A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Pan Macmillan Greek Myths: Gods and Goddesses
Book SynopsisThe stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece are sprawling, dramatic and wonderfully strange; their lives intertwine with mortals and their behaviours fluctuate wildly from benevolent to violent, from didactic to fickle, from loving to enraged.Greek Myths: Gods and Goddesses is part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, cloth-bound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover.Classicist and author Jean Menzies captures the magic of Greek myths by drawing on a wide variety of vivid retellings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which bring to life the stories of Zeus, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, Pandora and many more. Coupled with her own entertaining commentary, this is the perfect book for learning about the world of the Greek deities and a treat for all fans of Greek mythology.Discover even more mythology with Greek Myths: Heroes and Heroines edited by Jean Menzies.
£10.44
Button Poetry On UnBecoming
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£16.58
Mango Media From the Heart of a Mother
Book SynopsisRaw and Powerful Poetry for MothersAuthor and maternal inspiration, Randi Latzman, uses her own journey through motherhood to guide fellow mamas through the rollercoaster ride of raising a child. This is poetry for mothers, by a mother who has seen it all. Not just surviving motherhood, but thriving through it. Whether you’re a new mom or a total pro, you’ll learn how to soak up every moment in motherhood, while still leaving room for your own growth. This is poetry about healing, evolving, learning, and living as a mother in these current times.Read beautiful poems about motherhood, and learn how to navigate the hardest job in the world. This is poetry for first time moms figuring everything out, for long-time moms rediscovering themselves, and for every mother in between. It’s motherhood poetry in its realest form. One of the rare books about motherhood that doesn''t shy away from the good, the bad, and the
£16.99
Smokestack Books Cromwell's Head
Book Synopsis
£7.59
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Hot Sauce
Book SynopsisWinner of the James Berry Poetry Prize In her award-winning debut collection Kaycee Hill frankly explores coming of age as a woman – and the intricacies of connection and memory – against an urban-pastoral landscape. Raging with vivid, smoky lyricism and full-blooded imagery, Kaycee Hill’s poems are both a beginning and a continuation. Reflecting on her life and those in it, as well as first-times, underground scenes and the female body, she looks towards what is unflinchingly personal, and also outwards: towards family and strangers, nature and place, and a world that shapeshifts before us. Hot Sauce is a searing first collection that captures the visceral vulnerabilities of navigating life on the cusp.Trade ReviewKaycee Hill’s urban eco-poems are always awake to the beauty that can be found in unexpected places – from a makeshift bird-feeder to her mother’s 'cinnamon stick / fingers busy making roll-ups'. In this thrilling first collection, her lyric imagination takes us on a journey through the complexities of coming of age in a small working-class town. The heat of Hill’s sensuous imagery 'rages down the throat', searing our tastebuds and leaving us craving more. -- Aviva DautchFrom dancehalls, grime raves, to prisons, kitchens and gardens, Kaycee Hill’s poems excavate an archive of memories with synaesthetic dexterity. A robin’s red breast transforms into “the thumping heart of a young naked ash tree”. And queuing crowds become “shoals of black sea bass". These poems of place transform the contemporary into a mythic lyrical landscape, where images like "I felt one hundred hymens breaking like bird’s skulls" conjure up a rich surreal tapestry with dark folkloric undertones. Nature is a vivid backdrop with filmic effect. The iconic music of Sade, Corrine Bailey Rae, Genuine, Diana Ross and the Supremes demarcate era and time. Kaycee Hill’s poems linger on the tongue like hot pepper sauce. -- Malika BookerTable of ContentsFOR YOU (FOR YOU) 11 Muse 12 A Caged Thing Freed 13 What Love Looks Like 14 Naturalist 15 Kitchen 16 Shapeshift 18 The Collector 19 Dreams of Home 20 Ghost 21 For the Hive 22 Scuffing 24 The Gift 25 Last shift at St Wins MY GEOGRAPHIES 29 Polystyrene Cup 30 A SIDE 32 B SIDE 33 Elegy for Buster 34 Night Shift 35 In the queue at Motion 36 At the train station a pigeon 37 Day Visit at HMP Erlestoke 38 Blessed 40 Sleep Paralysis 41 Leaving St. Ives 42 A poem 43 Seal Island, St Ives 44 Oshun 45 Self Care HAS IT COME TO THIS? 48 Flying Ants 49 Fresh Set 50 A Woman on Shirley High Street 51 On Grief 52 Urban Kites 53 The Marlands, Midday 54 Hot Sauce 55 Bully 56 To Get Inside 57 Vignettes about the New Forest 58 Little Deaths 60 Pendulum 62 Spring Begins in Leigh Woods SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE LIGHT I FEEL THE SUN 64 Leo Season 65 Core Memories in Málaga 66 Strip Tease 67 Recurring Dream 68 Remember 69 Lauryn Hill at Boomtown 70 Come Along with Me 72 Hooked 73 Dad, Eighteen 74 Hallowed 75 Bedroom Witch 76 A Memory 77 Roots 78 Free Party 79 Makeshift
£10.44
Vintage Publishing Ballad of a Happy Immigrant
Book Synopsis'It isn't often that one encounters a sensibility so interested in our world - and so compelling in its powers of attentiveness. Leo Boix's poetry has a wide tilt and scope. It sings the doors open' Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic'They are sailors from another century, stalwart / captured on daguerrotype, casually masculine, tender of heart.'In the middle of the last century, the SS General Pueyrredón from Buenos Aires deposits Leo Boix's paternal grandfather on English soil for the first time. In the two years he spends there, he acquires a taste for his new homeland: from taking his tea white - muy blanco - to plunging into unfamiliar sensual worlds.So begins the poet's own journey, arriving in the United Kingdom as a young queer man. Ballad of a Happy Immigrant tells of the life he makes there: a dazzling collection of what it means to live, love and write between two cultures and traditions. Effortlessly moving between the English imagination and Spanish language, it is a boundless exploration of otherness and home, and the personal transformation that follows between 'loss / and a life / that starts anew.'*A Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice*Trade ReviewIn Ballad of a Happy Immigrant Leo Boix demonstrates the power of a poem to move not just the mind but the body. These are supple, evocative, sensuous poems that ripple with life from a poet who can do in two languages what many of us struggle to do in one -- Kayo ChingonyiHere, dear readers, you will find charms and bees, crows and legends, much silence and even more truth-seeking. You will find immigrant's songs, and love whispers to the planet, all set to music that is as inimitable as it's lush. It isn't often that one encounters a sensibility so interested in our world - and so compelling in its powers of attentiveness. Leo Boix's poetry has a wide tilt and scope. It sings the doors open -- Ilya KaminskyAs well as having a subtle mastery of forms, Boix is playfully inventive -- Rishi Dastidar * Guardian *Boix... has attempted something that few poets dare and even fewer achieve - to write in an adopted language... [he] handles words like a beachcomber, relishing them and experimenting with combinations and visual arrangements -- Angus Reid * Morning Star *
£9.50
Vintage Publishing Sonnets
Book SynopsisLove sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love.Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery - why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? - each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive.INTRODUCED BY ANDREW McMILLAN'This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love' Don Paterson, GuardianTrade ReviewThe great master who knew everything...an unspeakable source of delight—Charles DickensEvery age has reinvented the Bard in its own image. Renaissance Man or post-modern angst... Shakespeare haunts our language—IndependentShakespeare was the most consummate genius of all time—Peter AckroydDante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them, there is no third—T.S. EliotEvery single character in Shakespeare is as much an Individual as those in Life itself—Alexander Pope
£10.44
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The 306: Day
Book SynopsisThe 306: Day is the second part of Oliver Emanuel and Gareth Williams' powerful new First World War trilogy, charting the heart-breaking journey of the 306 men executed for cowardice and desertion during the conflict and the devastating consequences for those they left behind. This part explores how the war affected women, families, and communities on the home front. Inspired by real events and first-hand accounts, The 306: Day follows the lives of three ordinary women fighting to be heard above the clamor of World War 1.Trade ReviewAbsolutely exceptional in its sheer dramatic force * The Scotsman on The 306: Dawn *
£13.37
Canongate Books Now And Then
Book SynopsisNow And Then is not merely a collection of a songwriter's lyrics; the song-poems of this undisputed 'bluesologist' triumphantly stand on their own, evoking the rhythm and urgency which have distinguished Gil Scott-Heron's career.This collection of poems carries the reader from the global topics of political hypocrisy and the dangers posed by capitalist culture to painfully personal themes and the realities of everyday life. His message is black, political, historically accurate, urgent, uncompromising and mature and as relevant now as ever.Trade ReviewSome of the funniest and most literate lyrics in all music . . . From deadpan attacks on racism to withering sarcasm about the Great Society; from Chomskian rants to parodies of media shallowness - every line comes coated in a sardonically witty turn of phrase * * Time Out * *Accessible, intelligent, rhythmic writing which makes poetry seem worthwhile again * * The List * *Praise for Gil Scott-Heron: Engaging and immensely human . . . Much like his poetry, Scott-Heron's style is spare and effective, offering up jagged observations on fame, friendship and political and racial injustice * * Independent on Sunday * *Scott-Heron is such a fine writer . . . As readers and fans alike, we are left to mourn the passing of surely, the least likely pop star ever, one with a truly brilliant mind * * Sunday Times * *Gil Scott-Heron is timeless * * New York Times * *
£9.49
Cinnamon Press AlephBet
Book Synopsis
£9.49
Cinnamon Press Arriving Barefooted
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£9.49
Cinnamon Press Lightship
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£13.49
Carcanet Press Ltd Infinite in Finite
Book SynopsisA London Review Bookshop Book of the Year. Infinite in Finite develops the inimitable style of The Multiverse, the author's first collection (2018), praised as showing 'some of the best technical skills of any living poet', the work of 'one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose enthusiastic gaze is directed outward with energy and gladness'. Then Auden and the Romantics lighted his way. To those influences are now added the challenges of a Modernist style, drawing on Marianne Moore, T.S. Eliot and Delmore Schwartz. In the long sequence 'Appearance and Reality' and throughout the collection's intricate polymetrical stanzas, readers experience more variation than most contemporary free verse provides. The poems challenge assumptions about the place of form in the modern artistic ecosystem.
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd PN Review 276
Book SynopsisThe March-April 2024 issue of PN Review, one of the most outstanding poetry journals of our time.
£9.49
Carcanet Press Apple Thieves
Book SynopsisBeverley Bie Brahic's Apple Thieves delights in the pleasures of nature, art and the body.
£10.79
Carcanet Press Ltd Dantes Inferno
Book SynopsisThis new Jamaican Dante is as much a transformation as it is translation, by one of the most celebrated Caribbean writers of our time and former Poet Laureate of Jamaica.
£15.29
Carcanet Press Ltd Thrums
£11.69
Penguin Books Ltd You Don't Have What It Takes to Be My Nemesis:
Book Synopsis'A tremendous ball of fire hurled into the dark recesses of our world' Ocean Vuong'Radical . . . invites the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery' Tracy K. Smith'Psychotropic, visionary songs of love and defiance' Ralf Webb'Deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence' Eileen Myles'Queer . . . gorgeous . . . just stunning' Joelle TaylorA captivating, original call for creative freedom from one of the most singular poets of our time'this mechanistic world . . . has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry'Since their inception in 2005, CAConrad's (soma)tic poems have acted as an urgent appeal for an embodied, unfettered creative practice. Rooted in the Sanskrit 'soma', meaning 'to press and be newly born', and the Greek-derived 'somatic', relating to the body, Conrad's (soma)tic poetry reaches out from electrifying, esoteric rituals. Their methods are elaborate, and the results are unexpected: one, for instance, might begin by seeing the poet flood their body with the field calls of extinct animals - and end not only in a consideration of survivor's guilt and the destruction of ecosystems, but also in an elated sense of the presence, close at hand, of the many friends and lovers they lost to AIDS.Conrad draws on these rituals to enter a political, physical and spiritual state of consciousness, meditating on ecology, queerness and grief in powerful, dreamlike poetry that invites us to engage with the essence of things. This new selection is a testimony to poetry's capacity to reconnect us with the present moment and put an end to the alienation we feel: from our bodies, our surroundings, our planet.Trade ReviewCAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious -- Tracy K. SmithIn what is now the classic CAConrad mode of both exuberance and defiance, this book, like much of Conrad's epical body of work, is a tremendous ball of fire hurled into the dark recesses of our worlds (minds?). Luminous, sobering, but not without a capacious kindness in its ethos, this latest is a vibrant achievement from one of America's most legendary living poets -- Ocean VuongConjured in the extreme present, this is a vital addition to the global poetry canon. Through a lifetime of devotion to craft, Conrad has achieved an inventive and astonishing collection: a haunting, a prayer, a connection. They show how the ancient technology of poetry is between all things, living and not. Queer and gorgeous, filled with grief and belonging, a body within a body. Just stunning. I am dumb-struck -- Joelle TaylorCAConrad always argues (from the inside of their poems) for a poetry of radical inclusivity while keeping a very queer shoulder to the wheel. Their kind of queerness strikes me as nonpolarizing, not intentionally but because of the fullness of their exposition, a kind of gigantism that seems to me to be most deeply informed by love, and a tenderness for the ravages and tumult of existence -- Eileen MylesThese are psychotropic, visionary songs of love and defiance. CA celebrates poetry as a connecting force, a spell-work which binds us to the earth, animals, stars, and one another -- Ralf WebbCAConrad's work is as tough and as vulnerable as our bodies, as intricate and blunt as a flattened copper penny or a lily of the valley or the nests we'd build if we were birds. There's a love poem here for Jim Brodey, who once talked about poems bursting apart with 'extreme gracious information'. Right? Gleaming like a mineral in the contemporary nightmare, that's what this book is made of: through and through -- Luke RobertsI've been a fan of CAConrad's work from the beginning. There is always a necessary and vital life force at work in this poetry. This is a wondrous and essential selection of their noble life project -- Peter GizziAt a time when I don't always know how to make sense of what's going on, CAConrad serves as a cleareyed seer -- Jillian Steinhauer
£11.69
Verso Books The Flowers of Evil
Book SynopsisProbing the depths of the modern psyche in a voice at once caustic and vulnerable, melancholic and humorous, Baudelaire's infamous book brings to the surface a new understanding of evil, of eroticism, and of social life through an astonishing variety of poetic forms and styles.When it was published in 1857, six poems in The Flowers of Evil were banned on charges of obscenity. Baudelaire then reworked the book into a masterfully expanded version published in 1861.This new translation by acclaimed poetry scholar Nathan Brown includes the banned poems in a facing-page, dual-language edition of the definitive 1861 version, along with a major new introduction to the significance of Baudelaire’s work.Brown has carefully preserved the lineation, figurative language, punctuation, and grammatical structures of the original, finally giving us a version of The Flowers of Evil suitable for the general reader as well as scholars and teachers working i
£10.44
Troubador Publishing Serendipity Destiny or Fate
Book SynopsisThe third collection of poetry by Gloria Bradley following on from her earlier 'Shadowlands - Mind, Mood and Memory' and 'Masquerade Love, Loss and all the Dross'.
£9.49
Nick Hern Books Charleys Aunt
£10.44
Nick Hern Books Lifers
£10.44
Everyman Indian Love Poems
Book SynopsisAccording to the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written two thousand years ago, when the wheel of ecstasy is in motion "there is no textbook at all, and no order." Indian Love Poems is a unique gathering of poems from across more than two and a half millennia that attempts to catalog the disordered ecstasies of love, ranging from the Kama Sutra and earlier works up to present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora.Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire-both male and female-in the intricate dance of existence. From the twelfth-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to such contemporary poets as Kamala Das and Vikram Seth, this glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.
£10.80
Everyman Anna Akhmatova: Poems
Book SynopsisFrom her appearance in a small magazine in 1906 to her death in 1965, Anna Akhmatova was a dominant presence in Russian literary life. But this friend of Pasternak and Mandelstam was a poet in a country where poetry was literally a matter of life and death, as she found when Mandelstam and her own husband, Gumilyev, were executed, and her son imprisoned for many years in the Gulag. Akhmatova's first collection, Evening, appeared in 1912. Rosary (1914) made her a household name. After the Revolution she went in and out of favour with the authorities, who sometimes allowed her to publish, sometimes banned her work. She is now most celebrated in the West for Poem Without A Hero and Requiem, a sequencemourning the victims of Stalin's Terror which was only published (and then outside Russia) in 1963.
£10.80
Peepal Tree Press Ltd Patterflash
Book SynopsisPatterflash embraces the performative, self-ironising aesthetic of campness but, as a mask, it is a complex and very malleable one, capable of showing features of tenderness, bravery, righteous anger and sometimes sadness and alarm – as well as the comedic. Within a collection that displays an engaging variety of language registers, both ‘high’ and ‘low’ in tone, the masking sometimes makes use of Polari, the gay street language that simultaneously reveals and conceals, excludes and invites, estranges and makes familiar. The collection connects the poet as a wry, humane observer of the scene, particularly as conducted in Manchester, and the persona of “Adam Lowe” as both actor in and narrator of his own dramas, who performs, exults and sometimes suffers in a wide range of guises and disguises. What unites them is the urge to embrace the possibilities of being exactly who you want to be whatever the complications or consequences of your choice. From the four-year-old boy who, though always easy in his mixedness of race, also wants to wear a blonde woman’s wig without any angst of self-contradiction, through the poems delighting in the frank physicality of gay sex, to the mature man experiencing domestic contentment, Adam Lowe takes us on a journey rich in observation and always in a poetry that makes an art of patterflash.Trade Review"A collection of ecstatic queer hymns that walk us through Leeds, through Manchester, with the unique laguage of being young and queer in the north.
£9.49
Canterbury Press Norwich Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent,
Book SynopsisAdvent is a season of waiting and anticipation in which the waiting itself is strangely rich and fulfilling. Poetry can help us fathom the depths of Advent's many paradoxes: dark and light, emptiness and fulfilment, ancient and ever new. For every day from Advent Sunday to Christmas Day and beyond, the bestselling poet Malcolm Guite chooses a favourite poem from across the Christian spiritual and English literary traditions and offers incisive seasonal reflections on it. In the spirit of the season, he blends the familiar and the new, ranging from from spiritual classics such as Edmund Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert and Christina Rossetti, to contemporary voices Luci Shaw and Scott Cairns. His own acclaimed sequence of sonnets for the great Advent antiphons are also included.
£12.99
Nick Hern Books Bronte (NHB Modern Plays)
Book SynopsisIn 1845, Branwell Bronte returns home in disgrace, plagued by his addictions. As he descends into alcoholism and insanity, bringing chaos to the household, his sisters write - Polly Teale's extraordinary play evokes the real and imagined worlds of the Brontes, as their fictional characters come to haunt their creators. Bronte was originally produced by Shared Experience in 2005. It was revived by the company in 2010, in a co-production with the Watermill Theatre, Newbury, directed by Nancy Meckler.Trade Review'Breathtaking... a rare feat of theatrical imagining' Evening Standard 'Ambitious, intelligent and absorbing' Financial Times 'Soars on the wings of imagination' Daily Telegraph 'Riveting... a tantalising glimpse through the window of a uniquely haunted family home' The Times
£10.44
Nick Hern Books The Wardrobe (NHB Modern Plays)
Book SynopsisA gripping journey through British history that shows how our country was shaped and how connected we are with our past. Across seven centuries, small groups of children seek sanctuary in the same solid old wardrobe. It's the safest place they know - but is it safe enough? The Wardrobe was commissioned as part of the 2014 National Theatre Connections Festival and premiered by youth theatres across the UK. With a variety of roles for young actors, the play can be performed by a large cast of up to twenty-eight, or a smaller cast with doubling.Trade Review'Wonderful... a powerful stimulus for creative drama work' Drama magazine
£10.44
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Being Alive
Book SynopsisBeing Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley’s Staying Alive, which became Britain’s most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Staying Alive didn’t just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadn’t read poetry for years because it hadn’t held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. Being Alive was followed by a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), and by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020). These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry – all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry.Trade ReviewI love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid, strongly present and equally beautifully organised. But this new book feels even more alive - I think it has a heartbeat, or maybe that's my own thrum humming along with the music of these poets. Sitting alone in a room with these poems is to be assured that you are not alone, you are not crazy (or if you are, you're not the only one who thinks this way!) I run home to this book to argue with it, find solace in it, to locate myself in the world again. -- Meryl StreepThese poems remind us of what we have felt yet never fully articulated, what we have dreamt yet never believed entirely possible. Perhaps most importantly, the poems in here tell us there is nothing more powerful than language when its agenda is to reveal rather than to conceal or distort. -- Kamila ShamsieHopefully, books like this will put poetry back into the mainstream. -- Van MorrisonTable of ContentsNeil Astley 17 Introduction 1 Exploring the World Elma Mitchell 22 This Poem… Gerald Locklin 22 The Iceberg Theory Billy Collins 23 Introduction to Poetry Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 24 The Horses of Meaning Paul Muldoon 24 Symposium Simon Armitage 25 Not the Furniture Game Vincent Woods 26 A Song of Lies Philip Gross 27 Mappa Mundi Donald Hall 28 The Poem Galway Kinnell 29 Saint Francis and the Sow Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill 29 Celebration Elizabeth Bishop 31 At the Fishhouses Stewart Conn 33 Tremors Theodore Roethke 34 Night Journey Randall Jarrell 35 The Orient Express C.P. Cavafy 36 Ithaka Sheenagh Pugh 37 What If This Road Philip Larkin 38 Poetry of Departures Derek Mahon 39 The Last of the Fire Kings Matthew Sweeney 40 The Appointment Derek Mahon 41 The Mayo Tao Michael Longley 42 Echoes Hayden Carruth 43 No Matter What, After All and That Beautiful Word So Mark Doty 44 Migratory Don McKay 45 Close-up on a Sharp-shinned Hawk Lorna Crozier 46 Inventing the Hawk George Mackay Brown 48 The Hawk Robert Adamson 46 The southern skua 2 Taste and See Philip Levine 50 The Simple Truth David Budbill 51 The First Green of Spring Denise Levertov 51 O Taste and See Li-Young Lee 52 From Blossoms Peter Davison 52 Peaches Galway Kinnell 53 Blackberry Eating Sylvia Plath 53 Blackberrying Tony Harrison 54 A Kumquat for John Keats Vicki Feaver 57 Crab Apple Jelly Jacob Polley 59 A Jar of Honey Pablo Neruda 59 Sweetness, Always Kim Addonizio 61 For Desire Helen Dunmore 62 Wild strawberries Pablo Neruda 63 Horses Ted Hughes 64 The Horses Henry Shukman 65 Horses at Christmas Katrina Porteous 66 Calf Mary Oliver 66 How Everything Adores Being Alive Alden Nowlan 68 In Praise of the Great Bull Walrus Henri Cole 69 Cleaning the Elephant Alden Nowlan 69 The Bull Moose Elizabeth Bishop 70 The Fish Wendell Berry 72 The Peace of Wild Things Czeslaw Milosz 73 Gift Jane Hirshfield 73 Not-Yet Andrew Greig 74 A Pre-Breakfast Rant Chase Twichell 75 Hunger for Something Ruth L. Schwartz 75 Talking to God on the Seventh Day Jack Gilbert 76 Hunger Gwendolyn MacEwen 77 Dark Pines Under Water Erin Mouré 78 Toxicity P.K. Page 79 Planet Earth Wislawa Szymborska 80 The Ball Anne Michaels 81 The Passionate World Sarah Lindsay 82 World Truffle Archibald MacLeish 83 You, Andrew Marvell Mary Oliver 85 Look and See Agha Shahid Ali 85 Stationery Michael Donaghy 86 The Present Imtiaz Dharker 86 Blessing Robert Creeley 87 The Rain Naomi Shihab Nye 88 So Much Happiness Jane Kenyon 89 Happiness Robert Bly 90 The Third Body Czeslaw Milosz 90 On Pilgrimage Mary Oliver 91 The Summer Day Carl Dennis 92 The God Who Loves You James K. Baxter 93 The Ikons Czeslaw Milosz 94 Veni Creator Carl Sandburg 94 Prayers of Steel Antonio Machado 95 ‘Last night while I was sleeping’ Elizabeth Smither 96 Mission Impossible R.S. Thomas 96 from Counterpoint Dennis O’Driscoll 97 Missing God Charles Causley 100 The Forest of Tangle Fiona Farrell 101 Credo Aidan Rooney-Céspedes 102 Retro Creation Kaylin Haught 102 God Says Yes to Me Kerry Hardie 103 Sheep Fair Day Ruth L. Schwartz 105 Oh God, Fuck Me 3 Family Jacob Polley 108 Smoke Marge Piercy 109 The watch Lucille Clifton 110 the lost baby poem Jeni Couzyn 110 Heartsong Helen Dunmore 111 Scan at 8 weeks Kona Macphee 112 Ultrasound at 13 weeks Paul Muldoon 112 The Sonogram Pauline Stainer 113 The Ringing Chamber Victoria Redel 113 Ninth Month Derek Mahon 114 An Unborn Child Louis MacNeice 115 Prayer Before Birth Pablo Neruda 116 Births Kona Macphee 118 The night before the last day of January Kate Clanchy 118 Driving to the Hospital W.N. Herbert 119 The Harvest in March Matthew Hollis 120 And let us say Lauris Edmond 120 Tempo Fleur Adcock 122 Counting Kate Clanchy 123 Love Sylvia Plath 124 Morning Song Richard Murphy 124 Natural Son Thom Gunn 125 Baby Song Helen Farish 126 Newly Born Twins Sharon Olds 126 My First Weeks Kathleen Ossip 127 Nursling Anne Stevenson 128 The Victory Kate Clanchy 128 Stance Jane Hirshfield 129 Red Onion, Cherries, Boiling Potatoes, Milk – Anne Winters 130 from Elizabeth Near and Far Fleur Adcock 130 For Andrew Gabriela Mistral 131 Let Him Not Grow Up Rita Dove 132 Daystar Anna Jackson 133 The peacock of motherhood Connie Bensley 134 Single Parent Michael Ondaatje 134 Bearhug Nick Flynn 135 Cartoon Physics, part 1 Michael Laskey 136 A Tray of Eggs Thomas Lynch 137 Skating with Heather Grace Tony Hoagland 138 Benevolence Carlos Drummond de Andrade 139 Infancy Anne Stevenson 139 The Mother Seamus Heaney 140 Sunlight Philip Levine 141 Starlight Seamus Heaney 142 from Clearances Yehuda Amichai 142 My Father Sinéad Morrissey 143 Genetics Seamus Heaney 143 Digging Brendan Kennelly 144 I See You Dancing, Father Theodore Roethke 145 Papa’s Waltz Susan Wicks 146 My Father Is Shrinking Li-Young Lee 147 Little Father Hart Crane 147 My Grandmother’s Love Letters Andrew Waterhouse 148 Climbing My Grandfather Thomas Lynch 149 Custody Julia Copus 150 Second Home Marie Howe 151 How Many Times Kona Macphee 151 No fairy story Selima Hill 152 House Ai 152 The Cockfighter’s Daughter Sylvia Plath 156 Daddy Sharon Olds 158 Waste Sonata Tracey Herd 159 The Survivors Pascale Petit 160 The Strait-Jackets Pascale Petit 161 Self-Portrait as a Warao Violin Susan Glickman 162 But till that morning, ain’t no one gonna harm you John Steffler 162 Hollis Street Square, Halifax Gjertrud Schnackenberg 163 Returning North Maurice Riordan 165 Time Out Helen Dunmore 166 The blessing C. Day Lewis 167 Walking Away Kathleen Jamie 168 Mother-May-I Simon Armitage 169 Kid Cynthia Fuller 170 Guests Simon Armitage 170 from Book of Matches Rutger Kopland 171 Johnson Brothers Ltd Paul Farley 172 Laws of Gravity Gael Turnbull 174 Transmutation Vona Groarke 174 Family Sharon Thesen 175 Animals Miller Williams 175 Animals Sharon Olds 176 Forty-one, Alone, No Gerbil Billy Collins 176 Putting Down the Cat Elizabeth Smither 177 On the euthanasia of a pet dog Gerry McGrath 177 ‘Noticing a man unable…’ Howard Nemerov 178 Walking the Dog 4 Love Life Wislawa Szymborska 180 Love at First Sight Rosemary Tonks 181 Story of a Hotel Room Lavinia Greenlaw 182 Tryst Derek Walcott 182 Love After Love Julia Copus 183 Love, Like Water Yehuda Amichai 184 To My Love, Combing Her Hair Cathy Song 184 The White Porch Zbigniew Herbert 186 Rosy Ear Margaret Atwood 187 Variation on the Word Sleep Greta Stoddart 188 The Blindfold Zbigniew Herbert 189 Silk of a Soul Derek Walcott 190 The Fist Deryn Rees-Jones 191 What It’s Like To Be Alive Hayden Carruth 191 Alive Robert Hass 192 Misery and Splendor Sharon Olds 193 This Hour Galway Kinnell 194 After Making Love We Hear Footsteps Czeslaw Milosz 194 Love Jack Gilbert 195 The Great Fires Jane Hirshfield 196 Knowing Nothing Carol Ann Duffy 196 Warming Her Pearls Helen Farish 197 Look at These Liz Lochhead 198 I Wouldn’t Thank You for a Valentine Carol Ann Duffy 199 Valentine Pablo Neruda 200 Ode to the Onion Linda France 202 If Love Was Jazz Billy Collins 203 Litany Pablo Neruda 204 from 100 Love Sonnets Patrick Kavanagh 205 On Raglan Road Brendan Kennelly 205 Raglan Lane Stanley Kunitz 206 Touch Me William Matthews 207 Misgivings Kerry Hardie 208 The Hunter Home from the Hill Michael Longley 208 The Waterfall U.A. Fanthorpe 209 Atlas Philip Larkin 209 An Arundel Tomb 5 Men and Women Frederick Seidel 212 Men and Women C.K. Williams 215 The Dress Denise Levertov 218 The Mutes Fred Voss 219 The Inspection Marge Piercy 220 In the men’s room(s) Gwen Harwood 221 A Simple Story Tony Hoagland 222 The Change Carol Ann Duffy 224 Mrs Midas Anne Rouse 226 Spunk Talking Tom Leonard 226 Four of the Belt Chris Greenhalgh 227 A Man in the Valley of the Women Roddy Lumsden 228 Prayer To Be with Mercurial Women Wendy Cope 229 Bloody Men Clare Pollard 230 And Another Bloody Thing… Charles Bukowksi 230 sexpot Radmila Lazic 232 I’ll Be a Wicked Old Woman Deborah Randall 233 Ballygrand Widow Kim Addonizio 234 ‘What Do Women Want?’ Liz Lochhead 234 Rapunzstiltskin John Agard 236 English Girl Eats Her First Mango David Constantine 237 Pleasure Minnie Bruce Pratt 238 Done Selima Hill 238 Please Can I Have a Man Billy Collins 239 Man in Space Alice Oswald 240 Wedding Michael Laskey 240 The Tightrope Wedding Philip Larkin 241 The Whitsun Weddings Michael Longley 243 The Pattern Dorothy Molloy 244 Les Grands Seigneurs Selima Hill 244 Being a Wife Denise Levertov 245 The Ache of Marriage Sylvia Plath 245 The Applicant Dorothy Nimmo 247 Good Gifts Jacques Prévert 248 Breakfast Dorothy Nimmo 249 Ill-Wishing Him Liz Lochhead 249 My Way Cheryl Follon 251 Love Rats Duncan Forbes 252 Recension Day Michael Blackburn 253 Before That Catherine Smith 253 The New Bride Helen Ivory 254 Sleeping with the Fishes James Fenton 255 Let’s Go Over It All Again Eleanor Brown 256 Sonnet 6 Being and Loss Wallace Stevens 258 The Emperor of Ice-Cream Jackie Kay 258 Somebody Else James Merrill 259 Mirror Michael Davitt 260 The Mirror Chase Twichell 261 Cat and Mirror Gael Turnbull 262 Transmutation Henri Cole 262 Original Face Aleksandar Ristovic 263 The essential Marin Sorescu 263 Pond W.B. Yeats 264 The Circus Animals’ Desertion Jack Gilbert 265 Measuring the Tyger César Vallejo 266 The black heralds John Berryman 266 from Dream Songs (155) Paul Durcan 267 The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious Jane Kenyon 268 Otherwise James Fenton 268 The Mistake C.P. Cavafy 269 Che Fece… Il Gran Rifiuto Andrew Waterhouse 270 Speaking About My Cracked Sump Tracey Herd 270 Ophelia’s Confession Selima Hill 271 Hairbrush Polly Clark 272 Elvis the Performing Octopus Sarah Wardle 273 Flight Kerry Hardie 274 Autumn Cancer Julia Darling 274 Chemotherapy Gael Turnbull 275 Transmutation Kerry Hardie 275 She Replies to Carmel’s Letter Kenneth Mackenzie 276 Caesura David Scott 277 Heart Esther Jansma 278 Descent Carole Satyamurti 279 Broken Moon Wendy Cope 280 Names Bob Hicok 280 Alzheimer’s Alison Pryde 281 Have We Had Easter Yet? Tony Hoagland 282 Lucky Mark Doty 283 Brilliance Pearse Hutchinson 285 Flames Nick Drake 286 The Very Rich Hours Mark Doty 287 The Embrace Kerry Hardie 288 What’s Left Lucille Clifton 289 poem to my uterus Lucille Clifton 290 to my last period Howard Moss 290 The Pruned Tree James K. Baxter 291 Tomcat David Constantine 292 The Hoist R.S. Thomas 292 Lore Grace Paley 293 Here Anne Stevenson 294 Who’s Joking with the Photographer? Fleur Adcock 295 Weathering Lauris Edmond 296 3 a.m. C.K. Williams 297 The Shade Frederick Seidel 298 Dune Road, Southampton Matthew Sweeney 300 The Box Gerard Woodward 300 The Murderer Is a Cow Jacob Polley 302 Moving House Imtiaz Dharker 303 This room Naomi Shihab Nye 304 Kindness 7 Daily Round William Bronk 306 The Way Glyn Maxwell 307 The Nerve Simon Armitage 308 Killing Time #2 Louis MacNeice 310 Bagpipe Music Dennis O’Driscoll 311 Life Roo Borson 312 City Lights August Kleinzahler 313 Snow in North Jersey William Matthews 314 Grief Helen Dunmore 315 To Virgil Maura Dooley 316 Mind the Gap Jo Shapcott 316 My Life Asleep David Constantine 317 New Year Behind the Asylum Alden Nowlan 318 Great Things Have Happened Thom Gunn 319 Night Taxi Ken Smith 321 Message on the machine Brendan Kennelly 321 Clearing a Space Ciaran Carson 323 Clearance Ciaran Carson 323 Turn Again Edward Hirsch 324 In Spite of Everything, the Stars Jack Gilbert 325 Searching for Pittsburgh Lavinia Greenlaw 325 Zombies Dennis O’Driscoll 326 Home Philip Levine 327 What Work Is Al Purdy 328 Alive or Not Jacques Prévert 329 At the Florist’s Anne Rouse 330 Her Retirement Philip Larkin 331 Toads Robert Phillips 332 The Panic Bird Julie O’Callaghan 333 Managing the Common Herd Deborah Garrison 334 Fight Song Peter Didsbury 335 A Malediction Rita Ann Higgins 336 Some People Rodney Jones 337 TV Vicki Feaver 338 The Way We Live Philip Levine 339 Every Blessed Day Tom French 341 Pity the Bastards Ruth Dallas 345 Photographs of Pioneer Women Donald Hall 346 Names of Horses George Mackay Brown 347 The Ballad of John Barleycorn, The Ploughman, and the Furrow Grace Nichols 349 Sugar Cane Linda Gregg 350 Fish Tea Rice Derek Mahon 351 Everything Is Going To Be All Right Stanley Kunitz 352 The Round 8 Lives Derek Mahon 354 Lives Brendan Kennelly 356 The Story Gael Turnbull 357 Transmutation Suzanne Cleary 357 Acting Elizabeth Smither 359 The sea question Esther Morgan 359 The Sea Michael Harlow 360 No Problem, But Not Easy Joanne Limburg 361 Seder Night with My Ancestors Agha Shahid Ali 362 The Dacca Gauzes Maya Angelou 363 Still I Rise Gwendolyn Brooks 365 Sadie and Maud Douglas Dunn 365 Glasgow Schoolboys, Running Backwards Denis Glover 366 The Magpies Paul Muldoon 367 The Loaf Vona Groarke 368 Imperial Measure Billy Collins 370 Nostalgia Thomas Lux 371 Plague Victims Catapulted over Walls into Besieged City Ken Smith 371 Part of the crowd that day Tom Paulin 372 Desertmartin Derek Mahon 373 Ecclesiastes Andrew Waterhouse 374 Now the City Has Fallen Peter Reading 375 from Going On Imtiaz Dharker 376 Honour Killing Carol Rumens 377 Geography Lesson W.H. Auden 377 Refugee Blues George Szirtes 378 My father carries me across a field Choman Hardi 379 Escape Journey, 1988 Kapka Kassabova 380 Someone else’s life Jane Griffiths 381 Migration Carl Sandburg 382 Limited Moniza Alvi 382 Arrival, 1946 C.P. Cavafy 383 The City Ken Smith 383 Malenki robot Saadi Youssef 384 The Mouse Carol Rumens 385 The Emigrée James Fenton 386 The Ideal Gwyneth Lewis 386 A Poet’s Confession Zbigniew Herbert 387 Tongue Mihangel Morgan 387 Conversation W.S. Merwin 388 Losing a Language Zbigniew Herbert 389 From the Technology of Tears Agha Shahid Ali 390 from The Country Without a Post Office Yehuda Amichai 391 ‘The Rustle of History’s Wings,’ as They Used to Say Then Yehuda Amichai 392 Jerusalem James Fenton 392 Jerusalem Mahmoud Darwish 395 In This Land Moniza Alvi 395 The Sari James Fenton 396 Wind 9 Mad World Robert Pinsky 398 ABC Gerald Stern 398 The Dog Emily Dickinson 399 ‘I reason, Earth is short…’ William Stafford 400 Earth Dweller Hans Magnus Enzensberger 400 The End of the Owls Miroslav Holub 401 The end of the world Edwin Muir 402 The Horses Vijay Seshadri 403 The Disappearances W.H. Auden 405 The Shield of Achilles Edwin Brock 407 Five Ways to Kill a Man Tadeusz Rózewicz 408 Pigtail Primo Levi 409 Shemà Tadeusz Rózewicz 410 The survivor (attr.) Martin Niemöller 411 ‘First they came for the Jews…’ Erich Fried 411 What Happens Adrian Mitchell 412 To Whom It May Concern W.H. Auden 414 ‘When Statesmen gravely say…’ Hans Magnus Enzensberger 414 Explaining the Declaration Aleksandar Ristovic 415 Untitled Bertolt Brecht 415 War Has Been Given a Bad Name Mahmoud Darwish 416 He Embraces His Murderer Bertolt Brecht 417 from A German War Primer Heberto Padilla 417 Song of the Juggler Erich Fried 418 Conversation with a Survivor Jackie Kay 419 Twelve Bar Bessie Adrienne Rich 420 from An Atlas of the Difficult World Genevieve Taggard 421 At Last the Women Are Moving Carole Satyamurti 421 Ourstory Marge Piercy 422 The low road Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy 423 Revenge Czeslaw Milosz 424 Dedication Douglas Dunn 425 Ratatouille Paul Durcan 426 In Memory: The Miami Showband – Massacred 31 July 1975 James Merrill 427 Casual Wear Yehuda Amichai 428 The Diameter of the Bomb Norman MacCaig 428 The Red and the Black Sinéad Morrissey 429 The Wound Man John Burnside 430 History C.K. Williams 432 The Hearth W.H. Auden 434 Musée des Beaux Arts Wislawa Szymborska 435 Reality Demands Adam Zagajewski 436 Try to Praise the Mutilated World Faiz Ahmed Faiz 437 A Prison Evening Adrienne Rich 438 To the Days Sheenagh Pugh 439 Sometimes Eva Salzman 439 Spells Helen Dunmore 440 Glad of these times Jen Hadfield 441 Staple Island Swing 10 Ends and Beginnings Philip Larkin 444 The Trees M.R. Peacocke 444 Late Snow C.P. Cavafy 445 Candles Saadi Youssef 446 Night in Al-Hamra Helen Dunmore 446 Candle poem Mark Strand 447 A Piece of the Storm Bernard O’Donoghue 448 Going Without Saying Patrick Kavanagh 448 Wet Evening in April W.S. Merwin 448 For the Anniversary of My Death Adrienne Rich 449 Final Notations Raymond Carver 450 Gravy Jane Kenyon 450 In the Nursing Home Jo Shapcott 451 Lovebirds Sharon Olds 451 Beyond Harm Roy Fisher 452 The Entertainment of War Seamus Heaney 453 Mid-Term Break Robert Kroetsch 454 Sounding the name Stephen Dobyns 455 When a Friend Edwin Brock 456 And another thing… Michael Longley 457 Detour Paul Durcan 458 Tullynoe: Tête-à-Tête in the Priest’s Parlour Bernard O’Donoghue 458 Concordiam in Populo Elizabeth Smither 459 A cortège of daughters Meg Bateman 460 After the Funeral Virginia Hamilton-Adair 460 A Last Marriage Anne Stevenson 461 Musician’s Widow Lauris Edmond 462 Anniversary R.S. Thomas 463 A Marriage Carol Muske-Dukes 463 Love Song Ruth Stone 464 Poems Antonio Machado 465 The Eyes Ruth Stone 465 Curtains Elizabeth Jennings 466 Not at Home Jane Hirshfield 467 A Room Brendan Kennelly 468 We Are Living Marie Howe 469 What the Living Do Norman Nicholson 470 Sea to the West Lauris Edmond 471 Girls Czeslaw Milosz 472 A Mistake Tony Hoagland 472 Migration Michael Hartnett 473 A Prayer for Sleep Ruth Pitter 474 The Task James K. Baxter 474 from Autumn Testament Mary Oliver 476 Some Questions You Might Ask M.K. Joseph 476 A Riddle: Of the Soul Michael Hartnett 477 ‘There will be a talking…’ Gary Snyder 478 For the children Ruth Stone 478 In the Next Galaxy Jane Kenyon 479 Let Evening Come T.S. Eliot 480 from Four Quartets 484 Further reading 487 Acknowledgements 496 Index of writers 502 Index of titles and first lines
£11.69
Bloodaxe Books Ltd Selected Poems
Book SynopsisW.S. Merwin was arguably the most influential American poet of the last half-century – an artist who transfigured and reinvigorated the vision of poetry for our time. While he was long viewed in the States as an essential voice in modern American literature, his poetry was unavailable in Britain for over 35 years until Bloodaxe published this edition of his Selected Poems in 2007. This new selection covers over five decades of his poetry, from The Dancing Bears (1954) to Present Company (2005). Most of the book is drawn from his major American retrospective, Migration, winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Poetry. It was followed in 2009 by The Shadow of Sirius, which won him a second Pulitzer Prize, and then by The Moon Before Morning (2014) and Garden Time (2016). Merwin’s poetry has moved beyond the traditional verse of his early years to revolutionary open forms that engage a vast array of influences and possibilities. As Adrienne Rich wrote of his work: ‘I would be shamelessly jealous of this poetry, if I didn’t take so much from it into my own life.’ His recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs. Merwin is not only profoundly anti-imperialist, pacifist and environmentalist, but also possessed by an intimate feeling for landscape and language and the ways in which land and language interflow. His latest poems are densely imagistic, dream-like, and full of praise for the natural world.Trade ReviewThe work of more than five decades, gathered from 15 volumes, is here compressed into a selection that is more luminous than voluminous. Bulk is not Merwin's style. A fastidious, elegant writer, he is a calligrapher of consciousness, a fine penman aware that he is writing not on parchment but in water… Merwin is the unmistakable heir of the Emerson and Whitman who so ecstatically hymned flux. Like them he wonders constantly at how "all that I did not know went on beginning around me"; and like them he possesses a rare gift for pristine sensation. Yet between him and them there is a difference, evident from the minor key of his psalms, written as they mostly are in what can only be called the "passing tense". That difference is the measure of the history of the American century and of the present American world. As much American Noah as American Adam, post-modern Merwin is aware of launching a porous ark of language. Behind even his most serene raptures lies always the quiet imagination of apocalypse: "I hope I make sense to / you in the shimmer / of our days while the world we / cling to in common is // burning." To which one can only gratefully answer: yes, indeed, this volume does make very good sense. -- M. Wynn Thomas * Guardian *He has attained – more and more with every collection – a wonderfully streamlined diction that unerringly separates and recombines like quicksilver scattered upon a shifting plane, but remains as faithful to the warms and cools of the human heart as that same mercury in the pan-pipe of a thermometer. -- James Merrill
£10.80
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Winter's Tale: Third Series
Book SynopsisOne of Shakespeare's later plays, best described as a tragi-comedy, the play falls into two distinct parts. In the first Leontes is thrown into a jealous rage by his suspicions of his wife Hermione and his best-friend, and imprisons her and orders that her new born daughter be left to perish. The second half is a pastoral comedy with the "lost" daughter Perdita having been rescued by shepherds and now in love with a young prince. The play ends with former lovers and friends reunited after the apparently miraculous resurrection of Hermione. John Pitcher's lively introduction and commentary explores the extraordinary merging of theatrical forms in the play and its success in performance. As the recent Sam Mendes production at the Old Vic shows, this is a play that can work a kind of magic in the theatre.Trade Review'a play where miracles do happen and redemption does eventually come, but at a terrible price' Lyn Gardner, Guardian, 22.9.09 'Like all of Shakespeare's later plays, this is a realistic fairy tale' John Peter, Sunday Times, 20.9.09
£11.67
Candlestick Press Ten Poems about Sheep: Volume Two
Book Synopsis
£999.99
Candlestick Press Ten Poems about Horses
Book Synopsis
£7.41
Two Rivers Press Discoveries
Book SynopsisThe poems in Discoveries, written over the last four years, respond to the uncertainties of our time with an unpredictability of their own. Tim Dooley makes use of varied, sometimes arbitrary, structures to explore possibilities of expression. Some poems extemporise along lines of linguistic fantasy or celebrate innovators of modernism, while others observe contemporary experience with acuity. A sobering central section, structured in 100-word prose paragraphs, revisits a source of shame at the heart of our history.
£8.99
Dedalus Press 28 Portuguese Poets: Bilingual Anthology
Book Synopsis
£11.70
Arc Publications Time Begins to Hurt
Book Synopsis"The world of Little's poems is a dark one, for sure, where "the harm / the damage" we humans inflict - on the environment, on one another - is rendered unflinchingly. Her poems about family, for instance, make it clear that 'social distancing' is not just a phenomenon of the past two years. Love is present too, often inextricably bound up with the pain it can cause ("I keep loving you like an old bruise / still tender") but expressed in such rich and startling language, it is its own reward." Esther Morgan "Opening a book by Pippa Little I know I will find the kind of directness one can trust. There will be images that make the world of a page real... That is what Pippa Little does so well. And she does it with wide range, with different modes, various poetics... we find that the landscape therein is our solitude: however inventive it is also bare, like a person who cannot sleep and stares and stares all night at a blank wall. Which is to say, we recognize ourselves in these pages, our days, our questions. And the pages fortify. Why? Because they are honest." Ilya Kaminsky
£9.89
Stewed Rhubarb Press Another word for home is blackbird
£6.00
Stewed Rhubarb Press Touching Air
£6.00
Stewed Rhubarb Press In Wolfs Skin
£6.00
Arc Publications The Conjurer
Book SynopsisPassionate and full of music, these poems (both published and unpublished) explore the natural world and our place in it, and also confront the passing of time, decay and change.
£10.44
Scribe Publications Beowulf: a new feminist translation of the epic
Book SynopsisA GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, AND IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the acclaimed novel The Mere Wife. Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf — and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment students around the world — there is a radical new verse interpretation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English. A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye towards gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment — of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child — but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation.Trade Review‘Allied to a cunning ear for alliteration, this makes for a text of rollicking, restless verve. The masculine boasting, besting and butchering are duly in place, but Headley adds a sharp focus on the actions and motivations of the female characters ... Maria Dahvana Headley’s radical translation of Beowulf sets out to make you look again at the Norse epic … If you’ve ever struggled with the poem, this is the retelling for you, its ferocious clarity turning Beowulf into a Hollywood superhero.’ -- Rishi Dastidar * The Guardian *‘[The Mere Wife] includes some tantalising snippets of Beowulf as translated by Headley. Now we have the full version, and it is electrifying … It is brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand … With a Beowulf defiantly of and for this historical moment, Headley reclaims the poem for her audience as well as for herself.’ -- Ruth Franklin * The New Yorker *‘Bold … Electrifying.’ -- Ron Charles * The Washington Post *‘There is a glory and thrill to her verse, which brings the blood, fire and youthful energy of the original to the surface … a gift.’ -- Hetta Howes * TLS *‘Maria Dahvana Headley’s decision to make Beowulf a bro puts his macho bluster in a whole new light.’ -- Andrea Kannapell * The New York Times *‘Maria Dahvana Headley has made an enthralling, scalding, contemporary epic; she combines newly-wrought ancient kennings with US street slang and lights up the women in the poem with unusual sympathy.’ -- Marina Warner * New Statesman 'Books of the Year' *‘Her verse has a swaggering, street-smart bite.’ -- Alex Diggins * The Sunday Telegraph *‘An iconic work of early English literature comes in for up-to-the-minute treatment … Headley’s language and pacing keep perfect track with the events she describes … [giving] the 3,182-line text immediacy without surrendering a bit of its grand poetry. Some purists may object to the small liberties Headley has taken with the text, but her version is altogether brilliant.’ STARRED REVIEW * Kirkus Reviews *‘Beowulf is an ancient tale of men battling monsters, but Headley has made it wholly modern, with language as piercing and relevant as Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album DAMN. With scintillating inversions and her use of au courant idiom — the poem begins with the word ‘Bro!’ and Queen Wealhtheow is ‘hashtag: blessed’ — Headley asks one to consider not only present conflicts in light of those of the past, but also the line between human and inhuman, power and powerlessness, and the very nature of moral transformation, the ‘suspicion that at any moment a person might shift from hero into howling wretch.’ The women of Beowulf have often been sidelined. Not so here.’ -- Danielle Trussoni * The New York Times Book Review *‘Move over, Tolkien and Heaney. This translation of Beowulf into muscular urban slang is electric … The American novelist’s sharp new version slices clean and bright to the brutal heart of this ancient adventure like a sword snatched from the dull grey stone of academia.’ -- Helen Brown * The Telegraph *‘Stupendous … exhilarating and dangerous.’ -- Philip Hensher * The Spectator *‘Maria Dahvana Headley’s radical translation of Beowulf turns the old epic into a rollicking tale for today, grabbing your lapels from its very first word.’ -- Rishi Dastidar * The Guardian *‘I have a lot of things to say about Maria Dahvana Headley's new book, Beowulf … The first thing I need to tell you is that you have to read it now. No, I don't care if you've read Beowulf (the original) before … I don't care what you think of when you think of Beowulf in any of its hundreds of other translations because this — this — version, Headley's version, is an entirely different thing. It is its own thing.’ -- Jason Sheehan * NPR *‘[L]ively and vigorous … I am delighted. I’ve never read a Beowulf that felt so immediate and so alive … It’s profane and funny and modern and archaic all at once, and its loose and unstructured verses are full of twisting, surprising kennings.’ -- Constance Grady * Vox *‘[A]s a poetic meditation on the poem, it’s full of startlingly powerful and often raucously lovely language.’ -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Review *‘The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualises the tale.’ -- Barbara VanDenburgh * USA Today *‘Thrilling … she interrogates the text to great effect.’ -- Erica Wagner * The Spectator *‘Of the four translations I’ve read, Headley’s is the most readable and engaging. She combines a modern poetry style with some of the hallmarks of Old English poetry, and the words practically sing off the page … Headley’s translation shows why it’s vital to have women and people from diverse backgrounds translate texts.’ -- Margaret Kingsbury * Buzzfeed *‘Without sacrificing the rhythm, rhyme, and visceral language of the original, Headley’s spin is refreshing. Her use of contemporary slang and tempo make the ancient text appealing to a younger audience … For Headley to find a feminist angle in the midst of all this macho behaviour is a feat — but she does it … This is a translation that deserves a wide audience. It’s clear Headley had a lot of fun with this text, and it is to be hoped it lands on the school curriculum.’ -- Afric McGlinchey * Irish Examiner *‘Headley brings a directness, intensity, and rhythm to her translation that I haven’t seen before. This is what it must have felt like to sit in a mead hall and listen to a scop tell the tale. Other translations may be more scholarly, literal, or true to the poetic form of the original, but it’s been a thousand years since Beowulf was this accessible or exciting.’ -- Steve Thomas * The Fantasy Hive *‘Headley’s Beowulf is kindred in spirit to The Mere Wife — highly conscious of gender and modernised to the hilt — but totally different in form. Instead of changing names or places, Headley sticks closely to the original Old English text while updating the vocabulary with flourishes of internet humour … The feminism in Headley’s translation is embedded in the texture and language of the poem itself rather than in its individual events or characters … Her Beowulf is a tragicomic epic about the things men do to impress one another. It’s as fierce an examination of masculine weakness as The Mere Wife was of feminine strength.’ -- Jo Livingstone * Poetry Foundation *‘The new Beowulf is incredibly exciting from beginning to end!’ -- Jason Furman * Harvard University *‘The new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahavana Headley is the best thing I've read all fucking year.’ -- Mike Drucker, TV Writer and Comedian‘Finally, a Beowulf translation that leaves us feeling ‘hashtag: blessed’.’ -- Alena Smith * SLATE/Future Tense virtual event *‘Beowulf: a new translation pulls Beowulf into the fraught discourse on masculinity in the 21st century … Headley’s choice of backward-hatterd beer-soaked vernacular has its origins in the grandstanding language of the hero as we've always known him — a beefcake who wants to pull off such incredible feats that dudes will hype his reputation for centuries to come.’ -- Miles Klee * MEL Magazine *‘Maria Dahavana Headley’s breathtakingly audacious and idiomatically rich Beowulf: a new translation is a breath of iconoclastically fresh air blowing through the old tale's stuffy mead-hall atmosphere.’ -- Mike Scroggins * Hyperallergic *‘Joy. That is the primary emotion I felt as I was reading Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf … I cannot recommend this translation more highly. It is accessible to the reader who has never encountered Beowulf before, yet it intrigues and challenges those who study the poem professionally.’ -- David Wilton * WordOrigins.org *‘The sheer poetry lifts the reader into a realm that is both familiar and even enlivening.’ FOUR STARS * Carpe Librum *‘Now science fantasy writer, Maria Dahvana Headley has cut through with a punk sensibility. Hers is a culturally radical reading with a feminist edge and it opens a pathway to a deeper historical reading.’ -- Barry Healy * Green Left *‘Compelling and persuasive … Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation is bold, exciting and breathes new life into an old classic. With a more nuanced approach to some characters and some inspired language choices, Headley helps Beowulf reclaim its rightful place as a raucous and boozy crowd pleaser.’ FOUR STARS -- Simon Clark * The AU Review *‘This latest reimagining of the epic is through the feminist lens of Maria Dahvana Headley. Bringing this ancient text up to date is no mean feat; Headley does it with flair, fury, and fresh relatability.’ * Happy Magazine *‘This is a version that is highly recommended, not so much to ensure you’re up with your classic education, but rather, for the sheer pleasure of the story and its execution … There’s nothing quite like reading the book.’ -- Magdalena Ball * Compulsive Reader *‘In the wake of Seamus Heaney’s energetic and masterly translation 20 years ago, it took a brave writer to attempt a radically different one. But Headley’s engaging introduction to her almost rap-like version shows up many of the places where a translation can slant the original this way or that, and uses her own life and times as a starting point.’ -- Kerryn Goldsworthy * Sydney Morning Herald *‘[A] bold and fabulous feminist translation … This Beowulf is a joy to read: Headley has loosened herself from the shackles of stuffy scholarship and archaic language (although do not be fooled – she is adept at understanding her source material) to provide a rollicking good yarn.’ -- Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore * The Saturday Paper *‘[An] incredible feminist interpretation.’ * Keeping Up With the Penguins *‘It definitely isn’t your grandma’s Beowulf … Hooked from the first word … Headley's combination of alliteration, assonance, and consonance makes for verse that we can’t help but tap our feet and bob our heads to.’ -- Kwan Ann Tan * Asymptote *‘The critical aspect of this translation is that Headley uses language to bring the story vividly to life. Reinterpreting the text enables it to sing off the page, deploying verse and modern interpretations when necessary to recreate Beowulf as a flowing, visceral tale … a joy to read and highly recommended.’ -- Robert Goodman * Newtown Review of Books *‘Headley’s Beowulf demands to be read in one sitting … Barrelling along at breakneck speed, pulsating and breathless with excitement, it’s an outstanding poetic feat … It’s an astonishing world, and Headley offers us a uniquely powerful way into it.’ -- Carolyne Larrington * Literary Review *[T]here is precise scholarship at work here and a deep understanding of the language and style of the original poem – but Headley’s translation also injects new life into the epic … Headley is dragon-like in bringing her courage, grit and considerable poetic talent to the task of translation, yet also conveys plenty of its literary tradition … The Beowulf that emerges not only speaks to us but demands to be heard in our 21st-century moment. And what a captivating shout it is.’ -- Laura Varnam * History Today *‘Maria Dahvana Headley has satisfied the most deeply-felt and desired dream of any translator, to transfer into her language the words, feelings and cultural icons of a classic, lost tongue. Her Beowulf is wild and wiry, rich and ribald. It sings and dances, curtseys and copulates, although with a more graphic update of the latter, and it quite simply takes one's breath away … This Beowulf is born and eats from language at home in the world of the internet, robots, genes but maintains the alliterations and rhymes of traditional poetry, keeping the tradition alive and renewing it at the same time.’ -- Indran Amirthanayagam, judge in the Academy of American Poets' Harold Morton Landon Translation Award‘An electrifying translation.’ * The Telegraph *‘It’s awesome how strictly she follows the structure and rules while escalating the giddy gallop into a crescendo of overwhelming terror of the destructive marauder.’ -- Sue Prideaux * New Statesman *Praise for Maria Dahvana Headley: ‘Maria Dahvana Headley is a firecracker: she’s whip-smart with a heart, and she writes like a dream.’ -- Neil GaimanPraise for The Mere Wife: ‘There’s not a false note in this retelling, which does the Beowulf poet and his spear-Danes proud.’ STARRED REVIEW * Kirkus *Praise for The Mere Wife: ‘Vivid and thrilling.’ * The Daily Telegraph *
£9.49
Nine Arches Press Proof of Life on Earth
Book SynopsisYou live and then you die. That’s the only certainty there is, right? Using love as its guide, Proof of Life on Earth, the debut poetry collection by Degna Stone, looks at all the stops between our arrival and our departure. These poems examine matters of the heart (both the metaphorical and medical kind), of race and discrimination, of the body, mind and self – each in forensic detail, attentive and curious of what moves, shapes, and makes us alive.In between are the landmarks which populate the rich terrain of this collection; not only of our lives through youth to adulthood, but of history, of the long shadows of empire, and of landscapes themselves - especially those of the northeast of England, evocative, rugged and monumental. Stone’s deft and scalpel-sharp poetry explores human existence shaped by mortality and experience, and asks what it means to do more than survive – to live in defiance, openness and awareness.
£10.44
Nine Arches Press Small Moon Curve
Book SynopsisSmall Moon Curve is an intimate poetry memoir exploring what it means to ease open to the restorative powers of love, faith and beauty following diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer. In this compelling testimony, the narrator discovers a surprising, powerful affinity with Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
£10.79
Prototype Publishing Ltd. Vehicle: a verse novel
Book SynopsisIn a time when looking into the past has become a socially unacceptable and illegal act in the Nation, a group of scholars are offered an attractive residency to allow them to pursue their projects. When the residency transpires to be a devastating trick, these Researchers go on the run, and soon discover that their projects all relate to one major event: the Isletese Disaster – the decline and subsequent devastation fifty years earlier of a long-forgotten roaming archipelago called The Islets.One figure emerges as central to all of their work: Hester Heller, a reformed cult musiker turned student recruited from the Institute for Transmission as an agent of the state and tasked with gathering reconnaissance on the Disaster by using her old band Vehicle as a cover. Heller is the key to the Researchers collective story, which they try to piece together while evading their pursuers.Compiled from the Researchers’ disparate documentation, recollections, and even their imaginations, Vehicle is a timely and daring exploration of xenophobia, exploitation, the writing of histories and legacies, and the politics of translation.
£10.80
The Book Guild Ltd What A Wag An Anthropomorphic A to Z of Dogs
Book Synopsis
£7.60
Eyewear Publishing Selected Poems
Book Synopsis
£11.69
Verve Poetry Press Administer the Laughing Gas
Book Synopsis
£10.79
Burning Eye Books I LOVE
Book SynopsisIn her second collection, award-winning poet and playwright Rosy Carrick presents a passionate, lyrical and unflinchingly intimate collage of ruptured memory, drowned childhood, irreducible violence, and the intoxicating chimera of inviolable desire. Experimental and playful, the poems dart across a fractured and eclectic terrain: from quantum mechanics, grimy London sex clubs and fridged women to blood retinal barrier corruption, haunted reservoirs and salted gastropods; from Baudrillard's semiotics to the architectural aspirations of Elizabeth Bennet; from gurning infants to ecstatic glitter and misplaced canine arseholes; and always back to how it might be possible to love from under the rubble.
£10.44
