Poetry Books

Book SynopsisUS Poet Laureate W.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. Bloodaxe published his Selected Poems in 2007. At 82, Merwin produced ‘his best book in a decade – and one of the best outright’ (Publishers Weekly), and a collection which has won him his second Pulitzer Prize in the US and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in the UK. The nuanced mysteries of light, darkness, presence, and memory are central themes in his latest collection. ‘I have only what I remember,’ Merwin admits, and his memories are focused and profound-the distinct qualities of autumn light, a conversation with a boyhood teacher, well-cultivated loves, and ‘our long evenings and astonishment’. In ‘Photographer’, Merwin presents the scene where armloads of antique glass negatives are saved from a dumpcart by ‘someone who understood’. In ‘Empty Lot’, Merwin evokes a child lying in bed at night, listening to the muffled dynamite blasts of coal mining near his home, and we can’t help but ask: How shall we mine our lives?Trade ReviewIn his best book in a decade – and one of the best outright – Merwin points his oracular, unpunctuated poems toward his own past, admitting, ‘I have only what I remember’, and offering what may be his most personal, generous and empathic collection. Somehow, he manages to dissolve the boundaries between one time and another, seeming to look forward to the past or remember what has yet to happen… The poems show the marks of having weathered “the complete course / of life”, but also feel fresh and awake with a simplicity that can only be called wisdom: “the morning is too / beautiful to be anything else”. Gorgeous poems about enduring love melt time as well, looking toward a moment when we will be no older than we ever were. * Publishers Weekly *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. -- M. Wynn Thomas * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisPablo Neruda (1904-73) was the greatest Latin American poet of the 20th century. A prolific, inspirational poet, he wrote many different kinds of poems covering a wide range of themes, notably love, death, grief and despair. His poetry celebrates the dramatic Chilean landscape and rages against the exploitation of his people, for whom he became a national hero. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1971 for 'a poetry that with the action of an elemental force brings alive a continent's destiny and dreams'. This book presents fifty of his most essential poems in dynamic new translations, the result of an unprecedented collaboration between a team of poets, translators and leading Neruda scholars who came together to revisit or completely retranslate the poems. Also including some previously untranslated works, this bilingual edition sets the standard for a general, high-quality introduction to Neruda's complete oeuvre. The Essential Neruda includes translations by Mark Eisner, John Felstiner, Forrest Gander, Robert Hass, Jack Hirschman, Stephen Kessler, Stephen Mitchell and Alastair Reid, with an introduction by Mark Eisner and a foreword by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.Trade Review'What better way to celebrate the hundred years of Neruda's glorious residence on our earth than this selection of crucial works - in both languages! - by one of the greatest poets of all time. A splendid way to begin a love affair with our PABLO or, having already succumbed to his infinite charms, revisit him passionately again and again and yet again' - Ariel Dorfman, author of "Death and the Maiden". 'The call for a more accessible collection of Neruda's important poems is answered with The Essential Neruda - The editors and translators know how to extract gold from a lifetime of prolific writing. If you want a handy Neruda companion and don't know where to begin, this is it' - Ray Gonzalez, Bloomsbury Review. 'The best introduction to Neruda available in English. In fact, I can think of few other books that have given me so much delight so easily. At only 234 pages (bilingual), it somehow manages to convey the fullness of Neruda's poetic arc: reading it is like reading the autobiography of a poetic sensibility (granted, the abridged version)' - Dominic Luxford, Austin Chronicle.Table of ContentsPreface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti xv Introduction by Mark Eisner xvii From Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (1924) 1. Cuerpo de mujer / Body of woman 2 / 3 7. Inclinado en las tardes / Leaning into the evenings 4 / 5 15. Me gustas cuando callas / I like you when you're quiet 6 / 7 20. Puedo escribir los versos mas tristes / I can write the saddest verses 8 / 9 From Residencia en la tierra, I (1933) Galope muerto / Dead Gallop 12 / 13 Unidad / Oneness 16 / 17 Arte poetica / Ars Poetica 18 / 19 Sistema sombrio / System of Gloom 20 / 21 El fantasma del buque de carga / The Phantom of the Cargo Ship 22 / 23 Significa sombras / It Means Shadows 28 / 29 From Residencia en la tierra, II (1935) Solo la muerte / Only Death 32 / 33 Barcarola / Barcarole 36 / 37 Walking around / Walking Around 42 / 43 Oda con un lamento / Ode With a Lament 46 / 47 Entrada a la madera / Entrance Into Wood 50 / 51 Vuelve el otono / Autumn Returns 54 / 55 No hay olvido (sonata) / There's No Forgetting (Sonata) 58 / 59 From Tercera residencia (1947) Explico algunas cosas / I Explain Some Things 62 / 63 From Canto general (1950) Alturas de Macchu Picchu / The Heights of Macchu Picchu I. Del aire al aire / From air to air 68 / 69 IV. La poderosa muerte / Powerful death 70 / 71 VI. Entonces en la escala / And then on the ladder 74 / 75 VIII. Sube conmigo / Climb up with me 78 / 79 X. Piedra en la piedra / Stone upon stone 84 / 85 XI. A traves del confuso esplendor / Down through the blurred splendor 88 / 89 XII. Sube a nacer conmigo / Rise up and be born with me 90 / 91 La United Fruit Co. / The United Fruit Co. 94 / 95 El Fugitivo XII: A todos, a vosotros / To everyone, to you 98 / 99 El gran oceano / The Great Ocean 102 / 103 From Los versos del capitan (1952) El alfarero / The Potter 106 / 107 From Odas elementales (1954) Oda a una castana en el suelo / Ode to a Chestnut on the Ground 108 / 109 Oda al libro (II) / Ode to the Book (II) 114 / 115 Oda a un reloj en la noche / Ode to a Watch in the Night 122 / 123 Oda al vino / Ode to Wine 128 / 129 From Estravagario (1958) Fabula de la sirena y los borrachos / The Fable of the Mermaid and the Drunkards 134 / 135 El gran mantel / The Great Tablecloth 136 / 137 From Cien sonetos de amor (1960) XII. Plena mujer, manzana carnal / Full woman, carnal apple 140 / 141 XVII. No te amo como si fueras rosa / I don't love you as if you were a rose 142 / 143 From Plenos poderes (1962) Deber del poeta / The Poet's Obligation 144 / 145 La palabra / The word 148 / 149 El mar / The Sea 154 / 155 El pueblo / The People 156 / 157 From Memorial de Isla Negra (1964) La poesia / Poetry 166 / 167 Aquellas vidas / Those Lives 170 / 171 Pleno octubre / October Fullness 174 / 175 No hay pura luz / There Is No Clear Light 178 / 179 Insomnio / Insomnia 182 / 183 El futuro es espacio / The Future Is Space 184 / 185 From El mar y las campanas (posthumous) Si, camarada, es hora de jardin / Right, comrade, it's the hour of the garden 188 / 189 From Jardin de invierno (posthumous) El egoista / The Egoist 192 / 193 Jardin de invierno / Winter Garden 196 / 197

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Book SynopsisSelected Poems draws on Jenny Joseph's first four collections of poetry, The Unlooked-for Season (1960), Rose in the Afternoon (1974), The Thinking Heart (1978) and Beyond Descartes (1983). The poems explore the duality of existence, a track that runs through all her work, whether for children or adults, in poetry or prose. Jenny Joseph's Selected Poems includes 'Warning', her much celebrated monologue in which a young woman talks of her fantasies of old age, voted Britain's favourite modern poem in a BBC poll in 2006.Trade ReviewJenny Joseph writes poems full of mist and reason, poems strange in what they say but plain in the way they say it, poems rooted in an English tradition of passionate but quiet exactness…careful craftsmanship, an honest exploration of the human heart, and statement after statement that nags at the memory. -- Robert Nye * The Times *She mixes mystery and plain statement in a wholly original way… Those who find modern poetry too thin to be nourishing should try Miss Joseph’s specially enriched dishes… Clear observation, bold aphorisms and sharp unhappiness are woven together in her poems. The end product feels like joy. -- Peter Porter * Observer *

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Book SynopsisPaul Éluard’s poetry is concerned with sexual desire and the desire for social change. A central participant in Dada and in the Surrealist movement, Éluard joined the French Communist Party and worked actively in the Resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris. Caught between the horrors of Stalinism and post-war, right-wing anti-communism, his writing sustains an insistent vision of poetry as a multi-faceted weapon against injustice and oppression. For Éluard, poetry is a way of in?ltrating the reader with greater emotional awareness of the social problems of the modern world. Unbroken Poetry II, published posthumously in 1953, pays tribute to Dominique Éluard, with whom Paul spent the last years of his life. It traces the internal dialogues of a passionate relationship as well as of his continuing re-evaluation of the poetic project it-self. It centres on political commitment and places it at the heart of the lovers’ desire.

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Book SynopsisAttilio Bertolucci was one of Italy's greatest modern poets. This book is the first English edition of his poetry. His translator Charles Tomlinson was known internationally as one of the most distinguished modern English poets: his poems were described by Hugh Kenner as 'among the best in the English language in this century'. Born in 1911, Attilio Bertolucci published his first book of poems at the age of 18. His second, published in 1934, was recognised and favourably reviewed by Eugenio Montale. There followed a period of silence, broken in 1951 by The Indian Wigwam, which won the Viareggio Prize. He published two other books in the early 50s, but no more poetry until Winter Journey in 1971, his most boldly experimental as well as his most mature book. He also published two bestselling volumes of a novel in verse, La camera da letto, a kind of family history about his parents and childhood, and his love for Ninetta, the mother of Giuseppe and Bernardo Bertolucci, his two film-director sons. A frequent cause of pleasure and also disquiet in Bertolucci's poetry is his sense of time, the calm fire of the days. The critic Paolo Lagazzi speaks of Bertolucci, although slowly bleeding to death because wounded by time, as also drawing from time 'all the gifts, colours, sweetnesses still possible - while darkness and winter advance without truce'. Italian-English bilingual edition.

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Book SynopsisTomas Tranströmer (1931-2015) was Sweden’s most important poet of the past fifty years. This book contains all the poems he published, including those from the Bloodaxe Collected Poems of 1987, as well as three later collections, For Living and Dead (1989), The Sad Gondola (1996) and The Great Enigma (2004), and a prose memoir. A further revised edition was published in 2011. In Sweden he has been called a 'buzzard poet' because his haunting, visionary poetry shows the world from a height, in a mystic dimension, but brings every detail of the natural world into sharp focus. His poems are often explorations of the borderland between sleep and waking, between the conscious and unconscious states. Tranströomer was born in Stockholm, where he grew up, but spent many long summers on the island of Runmarö in the nearby archipelago, evoking that landscape in his early work, which draws on the aesthetic tradition of Swedish nature poetry. His later poetry is more personal, open and relaxed, often reflecting his broad interests: travel, music, painting, archaeology and natural sciences. Many of his poems use compressed description and concentrate on a single distinct image as a catalyst for psychological insight and metaphysical interpretation. This acts as a meeting-point or threshold between conflicting elements or forces: sea and land, man and nature, freedom and control. Robin Fulton worked with Tomas Tranströmer on each of his collections as they were published over many years, which involved detailed exchanges between translator and poet on the meaning and music of numerous poems. There have been several translations as well as some books of so-called "versions" of Transtromer's poetry published in English, but Fulton's is the most authoritative and comprehensive edition of his poetry published anywhere.Trade ReviewFulton's translation from the Swedish is excellent: a poet of exceptional achievement has with this volume been born into English. * Guardian *In its delicate hovering between the responsibilities of the social world and the invitations of a world of possibly numinous reality, Tomas Tranströmer's poetry permits us to be happily certain of our own uncertainties… Like the animals in Rilke's first sonnet to Orpheus, they are alive to the god's music which 'makes a temple deep inside their hearing. -- Seamus Heaney

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Book SynopsisWith an Introduction and Notes by Katherine McGowran.Christina Rossetti is widely regarded as the most considerable woman poet in England before the twentieth century. No reading of nineteenth century poetry can be complete without attention to this prolific and popular poet. Rosetti's inner life dominates her poetry, exploring loss and unattainable hope. Her divine poems have a freshness and toughness of thought, while many of her love poems are erotic, and as often express love for women as for men. The varied threads of Rossetti's concerns are drawn together in what is perhaps her greatest poem, the strange and ambiguous 'Goblin Market'.

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Book SynopsisEdited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Winter's Tale, one of Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, offers a striking and challenging mixture of tragic and violent events, lyrical love-speeches, farcical comedy, pastoral song and dance, and, eventually, dramatic revelations and reunions. Thematically, there is a rich orchestration of the contrasts between age and youth, corruption and innocence, decline and regeneration. Both Leontes' murderous jealousy and Perdita's love-relationship with Florizel are eloquently intense. In the theatre, The Winter's Tale often proves to be diversely entertaining and deeply moving.

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Book SynopsisEdited, introduced and annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Much Ado About Nothing has long been celebrated as one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies. The central relationship, between Benedick and Beatrice, is wittily combative until love prevails. Broader comedy is provided by Dogberry, Verges and the watchmen. The drama ranges between the destructively sinister and the lyrically romantic, giving the whole a complex and sometimes problematic character. Numerous revivals, in the theatre and on screen, have displayed the lively variety and interpretative openness of this engaging comedy.

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Book SynopsisA savage satire on the rapacious nature of office lives and lusts - the British debut from a writer whose work has been seen in prestigious theatres all over Germany. Everyone wants to get to the executive suite. Everyone wants the Delhi job. Everyone wants sex, everyone wants love. So, they push for it. Roland Schimmelpfennig's play Push Up was first performed at the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin, in November 2001. It was premiered in this English translation by Maja Zade at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in February 2002.Trade Review'An attack on corporate life enacted in a sequence of cunning dialogues... formally elegant and crisply expressed' * Observer *'An arresting piece... makes one hope that the Royal Court will import more of Schimmelpfennig's work' * Independent *

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Book SynopsisDrama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A tragic tale of duty, retribution and fate. King Agamemnon, on returning from the Trojan Wars, is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Now, to avenge the crime, their daughter Electra must commit one even worse and face the inevitable consequences. This edition of Sophocles' play Electra, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton.

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Book SynopsisA bittersweet romantic comedy about finding love later in life, from 'Scotland's greatest living dramatist' Scotland on Sunday. Suddenly single and with the dreaded 'Big Five-0' staring her in the face, Susan also has to cope with a father in his second childhood, a daughter in the throes of aggravated adolescence and an ex who, unfortunately, still has the power to wound... Set in the charity shop where Susan is a volunteer, Good Things is a poignant, hilarious play with a lot to say about finding love the second (or third or fourth) time. It was conceived by Lochhead as a loosely thematic sequel to her earlier play Perfect Days (Traverse Theatre, 1998). Liz Lochhead's Good Things was first performed by Borderline Theatre Company, in association with the Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Perth Theatre, at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow in September 2004, prior to an extensive national tour.Trade Review'Delightful... as funny, as touching, and yet as emotionally true as anything this supremely humane writer has yet produced' * The Times**** *'A pan-generational smash hit in the making' * The Herald, Scotland *'Popular theatre that tackles a real contemporary issue with terrific theatrical energy and skill' -- Joyce McMillan * Scotsman *

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Book SynopsisOozing with sophistication and wit, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's A Little Night Music (based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles on a Summer Night) is a passionate story of intertwined love affairs, regret and longing centred on elegant actress Desirée Armfeldt, and her family and flirtations. When Desirée performs in the town of her former lover, old passions rekindle and during a weekend in the country, the entangled romances of four couples are laid bare. With the magic of music on a summer's night, love's joys and complications play out in three-quarter time. Filled with beautiful iconic numbers, including 'Send in the Clowns' and 'A Weekend in the Country', A Little Night Music is a romantic musical by one of our greatest living composers. It opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre in February 1973 in a production directed by Harold Prince, winning Best Musical at the New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards and the Tony Awards. The musical premiered in the West End at the Adelphi Theatre in April 1975. It has since enjoyed professional productions in the West End, by opera companies, in a 2009 Broadway revival, and elsewhere, and it is a popular choice for regional groups. It was adapted for film in 1977, with Harold Prince directing.Trade Review'Heady, civilised, sophisticated and enchanting. Sondheim's breathtaking lyrics have the kind of sassy poetry that Cole Porter mastered' * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisThe nineteenth-century French classic about the swordsman-poet with the nose too large to be taken seriously, in an acclaimed English translation by Anthony Burgess. This translation of Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre, London, in July 1983, with Derek Jacobi as Cyrano. Burgess's translation was subsequently used as the basis of the sub-titles for the 1990 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Gérard Depardieu.Trade Review'Anthony Burgess's ingenious translation serves Rostand's wit while adding a few fillips of its own' * New York Times *'Emotional depth Rostand himself would surely have envied... Burgess' extravagant verse keeps its contours, yet trips off the tongue almost as though it were contemporary speech' * The Times *'The bounce and brilliance of Anthony Burgess' translation' * WhatsOnStage *

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Book SynopsisAn ominous play set in a cruel world of dark realism, an acknowledged masterpiece from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers. Harry Hope's Saloon is a waterfront bar full of life's failures. They exist barely, living on the knowledge that love is a chimera and despair is perpetual; that the desires they cultivate of an impossible future are only ever pipe dreams, because the only thing to look forward to is death. And then one day Hickey walks in with his own personal brand of hope, and his urge to make them face the truth. Written in 1939, Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh was first staged at the Martin Beck Theater, New York, in October 1946. It had its UK premiere at the Arts Theatre, London, in January 1958. 'A dramatised neurosis, with no holds barred, written in a vein of unsparing implacable honesty' Kenneth Tynan 'O'Neill, the great patriach of Broadway and the playwright who laid out the map on which all contemporary American drama is still written – Iceman is the first truly great epic of the modern American theatre, and its legacy is the intimate stripping of the soul which we now take for granted in drama worldwide' Sheridan Morley This edition of The Iceman Cometh includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

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Book SynopsisAn explosive, gripping and disturbing play about the phenomenon of False Memory Syndrome. Anna Weiss is a hypnotherapist, specialising in revealing 'lost' memories. Under her care, twenty-year-old Lynn has begun to 'remember' a long history of sexual abuse by her father. When Lynn confronts her father, David, he protests his innocence vehemently – so are Lynn's memories real or are they dark auto-suggestions? Mike Cullen's play Anna Weiss was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in 1997, winning the Edinburgh Festival Critics' Award. It was revived at the Whitehall Theatre in the West End in 1999.Trade Review'This is one of those rare plays that leaves an audience emotionally overwhelmed and desperate to talk about what they have just seen... Cullen has joined the major league of contemporary dramatists' * Daily Telegraph *'A piece of theatre as intriguing and slippery as any you are likely to see this year' * Independent *

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Book SynopsisDrama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price John Gay's bawdy and burlesque pastiche of classical Italian opera, often regarded as the world's first ever musical. Peachum the thief-catcher is horrified when he discovers his beloved daughter Polly has married Macheath the highwayman; he and his wife plot Macheath's death in the knowledge that they would be entitled to their daughter's inheritance once he was out of the way. But Lockit the prison warden is also after the highwayman's treasures, and daughter Lucy his crown jewels... The Beggar's Opera was premiered at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London, in January 1728. This edition of The Beggar's Opera is edited and introduced by Colin Counsell

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Book SynopsisAn electrifying, bittersweet love story with echoes of Romeo and Juliet, set in a society divided by racial bigotry and a world rocked by terrorism. Adapted from Malorie Blackman's best-selling novels. Sephy (a Cross) is the daughter of the Deputy Prime Minister. Callum is the son of a Nought agitator. United by a shared sense of injustice as children, and separated by intolerance as they grow up, their desire to be together begins to eclipse all family loyalty – sparking a political crisis of unimaginable proportions. 'I wanted to turn society as we know it on its head, with new names for the major divisions, i.e. Noughts (the underclass) and Crosses (the majority, ruling society)' - Malorie Blackman Dominic Cooke's adaptation of Noughts & Crosses was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2007.Trade Review'Dominic Cooke's excellent adaptation... a dark, politically unsentimentalised story about teenage love transcending the barriers in a deeply divided society... heart-rending' * Independent *

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Book SynopsisDrama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The best comedy of manners written in England before Congreve, The Man of Mode was first staged in 1676 and contains all the classic ingredients of Restoration Comedy: adultery, intrigue, gossip - as well as the first and greatest of the Restoration fops, Sir Fopling Flutter. This edition, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is edited by Trevor Griffiths, presenting the complete text, uncluttered by footnotes, with a full introduction setting out the historical context.

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Book SynopsisStill little known in the West, Persian poetry offers extraordinary riches. While celebrating the beauty of the world in poems about love, wine and poetry itself, or telling anecdotes of everyday life, Persian poetry set these themes in the wider religious and philosophical context of Islam. Omar, Rumi, Saadi, Sanai, Attar, Hafez and Jami – the great lyric and didactic poets of medieval Persia – are all represented in this selection of translations spanning almost two hundred and fifty years.

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Book SynopsisGathers together the finest of Ruth Pitter's poems.

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Book SynopsisIn the heat of summer, Sonya and her Uncle Vanya while away their days on a crumbling estate deep in the countryside, visited occasionally by the only local doctor Astrov. However, when Sonya's father, Professor Serebryakov, suddenly returns with his restless, alluring, new wife, declaring his intention to sell the house, the polite façades crumble and long-repressed feelings start to emerge with devastating consequences. Olivier Award-winner Conor McPherson's stunning adaptation of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece, Uncle Vanya, is a portrayal of life at the turn of the twentieth century, full of tumultuous frustration, dark humour and hidden passions. It premiered at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End in January 2020, directed by Ian Rickson. A film of the production, made by Sonia Friedman Productions/Angelica Films and shot on the stage of the Harold Pinter Theatre after the West End run was cut short due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was screened on BBC Four and went on to win the Theatre Award in the South Bank Sky Arts Awards 2021.Trade Review'[Conor McPherson's adaptation is] perfectly weighted... does not radically reinvent or revolutionise Chekov's 19th-century story. It returns us to the great, mournful spirit of Chekhov's tale about unrequited love, ageing and disappointment in middle-age, while giving it a sleeker, modern beat. McPherson's script has a stripped, vivid simplicity which quickens the pace of the drama... Every character is fully realised, including the ancillary roles that bring more than comic relief... a perfect tragicomedy' * Guardian *'As accessible as a TV drama, without ever betraying the great, melancholy, insightful soul that has made the play last for as long as it has. It is radical and revelatory without ever being gimmicky or insensitive… McPherson pulls off a feat of magical reinvention, and allows us to see the play anew' * WhatsOnStage *'Succeeds resoundingly in making the turn-of-the-20th-century cares of the original resonate today… the contemporary relevance is startling' * The Arts Desk *'Nobody quite walks the tightrope between comedy and tragedy with the aplomb of Chekhov… in McPherson's version, more than any others I've seen, the women get to deliver the emotional gut-punches that balance the humour' * Broadway World *'McPherson's new adaptation feels almost impossibly contemporary in the way it packs in so much lust, wit, rage and regret' * The Times *'A Vanya for our times' * Evening Standard *

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Book SynopsisA fierce and lyrical collection of poetry celebrating the moments of triumph and beauty in our lives, as well as the moments of despair—recasting them as opportunities for growth.In this never-before-published collection, poet Upile Chisala grapples with themes of love, loss, and desire. Throughout this third book, she explores her identity as a black Malawian woman, offering intimate reflections on her life and experiences, imparting a stirring, universal message of empowerment and self-love.

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Book SynopsisA Teatro Trilogy is three plays, written by Stewart Lemoine for his company Teatro la Quindicina. Each play, &quotShockers Delight!&quot, &quotPith!&quot, and &quotThe Margin of the Sky&quot respond to the question: Well . . . what if THIS happened?

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Book SynopsisWordsworth's lines on Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) contributed to a legend that became better known than Chatterton's work itself. His story is moving: a sensitive, unhappy boy, he fell in love with the medieval world and escaped into it from miserable schooling and the drudgery of apprenticeship. He read and then wrote "medieval" poetry which he passed off as genuine. When the poems he wrote in his own name brought him some success, he went to London to seek his fortune as a writer. After six months' struggle, too proud to admit defeat, starving and alone, he killed himself in his attic room. He was seventeen. There is more to Chatterton than the romantic archetype. His poetry was admired by Keats, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth; as Grevel Lindop says in his introduction, "Chatterton's work contains in essence the whole of Romanticism". This selection, with its detailed notes, shows the historical significance and unexpected range of Chatterton's poetry, and also enables the reader to enjoy it for its rich resonance and wonderfully memorable rhythms.

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Book SynopsisThis is a selection of the poet's work, including all the great lyrics and the more important prophetic books. In her introduction the poet and critic expounds Blake's esoteric theory and shows how it helped to create a poetry which is unlike any other.

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Book SynopsisA collection of poems by C.H. Sisson. This text shows how the author grounds his work in English landscapes, especially those of Somerset, and recalls the work of Eliot and Pound, and Hardy and Edward Thomas.

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Book SynopsisIn this collection, Jon Stallworthy and Peter France introduce Blok's poetry into English, retaining as much as possible his distinctive form and tone. His early poetry is inspired by mystical experience, and the Beautiful Lady in his work is less a conceit than a powerful enabler.

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Book SynopsisKefalonia, 1941. Captain Corelli, an enigmatic young Italian officer, is posted to the idyllic Greek island as part of the Axis occupying forces. Shunned by the locals at first, he proves to be civilised, humorous – and a consummate musician. The captain is soon thrown together with Dr Iannis's strong-willed and beautiful daughter, Pelagia, who discovers all of the complexities of love, and how it can blossom in the most unexpected and profound way. Rona Munro's adaptation of Louis de Bernières' much-loved epic novel, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, premiered on tour of the UK in 2019, before transferring to London's West End.Trade Review'A vivid and tumbling dramatic presence… real riches and depths are to be found, as it highlights the coarsening and toughening effects of life in wartime, balanced against an emotive love story' * Evening Standard *'A magical, moving immersion in Louis de Bernières' exquisite story that so many of us know and love' * A Younger Theatre *'Manages to both stay faithful to the original and inject it with freshness… much of the emotional drama comes from spectacle, song, movement and music and while this means that the weighty, winding narrative of the book is simplified, it feels more streamlined' * Guardian *'A fleet, muscular retelling. Liable to bring a lump to the throat' * Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisTo catch "in full sight" is Edwin Morgan's ambition. That fullness he achieves in lyric epiphanies, in the cumulative focuses and refocuses of sequences, in the reification of words in concrete poems, in the rhythms of sound poems. He hears and transcribes voices. Even the sonnet form remains an experiment for the poet questing for vision and unwilling to rest on rules. This volume includes Edwin Morgan's "Poems of Thirty Years" (1982) and "Themes on a Variation" (1988), together with some 50 uncollected poems from 1939 to 1982.

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Book SynopsisThe poems in "Jilted City" inhabit in-between-places, when a border is being crossed, a word is slipping into another language, when memory is translating loss. From 'Stations where the train doesn't stop' in 'Blue Guide', following a train journey through Belgium, to 'City of Lost Walks', English versions of a dissident Romanian poet whose 'poetry fails to register except in the form of an omission', McGuinness explores transition and translation, the afterlife of absences. Wit and paradox are at the heart of a collection that finds unforeseen connections between place and displacement.

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Shortlisted for the Scottish Poetry Book of the Year 2021. This first anthology of 'Apocalyptic' or neo-romantic poetry since the nineteen-forties includes over 150 poets, many well known (Dylan Thomas, W.S. Graham), and others quite forgotten (Ernest Frost, Paul Potts). Over forty of the poets are women, of whom Edith Sitwell is among the most exuberant. Much of the contents has never previously been anthologised; many poems are reprinted for the first time since the 1940s. The poetry of the Second World War appears in a new context, as do early Tomlisnon and Hill. Here readers can enjoy an overview of the visionary-modernist British and Irish poetry of the mid-century, its antecedents and its aftermath. As a period style and as a body of work, Apocalyptic poetry will come as a revelation to most readers.

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Book SynopsisFatherhood is the debut novel from award-winning poet Caleb Klaces, combining prose and poetry in an experimental work of verse fiction. Following the birth of their first child, a couple move out of the capital to the northern countryside, where they believe the narrator’s great-grandfather, a Russian emigrant, was laid to rest. The father dedicates himself to parenting, writing and conversation with his dead ancestor, newly conscious of the ties that bind the present to the past. It is a time of startling intimacies, baby-group small talk, unexpected relationships and tender rhythms, when every clock seems to tell a different time, and the solidity of language is broken. As his daughter begins to speak, the father’s gentleness turns to unexplainable rage. He begins to question who he must protect his child from – the outside world or himself. Their new house, the family discover, is built on a floodplain.Moving between history, memory and autobiography, its shifting form captures a life and language split open by fatherhood. An experiment in rewriting masculinity, it asks how bodies can share both a house and a planet.

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Book SynopsisVivid, enjoyable and comprehensible, the poet and pre-eminent translator Stephen Mitchell makes the oldest epic poem in the world accessible for the first time. Gilgamesh is a born leader, but in an attempt to control his growing arrogance, the Gods create Enkidu, a wild man, his equal in strength and courage. Enkidu is trapped by a temple prostitute, civilised through sexual experience and brought to Gilgamesh. They become best friends and battle evil together. After Enkidu's death the distraught Gilgamesh sets out on a journey to find Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Great Flood, made immortal by the Gods to ask him the secret of life and death. Gilgamesh is the first and remains one of the most important works of world literature. Written in ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C., it predates the Iliad by roughly 1,000 years. Gilgamesh is extraordinarily modern in its emotional power but also provides an insight into the values of an ancient culture and civilisation.Trade ReviewStephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh is a wonderful version. It is as eloquent and nuanced as his translations of Rilke. This is certainly the best that I have seen in English. * Harold Bloom *Stephen Mitchell's fresh new rendition of mankind's oldest recorded myth is quite wonderful in its limpidity and the immediacy of its live emotions. * Peter Mathiessen *Very readable. -- James Fenton * The Guardian *This is the most pellucid version of the epic yet to have been written in English, but what is most startling and admirable about it is the fact that Mitchell has not sacrificed a sense of the weird on the altar of readability. -- Tom Holland * Daily Telegraph *Mitchell produces what should become recognised as the standard text. Read it and sense all the wisdom and complexity of the original before film-makers now planning a screen version get their hands on it. Let it settle down into your imaginative depths. -- Rachel Campbell-Johnston * The Times *It was a revelation. The translation is superb. * Harold Pinter *As narrative verse, this Gilgamesh entrances and enthrals. Its liquid, intimate four-stressed lines negotiate the rapid shifts between everyday pleasures, heroic feats and blazing visions in this mythic world where the sensual and spiritual always intersect. Mitchell manages to slip the mesmerising incantations of the verse into his reader's bloodstream as if they flowed through some poetic intravenous drip. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *Reading Stephen Mitchell's marvellously clear and vivid rendering of Gilgamesh makes me feel that I am encountering this ancient poem for the first time. * Elaine Pagels *Beautifully retold and a page-turner in the bargain. Like Seamus Heaney's recent retelling of Beowulf, this book proves that in the right hands, no great story ever grows stale. -- Malcolm Jones * Newsweek *This is the most pellucid version of the epic yet to have been written in English, but what is most startling and admirable about it is the fact that Mitchell has not sacrificed a sense of the weird on the altar of readability ... a powerful translation. * The Times *Stephen Mitchell's Gilgamesh is a wonderful version. It is as eloquent and nuanced as his translations of Rilke. This is certainly the best that I have seen in English. -- Harold Bloom

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Book SynopsisA darkly comic, smashed-up retelling of Richard III, Shakespeare's classic tale about the lust for power, Teenage Dick reimagines the most famous disabled character of all time as a high-school outsider in junior year: the deepest winter of his discontent. Picked on because of his disability (as well as his sometimes creepily Shakespearean way of speaking), Richard is determined to have his revenge and make his name by becoming president of the senior class. But like all teenagers, and all despots, he is faced with the hardest question of all: is it better to be loved, or feared? 'Retells Shakespeare with a much-needed urgency, providing an arch reminder that the voices of the disabled have often been ignored, terrorised or shouted down from the earliest possibility... Lew's writing neatly blends Shakespearean rhetoric with everyday speech... sharp and highly enjoyable... more plays of this calibre, telling the stories they do, are very much needed and welcome to explore our own ingloriousness' - Broadway WorldTrade Review'Retells Shakespeare with a much-needed urgency, providing an arch reminder that the voices of the disabled have often been ignored, terrorised or shouted down from the earliest possibility... Lew's writing neatly blends Shakespearean rhetoric with everyday speech... sharp and highly enjoyable... more plays of this calibre, telling the stories they do, are very much needed and welcome to explore our own ingloriousness' Broadway World; 'Bursting onto the stage and bringing a hundred innuendos with it, Mike Lew's vibrant play mashes up teen films based on Shakespeare, (think 10 Things I Hate About You), and Richard III to present a potent and relevant play about our times and power... riffs beautifully from Shakespeare's original, with enough mashing up of the verse to make the audience laugh out loud at the tributes to the Bard. But, more importantly, it is a play for today' BritishTheatre.com; 'A smart, probing play... sinks a cunning, shining dagger into an author who’s buried in centuries of history and glory' Time Out; 'A raggedly brilliant evening... both deals in and subverts the dizzy, hyper-tense energy that drives American school dramas... boldly challenges the audience' Evening Standard; 'This is not just muscular writing by Mr Lew; it also has the ping of absolute authenticity' New York Times; '[A] sharp modern-day reinvention' Time Out (New York)

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Book SynopsisThe present selection traces the development of Yeats’s verse, encompassing the poet’s interest in Irish folklore and national identity, his engagement with the political situation of his day and the rich symbolism that is the hallmark of his work and a reflection of his lifelong fascination with the occult. It contains some of his best-known pieces, including the elegiac ‘Easter 1916’, the apocalyptic ‘The Second Coming’ and the reflective and spiritual ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. Often radical in content but always traditional in form, these poems are by turns startling and affecting, and never less than inspired. Taken together, they form an ideal introduction to the poetic career of one of Ireland’s greatest literary figures.Trade ReviewYeats is like a mountain range, lying on the horizon. He can’t be emulated; you just walk around under the shade. -- Seamus Heaney

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Book SynopsisThe poems in Eavan Boland's new collection seek out the delicate intersections between generation, identity, and the deep losses inflicted by history on those who can bear them least. Exploring questions of inheritance (from mother to daughter, from generation to generation), the poems look closely at the ways in which we construct one another, and the ways in which - even without country, or settled identity - a legacy of connection and consolation can endure.

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Book Synopsis"Select Meditations" is among the earliest works of the poet and mystic Thomas Traherne (1637-74). Written shortly after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the manuscript was not discovered until 1964 and first published by Carcanet in 1997. Traherne, a young clergyman in a country parish at the time, explores his relationship with God and his vocation to 'teach Immortal Souls the way to Heaven'. It is a spiritual journey that involves examination of his doubts and failings (he confesses to 'too much proneness to Speak'), of the political issues that shaped his times, and of the realities of ministering to his congregation. Above all, though, Traherne's meditations celebrate the beauty of the world and the human community transfigured by the love of God, in terms that speak across time. 'Remember', he writes, 'that the world is the beginning of Gifts.' Julia J. Smith's landmark edition, preserving the original spelling, provides a detailed introduction and notes on the text.

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Book SynopsisA harrowing, intense drama about people-trafficking, set inside a container lorry. A freight container, somewhere in Europe. Inside are five people with one common aim: to reach England and start a new life. Can they trust the agent to get them there? Can they rely on each other? And how far will each of them go to get what they want? Clare Bayley's play The Container was first performed (inside an actual container lorry) at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2007. It won a Fringe First Award for outstanding new writing on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and an Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award.Trade Review'Riveting, eloquent drama' * Observer *'Devastating... dramatises the terrifying experience [of illegal migration] as one of the key journeys of our time... electrifying drama' * Scotsman *

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