A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Goose Lane Editions Polari
Book SynopsisTrade Review"In Polari, John Barton has plugged language into all sorts of power sources, exploring the intricacies of structure and design through the politics of identity. Whether he's writing about sex or marmalade-making, he stares down desire, delving into needs 'laid bare for each seductive watcher and the one he watches.' These are opulent, daring poems." -- Barry Dempster"In Polari, Barton weaves an impressive soundscape, clothing old bones — like the villanelle, sonnet, glosa, and many others — with fresh clobber. With all the refined heft of a queer life lived long in language, this book pumps with the vitality of sex, thought, and rhyme. Sometimes traditional, sometimes blue, sometimes zhooshy and new, this is poetry plated for pleasure." -- Shane Rhodes"John Barton's poetry swings with lyric intelligence and worldly brilliance, like a contemporary Auden. Polari is absolutely beguiling." -- D.A. Powell
£14.39
Nick Hern Books Scuttlers
Book SynopsisA thrillingly fast-paced play about youthful disaffection, protest and violence, drawing on the history of the Scuttlers, the youth gangs of nineteenth-century Manchester. It's 1882 and the streets of Manchester are crackling with energy, youth and violence. As workers pour into Ancoats to power the Industrial Revolution, 50,000 people are crammed into one square mile. The mills rumble thunderously day and night. The air is thick with smoke. Life is lived large and lived on the street. This is the world's very first industrial suburb and the young mill workers form the very first urban gangs, fighting over their territory with belts, fists and knives. Invisible in history, their lives, deaths, loves, lusts and defiant energy tell stories that will repeat and repeat over the decades that follow. Scuttlers by Rona Munro was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2015. With nine leading roles and a large cast of mill workers and gang members, Scuttlers is well suited to performance by schools and youth groups, who will enjoy its physical energy and dramatic storyline.Trade Review'Dark, grimy, ripe with dangerous excitement... claustrophobic and intoxicating, opening a soot-smeared window into the past, as well as holding up a cracked mirror to our present' * The Times *'The writing is a mix of the lyrical and the iron-clad... invokes the grim, dirty poetry of everyday survival' * Guardian *'Impressive... an uncomfortable eye-opener' * The Stage *'Ha[s] an intoxicating energy... the action sequences are a rush to watch' * Exeunt Magazine *
£11.39
Nick Hern Books Picnic at Hanging Rock
Book Synopsis‘I know you’re there… Miranda? Miranda!’ On a summer’s day in 1900, three Australian schoolgirls on a picnic expedition to the remote Hanging Rock abscond from their group. They are last seen heading towards the beckoning Rock… In Tom Wright’s chilling adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s classic novel, five performers struggle to solve the mystery of the missing girls and their teacher. Euphoria and terror reverberate throughout the community, as the potential for history to repeat itself becomes nightmarishly real. This adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock was first co-produced by Malthouse Theatre and Black Swan State Theatre Company, Perth, and first performed at Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, in 2016. The play received its European premiere at the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh, in 2017.Trade Review'An explosion of theatrical power as fierce as it is contemplative, and so original that no-one who sees it is likely to forget it… Wright's adaptation gives fierce attention to the novel’s sense of the sheer arrogance and inadequacy of imperial British culture, as it tried to "tame" a land so ancient, implacable, and strange. Yet it is brilliant, too, on the infinitely mutable energy of youth, the huge suppressed erotic power and pressure, in these young women, that feels as if it could literally move mountains, and tear its way through a gap in time' * Scotsman *'Emotion, violence and meaning bubble up like magma… mythic in its scope and magical in its appearance... an evocative adaptation that finds horror not in nature, but in the civilising class' * The Stage *'A potently poetic, enigmatic pschyco-drama… Tom Wright's adaptation of Joan Lindsay's novel [has] an authentic, snarling economy of polite and prim, petticoat savaged menace… as compelling, visceral and insistent as that wasp in your otherwise perfect picnic jam pot. Unmissable' * The Edinburgh Reporter *'This retelling of the Joan Lindsay cult classic proves the book's theme remains relevant – and will terrify the pants off you' * Guardian *
£10.79
Currency Press Pty Ltd Transparency
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£13.49
Currency Press Pty Ltd Zeal Theatre Collection Three plays
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£18.69
Bloodaxe Books Ltd The Bloodaxe Book of 20th Century Poetry: from
Book SynopsisThis epoch-marking anthology presents a map of poetry from Britain and Ireland which readers can follow. You will not get lost here as in other anthologies – with their vast lists of poets summoned up to serve a critic’s argument or to illustrate a journalistic overview. Instead, Edna Longley shows you the key poets of the century, and through interlinking commentary points up the connections between them as well as their relationship with the continuing poetic traditions of these islands. Edna Longley draws the poetic line of the century not through culture-defining groups but through the work of the most significant poets of our time. Because her guiding principle is aesthetic precision, the poems themselves answer to their circumstances. Readers will find this book exciting and risk-taking not because her selections are surprising but because of the intensity and critical rigour of her focus, and because the poems themselves are so good. This is a vital anthology because the selection is so pared down. Edna Longley has omitted showy, noisy, ephemeral writers who drown out their contemporaries but leave later or wiser readers unimpressed. Similarly there is no place here for the poet as entertainer, cultural spokesman, feminist mythmaker or political commentator. While anthologies survive, the idea of poetic tradition survives. An anthology as rich as Edna Longley’s houses intricate conversations between poets and between poems, between the living and the dead, between the present and the future. It is a book which will enrich the reader’s experience and understanding of modern poetry. The anthology covers the work of 70 poets: Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Edward Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Edwin Muir, T.S. Eliot, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Hugh MacDiarmid, Wilfred Owen, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Robert Graves, Austin Clarke, Basil Bunting, Stevie Smith, Patrick Kavanagh, Norman Cameron, William Empson, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, R.S. Thomas, Henry Reed, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, W.S. Graham, Keith Douglas, Edwin Morgan, Philip Larkin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Montague, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Sylvia Plath, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Douglas Dunn, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan, Tom Leonard, Carol Rumens, Selima Hill, Ciaran Carson, James Fenton, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Jo Shapcott, Ian Duhig, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Simon Armitage and Don Paterson.
£11.40
Carcanet Press Ltd Ten South African Poets
Book SynopsisBrings together selections of ten outstanding South African poets, to show, in writing drawn from more than four decades, from very different cultures and traditions, a vital and diverse literature. Representing a vision of a pluralistic Africanism the anthology takes the poetry of the region away from the dichotomy which apartheid promoted.
£14.20
Carcanet Press Ltd Seven Ages
Book SynopsisIn contemplating her own death, Louise Gluck confronts the possible and the inevitable in this, her ninth and boldest book.
£9.45
Carcanet Press Ltd Halcyon
Book SynopsisGabriele d'Annunzio (1863-1938), the most influential and controversial Italian poet of the 20th century, published his masterpiece "Halcyon" in 1903. It is a carefully organized sequence of 88 lyrics which, to gain their full effect, must be read as a whole. Halcyon is a "solar diary" of a summer spent in Tuscany, part of the time with the legendary Eleanora Duse. The poems evoke specific times and places; more importantly, they conjure up emotions, memories and myths associated with each place. Beginning in early summer, they move through the seasons, changing in verse-form and mood, always delighting in the sensuous qualities of language. J.G. Nicholls's translation makes the richness and subtlety of d'Annunzio's poetry accessible to the English-speaking reader, and his introduction illuminates the complex themes and structure of the work. He provides a full glossary of places and references.
£12.34
Nick Hern Books Women Beware Women
Book SynopsisDrama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A Jacobean gore-fest of enforced seduction and ultimate revenge. Written in 1623, two years after The Changeling, Women Beware Women is the second of Thomas Middleton's two great tragedies. It is the story of the corruption of three young people, seduced and destroyed by the lust and treachery of the court of the Duke of Florence. This edition, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited and Introduced by Colin Counsell.
£6.07
Nick Hern Books The Railway Children
Book SynopsisMike Kenny's imaginative stage adaptation of E. Nesbit's much-loved children's classic. Famously filmed, this story of a prosperous Edwardian family - mother and three children - forced into near-penury in the rural north of England captures the anxieties and exhilarations of childhood with great tenderness and insight. As Mike Kenny says of his remarkably faithful adaptation, 'You don't need a real train to perform this play… the most powerful prop is the imagination of the audience, the most effective tool the skill of the actors.' So this version of The Railway Children, which offers three plum roles for young performers, is eminently suitable for schools, youth theatres and drama groups - anywhere, in fact, where the cry of 'Daddy! My Daddy!' is likely to provoke a tear. Mike Kenny's version of The Railway Children was first staged at the National Railway Museum in York in 2008, before receiving a major production at Waterloo Station in London in 2010.Trade Review'Lavish, warm-hearted... one of the very finest children's stories of the 20th century, and it is served superbly by Mike Kenny's adaptation' * Whatsonstage.com *'This glorious adaptation... profoundly moving... it never for a moment runs out of steam' * Guardian *'Mike Kenny's script provides everything needed for a cracking evening at the theatre' * Amateur Stage *'Mike Kenny's adaptation shows his mastery of playwriting for children and families... adults and children alike are enthralled by the clever mix of imagination and reality' * Financial Times *
£9.89
Nick Hern Books Mogadishu
Book SynopsisA gripping and urgent play about a well-meaning teacher who intervenes on behalf of a troublesome student, with terrifying consequences. When white secondary-school teacher Amanda is pushed to the ground by black student Jason, she's reluctant to report him as she knows exclusion could condemn him to a future as troubled as his past. But when Jason decides to protect himself by spinning a story of his own, Amanda is sucked into a vortex of lies in which victim becomes perpetrator. With the truth becoming less clear and more dangerous by the day, it isn't long before careers, relationships and even lives are under threat. Vivienne Franzmann's first play, Mogadishu won the Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting in 2008 and the George Devine Award in 2010. It was first produced at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2011.Trade Review'Outstanding... Franzmann manages to make all the characters credible and well-rounded, even the damaged perpetrator... She gets to the rotten core of what's going on in these melting-pot battlegrounds... The play of the year? In my book, quite possibly' * Daily Telegraph *
£10.79
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Plautus and Terence Five Comedies
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThese five new translations . . . take to its logical, lively conclusion the long-held but oft-ignored reality that Plautus and Terence were writers for the stage. These versions have verve: playability, liveliness, accessibility, unlike anything on library shelves today. Of modern-day attempts at Plautus-inspired music, for example, only Stephen Sondheim has excelled the inspired zaniness of Douglass Parker’s lyrics. There is much virtue to be measured here. . . . After reading these plays we might spend considerable thought on the possibility that conservative translations in the style of Barsby are less authentic--if such a thing can be measured--than those of Berg and Parker. . . . This is a deceptively important book, meriting a wide, attentive readership. . . . [Berg and Parker's] theater-friendly versions offer a vision of the future of Roman comedy, both scholarly and popular. The profession will be well repaid to take an appreciative look. --David Frauenfelder, North Carolina State UniversityDeena Berg and Douglass Parker’s Plautus & Terence: Five Comedies is a fascinating postmodernist rendition of some of the most postmodernist--metatheatrical, self-referential, sophisticated, stylized--literature classical antiquity has to offer. The sparkling and eminently performable translations are a hard act to precede, but the translator’s delightful introductions are a worthy match for their subjects. . . . Highly recommended. --John Wright, Northwestern UniversityThis splendid sampling of Roman comedy is particularly welcome because Parker and Berg have combined the best known (and perhaps finest) comedies of Plautus and Terence (The Brothers Menaechmus, here 'Double Bind,' and Miles Gloriosus, here 'Major Blowhard,' and Adelphoe, 'The Brothers') with two rarer and rather special comedies: 'The Wild Wild Women,' Plautus' exuberant Bacchides, and 'The Mother-in-Law' (Hecyra), perhaps Terence's most modern comedy, important as evidence from ancient comedy for the evolution of the sentimental or psychological drama of everyday life. The translators are to be congratulated on their choices and their truly up-to-date versions; Parker is a veteran whose punning wit and swashbuckling idiom in his very actable Plautus scripts contrast nicely with the simple elegance of Berg's Terence." —Elaine Fantham, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsMajor Blowhard = Miles Gloriosus. Double bind = Menaechmi. The wild, wild women = Bacchides / Plautus -- The mother-in-law = Hecyra. The brothers = Adelphoe / Terence.
£33.99
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc The Essential Homer
Book SynopsisSelections from both Iliad and Odyssey, made with an eye for those episodes that figure most prominently in the study of mythology.Trade Review"A good idea—its utility far outweighs qualms purists have about students not reading every last item in the catalogue of ships. The translation is vigorous and readable." —Andrew Ford, Princeton University"Not only does one get an excellent translation of both Homer's Iliad and Odyssey under one cover, but the selections included are infinitely better and longer than what one normally gets in anthologies of Greek literature. For courses in which entire texts cannot be used, this is by far the best choice available today." —Kostas Myrsiades, Westchester University"The Essential Homer fills a long-felt need for an edition that offers a sizable selection of the books and passages most likely to be used in undergraduate courses. It's a wonderful help." —Richard P. Martin, Stanford University
£36.54
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc Poems and Fragments
Book Synopsis Little remains today of the writings of the archaic Greek poet Sappho (fl. late 7th and early 6th centuries B.C.E.), whose work is said to have filled nine papyrus rolls in the great library at Alexandria some 500 years after her death. The surviving texts consist of a lamentably small and fragmented body of lyric poetry--among them, poems of invocation, desire, spite, celebration, resignation, and remembrance--that nevertheless enables us to hear the living voice of the poet Plato called the tenth Muse. Stanley Lombardo''s translations give us a virtuoso embodiment of Sappho''s voice, whose telltale charm, authority, immediacy, directness, intensity, and sudden changes of tone are among the hallmarks of his masterly translation. Pamela Gordon introduces us to the world of Sappho, discusses questions surrounding the transmission of her manuscripts, offers advice on reading these texts, and concludes with an enlightening discussion of same-sex desire in Sappho. Trade ReviewThe four sections of this book [Introduction, Translator's Note, translations, Notes on Ancient Sources] work remarkably well together, presenting the fragments of Sappho according to 'the idea of the isolated message' (xvii). The dominant and characteristic interest shared by both Lombardo as translator and Gordon as introducer is their concerted effort to validate 'fragments as esthetic wholes' (xxvi). Lombardo's translations are pleasantly distinct from those of any other I am aware of both for their sonorous but straightforward rendering in modern spoken American English . . . [an edition] better both for its clear translations, and for the breadth and depth of the critical Introduction. Lombardo's strategy as translator is to convey not only the Greek by means of English, but also the experience of reading 'Sappho as a pure, received text' (xxvi) by means of direct, plain presentation of the poem . . . A unique and welcome contribution to the diversity of English translations available. --Travis Feldman, The Bryn Mawr Classical Review I have long been an admirer of Stanley Lombardo's translations of Homer, and I was curious to see how he would adapt his fast-paced, lively style to Sappho. He has succeeded admirably. His translation of 73 poems of Sappho is clear, energetic, and close to the Greek. Pamela Gordon's Introduction gives a lucid and useful guide for the non-specialist to the last fifty years of scholarly debate on Sappho. This edition will be particularly useful for instructors of courses in translation seeking an introduction to Sappho for the Greekless student. It is also a pleasure to read. --Laurel Bowman, The Classical Bulletin Gordon's Introduction is a clear summation of the poetic and scholarly aura surrounding the figure of Sappho and these literary fragments. . . . This essay, complete with selective bibliography at the end, could be assigned to undergraduates as a first introduction to both the poetry and the phenomenon of Sappho. . . . Lombardo's translations are lively and accessible; Sappho lives anew for the English reader. . . . Ideal for teaching at the undergraduate level. --Cashman Kerr Prince, New England Classical Journal
£12.34
Hackett Publishing Co, Inc The Jew of Malta with Related Texts
Book SynopsisFeatures a modernised text of Marlowe's play with annotation on the page, a comprehensive Introduction, and related texts, including selections from Machiavelli's "Prince", Gentillet's "Anti-Machiavel", and Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning".Trade ReviewA provocative edition, one which belongs on the shelves of student and scholar alike. --Martha Oberle, Frederick Community College, Maryland, in The Sixteenth Century Journal
£11.39
Currency Press Pty Ltd Jack Hibberd Selected plays
Book Synopsis
£18.69
State University Press of New York (SUNY) The Poetry of HanShan A Complete Annotated
Book SynopsisThis is an annotated English translation of the poetry of Han-shan (Cold Mountain), a 7th or 8th century Chinese Buddhist recluse who wrote many poems about his life alone in the hills. Many of his poems describe the mountains where he lived in dramatic, yet appealing terms, while at the same time symbolizing in Zen fashion the Buddhist quest for enlightenment. Han-shan became a cult figure in the Ch''an/Zen tradition, and legends portray him and his companion Shih-te as eccentrics who said and did nonsensical things. Han-shan does often write on unusual topics with some of his poems being clever insights that just happen to be metric and rhymed. His language is simple and direct; his images and symbols fresh and bold. While the literary value of his work has for the most part been overlooked, this book provides line-by-line literary analysis of some of the more artistically interesting poems. Henricks'' work represents, therefore, a major contribution to the study of Chinese literature and Chinese religion.
£24.93
Museum of New Mexico Press All This Way for the Short Ride Roughstock
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£16.19
Faber & Faber The Inheritance
Book SynopsisThe most important American play of the century. Daily TelegraphInspired by E. M. Forster's novel Howards End, and set in New York three decades after the height of the AIDS epidemic, The Inheritance wrestles with what it means to be a gay man today, exploring relationships and connections across age and social class and asking what one generation's responsibilities may be to the next.Matthew Lopez's The Inheritance premiered at the Young Vic Theatre, London, in 2018, before transferring to the West End's Noel Coward Theatre. It premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 2019.This edition includes revisions made for the Broadway production.
£11.69
Seagull Books London Ltd Like Bits of Wind
Book SynopsisOne of the central figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets, Pierre Chappuis has thus far only been represented in English translation in fragments: a few poems here and there in magazines, online reviews, and anthologies. Like Bits of Wind rights that wrong, offering a generous selection of Chappuis's poetry and prose from the past forty years, drawn from several of his books. In these pages, Chappuis delves into long-standing questions of the essence of life, our relationship to landscape, the role of the perceiving self, and much more. His skeletal, haiku-like verse starkly contrasts with his more overtly poetic prose, which revels in sinuous lines and interpolated parentheticals. Together, the different forms are invigorating and exciting, the perfect introduction for English-language readers.
£19.47
Faber & Faber The Poem
Book SynopsisIlluminating and authoritative treatise on 'how a poem works', from the multi-award-winning poet, editor and professor of poetry - now in paperback.
£18.00
Seagull Books London Ltd Rechnitz and The Merchants Contracts
Book SynopsisIn Rechnitz, a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual historical event that took place near the Austrian/Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. The author brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated.
£30.60
Josef Weinberger Plays Arsenic and Old Lace
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£10.44
Josef Weinberger Plays Seeds of Doubt
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£10.44
Josef Weinberger Plays Playscript Of Mice and Men
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£10.44
Josef Weinberger Plays Death by Fatal Murder
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£10.44
Josef Weinberger Plays Death of a Salesman
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£10.44
Carcanet Press Ltd Golden Apple A Round of Stories Songs Spells
Book SynopsisOffers a selection from one of Europe's richest traditions of folk literature.Trade Review'Throughout there is the sense of the unadorned, unrationalized essence of folk tradition - This book entertains and startles afresh on each reading.' - Michael Cayley, PN Review ' - an absolute delight. The tales fly along relentlessly to their enigmatic endings, mixing up the ridiculous, the miraculous and the commonplace, putting to shame the puerile moralizing of many modern children's books. The irrational is sitting in the trees waiting to leap upon you - ' - George Szirtes, Quarto
£8.95
Nick Hern Books Nora: A Doll's House (NHB Modern Plays)
Book Synopsis'You've lies in the whites of your eyes, Nora. What have you done...?' Nora is the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful, beautiful and everything is always in its right place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, her life rapidly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything. Henrik Ibsen's brutal portrayal of womanhood caused outrage when it was first performed in 1879. This bold new version by Stef Smith reframes the drama in three different time periods. The fight for women's suffrage, the Swinging Sixties and the modern day intertwine in this urgent, poetic play that asks how far have we really come in the past hundred years? Nora : A Doll's House was first produced by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2019, at Tramway, Glasgow. A new production opened at the Young Vic, London, in February 2020. It was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, awarded annually to celebrate women who have written works of outstanding quality for the English-speaking theatre. 'A radical, stunning reworking which thrums with relevance and power... a wordsmith at the top of her poetic game... a classic play reinvented for our time' - BritishTheatre.com 'An intense, ambitious survey of women's shifting roles, which amplifies each step in Ibsen's elegantly crafted story, as though Nora's stamping through a cathedral in Doc Martens... Smith's ingenious dialogue makes what could be massively complicated feel simple and legible' - Time Out 'Smith's update is smart and thoughtful, balancing a sense of feminist history and activism with the tightness of a thriller and some rich personal drama' - The Stage 'Stef Smith's excellent adaptation... a provocation infused with Ibsen's radical spirit' - Guardian 'A beautiful and explosively significant piece of theatre' - ScotsmanTrade Review'A radical, stunning reworking which thrums with relevance and power… a wordsmith at the top of her poetic game... a classic play reinvented for our time' * BritishTheatre.com *'An intense, ambitious survey of women's shifting roles, which amplifies each step in Ibsen's elegantly crafted story, as though Nora's stamping through a cathedral in Doc Martens… Smith's ingenious dialogue makes what could be massively complicated feel simple and legible' * Time Out *'Smith's update is smart and thoughtful, balancing a sense of feminist history and activism with the tightness of a thriller and some rich personal drama' * The Stage *'Stef Smith's excellent adaptation... a provocation infused with Ibsen's radical spirit' * Guardian *'A beautiful and explosively significant piece of theatre' * Scotsman *
£9.89
Faber & Faber Leopoldstadt
Book SynopsisAt the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna. But Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptised Jew married to Catholic Gretl, has moved up in the world. Gathered in the Merz apartment in a fashionable part of the city, Hermann's extended family are at the heart of Tom Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama. By the time we have taken leave of them, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany and - for Austrian Jews - the Holocaust in which 65,000 of them were murdered. It is for the survivors to pass on a story which hasn't ended yet.Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt was first performed at Wyndham's Theatre, London, in January 2020.WINNER: OLIVIER AWARD FOR BEST NEW PLAY, 2020WINNER: TONY AWARD FOR BEST PLAY, 2023Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play; the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign
£10.44
Siglio Press The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use
Book SynopsisA revelatory anthology of poems, experimental prose and previously unpublished work by Madeline Gins, the transdisciplinary writer-artist-thinker famed for her “Reversible Destiny” architecture Poet, philosopher, speculative architect and transdisciplinary artist, Madeline Gins is well known for her collaborations with her husband, the artist Arakawa, on the experimental architectural project Reversible Destiny, in which they sought to arrest mortality by transforming the built environment. Yet, her own writings—in the form of poetry, essays, experimental prose and philosophical inquiries—represent her most visionary and transformative work. Like Gertrude Stein before her, Gins transfigures grammar and liberates words. Like her contemporaries in conceptual art, her writing is attuned to the energized, collaborative space between reader and page. The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader is a revelatory anthology, edited and with an introduction by the writer and critic Lucy Ives. It brings never-before-published poems and essays together with a complete facsimile reproduction of Gins’ 1969 masterpiece, WORD RAIN (or A Discursive Introduction to the Intimate Philosophical Investigations of G,R,E,T,A, G,A,R,B,O, It Says), along with substantial excerpts from her two later books What the President Will Say and Do!! (1984) and Helen Keller or Arakawa (1994). Long out of print or unpublished, Gins’ poems and prose form a powerful corpus of experimental literature, one which is sure to upend existing narratives of American poetics at the close of the 20th century. Born in the Bronx and long a resident of New York City, Madeline Gins (1941–2014) participated in experimental artistic and literary movements of the 1960s and ‘70s before developing a collaborative practice as a philosopher and architect. Alongside her own writing, Gins collaborated with her husband, the artist Arakawa, on a theory of “procedural architecture,” an endeavor to create buildings and environments that would prevent human death.Trade ReviewThough her style fluctuates, Gins’s keen interest in the embodied relationship between writing and reading remains constant throughout the collection [...] For Gins, words are nothing if not physical... Experiencing Gins’s writing in print — at long last — is so necessary. -- Alice Bucknell * PIN-UP *Exploratory, playful, participatory: these are the “design-elements” Gins employs to interface with the permeable form of being-human that she imagines for us. To this list I must also add generosity, as she delivers to us a version of ourselves, and of language, that is fluid and abundant. The editing and publishing of The Saddest Thing Is That I Have Had to Use Words: A Madeline Gins Reader reflects this generosity, fluidity, and abundance. I’m hard-pressed to think of any other attributes more crucial to cultivate in our present time. -- Karla Kelsey * Hyperallergic *A startling collection of essays, novels, artist books, and poems. -- Quinn Latimer * 4 Columns *This generous selection of texts is an opportunity to engage with the full scope of [Gins's] thinking. -- Steve Zultanski * Frieze *This collection brings to light the literary achievements of conceptual artist and speculative architect Madeline Gins. -- Megan Liberty * Brooklyn Rail *Stimulating and consistently surprising, this is a treat for those interested in interdisciplinary artists such as John Cage. -- Editors * Publishers Weekly *[A] radical reinvention of fiction. -- Randy Kennedy * Ursula *
£22.50
Shambhala One Robe One Bowl
Book SynopsisThe hermit-monk Ryokan, long beloved in Japan both for his poetry and for his character, belongs in the tradition of the great Zen eccentrics of China and Japan. His reclusive life and celebration of nature and the natural life also bring to mind his younger American contemporary, Thoreau. Ryokan''s poetry is that of the mature Zen master, its deceptive simplicity revealing an art that surpasses artifice. Although Ryokan was born in eighteenth-century Japan, his extraordinary poems, capturing in a few luminous phrases both the beauty and the pathos of human life, reach far beyond time and place to touch the springs of humanity.
£14.48
Wesleyan University Press Collected Poems
Book SynopsisA collection of authentic, profound and beautiful poems.
£16.40
Josef Weinberger Plays Inherit the Wind by Lee Robert E Author ON
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£10.44
Josef Weinberger Plays terranova
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£10.44
Goose Lane Editions Poisonous If Eaten Raw
Book SynopsisWinner, J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry AwardIn this experimental long poem sequence, Alyda Faber transforms the portrait poem into runic shapes, ice shelved, sculpted, louvered on a winter shoreline. Twenty years after her mother’s death, Faber untethers herself from the mother she thinks she knows with wild analogies: depicting her mother variously as King Lear’s Kent, a Camperdown elm, a black-capped chickadee, Neil Peart, Pope Innocent X, and a funnel spider. While embodying the passionate relationship between mother and daughter, Faber’s poems also expose the thorn in the flesh — the inability of mother and daughter to give each other what they most want to give. Endlessly discovered, yet ultimately unknowable, the poet’s mother is complex, mystifying, and unwavering: courageous in her decision to leave all that she knew behind; bewildering in her fidelity to a damaging marriage; steadfast in her devotion to a God who is at once adamant and the source of ephemeral beauty.Trade Review“Each poem in Poisonous If Eaten Raw is a portrait and an ecosystem that makes meaning from memory and of a relationship that is the origin of longing and is singular to each of us. How do we make sense of our mothers? The pain they endured, the pain they created? This is a poet pushing past memory into a present and deeper understanding that’s brimming with empathy and a way forward. And this is remembering in motion: vivid and audacious, moving into and out from its source.” -- Sue Goyette“There is no way for a daughter to know her mother as anyone other than a mother. But in Poisonous if Eaten Raw, Faber creates evocative portraits that attempt to bridge this gap of knowing through a process of surreal re-imagination.” -- Manahil Bandukwala * The Fiddlehead *
£14.39
New Directions Publishing Corporation Glass Menagerie Rev New Directions Books
Book SynopsisNo play in the modern theatre has so captured the imagination and heart of the American public as Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.Trade Review"The revolutionary newness of The Glass Menagerie . . . was in its poetic lift, but an underlying hard dramatic structure was what earned the play its right to sing poetically." -- Arthur Miller"With the advent of The Glass Menagerie . . . Tennessee Williams emerged as a poet-playwright and a unique new force in theatre throughout the world." -- Lyle Leverich in Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams
£9.49
Three Rooms Press Atrium
Book SynopsisIn Atrium, award-winning Palestinian-American poet Hala Alyan traces lines of global issues in personal spaces, with fervently original imagery, and a fierce passion and intense intimacy that echoes long after initial reading.The book received the 2013 Arab American Book of the Year Award for Poetry, an astounding achievement for a first collection. In addition, Alyan was recently tapped as a finalist in the Nazim Himet Poetry Competition.Already in her young career, Alyan has etched her mark on other award-winning poets who are universal in their praise: Don''t miss the dazzling Hala Alyan. Wow. When she says the poetry like a spear,’ she isn''t kidding.” Naomi Shihab Nye; Hala Alyan’s poems startle us with their beautiful, enigmatic images and capture us with their passionate engagement with the world. A powerful debut.” Chitra Divakaruni; For all the stunning angularity in this vision, we do not doubt that what we are seeing and sensing here is a surprising, sharp-edged sense of the real, of a world that had been there all along, just waiting for this poet and these poems to reveal. Start to finish, these poems convey a singular vision and represent an important new voice in the international poetry arena.” Fred MarchantHala Alyan''s Atrium is truly a remarkable debut by a poet of stunning virtuosity and range.
£10.99
Poetry Wales Press Much With Body
Book Synopsis
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Master Class
Book SynopsisThe world can and will go on without us but I have to think that we have made this world a better place. That we have left it richer, wiser than had we not chosen the way of art.The 1996 Tony Award winner for Best Play.Terrence McNally''s Master Class presents the legendary opera diva, Maria Callas, as she puts aspiring young singers through their paces in a series of master classes. Both moving and entertaining, this theatrical tour de force dramatizes the Callas phenomenon and is an unembarrassed, involving meditation on Callas''s life and the nature of her art. Such subjects are not easily dramatized, certainly not with this brio. (New York Times)After opening on Broadway in 1995 with Zoe Caldwell and Audra McDonald, the play premiered in London in 1997 with Patti LuPone. It was last revived on Broadway and in the West End in 2011-12 starring Tyne Daly.Trade ReviewMcNally's well-crafted, quip-filled drama — which depicts Callas teaching at Juilliard, circa 1971 (her voice was virtually destroyed by then) — is less a biography and more a love letter to La Divina. * Entertainment Weekly *Terrence McNally's brusque and brilliant rendering of Callas is the sort of meaty role actresses love to sink teeth and claws into * New York Daily News *
£10.44
Currency Press Pty Ltd Jandamarra
Book Synopsis
£14.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Springboard Shakespeare A Midsummer Nights Dream
Book Synopsis A Midsummer Night''s Dream is one of Shakespeare''s most popular comedies. This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night''s Dream has a three-part structure: whether you''re watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying A Midsummer Night''s Dream.Trade ReviewHaving Crystal as a companion through the stickier parts of Hamlet and Macbeth is like going to the theatre with an intelligent friend. * The Independent *How different it might have been if we’d had Ben Crystal’s sparky little books to introduce us. My Shakespearean epiphany would have come much sooner...[the books] lead newcomers into the play in question in a gentle, upbeat, unpretentious way. Fresh and slim, they’re about as far as could be from dusty, dry study guides relating to school exams...much better than the average theatre programme...I’d like to see them on sale in theatre bookshops, and/or wherever there’s a production of one of these plays...I’d also recommend them for classroom use. -- Susan Elkin * The Independent on Sunday *A highly worthwhile series, which should prove to be valuable for directors, actors and students…This formula really works. As an experiment, your dedicated reviewer tried out Macbeth in preparation for and following on from the Eve Best production of the Globe. The experience was definitely improved, with some of the tips on words and language proving especially helpful and enlightening… These really are excellent little guides that will prove informative to almost anybody with an interest in the subject. -- Philip Fisher * British Theatre Guide *
£10.44
Arizona Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies,US Hamlet
Book SynopsisTo thine own text be trueLisa Peterson's translation ofHamletinto contemporary American English makes the play accessible to new audiences while keeping the soul of Shakespeare's writing intact. Lovers of Shakespeare's language take heart: Lisa Peterson's translation ofHamletinto contemporary American English was guided by the principle of First, do no harm. Leaving the most famous parts ofHamletuntouched, Peterson untied the language knots that can make the rest of the play difficult to understand in a single theatrical viewing. Peterson's translation makesHamletaccessible to new audiences, drawing out its timeless themes while helping to contextualize To be, or not tobe:that is the question, and Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, so that contemporary audiences can feel their full weight. This translation ofHamletwas written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translati
£9.46
Penned in the Margins The Sun is Open
Book SynopsisWinner of the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize Winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize The Sun is Open sifts through a boxed archive of public and private materials related to the life and death of the author's father, who was murdered by the IRA outside their Belfast home in 1984. Moving between child and adult voices, past and present, this startlingly innovative debut attempts to decode the fragments left behind and, with them, piece together a history and a life. 'Each page of The Sun Is Open is rich with exquisite and surprising language, pain, and wisdom.' - Maggie Nelson 'The Sun is Open employs a grammar in which everything is significant, from Wendy Houses, to the very hairs of your head, to the poetry of First Aid instructions, to slaters. This is meticulous and painstaking - sometimes pain-making work - making the words fit the columns, be they inches of newsprint or entries in an Account Book, negotiating or nudging the meanings into alternative senses. A series of ethical considerations and transactions, credits and debits that sometimes demand to be accounted for, or judged, or at least spoken of in the light of whatever the forensics might or might never unfold.' - Ciaran Carson Poetry book of the month - the Observer A TLS book of the yearTrade Review'To sit with the unspeakable, to spell it out in alphabet spaghetti, using only the letters given to you that day; to spell death using the adverts in the cash and carry; to spell life using the names on sweet wrappers, is extraordinary work. The Sun is Open is a work of extraordinary emotion, written with extraordinary control. It is also - perhaps extraordinarily - a work of joy.'-Joanna Walsh, 'The Sun is Open is like fragments of a broken window reassembled into startling new form and meaning. The fragments include the Bible, press reports, personal memories and the archives of William McConnell, Deputy Governor of the Maze prison and the poet's father, who was murdered by the IRA in 1984. The reassembling - usually into squares and boxes of type with fragments of sources - presents us with the jagged memorial of a broken time.'- George Szirtes, 'The Sun is Open brings us 109 pages closer to knowing that raging absence in the wake of violence, in the wake of love; the wakefulness that persists. The poem is history as postmodern text - all middle, no endpapers, no polite intermission or lapses of memory. This book's freedom of thought is not taken lightly, but gloriously, celebratorily. Gail McConnell is a force.'- Caoilinn Hughes
£18.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC A Midsummer Nights Dream
Book SynopsisThe Arden Shakespeare is the established edition of Shakespeare''s work. Justly celebrated for its authoritative scholarship and invaluable commentary, Arden editions guide you to a richer understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare''s plays. This edition of A Midsummer Night''s Dream provides a clear and authoritative text, detailed notes and commentary on the same page as the text and a full introduction discussing the critical and historical background to the play. The editor brings fresh perspectives on global productions and adaptations of this most-loved of Shakespeare''s comedies.Table of ContentsList of Illustrations General editors’ Preface Preface INTRODUCTION STAGE, SCREEN, ART The play in its time: staging and casting British productions: Restoration to nineteenth century British productions: the twentieth century and after Europe Beyond Europe Other media: cinema, music, art SOURCES AND ANALOGUES: FAIRIES AND MORTALS Fairies and fairy lore Ovid: the classics and the fairies Pyramus and Thisbe Theseus and Hippolyta: Plutarch, Chaucer and Shakespeare THEMES AND DESIGNS Pastoral: the forest Dreamers and Lovers Patriarchy Carnival, class, court Theatre, art and illusion The comedy of compromise LANGUAGE AND VERSE A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM Appendix 1: Casting Chart Appendix 2:Date and Occasion Appendix 3: The Text Abbreviations and References Index
£8.99
Samuel French Ltd I Joan
Book SynopsisOh if we can just quiet the world for a moment. And listen within. There''s avoice guiding you. I promise it''s there. And until you can hear it, I''ll be it foryou.The men are all fighting, again. An endless war. From nowhere, an unexpected leader emerges. Young, poor and about to spark a revolution.Rebelling against the world''s expectations, questioning the gender binary, Joan finds their power within, and their belief spreads like fire. I, Joan is apowerful and joyous new play which tells Joan of Arc''s story anew. It''s alive and queer and full of hope.
£11.99
Peter Lang Publishing Inc Wallace Stevens and Francis Parkman
Book SynopsisWallace Stevens and Francis Parkman: The American West and Beyond discovers a previously unacknowledged connection between the poet and the historian. Parkman in his historical narratives served as a source for a variety of poems by Stevens, including some of his more major efforts. Early on, Stevens responds in a playful way to Parkman; later on, Stevens becomes more serious and thoughtful, admitting to the more troubling aspects of Parkman's narratives. With an understanding of how Parkman relates to these poems, the reader will more easily engage with the poet, and see how Stevens, in conjunction with Parkman, becomes a guiding light for acknowledging the cognitive dissonance that shadows the American experience.Stevens was not always distant, not always a solipsistic poet. At least at times, he was deeply in touch with his world and deeply affected by it, as he aspired to grow beyond the historical burdens so deeply embedded in it. All readers of Stevens will benTable of ContentsNote on Citations – Preface and Acknowledgments – Introduction – Prospecting French Connections in Search of Wallace Stevens – Discovering a Religious Perspective – Realizing a Religious Perspective – Prospecting Yet Another French Connection – Prospecting Parkman on Another Day – Summing Up and Heading West – Heading Further West into Indian Territory – A Note on Stevens’ Library and Beyond – Going Beyond – Works Cited – Index of Poems and Works by Stevens – General Index.
£54.00
