Poetry Books

Book Synopsis'I am strength I am power I am courage I am revolution I am Amber Rai' Amber is trapped – by her family's rules and expectations, and by her own fears. But on the running track she feels free. As her body speeds up, the world slows down. And the tangled, mixed-up words in her head start to make sense... It's time to start a revolution: for her mother, for her sister, for herself. Run, Amber. Run. Manjeet Mann's multi-award-winning verse novel, Run, Rebel, about a young woman beginning to take control of her life, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2021 and won the CILIP Carnegie Shadowers Choice Award, a UKLA Book Award, a Diverse Book Award and the Sheffield Children's Book Award. This fast-paced, mesmerising stage version, adapted by the author, was first produced in 2023 by Pilot Theatre, with Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Derby Theatre and York Theatre Royal. This edition also contains a range of teaching materials and resources designed to help educators bring the play to life for their students. 'Mann's brilliant, coruscating verse novel lays out the anatomy of Amber's revolution, and the tentative first flowerings of hope and change' Guardian Trade Review'An empowering show for teenagers with a touch of Bend It Like Beckham... vividly captures the restlessness of being a teenager' * The Stage *'Strong storytelling... thought-provoking, involving and exciting' * BritishTheatre.com *'A superb adaptation... joyful, vibrant and full of life, with a genuine feel-good ending' * Reviews Hub *'A compelling, fast-paced play... there are a lot of opportunities for a cast of young performers to use their creativity in interpreting the text and deciding how it could be performed... a fresh, challenging and original text that is inspiring to read' * Drama & Theatre Magazine *

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Book Synopsis'I didn't expect it so soon, that's all. It made it seem so final, all our lives, those decisions all irreversible, immortalised in a slideshow to a Coldplay track.' Helen is forty when she loses her husband. Her daughter Becca is fifteen when her dad dies. Now it's just the two of them... what do they do next? Unfolding through snapshots of a relationship over forty years, Helen explores the threads which bind mother and daughter together, how they damage each other, and how they come to each other's rescue. A play for two actors – about love, grief, and getting ashes stuck to your trouser leg – Helen by Maureen Lennon was shortlisted for the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award. It was first produced at Theatre503, London, in 2023, in a co-production with Terrain, a company dedicated to promoting Northern artists and the stories they tell. Trade Review'Powerful... wrenchingly sad... successfully captures that dislocating out-of-body feeling that can accompany profound grief, and there are some truthful moments of humour and tenderness, too' * The Stage *'Feels real... the dialogue is strong and natural... poignant with touches of humour' * Reviews Hub *'Brisk, intense and with a strong emotional hit' * London Pub Theatres *'A deeply poignant and profound look at how grief can impact a life... beautifully written... hugely recommended' * There Ought To Be Clowns *

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Book Synopsis'It was a tower block, but it was home.' The early hours of Wednesday 14 June 2017. The north-west corner of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. A twenty-four-storey residential tower. The scene of a national tragedy. This powerful verbatim play is drawn from the testimony of residents – a group of survivors and bereaved – at the heart of the Grenfell Tower tragedy. It reveals the impact of the multiple failures that led to the most devastating residential fire in the UK since the Second World War, and asks: how do we stop this ever happening again? Startling, urgent and deeply moving, Grenfell: in the words of survivors explores the courage and resilience of an ill-treated community and their continued campaign for justice. Created from interviews by Gillian Slovo, the play was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in July 2023, co-directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike. 10% of the net proceeds from sales of this book will be donated by the publisher to the Grenfell Foundation, who support the bereaved and survivors in the aftermath of the fire, as well as help them ensure Grenfell is remembered long into the future.Trade Review'Moving, heartfelt and important... a powerful piece of verbatim theatre that demands empathy, not sympathy' * Evening Standard *'An engulfing experience... harrowing but not sensational... Slovo's play is new and important. It is not only that she uses the words of survivors; it's that they are her collaborators. The result is an inquiry of the best sort – the most humane kind – on stage' * Observer *'A tour de force... deeply humane... infinitely more meaningful than dispassionate news footage... a tremendous piece of theatre' * Time Out *'Gripping... shocking... piles up devastating detail... an ensemble masterpiece' * Guardian *'Powerful' * Telegraph *'A visceral insight into a human tragedy' * The Times *'A powerful and necessary polemic... The details clutch at the throat and the heart... an urgent call to arms' * The Stage *'Powerful and harrowing... But alongside the anger, there is love' * WhatsOnStage *'Devastating' * iNews *'Terrifying' * Broadway World *'A masterpiece... verbatim theatre delivered to wrenching effect... The details are indelible' * Arts Desk *

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Book Synopsis'We are all the authors of our own love story.' Casey's new boyfriend Brett is handsome, romantic and devoted – a dream come true. He writes poetry! He makes quiche! For once in her life, Casey is in a relationship with a man who attends to her every whim and desire. But when her suspicious sister Cynthia starts digging into Brett's past, she threatens to take away the one good thing that's ever happened to Casey… Nancy Harris's play Somewhere Out There You is a romantic comedy with a twist, playfully unravelling the love stories we weave for ourselves and inviting us to question what compels us to tell them in the first place. It was first performed in 2023 at the Abbey Theatre, as part of Dublin Theatre Festival, directed by Wayne Jordan.Trade Review'Delightful... insightfully skewers the delusions and hypocrisies that are at the heart of most romantic relationships' * The Stage *'Bold and enjoyable' * Irish Times *'Sparkily original' * Irish Independent *'A refreshingly lighthearted comedy with some very funny lines and a Charlie Kaufmanesque twist... a warm and upbeat piece that makes you question the nature of love and its importance in our lives' * No More Workhorse *'Hilariously entertaining, with just a dash of romance, Somewhere Out There You is a laugh out loud delight. A perfect first date for hopeless romantics and the romantically hopeless' * Arts Review *

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Book Synopsis'Shisha lounges are an essential part of the Muslim experience, bruv, like the Fillet-O-Fish.' Chunkyz Shisha Lounge is a home away from home for Jihad, Rashid and Asif, a space where community whispers are heard, jokes are told, and new hustles are born. But its future is under threat, having become a target for local politicians. Aspiring journalist Jihad wants to fight back. After winning a competition to produce his own documentary, he sets out to create something that gives a voice to his community and challenges the usual stereotypes that fill the airwaves. Will he be able to create something that makes his boys proud? Or will his dreams of becoming a journalist come at a cost too high to bear? Mohamed-Zain Dada's debut play, Blue Mist is a story about South Asian Muslim men navigating a system that isn't built for them. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2023, directed by Milli Bhatia, in a co-production with SISTER.Trade Review'Vivid and ambitious... complex ideas presented with verve... could not be more current, or urgent' * Guardian *'Boisterously enjoyable... Dada has a real feel for character and atmosphere, and his debut is shot through with vibrancy' * Evening Standard *'A lovable drama about a trio of male Muslim friends and the run-down shisha lounge they hang out in... gets right to the heart of what a safe space can be for young men and how devastating it is to violate that... So many great lines whizz by in the back-and-forth of Dada's dialogue' * Time Out *'A drama that touches on a range of urgent themes and shows the importance of public spaces for our increasingly isolated urban youth' * WhatsOnStage *'Mohamed-Zain Dada's warm, well-observed sitcom handles sensitive themes around Islamophobia and men's mental health with care and compassion... his vibrant, naturalistic dialogue is packed with slang and striking turns of phrase... an alternative perspective that is refreshing and necessary' * The Stage *'Authentic and energetic... offers an insight into shisha lounge culture — and challenges easy stereotypes about youth and masculinity... Dada writes with a wonderfully warm vibrancy, delivering some brilliant anecdotes... a report from the front line of Muslim masculinity... signals the arrival of a thrilling new voice on London's new writing scene' * Arts Desk *'A brilliant debut... Dada writes with authentic personality, introducing his three characters with naturalistic idiosyncrasies that paint a vibrant cultural landscape... it's funny, sarcastic, satirical, thought-provoking, informative, original. It has it all' * Broadway World *

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Book SynopsisOn the surface, Michael and Cheryl have it all: a posh new home in suburban Belfast, good jobs, 2.4 pets. But things take a sinister turn when, living opposite a bonfire site, they unwittingly become the targets of a hate campaign involving missing animals, graffiti and explosions… Gary Mitchell's play Burnt Out is a blackly comic psychological thriller exposing the darker side of suburban life. It was first performed in 2023 at the Lyric Theatre Belfast, as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival. Gary Mitchell is a British playwright based in Northern Ireland. His plays, many of them political thrillers about contemporary life in Belfast, have been widely performed, and he has been called 'Northern Ireland's greatest playwright' (Guardian). 'His writing has the blazing conviction of lived experience combined with an unfashionable relish for strong plots. His best work has a stomach-churning intensity' Daily TelegraphTrade Review'A domestic psychodrama laced with menace and sardonic humour, informed by Mitchell's own experiences... genuinely shocking, with an explosive, surreal climax' * The Stage *'A potent portrait of a community marginalising itself' * British Theatre Guide *'An edgy black comedy that delves into the shadows of Belfast's suburban life... about the inexorable descent into nightmare and the vice-like grip that paramilitaries have on communities... a compelling watch that masterfully blends dark comedy with psychological horror' * Love Belfast *'Brilliant... a powerful, darkly comic and excellent play' * Belfast Media *'Will have you on the edge of your seat' * Belfast Live *'An incredible piece of theatre... a darkly humorous piece... The savagery always hits home... genuinely scary * Irish News *

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Book Synopsis'I like having things. I like having lots of things. It reminds me that I'm... Y'know? A person.' Alice is done with fast fashion. Ben can't stop buying trainers. And Charlie just wants to sell out… one organ at a time. Billie Collins's play Peak Stuff is a fast-paced, funny, fearless deep-dive into consumer culture. In an age of retail therapy, climate crisis and click and collect - how does our 'stuff' define us? And have we reached peak stuff? The play was commissioned by ThickSkin and Lawrence Batley Theatre, was a winner of the New Play Commission Scheme, and was first presented on tour of the UK in 2024.

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Book SynopsisA thrillingly adventurous adaptation of the beloved and radical story about the magic of nature and the nature of magic, premiered at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in 2024.

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Book SynopsisA chance meeting leads to giddy kisses in a play about two women who find each other without even knowing they were looking. Premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2024.

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Book SynopsisA play exploring the inequalities we face around death, and the cost of turning your loved ones into art. Premiered by Paines Plough in 2024.

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Book SynopsisA sharp-witted and devastating play charting the parallel lives of two gay Pakistani men as they negotiate everything from casual hook-ups to the UK's hostile environment.

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Book SynopsisA thrilling play offering a deep-dive into the mysterious world of cryptocurrency, revealing how ambition and hope can be exploited, no matter the system at play. Premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2024.

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Book SynopsisA new play about a contentious statue in the British Museum, questioning who can claim cultural artefacts and why. Premiering at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2025.

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Book SynopsisThe story of a game, a life, and a man of two halves. This stage adaptation of David Peace's iconic novel about Bill Shankly, Manager of Liverpool FC, was premiered at the Royal Court Liverpool in 2025, with a cast including Peter Mullan.

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Book SynopsisThe book collects almost thirty-five opinion pieces, essays, and two poems by the author on a wide variety of public policy topics written and published between 2006 and 2022. The author, a self-described “militant moderate,” draws on his participation in many public debates. The articles are grouped into six, topical groupings that range widely: the growing need for moderate voices in policy debates; the nature of American exceptionalism; the challenge of civic discourse; the depredations of the Trump years; and policies concerning immigration, citizenship, and refugees.Trade Review“In this book, Peter Schuck demonstrates compellingly that being a ‘moderate’ need not mean being wishy-washy. He rejects cant from all quarters, demands disciplined examination of factual evidence, and comes to provocative conclusions. Ideologues of all stripes should be forewarned: this book exemplifies intellectual independence.” — Richard Fallon, Story Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.“In this welcome sequel to his superb ‘Meditations of a Militant Moderate,’ Peter Schuck gives an object lesson in the two traits which our intellectual discourse desperately needs: common sense and wise judgment. His verve and passion dispatch the myth that moderates are milquetoasts. Slaying shibboleths about everything from abortion and immigration to cancel culture and campus crybullies, Schuck shows again why his voice is unique and necessary.” — Jonathan Rauch, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Suffering from low blood pressure? Peter Schuck’s More Meditations of a Militant Moderate is the perfect cure. Whether you are politically left, right, or center, you will find thrilling support for and infuriating refutation of positions you embrace. But most of all, you will revel in the pleasure of reading the muscular prose of a vigorous intellect wrestling honestly with issues that will surely matter deeply to you.” — Henry J. Aaron, Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Fellow, the Brookings Institution.Table of ContentsPart 1: Preface and Part 1; Part 2: American Exceptionalism; Part 3: Civic Discourse; Part 4: The Misbegotten Trump Presidency; Part 5: Campus Follies; Part 6: Immigrants, Citizens, and Refugees

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Book SynopsisSix characters's search for jobs, commitment, love and friendship is transformed by a night out.

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Book SynopsisA play by the poet and playwright Jon Fosse. This version is translated for the stage by playwright Gregory Motton. Two lovers have conflicting interests when they have a child together.

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Book Synopsis'None of this is the truth. It's just people saying things. It's all subjective. There's the truth, and there's what people think is the truth, and it all depends on how you slant it...' "Taking Care of Baby" tackles the complex case of Donna McAuliffe, a young mother convicted of the murder of her two infant children. In a series of probing interviews the people in this extraordinary story, including Donna herself and her bewildered mother Lynn, reveal how they may have harmed those they sought to protect. Dennis Kelly's ambitious new play uses the popular techniques of drama-documentary and verbatim theatre to explore how truth is compromised by today's information culture. "Taking Care of Baby" opens at the Hampstead Theatre in May 2007.

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Book SynopsisIf you believe that a dog is man’s – and woman’s – best friend, this is the anthology for you: six hundred years of reflections on the virtues (and some of the vices) of canine kind. Within these pages you will find a large selection of animals and an even larger variety of poets, some big and cuddly, others small and well-equipped with teeth. Dame Juliana Berners anatomizes a good greyhound, Lord Byron laments his best friend, Louis MacNeice describes an afternoon walk, William Wordsworth watches the hunt, Thomas Hardy imagines his favourite companion speaking. They are joined by Anne Sexton, Siegfried Sassoon, Alexander Pope, Rudyard Kipling, Dorothy Parker, Geoffrey Chaucer and a pack of others in hot pursuit of the same objective: the essence of dog.

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Book SynopsisEver since Pushkin, Russian poets have been famous for their ability to combine private and public experience in lyric poetry of a comprehensiveness and intensity unmatched elsewhere. Ranging in extremes from the melting tenderness of unrequited love to the bitter comedy of political chaos, this collection of poems covering two centuries includes work by Lermontov, Tyutchev, Fet, Annensky,Mayakovsky, Bely, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Brodsky and others less celebrated but no less extraordinary. The text is divided into six sections. Russian poets constantly reflect on their art, so the first section is appropriately entitled 'The Muse'. Their other great topic is Russia herself, explored in parts two and three. Part four presents the inner world, parts five and six traditional themes of love and mortality. Poetry has often been a matter of life and death in Russia, where Mandelstam was not the only poet to perish in the Gulag. The comfortable private domain familiar to many English and American writers barely exists in a country where political realities are exigent - one reason for the fierce intensity found in so many of these poems.

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Book SynopsisFishing has inspired a wealth of poetry-Tang Dynasty meditations; Japanese haiku; medieval rhymes; classic verses by Homer and Shakespeare; poems by Donne, Goethe, Tennyson, and Yeats. Modern masterpieces abound as well, by the likes of Federico García Lorca, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Robert Lowell, Raymond Carver, Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, Richard Hugo, and Derek Walcott. In the hands of the poets collected here, fishing with a hook and line yields reflections both sparklingly light and awe-inspiringly deep. Filled with humour, nostalgia, adventure, celebrations of the beauties of nature, and metaphors for the art of living, The Art of Angling is sure to lure anglers and lovers of poetry alike.

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Book SynopsisHorace saw the death of the Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire, and was personally acquainted with the emperor Augustus and the poet Virgil. He was famous during his lifetime, and continued to be posthumously, for his odes and epodes, his satires and epistles, and for Ars Poetica. His lyric poems have been translated into many languages, by an array of famous poets including Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Cowper, A. E. Houseman, Ezra Pound, Louis McNeice, Robert Lowell--and even Queen Elizabeth I and the Victorian prime minister Gladstone. Also included are excerpts from Ars poetica (The Art of Poetry), an influential work of literary criticism, and the Carmen saeculare (Secular Hymn), a prayer to Apollo commissioned by Augustus for public performance. Horace's injunction to "seize the day" has echoed through the ages. This anthology of superb English translations will show how Horace has permeated English literature for five centuries.Trade ReviewThe poet Tennyson hailed the lines of the Odes asJewels five-words-long That on the stretch'd forefinger of TimeSparkle for ever. -- Tennyson

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Book SynopsisThe Uyghur people of Central Asia have a long and distinguished tradition of poetry - indeed, their first oral epic was circulating as early as the 2nd century BCE. In the medieval period Sufi poetry flourished, embracing Persian forms such as the ghazal, which spoke eloquently of beauty, love, loss and separation. A major poet, Alshir Navayi (1441­-1501) fully established classical Turkic or Chagatai as a perfect vehicle for poetic expression. Some contemporary poets continue to find inspiration within the traditional forms, while others experiment with a freer style of verse.Uyghur poetry reflects the magnificent natural landscapes where the Uyghurs have lived for two millennia - endless steppes, soaring mountain ranges and mysterious deserts, crossed by the historic Silk Road. It is also shaped by their turbulent past, caught between warring empires or marauding warlords - and their deeply troubled present.The Uyghurs form a minority in China, where the government is now making a systematic attempt to erase their language and culture. Many intellectuals have been imprisoned, and many poets are now writing from exile, including the editor and translator of this volume, Aziz Isa Elkun, who lives in London. Uyghur Poems is not only a celebration of an ancient and vibrant poetic tradition, but also a vital witness to a culture under threat.

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Book SynopsisA reprint of the collected poems of Idris Davies (1905-1953), a miner, teacher and highly-acclaimed poet of Rhymney, Monmouthshire who portrayed the hardship of the mining communities of south-east Wales during the 1920s and 1930s. First published in 1972.

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Book SynopsisPure Filth, Aidan Mathews’ fifth volume of poetry, follows upon Windfalls (Dolmen, 1977), Minding Ruth (Gallery, 1983), According to the Small Hours (Cape, 1998) and Strictly No Poetry (Lilliput, 2017). At its heart, the collection is about reflections on a career and sustained loves for people, God and art, with themes threaded throughout such as the pandemic, suburban Dublin, Irish landscape and history and the Holocaust. His critic and biographer David Wheatley says: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that Mathews does not have themes so much as obsessions. If his Catholic faith provides the ground base for all his work, sexuality, mental illness and the Holocaust recur in poem after poem, stitching together the quotidian and the extreme … Synthesizing the sexual, the sacred, and the secular, Mathews’ poetry is a testament of great personal power, answerable to the cloister and the locked ward, the social lepers and the captains of the ship of state.’ (Irish Poetry, Wake Forest 2017)Trade Review‘Mathews’ great strength is in gleaning unvanquished beauty from the humblest thing, maybe the ugliest thing and perhaps the pure filth of it. A magnificent work.’ ANNE CUNNINGHAM, MEATH CHRONICLE

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Book SynopsisDr. Mephisto is in the form of a long sequence of poems. It traces Mephistopheles as he ranges freely through time and space, at times a laconic observer, at others a thuggish participant, but always a presence wherever there is conflict and suffering and whenever there is work to be done. Far from being oppressive, this is an exciting and highly original work, whose exhilarating pace is set by Emery’s innovative use of language and form, and whose acerbic political edge keeps the vision sharp and fresh. Compelling, hard-hitting, and grimly funny, Dr Mephisto will be remembered long after being read, and a significant new poetic voice will have been recognised.Trade ReviewChris Emery’s Dr. Mephisto lets the Devil have a little fun and reminds me that eternal damnation can be a Godsend. -- Simon Barraclough * Magma *These poems reimagine excruciatingly the ‘double life’ of the body itself, the life of nervous self-domination and subjection. -- Keston Sutherland * Quid *Recreating a goldmine, an apt circle of Hell, he’s also creating a trope for the destructive greed and wealth of the consumer West. -- Herbert Lomas * Ambit *A good first collection. -- Tony Frazer * Shearsman Magazine *Vivid, pungent stanzas. -- M.C. Caseley * Stride Magazine *Certainly you will not have read any other poetry book like this, and Goethe and Christopher Marlowe must surely have been looking approvingly over Chris Emery’s shoulder when he was writing, gasping at his command of language. -- Anne Born * Leviathan Quarterly *Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgements The Pendulum The Gift The Levitation Hermes Lives Mephisto Sleeps The Evocation Speech of Asmoday Underground The Flight The Burial The End Sebastião Köpfe Mephisto’s Pockets The Moment The Scourge The Hippogriff The Crucifixion Mephisto Sweeps the Desert Mephisto Redivivus Mephisto Deals the Tarot The Prayer Shulamith The Mother Lullaby To Tease Contrariwise Boom Ballast Mattress Thought Udder Music Transformer Exterminator Pandemonium Cleaving Ariadne Quoit Melatonin Zion Dreck Shulamith’s Night Song Shulamith’s End Song Dream Bunions Bucket Elegy Germinator Generator Drum Song Zero Start Scenario Notes

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Book SynopsisThe poems in More Shadow Than Bird are imagistic narratives of emotional situations that offer not the story of a life, but of the consciousness accompanying the life lived. The quirky perspective and musical surface of these poems makes them engaging – deceptively catchy, even – as a mysterious darkness tows from beneath to draw the reader deeper in. This consciousness, even as it operates on a more philosophical level, is embodied – not abstract or removed – conveying a sense of rawness and honesty that is rare in non-representational work.Table of Contents Contents More Shadow than Bird Still Life with a Bedroom on an Airshaft Unknown Knowns The Exile’s Letter Deposit Bats The Garden Imago Insufficient Moon Augury The Riddle of the Shrink Hemophobia Agyrophobia Cremnophobia Hypegiaphobia Gametophobia Caesura’s Palace Two Years The Renovated Room The Closet Absinthe Man on an Island [ The Messy Apartment Aperture The Streetlight The Window’s Oven Insomnia [ Morning [ Breakfast What Is Denied The Ride Home from Mourning Disquiet [ Aurelia in August Jane E. Io Congedo [ Guest Trees at Night Walking with Suzan Sing Fat Chiaroscuro Notes

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Book SynopsisWorking on Ovid’s extraordinary but often much-neglected exile poetry with an old second-hand Latin dictionary one stormy spring morning, Josephine Balmer noticed a school-boy’s faded name inked on its fly-leaf and a date, January 1st 1900. The Word for Sorrow explores the story of this dictionary and its owner, who, as a subsequent Google search uncovered, later fought with the British yeomanry in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of World War I, near Ovid’s own Black Sea exile. Alongside versions and interpretations of Ovid’s Tristia – the text the dictionary translates – soldiers’ original diaries and letters from Gallipoli provide another rich vein of source material for the original poems of the volume, which also follows Balmer’s own journey as she excavates these entwined narratives, underscoring how the emotional charge of the past still resonates down through the centuries.Like Chasing Catullus, Balmer’s acclaimed first collection, The Word for Sorrow explores an interplay between translation and original, text and translator, past and present, giving new resonance to ancient grief. An engaging detective story in verse, the work traces the invisible lines that connect us to often surprising points in history, finding common ground in unexpected places, forging often unexpected links between past and present.From Ovid’s Rome to the blood-soaked trenches of Gallipoli, its powerful and engaging poems give voice to the universal suffering of exile, war and grief, celebrating the enduring common humanity that binds us across countries and over centuries, whether we live at the beginning of the first, the twentieth or the twenty-first century.Trade ReviewThe Word for Sorrow crosses boundaries between poetry and translation as versions from Ovid’s Tristia converse with new poems that reflect on experiences behind and beyond them, such as the doomed Allied campaign at Gallipoli during World War I, focusing on weavings of life and text across history towards resonating constants of humanity ... Balmer poignantly reflects T.S. Eliot’s explanations of the ‘mind of the poet’, the sensibility that connects disparities, locating and effecting meaningful wholes.’ -- Paschalis Nikolaou * Norwich Papers *The Word for Sorrow crosses boundaries between poetry and translation as versions from Ovid’s Tristia converse with new poems that reflect on experiences behind and beyond them, such as the doomed Allied campaign at Gallipoli during World War I, focusing on weavings of life and text across history towards resonating constants of humanity ... Balmer poignantly reflects T.S. Eliot’s explanations of the ‘mind of the poet’, the sensibility that connects disparities, locating and effecting meaningful wholes.’ -- Paschalis Nikolaou * Norwich Papers *Table of Contents Acknowledgements Preface Proem: Small Town Fete One: The Journey Out Naso’s Book Back in Rome Hail Naso All at Sea Dancing in the Dark Naso’s Last Night Malvern Road Station, Cheltenham The Horses By the Dardanelles Naso Sees the End of the Beginning Business Two: Landed Landed Naso Off the Shelf Between the Lines Knocking at the Door Naso Writes his Own Epitaph Among the Graves: Green Hill, Gallipoli Naso’s Plight Hits Home Digging In Naso Sees Hell Freeze Over Hell Hole Last Orders Naso Lost for Words Thread Three: The Way Home Dictionary Definitions Naso Sees Action Welcome Note Naso Looks to the Stars Among the Graves: Ampney Crucis Seeking Quarter The Fall Naso’s Back Story Among the Graves: Salonica Naso the Barbarian Up for Auction (1919) The Penny Pot Naso’s Last Word The Word for Sorrow Epilogue: The Observer Book of Wild Flowers References and Notes Sources and Resources

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Book SynopsisNii Ayikwei Parkes' début collection encompasses the story of a triangular trade in reverse – a family history that goes from the Caribbean back to Sierra Leone, and in his own life from London to Ghana, and back again.His gift as a poet is for the most rewarding kind of story-telling, including those stories told with wit and an engaging ambivalence about himself. His narratives move unerringly to a perfect punch-line, but in the collection as a whole there is a refreshing lack of complacency in his willingness to move out of his comfort zone and explore areas of imaginative fantasy, as in his Ballast series, a tour de force of defamiliarisation, where he imagines how the slave trade would have gone had its mode of transport been the hot air balloon, rather than the slave ship. There is much humour, but it comes from a family tradition of knowing that 'our jokes weren't really funny, they were just sad/ stories we learned to laugh at'. Like all poets with a largeness of heart, with no embarrassment about embracing the deepest feelings, Parkes has an especial sensitivity to the promise and acute sensitivities of childhood, both his own and others."An astonishing, powerful remix of history and language and the possibilities of both" Ali Smith, The GuardianNii Ayikwei Parkes is the author of three poetry pamphlets. In 2007 he was awarded Ghana's National ACRAG award for poetry and literary advocacy.

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Book SynopsisIan McDonald’s Collected Poems (2018) was marked by a late flush of exceptional new poems that addressed both the infirmities of ageing as well as its continuing joys. That flow of memory has continued, addressing a long, rich life from a childhood in Antigua, youth in Trinidad and an adult life lived in Guyana. It was not to be halted by anything as malleable as the word “collected”, and this collection of poems from the past four years is more than just a “brawta” to bring back from the market to enjoy. There is the mystery of why certain memories, dormant for decades, suddenly emerge, like a childhood nightmare still as real 80 years later, or how in one’s own elder years, recollections of one’s parents take on a pertinence and vividness of presence. But it is not merely the past that revisits but an immersion in the present that has never been more real and precious in every respect. If the world has become, increasingly, one’s house and garden, its inhabitants one’s wife, children and grandchildren, it is experienced as not a jot less rich than anything in the past –indeed ever more precious for its evanescence. Ian McDonald writes that he is simply the recipient, the receiving station of what arrives in his head. He denigrates his gift for exactness, for the telling detail, for the right word, gifts that have been cultivated by a long life of writing.

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Book SynopsisJohn Robert Lee’s Christian faith is always present in his perceptions of experience and in the shaping of his art, and even those who don’t share his faith should be grateful for this because he gives us a poetry of an empathetic sensitivity to human frailty, celebrations of the beauty of enduring love, prophetic anger in calling out injustices and a sense of the sacredness of the natural world and the terrible insults we offer it. It's a magnificent and varied collection in which different kinds of voices -- all JRL -- mesh together: the observational, the sacramental, the elegiac, the prophetic and the personal. It’s a collection in which four major suites of poems give the whole an organic unity, which is not to say that the individual poems that fall outside the suites don't make their fine contribution. The ‘Belmont Portfolio’, dedicated to Earl Lovelace, records a time spent on his own in the unfamiliar streets of Belmont in Trinidad in poems that catch the sense of being on the edge of adventure, that see the numinous behind the ordinary. The ‘Office Hours’ suite, with its gracious nods to W.H. Auden, is both an engagement with the hours of divine office and the Bible readings that go with it, and a very human series of reflections on that most universal of experiences – how we live through our diurnal cycles. There is the rousing, prophetic, Old Testament righteous anger of the ‘Watchman’ sequence, which reflects on the hell of living in Babylon and the gap between the deceits of ‘liberal democracies’ and the ghastly realities of their global crimes. In the last sequence, ‘What Remains to be Said’ the poet emerges to the front of the stage and speaks directly and confidentially to the reader. It is a sequence that gathers together what must be treasured as sustenance through ‘this Purgatorio’ of our times, reflections on how one can speak in an era where you are “collared in faith in agnostic seasons”, where the frequency of the deaths of those with whom you have shared the struggle is a “haunting against my faith in the Tree of Life” – and a wondering, slightly tongue-in-cheek: “approaching mid-seventies, what do I know?”

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Book SynopsisA breathtakingly beautiful new collection from Ian McDonald - one of the Caribbean's leading poets, and now in his nineties.

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Book SynopsisThis stunning collection features never before published work along with poems written during her time as Scots Makar, and marks the end of her term as Scotland's Poet Laureate (2011-2016). Whether commissioned works, such as 'Connecting Cultures', written for the Commonwealth Games in 2014 or more personal works, 'Favourite Place', about holidays in the west coast with her late husband, this collection is beautiful, sensitive and brilliant. Throughout her career Liz Lochhead has been described variously as a poet, feminist-playwright, translator and broadcaster but has said that 'when somebody asks me what I do I usually say writer. The most precious thing to me is to be a poet. If I were a playwright, I'd like to be a poet in the theatre.'Trade Review'An inspirational presence in British poetry - funny, feisty, female, full of feeling' - -- Carol Ann Duffy'Human relationships, especially as seen from a woman's point of view, are central: attraction, pain, acceptance, loss, triumphs and deceptions, habits and surprises; always made immediate through a storyteller's concrete detail of place or voice or object or colour remembered or imagined' -- Edwin Morgan'This is the work of a highly intelligent, sensitive, perceptive, and humorous young woman ... Behind the brilliant display of fireworks, and the wry laughter, and the lyricism, there is a deal of pain' -- George Mackay Brown'One of the few poets writing today capable of encompassing the matter of contemporary life in terms that are both attractive and thought provoking' * Books in Scotland *'The social satires in Liz Lochhead's new collection are among the wittiest and most original pieces she has written' * Herald *

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Book SynopsisIn this new Selected Poems, Kathleen Jamie explores the multi-faceted world of George Mackay Brown’s Orkney, the poet’s lifelong home and inspiration. George Mackay Brown’s concerns were the ancestral world, the communalities of work, the fables and religious stories which he saw as underpinning mortal lives. Brown believed from the outset that poets had a social role and his true task was to fulfil that role. This is not the attitude of a shrinking violet, tentatively exploring his ‘voice’. Art was sprung from the community, and his role as poet to know that community, to sing its stories. But there was also room for introspection; the poet’s task was simultaneously to 'interrogate silence'.Trade Review'New editions of his poetry and short stories, published to mark his centenary, show his spirituality and extraordinary gift for 'involved detachment'' * The Spectator *'Malachy Tallack and Kathleen Jamie do an excellent job in editing these collections for the centenary of MacKay Brown's birth. They choose both poems and stories that show the appeal and strength of his writing' -- Donald Murray * Stornoway Gazette *

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Book SynopsisIn Alycia Pirmohamed’s debut collection, Another Way to Split Water, a woman’s body expands and contracts across the page, fog uncoils at the fringes of a forest, and water in all its forms cascades into metaphors of longing and separation just as often as it signals inheritance, revival, and recuperation. Language unfolds into unforgettable and arresting imagery, offering a map toward self-understanding that is deeply rooted in place. These poems are a lyrical exploration of how ancestral memory reforms and transforms throughout generations, through stories told and retold, imagined and reimagined. It is a meditation on womanhood, belonging, faith, intimacy, and the natural world. Shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award 2023 and the Saltire Society Poetry Book of the Year Award 2023 Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023, the Laurel Prize 2023 and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2023Trade Review'Pirmohamed writes with a flow which is rarely interrupted. She has a fine ear for the musicality in words and knows exactly where a line should turn' -- Susan Mansfield * The Scotsman *'Pirmohamed’s achievements speak for themselves ... each poem is crafted, each word perfectly placed, flowing into one another. Dreamlike, brimming with ideas, it’s a collection that engulfs you, invites you to read more, to discover new jewels on each read' -- Heather McDaid * The Skinny *'In Another Way to Split Water a reader gets to taste arrival before arrival, a form of tenderness that refracts: "an inherited vanishing/through the slit of a dream"' -- Bhanu Kapil'Pirmohamed is an immensely gifted poet' -- Eduardo C. Corral'An electric, taut, and glimmering achievement' -- Aria Aber'You will want to map the navigations of these poems. You will be compelled to orbit their magnetic and inimitable oscillations' -- Shivanee Ramlochan'[Another Way to Split Water] inspired me so much. So many things I will think about differently now, from nature to form' -- Tice Cin, author of Keeping the House'[Pirmohamed's] language flows in elegant, mysterious ways, telling tales of heritage, history and belonging.' -- Toni Velikova, Scottish Poetry Library'An extraordinary collection... it's one that I'm very much looking forward to returning to' * Glass Bookshop Radio *'Another Way to Split Water is an homage to family, the natural world, and storytelling' -- Rebecca Mangra * Room Magazine *'[a] lyrical exploration of stories told and retold, ancestral memories reformed and transformed, and the imagined and reimagined' -- Hari Alluri * Massy Arts *'Lyrical and achingly beautiful... Another Way to Split Water is shot through with love, beauty, and deeply tender moments that live on far beyond the page.' -- Roshni Gallagher * Gutter Magazine *'The poems in this book draw you in with their incredibly vivid imagery of wilderness and water' * Fourteen Poems magazine *'Alycia Pirmohamed's Another Way to Split Water is affecting, refined, and elusive in its invocations of environmentalism, circumventing cliché through sprezzatura' * Raymound Souster Award Panel (Shortlisted, 2023) *'I'm both struck and charmed by the slow progressions of lyric observation and philosophical inquiry throughout... Another Way to Split Water' -- Rob McLellan'Pirmohamed’s writing evokes tender emotions within readers by bringing a voice to those who search for a sense of identity and belonging in multiple places at the same time ... To read her book is to give form to the unappeased diasporic yearning that we continue to come to terms with' -- Michelle Lu * Surging Tide Magazine *'Rich, vulnerable and multi-layered, the poems engage with the subject’s relation to water environments in a climactically and politically turbulent world' * Poetry School *'A long love letter to not just water that takes a multitude of shapes, but also to grief, prayer, girlhood, wind, womanhood, Allah, elks, longing, and departures... The reader's bonding to these poems, in many moments, is meditative, and almost transcendent' * Wasafiri Magazine *'Her narrative is dynamic, a vibrant act of creating, undoing, transforming, and becoming. As you move through the book, the cyclical images of nature, gentle ebb and flow of rivers, rise and fall of storms, reflections of childhood and ruminations on the future, contribute to an emblematic growth of character and voice' * Outcrop Poetry *'Alycia Pirmohamed’s Another Way to Split Water is an exciting debut that explores connections between landscape, language and the body in a series of lyrical poems' * The Saltire Society *

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