emotions, ideas, or states of mind: love, hope, despair, fidelity, solitude, beauty, mortality. Over time these associations entwined with myth and legend, with religious symbolism, folk and herbal lore. By the early 19th century the 'Language of Flora' had become increasingly refined, especially in England and America, where sentimental flower books listing flower meanings and illustrating them with verse were perennial bestsellers. The Everyman Language of Flowers without sacrificing the charm of its Victorian predecessors aims to provide extended, updated and rather more robust floral anthology for the 21st century, presenting poetry from ancient Greece to contemporary Britain and America, and spanning the world from Cuba to Korea, Russia to Zimbabwe. Here are Rumi and Rilke on the rose; Herrick and Louise Glück on the lily; Chaucer, Emily Dickinson and Jon Silkin on the daisy; Mary Robinson and Ted Hughes on the snowdrop; Lorenzo de Medici, John Clare and Alice Oswald on the violet; Hugo and Roethke on carnations; Ovid and Goethe on poppies; Blake and Eugenio Montale on the sunflower; Christina Rossetti on heartsease and forget-me-nots; Emily Brontë on harebells and heather, Seamus Heaney on lupins, Pasternak on night-scented stock... Eastern cultures, rich in flower associations, are well represented: there are Tang poems celebrating chrysanthemums and peonies, Zen poems about orchids and lotus flowers, poems about jasmine and marigolds from India, roses, tulips and narcissi from Persia, the Ottoman empire and the Arabic world. Flowers are arranged by season, with roses and lilies in a section of their own. In a final section poets comment directly or indirectly on the language of flowers itself. The book concludes with a selected glossary drawn from several celebrated Victorian collections.

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Book SynopsisPoems of Rome ranges across the centuries and contains the work of poets from many cultures and times, from ancient Rome to contemporary America. Designed to lend itself to those visiting the city - whether in person or imagination - the book is divided into sections by place. Its pages lead the reader from the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, from the Vatican to the Villa Sciarra, from the Pantheon to the Palatine Hill, all seen through the eyes of poets who have been dazzled by these glorious sites for centuries. The poets range from Horace, Ovid, Virgil and Martial through Du Bellay and Rilke to Pasolini and Pavese, with a strong cast of 19th-century travellers - Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Clough, Browning, Swinburne, Hardy, Wilde, Longfellow - and a varied selection of modern poets including Elizabeth Jennings, Cecil Day Lewis, Joseph Brodsky, Jorie Graham, James Wright and Rosanna Warren. A collection as dazzling as the great city itself.

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Book SynopsisFor thousands of years humans have variously worshipped trees, made use of them, admired them, and destroyed them— and poets have long chronicled the relationship. In this collection, Robert Frost’s “Birches,” Marianne Moore’s “The Camperdown Elm,” Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “Binsey Poplars,” and Zbigniew Herbert’s “Sequoia” stand tall beside Eugenio Montale’s “The Lemon Trees,” Yves Bonnefoy’s “The Apples,” Bertolt Brecht’s “The Plum Tree,” D. H. Lawrence’s “The Almond Tree,” and A. E. Housman’s “Loveliest of Trees.” Whether showing their subjects being planted or felled, cherished or lamented, towering in forests or ?owering in backyards, the poems collected here pay lyrical tribute to these majestic beings with whom we share the earth.

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Book SynopsisLegendary American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has won eight Tonys, eight Grammys, six Olivier Awards, an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize. His brilliant songs and lyrics of genius have entertained us for more than half a century and his Broadway shows revolutionized musical theatre. Working together with Sondheim, editor Peter Gethers has selected for this volume lyrics from across Sondheim's career, drawn from shows including West Side Story, Gypsy, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. The result is a delightful pocket-sized treasury of the best of SondheimTrade ReviewSondheim's radicalism and lyrical ingenuity have often been appreciated more in Britain than at home' (Guardian). His shows have appeared successfully in London theatres since the early 1970s; he has also been staged by the Royal Opera, ENO and the National Theatre, and been the subject of a Prom. 'Most of his musicals bombed on Broadway, before wowing the West End and most can be seen up and down the land in church halls, college refectories and summer festivals. In English hands, Sondheim is safe ... -- Norman Lebrecht * Evening Standard *Possibly the greatest lyricist ever -- Cameron MackintoshSondheim’s lyrics stand apart from the music, like playlets in themselves, unparalleled in their wit, erudition and ingenuity. * Daily Telegraph *Musical theater's greatest lyricist, full stop * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisPlace of refuge, place where we can be ourselves; place we long to escape from, place where we are confronted by absence and loneliness; shabby downtown apartment or idyllic country cottage. Like it or loathe it, home is where we do most of our living. Home is, of course, many things to many poets. It is Billy Collins's favourite armchair and Imtiaz Dharker's 'Living Space' in the slums of Mumbai. It is Wordsworth's 'dear Valley' of Grasmere, and Philip Larkin's Coventry, that place where nothing so famously happens. It may be somewhere we long for, perhaps unattainably: Ovid and Mahmoud Darwish lament their home countries, Kapka Kassabova seeks 'a house we can never find', while Jules Supervielle is 'Homesick for the Earth'.There is an abundance of domestic life. Attend a miserable breakfast chez Jacques Prévert; observe Wendy Cope and partner happily 'Being Boring'. Cut to Anna Barbauld's washing-day, Marilyn Nelson dusting, Buson mending his clothes and Fiona Wright contending with a Tupperware party. Peep in on Amy Lowell in the bath and John Donne in bed, Auden in the privy and Joy Harjo at the kitchen table. Here are removals and homecomings, neighbours good and bad. Inevitably, after a year of enforced domesticity, some lockdown thoughts (Anna McDonald, Pauline Prior-Pitt); Mary Oliver's dream house, Naomi Shihab Nye's homes where children live, the far-from-safe houses of U. A. Fanthorpe, and some final reflections on the idea of a dwelling place from Rumi, Emily Dickinson, John Burnside, Vinita Agrawal, Derek Walcott, Les Murray and Iman Mersal. It may not always be sweet, but there is certainly No Place Like Home.

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Book SynopsisMacbeth is one of Shakespeare's finest plays, and presents a man's conscience and the effect of guilt on his mind. A dark and bloody play, Macbeth explores reality and illusion; witchcraft and the supernatural; ambition and kingship; the natural order; light and life, darkness and death; blood and dead babies. Written just after the Gunpowder Plot, and at a time when people were often tried for treason, Macbeth makes much of the beliefs of an extremely superstitious age. King James 1 believed in demons conjured by devils and wild women who could fly through the air, raise storms and tell the future. Their prime purpose was to create havoc and corruption. Whether or not Shakespeare shared these beliefs, all are featured in Macbeth to spine chilling effect. This new edition includes the complete text with explanatory notes and a full introduction that describes the setting, summarises the plot and profiles the main characters. It discusses Shakespeare's language and the play's themes, and it gives typical essay and test questions to help students prepare for exams. Includes: Introduction The Story of Macbeth The Play's Characters Themes and Language Examining the Play The Play Notes throughout

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Book SynopsisThis landmark work contains a remarkable selection of 560 of the thousands of songs and poems created during, and reflecting upon, the most extraordinary decade of Ireland’s history. This opened with the Dublin Lockout of 1913 and ended with the post-independence civil war, embracing World War I, the Rising of 1916, and the Anglo-Irish war. The Indignant Muse also includes 177 musical airs and 136 illustrations.Trade Review‘Terry Moylan’s compilation surpasses in scale, variety and historical interest anything that’s been attempted to date … the glory of the collection is the large number of items published here for the first time … a herculean effort by a lifetime collector of songs with an encyclopaedic knowledge of his material.’ — from the Foreword by Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh

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Book SynopsisArchipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the last twenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by scholar-poet Andrew McNeillie, with the assistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine the relationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought together established and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the study of islands, coasts and waterways. It journeys from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from the Aran Islands to the coast of Yorkshire, tracing the cultures of diverse zones through some of the best in contemporary writing about place and people. This collection gathers poetry, prose and visual art in clusters grouped around the Irish and British archipelago, with contributions from an array of significant artists. With fifty contributors, Archipelago: A Reader includes: Moya Cannon is an Irish poet with seven published collections, the most recent being Collected Poems (2021). Deirdre Ni Chonghaile is a graduate of the University of Oxford and University College Cork. She is associated with NUI, Galway, and the University of Notre Dame, and is known for her work in music studies. Tim Dee is a naturalist, BBC radio producer and author of The Running Sky (2018). Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) was born in Northern Ireland. His career included teaching at Harvard and Oxford. He received many awards including the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1995. Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish writer whose work has appeared internationally. She has taught poetry at the University of Stirling since 2010. Michael Longley is a Northern Irish poet, and winner of the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, and the PEN Pinter Prize in 2017. Robert Macfarlane is a Writing Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has won the EM Forster Award for Literature. Derek Mahon (1941-2020) was a Northern Irish poet. He won the David Cohen Prize for Literature and the Poetry Now Award. Andrew McNeillie is a Welsh poet and current Literature Editor at Oxford University Press. His memoir An Aran Keening was published by The Lilliput Press, and he is founder of the Clutag Press and publisher of the Archipelago series. Sinead Morrisey is a Northern Irish winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize. She has taught in Belfast and Newcastle. 'Archipelago met and extended my own strong sense that there was a need to turn the compass-rose of some storytelling and art in Britain and Ireland away from the south and east and towards the north and west; away from the metropolis and towards the margins.' -Robert MacfarlaneTrade ReviewThis book is thrilling: it leaves the reader scrambling for ground: Is every possible interpretation or nuance about archipelagoes contained here? The possibility enthrals. Within the compendium individual writers reveal their own sources so the effect is like a Russian doll of mysteries within mysteries. The editors are to be praised for uniting these threads into a rare and colourful garment. -- Dan MacCarthy * Irish Examiner *This is both a lengthy and weighty volume. But its 578 pages are full of gems of good writing and observation. -- Andrew Hook * Scottish Review *

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Book SynopsisAs I step out of the conservatory facing North, supported by my pusher, the first that catches my eye is the dying Sycamore which escapes death every year by producing a healthy crop of leaves, but it looks so decrepit that surely it can't pull that trick yet again. -1 April, 2020 In his eighty-eighth year, John Boorman uses his time in lockdown to reflect on the splendour of the surrounding nature of County Wicklow. Coccooning with his daughter and son among the hills of Annamoe, Boorman chronicles his daily walks and observations of the trees on his estate, writing with heightened appreciation of the beauties of his eyrie using only one eye and one finger. Poetry flows from his pen as he sits chairbound among his trees and flora: sycamores, limes, beech, oak, redwood, shrubs and flowers, birdsong and shifting skies are luminously recorded as the world falls silent. With illustrations by Susan Morley, this slim but meditative volume is a remarkable narrative by the creator of The Emerald Forest, Excalibur and Deliverance - a swansong like no other.Trade ReviewReading each entry, a meditative calm descends, and I can almost feel the bark of the twin oak he so lovingly strokes when he visits it, as if greeting an old friend, before sitting on the bench beneath to drift in and out of ruminations and dreaming. -- Susan McKeever * Books Ireland *Reading each entry, a meditative calm descends, and I can almost feel the bark of the twin oak he so lovingly strokes when he visits it, as if greeting an old friend, before sitting on the bench beneath to drift in and out of ruminations and dreaming. -- Susan McKeever * Books Ireland *Delicate, insightful, rich and meditative. -- Hilary A. White * The Independent *

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

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2012 Polari PrizeA Book of the Year for The Independent and The Poetry SchoolHoliday Read in The ObserverThe Frost Fairs is a compassionate book with a global and historical scope, tackling science and city life from a range of surreal yet poignant angles. It explores love in many forms, from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay and cross-gendered lives from the past. The pieces travel from ancient Alexandria to twenty-first century bars and council estates, behind everything the vastness of the sea and sky. The array of voices here is striking: taxi drivers report their most outlandish fares and hermaphrodite statues flirt with observers; abandoned lovers watch frost fairs melting on the Thames and drag queens revel in the freedoms afforded by the Blitz. Formally deft and carefully crafted, this diverse range of poems uses language that is always musical and alive. Surprise and the uncanny are cherished as ways of returning to us the strange leaps and enduring power of our deepest yearnings. In this collection, longing and losing condition all we see and hear, making the impossible suddenly plausible. Whether exploring Brighton seascapes or questions of empire, there is always in McCullough’s writing an openness to seeing the world from an alternative point of view. At once bold and haunting, The Frost Fairs opens the door to a new country in the reader’s imagination in its exploration of the possibilities of the human heart. Trade ReviewJohn McCullough's debut collection introduces a writer acutely aware of poetry's transformative power, its ability to question assumptions and subtly shift perspective ... Sharp yet compassionate, formal yet nimble, the poems glitter with slang and modern culture while maintaining an engaging seriousness. -- Ben Wilkinson * The Guardian *[T]he sheer heart-stopping quality of the better poems, however, which make this collection such a rewarding and moving debut. -- A.B. Jackson * Horizon Review *McCullough has a very distinctive style of voice, creating a close affinity with the reader which builds to a wonderful empathy with the voices in this collection. A remarkable debut, he offers a playful, yet serious set of poetry which is full of nothing other than sincerity. -- Liam Parkin * LoveReading.co.uk *John McCullough is a delight to read, the poems sit there waiting for you to look at them again ... He’s an origami poet and the pages turn from horses to white capped waves to Sargasso seas to bathetic abyss and back ... It’s a lovely journey to take with a master of his art and I’d recommend this first compilation as an excellent gift for anyone with an interest in contemporary poetry, poetry that explores the LGBT experience of love and intimacy and anyone who likes a damn good read. -- Eric Page * Gscene Magazine *At the core of John McCullough’s The Frost Fairs is a hard-won and solid-as-granite foundation, a lasting literary achievement that’s replete with range, control, and ambition. Regardless of how far this achievement carries him — and all indications promise that the ascent will surely be a lofty one — my affection will remain for the figure at the end of his poem “The Dictionary Man,” the lone boy who’s asleep at his desk, dreaming over the words. -- Jason Roush * Popsublime *Tipped with voyeurism, each of the poems within displays a real lightness of touch and mischievous freedom, manifested as whisper and anecdote concerning lives glimpsed in passing. Ultimately, this collection needs to be dipped into, in order to get the most impact from each poem. Read all in one go, the quiet play of each interaction risks blurring into the next, as skaters and stallholders on the arrested Thames. * Dr. Fulminare *In his fine debut collection The Frost Fairs, John McCullough turns out tender love poems and imaginative thought experiments with equal aplomb. -- Suzi Feay * The Independent Books of the Year *The judges were impressed with the polish and precision of the language, the confidence of the writing and the scope of the work. The Frost Fairs isn’t a one-note collection, but one that covers many themes and strikes many chords, from modern transatlantic relationships to hidden gay lives from the past. It’s also surprisingly mature for a first book – a debut which doesn’t feel like a debut. -- Paul Burston * Head Judge for the Polari First Book Prize *Table of Contents Contents Sleeping Hermaphrodite Talacre Night Writing Reading Frank O’Hara on the Brighton Express The Light of    Venus Masterclass Small, Vertical Pleasures On Galileo’s Birthday Sneakers Known Light The Last Hangman The Long Mile Islands The Floating World The Other Side of   Winter The Dictionary Man Georgie, Belladonna, Sid Angels Over Hatfield The Empress of   Mud The Crystal Palace Circumference Miss Fothergill Observes a Snail Foucault’s Spoons Cold Fusion Ghost The Cure Portrait of the Young Poet as a Wagtail The Moon of Myths Severance Seascape The Disappearance of St Anthony’s Church Tropospheric Dragons The Amazing Tintin Cherry Tops The Loft Fire Crepuscular Motile

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Book SynopsisMark Burnhope's poems present a generous but moral quizzing of the world. Peering out over disability, faith and the host of prejudices that spring from such ground, they negotiate a path through lyricism and music, didacticism and narrative, comedy and confession, slang and slur in their search for a voice with which to speak. They visit town and sea, husband and wife and monuments to grief built of snow, steel, stone. They take us to a hydrotherapy session, a talking tree and an outcast crew including Pinocchio, Queequeg and Quasimodo. But at their heart, there is great warmth. Burnhope asks uncomfortable questions of the rhyme or reason for loss and healing, even as he challenges received perceptions of disabled life with wit, verve and an inclusive imagination.Table of Contents Emoliage The Little White Poem To My Restored Example, Pinnochio Wheelchair, Recast as a Site of Special Pastoral Interest Milo Won't Go in the Water The Ideal Bed To My Familiar, Queequeg To My Best-kept, Quasimodo The Man Upstairs Drafts a Letter to the Councils Our Jonah of Boscombe Pier Twelve Steps towards Better Despair Dream Invertebration The Well and the Ceiling Rose Queequeg (Reprise) The Snowboy Shinglehenge Christogamy The Centre The Letting Tree The Serpentine Verses The House, the Church and Fisherman's Walk

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Book Synopsis"Slave Song" is unquestionably one of the most important collections of Caribbean/Black British poetry to have been published in the last twenty years. On its first publication in 1984 it won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and established Dabydeen as a provocative and paradigm-shifting writer. At the heart of "Slave Song" are the voices of African slaves and Indian labourers expressing, in a Guyanese Creole that is as far removed from Standard English as it is possible to get, their songs of defiance, of a thwarted erotic energy. But surrounding this harsh and lyrical core of Creole expression is an elaborate critical apparatus of translations (which deliberately reveal the actual untranslatability of the Creole) and a parody of the kind of critical commentary that does no more than paraphrase or at best contextualise the original poem. It took some time for the displaced critics to recognise that this prosaic apparatus was as much part of the meaning of the whole as the poems themselves, that Dabydeen was engaged in a play of masks, an expression of his own duality and a critique of the relationship which is at the core of Caribbean writing: that between the articulate writer and the supposedly voiceless workers and peasants. This new edition has an afterword by David Dabydeen that briefly explores his response to these poems after more than twenty years.

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Book SynopsisRoger Robinson recently came to the attention of UK audiences in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten, hailed by Carol Ann Duffy as "a joyful and important moment in publishing".The Butterfly Hotel is his first full collection of poetry, a telling document of the immigrant experience, from the 1980s to the present day, and the realities of uprooted culture. Butterflies hold a symbolic importance throughout, fragile yet ideal, adapting to survive.Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives in London. His one-man shows are The Shadow Boxer, Letter from My Father's Brother and Prohibition, all of which premiered at the British Festival of Visual Theatre at Battersea Arts Centre. He has received writing commissions from Stratford Theatre Royal East, the National Trust, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate. His poetry has appeared in the Flipped Eye pamphlets Suitcase (2005; ISBN 9780954224776) and Suckle (2009; ISBN 9781905233212), the latter winning the Peoples Book Prize, and in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten, edited by Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra (2010; ISBN 9781852248796).

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Book SynopsisThe title of Wife is both ironic and deeply serious. There are wittily sharp poems on the gender inequalities and potential prisons of marriage, that are in dialogue with poems that celebrate the physical joys of intimacy and poems that explore the processes of self-creation that take place in the closeness to the male other. Poems that are cutting about male self-deceptions and arrogations of power speak to poems that display a deep sensitivity to the aloneness of the embattled male psyche. This is not verse in the confessional mode, but poems that take on other voices, other histories and explore the relationship between experiences and the way we mythologise them. These spare, elegant poems are not only intensely body focused and attentive to the minutiae of domestic space, but that they make connections to the worlds of family, church, village and nation – and even, in a poem the references the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, to the soul. Their context is a Virgin Islands’ past, a Black American present, and an enlarged human future.

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

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Book SynopsisAs a child, Nick Mahoka fled Idi Amin's Uganda, and the poems in this collection relate to the horrors of the civil war that ousted the brutal tyranny of Amin. In political terms the poems chart the impact of imperialism and neo-colonialism that lay behind those traumas in the life of the nation. In personal terms, the poems are framed between the contrary pulls of attachment and flight, exile and longing. At their heart is an unwavering curiosity about how people behave in extreme situations, and what this reveals about our common human capacities to indulge grandiose visions, betray them, dissemble, seek revenge and kill. There is no presumption of innocence. There may be flight, but there is no standing aside. The narrator can dream (but is it a dream?) of a “dead man/who has been stung by the invisible bee of my bullet”.There is much darkness of reference in the collection, but also a hopeful search for truthfulness and trust as the only things that matter. The poems - as poems of grace, control and beauty of image – demonstrate the power of the best poetry to speak of difficult things in a way that enlightens, not merely horrifies. The care in the making and shaping of the poems bears witness to the evident fact that for Nick Makoha poetry became “This rock […] a sanctuary from which I can repair the ruins”.

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Book SynopsisIn using an epigraph from the 18th century poet Christopher Smart, for years incarcerated in the madhouse (“For I am not without authority in my jeopardy”), Nicholas Laughlin stakes his case for a poetics of radical innocence (for “The less you know, the less mistaken”) that includes the accidental, the punning slip, the puzzlingly axiomatic, (“You bruise a grammar before it bruises you”). Indeed, when a poem speaks of “the unstable topography” of dreams, some readers may feel they have arrived at a more stable and recognisable place. This is a poetics by no means without Caribbean precedent. Like the brilliant Jamaican poet, Anthony McNeill with his “mutants” (retained typos), for Laughlin “Errors are not accidents”.Enemy Luck is almost an encyclopaedia of ingenious devices and forms: cut-outs that hint at kidnapping threats; a poem that resembles the often mystifying chapter summaries of the 19th century novel (in which…); visits to geographical territories mutated from a Wilson Harris fiction (Borges is also an inspiration); found fragments; lengthier extracts from a variety of sources, from Strabo to Oliver Goldsmith, whose meaning is changed by their new contexts; Poundian translations where the original is absorbed into a characteristic Laughlin voice rather than being attempts to replicate the original; an index to some fugitive travel narrative that invites the reader to construct their own story; seemingly absurd narratives that make perfectly good sense; seemingly realistic narratives that mystify like an Escher building; a cast of personas from Cousin Hermes to King Q.Here is a collection that invites us to active reading, to picking up clues, to inserting ourselves into the dialogue between the poems. Above all, Nicholas Laughlin challenges us to think about the expectations and accumulated experiences we bring to the shaping influence of a variety of literary forms – and helps us to deconstruct them.

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Book SynopsisThe Sea Needs No Ornament/ El mar no necesita ornamento is the first bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry by women writers of the English and Spanish-speaking Caribbean and its diasporas to be curated in more than two decades. The anthology presents a selection of work by poets from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and from various Anglophone Caribbean islands and the Diaspora. Each poem is presented first in the original, followed by the translation. Excitingly, the majority of poets have not yet been widely translated or included in a bilingual anthology of this scope.Trade Review“This book gives us some of the most passionate and insightful writing around, in any language… as I look at the translated voices here I am both moved and transformed by the ways they seem to address the devastation of the present moment… Spanish-speaking poets are presented with wonderful English-language poets. The result is a first-rate conversation between poetics, a marvel.”Ilya Kaminsky.

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Book SynopsisThis stunning new collection from Nii Ayikwei Parkes features poems which embrace play, love and the ephemeral such as water bodies, blood/heritage, history and gossip; and a healthy dose of music and popular culture. Concerned with the phase of life sometimes referred to as the midlife crisis, The Geez navigates the blurred lines between age and youth; the real and the imagined; what is seen and what is - what catches the gaze and what lies beneath. Conceived in four sections, the collection moves from play, to love, to gossip and - finally - to explorations of the intersections of self and contemporary culture, including a segment inspired by blues legends, riffing on the myth of the crossroads, as well as an eleven-part love letter to the African diaspora - specifically African-Americans, whose sacrifices have contributed to the still-suppressed freedoms of Black folk globally. A number of the poems in The Geez are written in a form called the Gimbal, which was developed by Nii - initially to work through his enduring grief at the loss of his father. It evokes the workings of a gyroscope - spinning but stable -a state that echoes the liminality that anchors this collection.

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Book SynopsisIn musical, evocative language, her poems imagine the what-if-that-almost-was of Scotland’s best-loved Bard, following Robert Burns into the life he might have lived as a plantation overseer in Jamaica—then seeing his enslaved granddaughter come back to Scotland to claim a life reserved for white women. Evie Shockley This collection is timely and timeless as it reframes the complicated genealogies created by colonialism. Erasure is one of the colonizer’s most insidious tools and McCallum’s gorgeous monologues serve to reclaim the voices ignored, unsaid, and unclaimed because of colonialism. Adrian Matejka A subtle, multi-layered verse narrative… The worlds it vividly presents beget reflections on creativity, history, slavery, race and many other issues. It is an exceptional work, a memorable achievement. Mervyn Morris Seemingly controlled words surge with echoes; poems keep double-entry accounts, striping the page, laddering like stockings. McCallum achieves an un-haunting. Characters are realer than real, less imaginary than re-storied. Like the returning dead, whom nothing ‘will quench or unhunger’, this work wants you, wants us, ‘to begin again’. Vahni Capildeo

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Book SynopsisBath of Herbs is her beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality. It honours the lives of Black and Brown women and asks how they can reclaim space, both practically and conceptually. It celebrates and mourns the unspoken pain and joys of motherhood; of menstrual cycles, childbirth, tending to sick children with life-threatening illnesses, the death of mothers, love in all its myriad forms and the desire to escape the constraints of domestic and family life towards different kinds of freedoms. It also revisits the confusing world of childhood; the inexplicable actions of adults and the bullies who despise perceived difference. There is her ownership of a writerly inheritance handed down from her grandfather, the Black Martiniquan writer, Joseph Zobel, but also an awareness that this heritage has involved a movement away from the Black peasant world Zobel wrote about towards a comfortable Europeanness of being. Other poems address the security of a middle-class life and the many pleasures it offers – but also how that world can be broken apart by death, by serious illness, by the fear that the channels of communication in a marriage have ‘gone down’ and how, as a woman expected to hold everything together, one is sometimes forced to take refuge in the wildest fantasies. Linking the whole is an engagement with the possibilities of healing: as in the bath of herbs in which her grandmother bathed her mother after giving birth; in the physicality of running and purificatory swimming in a river; in the care a hospital gives to her child and in the healing power of the natural world.

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Book SynopsisIn his fifth collection with Peepal Tree Press, After Poems, Psalms, John Robert Lee achieves a sense of spirit, insight and empathy with these celebratory and contemplative poems.In the way that we might look to the psalms for strength and solace, After Poems, Psalms should be received as a gift, a balm and a cause for celebration. Here is a companion to assist spirit wrestlers and lovers of poetry in their quest to identify the numinous in both the human and the natural worlds. Lorna Goodison

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Book SynopsisComedies for young actors (and the young at heart): ''Gwylltio'' by Haf Llewelyn and ''Ffyrst Rispondars'' by Gwynedd Huws Jones.

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Book SynopsisA century after his death as a young man on a blood-soaked battlefield far from his mountain farm, Hedd Wyn''s name remains seared on an entire nation''s memory. His home has become a place of pilgrimage, and his story continues to sadden, anger and inspire us. This volume comprises a collection of Hedd Wyn''s poems in English translation by Howard Huws with 54 striking images.

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Book SynopsisA new collection of the poetry of Rhys Iorwerth - poems formed after his return to his home town of Caernarfon following 15 years in Cardiff. The poems, illuminated with photography by Geraint Thomas, present a mix of the sunny and stormy, the lighthearted and profound.

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Book SynopsisA poem does not have to be famous to be cherished. The best-known poems of Robert Burns have been loved by countless people over the years, but there are other poems that may be largely unknown that will mean a great deal to the few who are familiar with them. This anthology is a personal curation and not just a simple collection of poems. Each poem, handpicked by Alexander McCall Smith, leads the reader from one poem to the another. Intimate in tone, the editor shares the pleasure he finds in these poems through short epigraphs written for each piece.Trade Review'Lesser known works by Scottish poets have been hand-picked to show the divers and passionate voice of the country' * Scots Magazine *‘A haunting personal mixtape that gives voice to the ghosts of Scottish poetry. The personal nature of the collection allows McCall Smith to shine a light on lesser-known works. Every reader will find something to latch onto' * Herald on Sunday *'A beautifully curated, timeless collection' * Woman’s Weekly *‘Sit back - there is certainly plenty here to enjoy’ * Scotsman *'The true excitement of discovery lies in the lesser known gems, [such as] Tessa Ransford's Nocturne Lewis. There are poems that seep Scotland through their very pores. A wonderful anthology' * The Wee Review *

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Book SynopsisWhat really counts in this life? For the writer, Alexander McCall Smith, it is friendship and love – themes that crop up time and again in his novels. And it is these themes that he explores in this collection of poems, with moments that swoop and soar, and descriptions that will make you laugh and realign your view. This collection reminds us to look at the world differently, to stop once in while and look up at the sky.Trade Review'His poetic voice is conversational, companionable, friendly ... It is such books, books like this one, that in a time of strident and dishonest polemics readers should attend to with a feeling ear' -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *'The many admirers of the fiction of Alexander McCall Smith will be totally charmed by a book of poems he has produced. He reveals the same genial, quietly wise persona, whether offering gentle philosophy about life, writing about the seven hills of Edinburgh or running an elegant series of sonnets' * The Herald *'A book to treasure and return to through the year and across the years. All the poems inspire reflection, and an empathetic urge to take in the world through the eyes of others' * LoveReading *'McCall Smith never beats the big drum or shouts his wares in the marketplace. His poetic voice is conversational, companionable, friendly' * Yorkshire Post *'I had no idea the much-loved novelist AMS wrote poetry until a beautiful meditation dropped into my inbox during the strange days of Big Lockdown ... If you had never read one of his novels, these poems would make you love a writer whose optimism and grace give you hope for the world, 'its beauty revealed afresh'' * Daily Mail *'Explores a wide array of themes including journeys, books, animals and places in what would be deemed light verse. The stand-out works in this collection speak volumes in our volatile, Covid-19 afflicted world. The tile poem beautifully portrays how the pandemic has allowed us the opportunity to reconnect with a true sense of happiness. Offers a cosy form of escapism through poetry that’s easily accessible for all readers' * Dundee Courier, Scottish Book of the Week *'A wonderful collection of Alexander's poems which has given great comfort to us all in this rotten time we’ve all had' -- Brett Wolstencroft, Daunt Books'A moment of hope. Thank you' -- James Naughtie, 5 x 15'This collection, which examines the themes of friendship and love, is a joyous affirmation of [McCall Smith’s] infatuation with the form. Delivered in his trademark genial, conversational style … accessible and highly enjoyable' * Scottish Field *

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

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

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

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

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Book SynopsisA remarkable debut from a promising new poet.In his debut collection, Real Boys, Thomas Stewart examines the death of his father and explores questions of grief, guilt, mental health, identity, sexuality and masculinity. As these poems unfold, a hallway of mirrors is created. Through the lens of father-son relationships, cinema, art and Welsh mythology are expanded and rethought. This collection grapples with what it means to be a father, a son and a self. Subverting the notions of gender, Stewart addresses both the damage of old stereotypes and the passage of generational trauma, questioning how we might change.''A wonderful meditation on the language of grief, want, lust and hope'' Jenni Fagan''A beautiful and wistful collection which wrangles with life's ample grief and heartache'' Andrés N. Ordorica''These poems are a revelation. I took great comfort from Thomas Stewart's collection'' Lotte Jeffs

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Book SynopsisThis collection of Dante Alighieri’s lyrics charts his poetic evolution and displays the ground on which his Vita nuova and Divine Comedy developed. Inspired in his early poems by troubadour love poetry, Dante would later come to master all the genres of the time, such as the canzone, the sonnet and the ballad. At the same time deeply personal – dealing with themes of love, death and exile – and imbued with the poetic and political milieux of the period, Dante’s Rime offer a fascinating glimpse into the imagination of arguably the greatest writer of all time.Trade ReviewDante’s is the most comprehensive and the most ordered presentation of emotions that has ever been made. -- T.S. Eliot

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

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Book SynopsisPart of Alma Evergreens series, this new edition of Macbeth is presented here in a fully annotated edition that will make the text accessible to twenty-first-century readers, enabling them to appreciate its poetry and encouraging them to delve deeper into its variegated and complex history.

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Book SynopsisThe founding father of modern Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin has exerted - through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin, his plays, his short stories and his narrative poetry - a long-lasting influence well beyond the borders of his motherland. A slightly lesser-known, but by no mean less important aspect of his writing is his vast production of shorter verse, a genre at which he excelled and arguably still remains unsurpassed. This volume, part of Alma's series of the complete poetic works of Alexander Pushkin, collects the poems written by Pushkin at the time of his marriage to Natalia Goncharova right until his untimely death in a duel, and includes some of the greatest lyrical poems of his maturity, such as `In an Album', `Arab Imitation' and `Worldweariness', each presented in a verse translation opposite the original Russian text. Enriched with notes, pictures and an appendix on Pushkin's life and works, this will be essential reading for anyone wishing to delve deeper into the Russian bard's genius.Trade ReviewPushkin is an extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps the only phenomenon of the Russian spirit. -- Nikolai Gogol

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Book SynopsisWhen Emily Dickinson died in 1886, having published only a tiny selection of her verse anonymously in journals and newspapers, she left behind a chest containing almost 1,800 poems written on notebooks and loose sheets. Her family members, starting with her sister Lavinia, began editing and compiling them for publication, and one of the most celebrated collections, The Single Hound, was prepared by her niece Martha Dickinson Bianchi and published in 1914. This volume, containing some of Dickinson’s most original and poignant pieces, helped cement her reputation as one of America’s most important poets. Sparse and experimental, yet accessible and intimate, the compositions included in The Single Hound provide an ideal introduction to Dickinson’s genius.Trade ReviewEmily was my patron saint. -- William Carlos Williams

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Book SynopsisBetween 1892 and 1895, Oscar Wilde’s drawing-room comedies Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest made his name as a playwright who fearlessly mocked the hypocrisy and snobbery of Victorian society and took gleeful delight in appearing to trivialize its most sacred institutions. With its premiere on Valentine’s Day 1895, The Importance of Being Earnest – a hilarious comedy of mistaken identities and coruscating language – was a phenomenal success, but its run was cut short prematurely by Wilde’s court case and subsequent incarceration, and the play was not published until 1899, after Wilde had been released from prison. Also including the powerful Salome, originally written in French and banned by the British censor, this collection displays Wilde at his provocative and witty best, and demonstrates why he was a playwright who delighted audiences and infuriated critics in equal measure.Trade ReviewReading and rereading Wilde throughout the years, I noticed something that his panegyrists had not, it seems, suspected: namely the verifiable, elementary fact that Wilde was virtually always right. -- Jorge Luis Borges

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Book SynopsisIn the 1940s, Picasso wrote two plays in French: the first, Desire Caught by the Tail, was conceived during the German occupation of Paris and features a cast of grotesque allegorical characters such as the Onion, Silence or Fat Anxiety discussing the crucial wartime themes of hunger, cold and love; the second, The Four Little Girls, came about a few years after the end of the war on the French Riviera, and presents the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of four unnamed girls in a vegetable garden, revealing an unexpectedly evil aspect of childhood. These surreal compositions, which were meant to be read aloud rather than formally staged, are a testament to the great artist’s imaginative powers, and have been considered as forerunners to the theatre of the absurd of the 1950s, as exemplified by Beckett, Ionesco and Adamov.

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