A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Samuel French Inc The Odd Couple
Book SynopsisComedy / 6m, 2f / Int.This classic comedy opens as a group of the guys assembled for cards in the apartment of divorced Oscar Madison. And if the mess is any indication, it''s no wonder that his wife left him. Late to arrive is Felix Unger who has just been separated from his wife. Fastidious, depressed and none too tense, Felix seems suicidal, but as the action unfolds Oscar becomes the one with murder on his mind when the clean-freak and the slob ultimately decide to room together with hilari
£12.80
Samuel French Inc Brighton Beach Memoirs
Book SynopsisFull Length, Comic Drama / 3m, 4f / Comb. Ints/Ext.Here is part one of Neil Simon''s autobiographical trilogy: a portrait of the writer as a young teen in 1937 living with his family in a crowded, lower middle-class Brooklyn walk-up. Eugene Jerome, standing in for the author, is the narrator and central character. Dreaming of baseball and girls, Eugene must cope with the mundane existence of his family life in Brooklyn: formidable mother, overworked father, and his worldly older brother Stanley
£10.99
Random House USA Inc The Divine Comedy
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£26.25
Faber & Faber Crow From the Life and Songs of the Crow Faber
Book SynopsisCrow was Ted Hughes''s fourth book of poems for adults and a pivotal moment in his writing career. In it, he found both a structure and a persona that gave his vision a new power and coherence. A deep engagement with history, mythology and the natural world combine to forge a work of impressive and unsettling force. ''English poetry has found a new hero and nobody will be able to read or write verse now without the black shape of Crow falling across the page.'' Peter Porter
£11.69
Faber & Faber Collected Poems of Ted Hughes
Book SynopsisFor the first time, the vast canon of Ted Hughes's poetry together in one beautiful and collectable paperback edition.The Collected Poems spans fifty years of work, from Hawk in the Rain to the best-selling Birthday Letters.Trade Review"'This is a volume of quite astonishing authority - not just mastery, beauty and power, but sheer canonic authority' Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph"
£34.00
Burning Eye Books At What Point
Book SynopsisCaitlin O'Ryan's debut collection is a journey of mirror smashing and everything we have come to accept being called into question. Her poems vibrate through the pages with a sense of urgency that says you are not alone, I also feel this. The title poem has amassed millions of views online and featured on BBC Woman's Hour.
£10.44
Readerlink Distribution Services, LLC William Shakespeare Comedies
Book SynopsisBring on the merriment and song whenever you open this collection of Shakespeare’s entertaining comedies. The comedies of William Shakespeare—including The Tempest, The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It—have entertained readers and theatergoers for centuries. This elegant Word Cloud edition of Shakespeare’s Comedies includes all fourteen of the Bard’s comedies in a single volume so readers can revisit their favorite plays and passages with ease.
£10.44
HarperCollins Publishers Selected Poetry Prose
Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.
£5.68
Many Rivers Press David Whyte Essentials
Book Synopsis
£13.50
Cambridge University Press All the Sonnets of Shakespeare
Book SynopsisIntended for all readers of Shakespeare, this beautiful and ground-breaking book arranges Shakespeare's sonnets printed in 1609 in chronological order and intersperses the sonnets from the plays among them. A lively introduction provides essential background, while explanatory notes and modern English paraphrases illuminate the sonnets' meanings.Trade Review'What a fresh and lovely idea! I've been speaking the sonnets for most of my life. They are such wonderful training for an actor, and the notes and paraphrases in this book are just what we all need to guide us through them.' Judi Dench'This new arrangement of Shakespeare's sonnets is a revelation. Paul Edmondson, and Stanley Wells have truly illuminated the author's themes, preoccupations and obsessions. In so doing the poems have a fresh, and startlingly clear narrative progression. Thanks to their scholarship I found myself experiencing this work as never before. There is a directness, simplicity, and humanity, which shines from the page. It was an honour to read them in this form. I hope a large audience will enjoy seeing (and hearing), this new light shone on a great literary treasure.' Kenneth Branagh'Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells have done something daring, controversial, and richly illuminating. To the 154 poems collected in the celebrated volume of Shakespeare's Sonnets they have conjoined the sonnets that appear in the plays – such as the famous lines shared by Romeo and Juliet. To these they have added a number of passages from the plays that are in effect close relations to the conventional sonnet form. The result is to break down the walls and set Shakespeare's famous sequence in a much expanded field of poetic making. But that is not all: jettisoning the order in which the sonnets first appeared in print, Edmondson and Wells arrange them in what they take to be their chronological order of composition. The result is something radical and unsettling. To make these deeply familiar poems seem unexpected and new is a significant achievement.' Stephen Greenblatt, Author of Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics and The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve'A marvellously refreshing new look at Shakespeare's devotion to the sonnet form, expanding our understanding of the published sonnets by adding those he included in the plays. The single sentence description of each sonnet is also immensely useful and helpful to even the most seasoned reader.' Gregory Doran, Royal Shakespeare Company, Artistic Director'This is a book of clarity and love which shadows the mind in time of Shakespeare the poet and in so doing brings us closer than ever before to his own awareness of the reach of his genius.' Carol Ann Duffy'All the Sonnets of Shakespeare presents a wealth of valuable material and compelling interpretations in a clear, comprehensible, and convincing style that will hold appeal not only for Shakespeare scholars and students, but for all devotees of 'the supreme poet-dramatist' and his work.' Deb Miller, DC Metro Theater Arts'A valuable project, and one which achieves what Shakespeare editions so often promise but so rarely deliver: which is to prompt a genuinely new way of looking at these familiar works.' Daniel Swift, The Spectator'What Edmondson and Wells have done is both groundbreaking and profoundly significant … whether dipping in for a brief encounter or wanting to fully immerse oneself in the entire Sonnet canon, with scholarly explication and guidance, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare is a one volume tour de force. 400 years after his death, Edmondson and Wells have breathed new life into our engagement with his poetic output and a revised understanding of the man, his motives and his responses to creative muses … I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of their book and rediscovering the Sonnets for yourself! The casual reader will be both enlightened and entertained and the scholar will be academically stimulated.' Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Yorkshire Times'… a model of editing, which scraps the conventional sentimentalities and lets us read the Sonnets as poems - explorations into worlds of possible feeling, speech and thought, rather than coded memoirs.' Rowan Williams, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2020'In putting Shakespeare's dramatic sonnets alongside the 1609 group, this edition exhibits the breadth with which he handles the form.' Molly Clark, Times Literary Supplement'This book is a gift to scholars and students … This study will prove valuable to all who specialize in Shakespearean topics.' M. H. Kealy, Choice'Exploring the sonnets hidden in some of Shakespeare's most revered plays gives a new flavour and dynamic to those characters. It draws our attention to the author's intention in each play, where he makes a character unexpectedly speak in poetry. It illuminates that moment and poses new questions. The detailed and extremely in-depth introduction strongly supports the original works and allows us to examine all of Shakespeare's sonnets in a new, exciting and precise way. I learned a lot from reading this. I hope you do too.' Lolita Chakrabarti'… this is a volume into which one can dip suggestively, creatively and repeatedly to find things new. It is, frankly, the most exciting reconception of the Sonnets since John Benson's Poems in 1640, and the same motive of making them 'serene, clear and elegantly plain' serves to intensify their drama, their diversity and their brilliance.' Jane Kingsley-Smith, Shakespeare SurveyTable of ContentsIntroduction Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells; About this Volume; Sonnets; Textual Notes, All the Sonnets of Shakespeare: Literal Paraphrases, Numerical Index of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), Index of First Lines.
£15.99
Sarabande Books, Incorporated Hotel Almighty
Book SynopsisVisually arresting and utterly one-of-a-kind, Sarah J. Sloat's Hotel Almighty is a book-length erasure of pages from Misery by Stephen King, a reimagining of the novel's themes of constraint and possibility in elliptical, enigmatic poems. Here, "joy would crawl over broken glass, if that was the way." Here, sleep is a "circle whose diameter might be small," a circle "pitifully small," a "wrecked and empty hypothetical circle." Paired with Sloat's stunning mixed-media collage, each poem is a miniature canvas, a brief associative profile of the psyche—its foibles, obsessions, and delights.Trade ReviewAIGA 50 Books 50 Covers of 2020 The New York Times Book Review, “New & Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins” Library Journal, "Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" Academy of American Poets, “2020 Featured Fall Books” "Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations" Electric Literature, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image" Neon Pajamas, "Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020" Hypoallergic, “Typographic Eye Candy”: 50 Standout Book Covers From 2020 “Absolutely marvelous.” —Mary Ruefle "This book of erasure poems uses Stephen King’s “Misery” as its source text, highlighting themes of captivity and imagination. Sloat reproduces the original pages she used, adorned with fanciful collages on the erased sections." —”New and Noteworthy Poetry, from the Ancient Greeks to Billy Collins,” The New York Times Book Review "Sarah J. Sloat’s debut poetry collection, Hotel Almighty, is a visual feast. This assemblage of erasure poems and full-color collages is a fantastical, Rubik’s Cube of a delight." —Kelly Fordon, New York Journal of Books "Sloat’s brilliant erasures. . . are visual delights that transcend confinement." —"Kenyon Review’s 2020 Holiday Reading Recommendations," Kenyon Review "Sarah J. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty (Sarabande, Sept.) goes all out with erasure and mixed-media collage to reimagine Stephen King’s Misery." —"Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" by Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal "Hotel Almighty is a collection full of possibility and surprise. Of yes, misery and confinement, but also of playfulness and hope. It’s worth noting how unusual and thrilling it is to encounter a book of poems infused with so much color. The sophistication of the erasure pairs with the illustrative nature of collage to create a distinct mood, at times, like a subversive picture book for the Future Adult version of the kid drawing in the back of the room, who is too smart or dark or witty for the rest of the class." —"Misery Loves Company: A Conversation with Sarah J. Sloat" by J.M. Farkas, The Rumpus "More in the spirit of play than protest, S. Jane Sloat creates poetry from prose, reconstituting the words and world of Stephen King’s Misery. Sloat finds dreamy delight in King’s suspenseful tale: ‘In an act of imagination/late at night./He threw back his head and/a variety of strange and poisonous flowers grew.’ These lines feel like they speak to the creative process in general and to this book in particular. Each page is a poem revealed through erasure, strange word-flowers growing up from crayons, collage fragments, and loose threads that suggest a feminine hand." —Electric Literature, "9 Graphic Poetry Collections that Reimagine Text and Image" "Sarah J. Sloat's visual spectacles feel like unique and refreshing dreamscapes. Where a table or desk transforms into a craft bonanza of vivid lines, vintage clippings, yarn, scissors, wallpaper, string. Hotel Almighty offers all of those things. Bring me erasure. Bring me poetry. Bring me analog collage. Bring me Misery on every damn page." —"Favorite Authors (and Their Books) That I Read in 2020," Neon Pajamas "Hotel Almighty will make your brain spin until the last page, weaving colorful paper cut-outs, vibrant dots, and gold threads with word-jewels excavated from Misery, bewildering you with a new sense of what poetry is capable of." —Rhino "At a time when many contemporary poets experiment with and teach erasure as a poetic technique, Sloat's collection showcases the many potentials of the form. Sloat's visual compositions occur on three or four levels at once, as she aligns the forms of the source text, the verbal text, the collage, and the collection. I believe this multi-level resonance sets new parameters for poetry. With her flexibility with syntax and fluid subjects, Sloat forges new insights that call us to question the way we relate to what confines us, and to re-set the limits of a poem. I've loved reading and re-reading Hotel Almighty. I find something new each time I open the book, and I continue to learn from the box of many boxes Sloat presents here." —Diagram, online "[Misery] explores the mode and function of artistic creation as it relates to life itself, the ways confinement and suffering can become means to radical opening. Sloat’s Hotel Almighty internalizes all of this, both commenting and building on King’s explorations in both the form and lyricism of her erasures." —Dream Pop Journal, online "Sloat’s work here belongs within the offbeat orthodoxy of found poetry; the popular label 'blackout poetry' certainly applies to her method of scratching out, painting over or otherwise obscuring printed text, thereby bringing novel messages to the surface. And yet these terms, which live in negative language, don’t fully capture Sloat’s sublime, unsettling outcomes. She coaxes Technicolor poetry from preexisting pages; new verse isn’t merely found—as in stumbled upon—but unearthed." —The Curator "[A]n innovative, compelling work of visual lyric." —Women’s Voices for Change, online "Hotel Almighty is a profound work of reinvention — from King’s pop fiction to a hybrid work where houses grow wild with flowers, where one asks hell to “subside a little” (42), and where the reader enjoys every minute of the bizarre, vivid, delightful journey." —The Indianapolis Review "This is the technical and dramatic pinnacle of erasure poetry." —Naoko Fujimoto Poetry & Graphic Poetry “Sarah J. Sloat’s erasure-collages create intimate and intricate pairings that ricochet back and forth between text and image. In one, a picture of a giant hand tenderly touching a tiny telephone speaks to the page’s mournful question, ‘If I could be / A dim shape slumped over / and round / Would that be so bad?’ In another, the erased text (‘The sound of the wind filled the phone / squeezing into the line / like a nerve awake at night’) is translated into red stitches approaching, then encircling a tree. Hotel Almighty is a marvel.” —Matthea Harvey
£14.24
Scotland Street Press Wilson's Ornithology and Burds in Scots
Book Synopsis‘The crossbill is a bonny bird An she sings wi a guid Scots tongue Jip-jip-jip A’ll gie ye gip Gin ye meddle wi me nor ma young’ As a result of his travels across the North American continent in the eighteenth century Alexander Wilson pioneered the science of ornithological writing and illustration, becoming an inspiration for most of the ornithological works which followed. This new book celebrates the artwork of Alexander Wilson by reproducing his illustrations alongside new poems in Scots by Hamish MacDonald, looking at the habits, habitats, and characteristics of birds.
£9.49
Flame Tree Publishing W.B. Yeats Selected Poetry
Book SynopsisLittle treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The original text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader. The poetry of W.B. Yeats is among the most-loved literature of the twentieth century. At times dream-like, at others political, his verse has a rich sense of identity, infused with myth, mysticism and lyrical skill. This gift edition of selected poetry gathers some of the finest works by the Irish poet, including ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘The Stolen Child’, ‘When You Are Old’, ‘The Song of the Happy Shepherd’, 'Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven', ‘Easter, 1916’, 'The Second Coming' and 'A Prayer for my Daughter'. In place of the glossary are included selected notes by Yeats himself, and indexes of titles and first lines.
£8.99
Penguin Random House India I Dont Love You Anymore
Book SynopsisI Don't Love You Anymore is a book that'll feel like home to you. I promise it'll hold you gently on your worst days. Love, Rithvik
£10.76
HarperCollins Publishers Inc Dearly
Book SynopsisA new book of poetry from internationally acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author Margaret AtwoodIn Dearly, Margaret Atwood’s first collection of poetry in over a decade, Atwood addresses themes such as love, loss, the passage of time, the nature of nature and - zombies. Her new poetry is introspective and personal in tone, but wide-ranging in topic. In poem after poem, she casts her unique imagination and unyielding, observant eye over the landscape of a life carefully and intuitively lived.While many are familiar with Margaret Atwood’s fiction—including her groundbreaking and bestselling novels The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, Oryx and Crake, among others—she has, from the beginning of her career, been one of our most significant contemporary poets. And she is one of the very few writers equally accomplished in fiction and poetry. This co
£20.99
Union Square & Co. Romeo and Juliet
Book SynopsisThis colourful graphic novel features an illustrated cast of characters and a helpful plot summary.
£9.89
Pan Macmillan Cannibal
Book SynopsisA beautiful debut collection from Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair that draws on our colonial history and speaks powerfully to our present moment.Shortlisted for Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize 2021 A Guardian most anticipated book for 2020'Safiya Sinclair bursts onto the shelves with this richly powerful debut collection' – ScotsmanColliding with and confronting Shakespeare's The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal beautifully evoke the poet's Jamaican childhood and reach beyond to explore history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke. Cannibal marks the arrival of a thrilling and essential lyrical voice.'Cannibal is nothing less than an entrancing debut that reveals the teeming intellect and ravishing lucidity of a young poet in full possession of her literary powers.' – Major JacksonTrade ReviewWith exquisite lyrical precision, Safiya Sinclair is offering us a new muscular music that is as brutal as it is beautiful. Intelligent and elemental, these poems mark the debut of a poet who is dangerously talented and desperately needed. -- Ada LimónCannibal is nothing less than an entrancing debut that reveals the teeming intellect and ravishing lucidity of a young poet in full possession of her literary powers. Here is a poetry that richly interrogates power and history while also eloquently and furtively asserting the possibilities of nature, desire, and the body as ceremonial and spiritual sources of resistance and affirmation. -- Major JacksonBook of the Month: A singingly gifted writer . . . Sinclair riffs on this notion of savagery as she evokes her childhood in Jamaica and explores race relations in the US; womanhood and otherness; post-colonialism and life in exile . . . An astonishing talent. * The Bookseller *Covers so much ground: her Jamaican background, spirituality, womanhood, America, race relations. She laces words together in a beautiful tapestry, full of history, life, death and, most of all, renewal. -- Morgan Jerkins, New York TimesFilled with beautifully rich imagery . . . Lyrical and provocative, Sinclair's poems teach the reader in rich language what it means to be 'other' * Buzzfeed Books *Much like June Jordan and Audre Lorde, Sinclair is a force to be reckoned with. Her stanzas will revive you and leave you transformed. * Lenny Letter *Cannibal is the dazzling debut volume of Safiya Sinclair, born in Montego Bay, Jamaica and living in the U.S. Her poems shimmer with the rich colours and sounds of her homeland, but running through is a sense of escape and of exile. * Daily Mail *Precise and provocative poems . . . Sinclair writes with a thrilling sensibility of the texture of savageness * New Statesman *Safiya Sinclair bursts onto the shelves with this richly powerful debut collection . . . Sinclair's material interweaves the personal, the historical, and the political with language of stunning originality . . . these poems are physical, enraged and sensual but also reflected and precise. * Scotsman *
£10.44
Poetry Book Society Poetry Book Society Spring 2024 Bulletin
Book SynopsisThe quarterly poetry magazine of the Poetry Book Society, founded by T.S. Eliot, featuring poems and exclusive interviews from Victoria Kennefick, Isabel Galleymore, Gillian Clarke, Rachel Mann, Jane Hirshfield, Rosa Campbell, Bunny Lang, and Maria Stepanova.
£9.49
Oxford University Press Lyrical Ballads 1798 and 1802 Oxford Worlds
Book SynopsisWordsworth and Coleridge's joint collection of poems has often been singled out as the founding text of English Romanticism. This is the only edition to print both the original 1798 collection and the expanded 1802 edition, with Wordsworth's famous Preface. It includes important letters, a wide-ranging introduction and generous notes.Trade ReviewFor students of the Lyrical Ballads as one of the key texts of Romanticism, Staffords new edition, juxtaposing the two 1798 and 1802 versions, is highly recommendable as it finely lays out both the reader response dimension of its poetics and the contexts of its production. * Helga Schwalm, The BARS Review *Lyrical Ballads, in case you missed it, is, quite simply, possibly the single most important collection of poems in English ever published. * Nicholas Lezard, Guardian *An invaluable resource for both teachers and students of Romantic literature... elegant, informative and clearly written introduction, a lucid overview of the Lyrical Ballads' transformation between 1798 and 1802... warmly recommended. * Susan Valladares, Reviews Editor for the British Association for Romantic Studies' Bulletin & Review and Lecturer in English, Worcester College, Oxford *Stafford's new edition, juxtaposing the two 1798 and 1802 versions, is highly recommendable * Helga Schwalm, BARS Review *
£8.99
Nick Hern Books Stereophonic
Book SynopsisThe electrifying, Tony Award-winning playset inside the elusive world of a recording studio, as a rock band on the brink of superstardom attempts to create their difficult second album. Published alongside the West End production in 2025.
£13.49
Dare-Gale Press The Wound
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£8.49
Nick Hern Books Little Baby Jesus & Estate Walls: Two plays
Book SynopsisTwo plays, both set in contemporary inner-city London, showcasing the remarkable poetic and theatrical imagination of writer/performer Arinzé Kene. Little Baby Jesus is a lyrical triptych of three intertwining, colliding monologues about the life-changing moments when three young people 'grew up'. Joanne is dipped in rudeness, rolled in attitude and is fighting to keep her life afloat. Sensitive and mature he may be, yet Kehinde struggles with an obsession for mixed-race girls as he eyes his place on the social ladder. Rugrat is the class clown and playground loudmouth, and just wants to make it past GCSEs. Estate Walls is the story of Obi, a young writer who dreams of leaving his estate, but with bad boys Myles and Cain for best friends, there are bound to be setbacks… Both plays premiered at Ovalhouse Theatre in south London, directed by Ché Walker, with Estate Walls winning Arinzé the Most Promising Playwright at the Offies (Off West End Theatre Awards) in 2011. Little Baby Jesus was revived at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in 2019, directed by winner of the JMK Young Director Award Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu.Trade Review'An intense, visceral and vivid portrayal of the often-brutal reality of growing up. It feels starkly authentic and cruel, whilst at times is wildly funny and is all the more appealing for it' * Broadway World on Little Baby Jesus *'A huge groundswell of hormones, mistakes, loneliness and searching. You feel, emotionally, like you know the story and care about these three teenagers and that is why Arinzé Kene is brilliant' * Time Out on Little Baby Jesus *'The great joy of the play springs from Kene's sharp-eyed, witty observations and the lyricism of his descriptive writing... moves from hysterically funny to tear-jerkingly moving in an instant, with comedy, harsh reality and allegory fitting together seamlessly... rides the highs and lows of the years of teenage discovery and arrives assuredly at a life affirming destination' * The Reviews Hub on Little Baby Jesus *'Here is a play that will be racing through you, making you laugh and think, long after you've left the theatre... a genre-defying theatrical hybrid – a thrilling combination of performance poetry, standup comedy and good old-fashioned storytelling' * Guardian on Little Baby Jesus *'Skips majestically between the epic and urban in a story that would feel as comfortable set against a Grecian palace as it does the grimy city wall of its title... Kene's eclectic dialogue is a pleasure to listen to, jumping from poetic to pithy and back again with remarkable ease' * Theatre Workbook on Estate Walls *'Witty and intelligent... deftly captures and magnifies the poetry of everyday conversation on an estate' * Soul Culture on Estate Walls *
£11.69
Legend Press Ltd Honeybee: for fans of MILK ANDHONEY by Rupi Kaur
Book SynopsisGoodreads Choice Award winning poet Trista Mateer "expertly exposes the intensity of first love" in this confessional collection of poetry.You will meet people in your lifetime who demand to have poems written about them. It''s not something they say. It''s something about their hands, the shape of their mouths, the way they look walking away from you.Honeybee is an honest take on walking away and still feeling like you were walked away from. It''s about cutting love loose like a kite string and praying the wind has the decency to carry it away from you. It''s an ode to the back and forth, the process of letting something go but not knowing where to put it down. Honeybee is putting it down. It''s small town girls and plane tickets, a taste of tenderness and honey, the bandage on the bee sting. It''s a reminder that you are not defined by the people you walk away from or the people who walk away from you. Consider Honeybee a memoir in verse, or at the very least, a story written by one of today''s most confessional poets.Perfect for fans of Caroline Kaufman, Atticus, Clementine von Radics, Nina LaCour, Adam Silvera, and Becky Albertalli; or anyone interested in bisexuality, heartbreak, running away from your problems, and coming out.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Selected Poems
Book Synopsis''I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions.''Louis MacNeice''s prescription is designed to look ordinary, rather than esoteric, but very little poetry can claim to meet these specifications, stringent in their very wideness. MacNeice''s work matches the world he famously described as ''incorrigibly plural.''Michael Longley, himself a distinguished Ulster poet, has written an introductory essay of meticulous advocacy. His wife, the critic Edna Longley, has supplied the apparatus for students and the general reader.
£13.49
Faber & Faber Tales from Ovid Twentyfour Passages from the
Book SynopsisWhen Michael Hofmann and James Lasdun''s ground-breaking anthology After Ovid (also Faber) was published in 1995, Hughes''s three contributions to the collective effort were nominated by most critics as outstanding. He had shown that rare translator''s gift for providing not just an accurate account of the original, but one so thoroughly imbued with his own qualities that it was as if Latin and English poet were somehow the same person. Tales from Ovid, which went on to win the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, continued the project of recreation with 24 passages, including the stories of Phaeton, Actaeon, Echo and Narcissus, Procne, Midas and Pyramus and Thisbe. In them, Hughes''s supreme narrative and poetic skills combine to produce a book that stands, alongside his Crow and Gaudete, as an inspired addition to the myth-making of our time.
£13.49
Faber & Faber Waiting for Godot
Book SynopsisSubtitled â??A tragicomedy in two actsâ??, and famously described by the Irish critic Vivien Mercier as a play in which â??nothinghappens, twiceâ??, En attendant Godot was first performed at the Th_Ãtre de Babylone in Paris in 1953. It was translated into English by Samuel Beckett, and opened as Waiting for Godot at the Arts Theatre in London in 1955.â??I told [Ralph] Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.This seemed to disappoint him greatly.â??-- Samuel Beckett to Barney Rosset, 18 October 1954All the dead voices.They make a noise like wings.Like leaves.Like sand.Like leaves.[Silence.]They all speak together. Each one to itself.[Silence.]Rather they whisper.They rustle.They murmur. They rustle.[Silence.] What do they say?They talk about their lives.To have lived is not enough for them.They have to talk about it.To be dead is not enough for them.It is not sufficient.[Silence.]They make a noise like feathers.Like leaves.Like ashes.Like leaves.
£9.49
Indigo Dreams Publishing Her Lost Language
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£8.54
Nightboat Books Toxicon and Arachne
Book SynopsisIn Toxicon & Arachne, McSweeney allows the lyric to course through her like a toxin, producing a quiver of lyrics like poisoned arrows. Toxicon was written in anticipation of the birth of McSweeney’s daughter, Arachne. But when Arachne was born sick, lived brie?fly, and then died, McSweeney unexpectedly endured a second inundation of lyricism, which would become the poems in Arachne, this time spun with grief. Toxicon & Arachne is the culmination of eight years of engagement with lyric under a regime of global and personal catastrophes.Trade Review"The kamikaze fantasy arises, like everything in this frightening and brilliant book, not from a pleasant 'brainstorm' but from the animal reflexes of the 'brainstem.' The defeat is total: a rout, a blowout. Now that the tables have been permanently turned, 'the popsong plays' on 'the toy turntable' in the nursery and also—you can hear the faint pun—'in eternity.'”—Dan Chiasson, The New Yorker"McSweeney is much more formally inclined — the book contains a crown of sonnets and two sestinas, perhaps the only good sestinas I’ve ever read. In the free verse poems too, sound and rhythm are the governing principles, with deeper connections almost feeling like a bonus to the surface pleasure of the sonic riffing… At their most disorderly, McSweeney’s poems highlight errors of history, genetics and luck — and that contemporary feeling of being in the wrong timeline."—Elisa Gabbert, The New York Times "Formally brilliant, emotionally heartbreaking, and considerably terrifying, this is a stunning work from one of poetry’s most versatile experimentalists."—Publishers Weekly Starred Review "McSweeney remains clever, far cleverer than I, but by the end of this masterful double-text⎯ in which even the unequal parts seem appropriate to staggering grief⎯ any sensitive reader should feel as if they’ve shared in the poet’s singular struggle: that of finding some form, some phrase, that might convey what’s inconceivable."—John Domini, The Brooklyn Rail "Joyelle McSweeney’s Toxicon and Arachne, published by Nightboat a month into America’s fight against the novel coronavirus, depicts a world of chemical spills and pestilence."—Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair "McSweeney is one of our most dynamic poets of theme, mood, and syntax, and this new paired collection unifies those ranges in a most powerful fashion."—Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions "Arachne subverts and elaborates upon Toxicon. Toxicon sharpens the cuts of Arachne. With these two texts—this book, Toxicon and Arachne—Joyelle McSweeney has created a work of incredible honesty, exploring suffering and trauma through the lens of the necropastoral. This landscape of moss and bugs and dilapidation."—Mike Corrao, Empty Mirror “'Each thought strikes my brain / like the spirals of a ham,' keens Joyelle McSweeney late in this vertiginous book’s waking nightsweat. Meat cut thus summons the cycles of violence that aggrieve the poet’s mind, chiming with the sonic associations that ring through Toxicon & Arachne’s textual-psyche, coming to signify, for me, culpability in systems of gross brutality. We breathe to euphonize, thus we conspire. Reader, that grief and anger are rendered here, entangled with such snarl and venom may stun none who know this searing, delirious, furious poet’s work. Still. In this seething collection, McSweeney, wields her wildest knife while making public her arcing, aching cuts of deep and private mourning without blinking. It’s stupefying."—Douglas Kearney “McSweeney treats words, like images, as instances of their precise contents rather than symbolic references.”—Matthew Henriksen "Joyelle McSweeney’s Toxicon and Arachne is a very remarkable book. She deals with a vast array of the physical and spiritual, without ever succumbing to the tired cliches of our current stale poetry scene. The book beggars all description, but its own incredible inventions, both lyric and tragic (and much else). All otherhow and otherwho...."—Mac Wellman “I’ve never read anything by Joyelle McSweeney that wasn’t totally exciting. She’s one of the most interesting people working now in terms of the forms she uses, and she’s extremely deft, and playful, and yet the stuff that’s going on, content-wise, is really super-smart, and has really good politics and stuff. I just find her a thrilling font of new stuff.”—Dennis Cooper "Unequivocally, these poem’s build their right relation with the truth of the matter and the fact of suffering--where the speaker must go, with 'with cerements,' into how 'an epigenetic/code remembers trauma.' McSweeney recalls, remembers and remembers again, and lets the poem examine how to 'live in shame/as blood floods the vaulted chasm' in order to look at the poem's points of survival and how they turn to speak to anguish. I am in deep awe of the resilience found in these pages, and the enduring strength and clarity these poems expel forth."—Prageeta Sharma "She has managed very brilliantly and bravely to risk a greater openness to dread and to maintain as much control of it as an animal trainer had better with leopards. I am saying Toxicon is a major book."—Cal Bedient, Lana Turner
£12.34
Saqi Books Revolt Against the Sun
Book SynopsisA key resource for students and teachers of Arabic and world literature, as well as for readers interested in discovering an alternative narrative of modern Iraqi culture.
£12.74
Faber & Faber The Forward Book of Poetry 2026
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Comedy About Spies
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£10.99
Nick Hern Books A Good House
Book SynopsisA funny, thrilling and provocative play exploring race, resentment and community politics, from a leading South African playwright.
£9.89
Fitzcarraldo Editions Old Food
Book SynopsisFrom one of the most lauded artists of his generation comes a purging soliloquy: a profound nowt delivered in some spent afterwards. Scorched by senility and nostalgia, and wracked by all kinds of hunger, Ed Atkins’ Old Food lurches from allegory to listicle, from lyric to menu, fetching up a plummeting, idiomatic and crabbed tableau from the cannibalised remains of each form in turn. Written in conjunction with Atkins’ exhibition of the same name, Old Food is a hard Brexit, wadded with historicity, melancholy and a bravura kind of stupidity. Ed Atkins is an artist who makes all kinds of convolutions of self-portraiture. He writes uncomfortably intimate, debunked prophesies; paints travesties; and makes realistic computer generated videos that often feature figures that resemble the artist in the throes of unaccountable psychical crises. Atkins’ artificial realism, whether written or animated, pastiches romanticism to get rendered down to a sentimental blubber – all the better to model those bleak feelings often so inexpressible in real life.Trade Review‘Violent, emetic, immoderate, improper, impure – that’s to say it’s the real thing. Atkins’s prose, which may not be prose, adheres to Aragon’s maxim “Don't think – write.”’ — Jonathan Meades‘Atkins, reflecting on the absence of humans in the exhibition, here favours the visceral impact of associated images and words, pumping the poetry-prose with lines that speak of our primeval instincts, needs and desires, in order to “seek empathic commons”.’ — ArtReview‘Ed Atkins is the artist of ugly feelings – gruesome and smeared and depleted. But everything he does in his videos or paintings, I’ve always thought, he really does as a writer. He uses language as a system where everything gets reprocessed and misshapen – a unique and constant mislaying of tone that’s as dizzying as it’s exhilarating.’ — Adam Thirlwell, author of Lurid & Cute ‘The universe is a rabble of contagion and miasma. The universe is a rabble of spheres, moved by mystical forces. Ed Atkins pokes this condition. He strokes and bursts it. He is the barber who doubles as doctor and a dentist, quick with his knife and flushes of blood. No page of Old Food is dry, it seeps with life, it breathes, bleeds, engorges, sticks you together with spit. Like bacterial cells on an errant loaf, Old Food is language in growth. ’ — Helen Marten, 2016 Turner Prize winner
£9.99
Penguin Books Ltd The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem From
Book SynopsisAn essential anthology that puts contemporary geniuses Eileen Myles and Margaret Atwood in conversation with literary classics Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde about the liberating and unique combination of poetry and proseA Penguin Classic The prose poem has proven one of the most innovative and versatile poetic forms of recent years. In the century-and-a-half since Charles Baudelaire, Emma Lazarus, Oscar Wilde and Ivan Turgenev spread the notion of a new kind of poetry, this genre with an oxymoron for a name has attracted many of our most beloved writers. Yet, even now, this peculiarly rich and expansive form is still misunderstood and overlooked. Here, Jeremy Noel-Tod reconstructs the history of the prose poem for us by selecting the essential pieces of writing, covering a greater chronological sweep and international range than any previous anthology of its kind. Noel-Tod even calls it an alternative history of modern poetry. In The Penguin Book o
£11.69
Nick Hern Books The Three Musketeers
Book Synopsis‘My name is D’Artagnan, musketeer to King Louis the Thirteenth, defender of the Queen’s diamonds, and the man you tried to poison in that bar.’ When the young and naive D'Artagnan sets out on his quest to become a King's musketeer, he immediately encounters the dangerous femme fatale, Milady de Winter. After discovering that the musketeers have been disbanded, he makes it his mission to get them reinstated. But will his feud with Milady thwart him? And who the heck is she? This riotous adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel by John Nicholson (Hound of the Baskervilles, Peepolykus) was originally performed by physical-comedy theatre company Le Navet Bete on a UK tour in 2019, with four actors playing over thirty characters. It was co-produced by Le Navet Bete and Exeter Northcott Theatre. The Three Musketeers will suit any theatre company or drama group looking for a funny, high-energy adaptation of a universally loved story, which is suitable for audiences of all ages. Swashbuckling and rollicking adventure guaranteed – convincing French accents, not so much.Trade Review'Utterly hilarious and heartfelt' * The Reviews Hub *'A beautifully realised piece of work... enormous fun and full of quirkiness... a joyful, slightly bonkers, artistically clever and accomplished piece of theatre... a visual and aural feast' * ReviewsGate *'An enthusiastic riot of dad jokes, dodgy accents and gleeful gallivanting' * Guardian *
£11.69
Faber & Faber Feel Free
Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2018Nick Laird has been an assured and brilliant voice in contemporary poetry since his acclaimed debut, To a Fault, in 2005. Feel Free, his fourth collection, effortlessly spans the Atlantic, combining the acoustic expansiveness of Whitman or Ashbery with the lyricism of Laird''s forebears Heaney, MacNeice and Yeats. With characteristic variety, invention and wit (here are elegies, monologues, formal poems and free verse) the poet explores the sundry patterns of freedom and constraint - the family, the impress of history, the body itself - and how we might transcend them.Feel Free is always daring, always renewing, and Laird''s most remarkable work to date.
£11.69
Flame Tree Publishing Chinese Voices: Classical Poetry
Book SynopsisThe Chinese poetic tradition, which dates back to almost 1,000 B.C., is one of the most cherished parts of the nation’s cultural heritage. This collection of translated classical poems are a stunning chronicle of Chinese life, culture and history, and remain as compelling today as ever. Moreover, their vitality and evocative imagery demonstrate why Chinese poetry was so inspiring to modern Western poets, particularly Ezra Pound and the Imagist movement. Organized by theme and with containing works by some of the most esteemed Chinese poets, this anthology is sure to delight every reader.
£9.49
Nick Hern Books Giant
Book SynopsisA stage play exploring the life and legacy of that fiendishly charismatic icon, Roald Dahl. Premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2024 and transferring to the West End in 2025.
£15.64
Playwrights Canada Press,Canada Paradise Lost
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£19.54
Andrews McMeel Publishing Mixed Feelings
Book SynopsisFrom actor Avan Jogia comes a raw and moving collection of poetry, stories, and art about living as a mixed-race person in a world increasingly fixated on racial identity.In Mixed Feelings, Avan Jogia explores his complicated emotions around race, identity, religion, and family through poetry and imagery. Drawing on the author's own life story as well as interviews he's conducted with friends and strangers, Mixed Feelings serves as a dialogue starter for difficult topics that now, more than ever, need to be discussed.Trade Review"Thank you to Avan for having the courage and the wit and the insight to write this book. It's the poetry collection that a new generation of artists needs, and he did such an incredible job being both vulnerable and empowering." (Mallory Viscardi, Editor of Little Infinite, Little Infinite)"Mixed Feelings is a great read for anyone looking to explore what it means to be more than a singular label." (Jes Caron, VOYA Magazine)
£11.39
Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Library of Small Catastrophes
Book SynopsisRollins'' debut is a book of dissonance, with race and women's bodies proving two unyielding concerns throughout this four-part work. In poem after poem, Rollins demonstrates that she is finding her own way, shining a light, making darkness apparent. ?Publishers WeeklyThe range of Rollins' poetic skill is remarkable. The result is a collection of poetry which is magnificently crafted, readable, and crucially important. ?New York Journal of BooksLibrary of Small Catastrophes, Alison Rollins' ambitious debut collection, interrogates the body and nation as storehouses of countless tragedies. Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges' fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss. Memory is about the future, not the past, she writes, and rather than shying away from the anger, anxiety, and mourning of her narrators, Rollins' poetry seeks to challenge the status quo, engaging in a diverse, boundary-defying dialogue with an ever-present reminder of the ways race, sexuality, spirituality, violence, and American culture collide.
£14.25
HarperCollins Publishers The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun
Book SynopsisUnavailable for more than 70 years, this early but important work is published for the first time with Tolkien's Corrigan' poems and other supporting material, including a prefatory note by Christopher Tolkien.Set In Britain's land beyond the seas' during the Age of Chivalry, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun tells of a childless Breton Lord and Lady (Aotrou' and Itroun') and the tragedy that befalls them when Aotrou seeks to remedy their situation with the aid of a magic potion obtained from a corrigan, or malevolent fairy. When the potion succeeds and Itroun bears twins, the corrigan returns seeking her fee, and Aotrou is forced to choose between betraying his marriage and losing his life.Coming from the darker side of J.R.R. Tolkien's imagination, The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, together with the two shorter Corrigan' poems that lead up to it and are also included here, was the outcome of a comparatively short but intense period in Tolkien's life when he was deeply engaged with Celtic, andTrade Review‘The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun is a poem in the tradition of the medieval "lay", also illustrated by the Lay of the Children of Húrin, and in the Lay of Leithian. This 556-verse-long poem tells the tragic story of a lord who sacrifices his life by love: in order to have a child with his wife, then to remain faithful to his spouse, he gives his life to a witch.’ The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate website ‘The language is as time-worn as a Runic engraving yet clear as a bell … The holy and the unholy imbue everything. It is a world captured in stained glass.’ Daily Telegraph
£8.54
Faber & Faber Englander N What We Talk About When We Talk About
Book SynopsisA viciously funny and intelligently provocative play about family, friendship and faith, adapted by the author from his Pulitzer-finalist short story. Who in your life would you trust to keep you alive?
£10.44
Oxford University Press The Poetic Edda
Book SynopsisShe sees, coming up a second time,earth from the ocean, eternally green;the waterfalls plunge, an eagle soars above them,over the mountain hunting fish.After the terrible conflagration of Ragnarok, the earth rises serenely again from the ocean, and life is renewed. The Poetic Edda begins with The Seeress''s Prophecy which recounts the creation of the world, and looks forward to its destruction and rebirth. In this great collection of Norse-Icelandic mythological and heroic poetry, the exploits of gods and humans are related. The one-eyed Odin, red-bearded Thor, Loki the trickster, the lovely goddesses, and the giants who are their enemies walk beside the heroic Helgi, Sigurd the Dragon-Slayer, Brynhild the shield-maiden, and the implacable Gudrun. This translation also features the quest-poem The Lay of Svipdag and The Waking of Angantyr, in which a girl faces down her dead father to retrieve his sword.Comic, tragic, instructive, grandiose, witty, and profound, the poems of the Edda have influenced artists from Wagner to Tolkien and speak to us as freely as when they were first written down seven hundred and fifty years ago.Trade ReviewLarringtons version of The Poetic Edda has been beautifully translated, and the flow of each poem is perfect. * Kirsty Hewitt, Book Hugger *A 750-year-old haul of Icelandic verse might not sound like cutting-edge entertainment but these sinewy sagas include such modern elements as gutsy heroines and ultra-violence. * Christopher Hirst, Independent *This is a lovingly presented translation of one of the most important works of Norse mythology ... A fabulous collection worthy of multiple readings. * Arthur Chappell, Concatenation.org *
£16.19
Nick Hern Books The Years
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£9.89
2Leaf Press Ransom Street
Book SynopsisRansom Street is Claire Millikin’s third collection of poetry with 2Leaf Press. The poems in this volume meditate on the idea of ransom to explore legacies of violence in the southeastern United States, ultimately seeking moments of reckoning for these unsettled histories. A fee paid to release a prisoner, ransom can, Millikin shows us, initiate a sacrificial act that drives people apart, but also, when paid, can bring the homeless home. The poems in Ransom Street move through the question of release elliptically, exploring these abstract implications of ransom through a fictional street in a southeastern American town. The presence of inherited violence, cultural and familial, haunt the terrain of Ransom Street, as the poems move through a geography of ghosts, always seeking “ransom,” the sacrificial act that returns the self to wholeness.
£12.35
Penguin Putnam Inc Black Girl Call Home
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£15.29
Canongate Books poyums
Book SynopsisFrom Len Pennie, the performance poet sensation, comes an electric debut collection about loving, learning, surviving, growing and giving - an instant Sunday Times bestseller
£10.44
