Poetry Books

Book SynopsisThe definitive collection of one of the most celebrated poets of his generation and a master of the lyric poem in its richest, most flexible registers.

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Book SynopsisWhat is home? The answer seems obvious. But Telling Our Stories of Home, an international collection of eleven plays by and about women from Lebanon, Haiti, Venezuela, Uganda, Palestine, Brazil, India, UK, and the US, complicates the answer. The answer includes stories as far-ranging as: enslaved women trying to create a home, one by any means necessary, and one in the ocean; siblings wrestling with their differing devotion to home after their mother's death; a family wrestling with the government''s refusal to allow the burial of their soldier-son in their hometown; a young scholar attempting to feel at home after studying abroad; a young man fleeing home due to his sexual orientation only to discover the difficulty of creating home elsewhere, and Siddis (Indians of African descent) continuing to struggle for acceptance despite having lived in India for over 600 years. These are voices seldom represented to a larger audience. The plays and performance pieces range from 20 to Table of Contents1. Acknowledgement 2. Introduction by Kathy A. Perkins The Plays · The House by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon) · Happy by Kia Corthron (U.S.) · The Blue of TheIsland by Évelyne Trouillot (Haiti) · Nine Lives by Zodwa Nyoni (UK) · Leaving, but Can't Let Go by Lupe Gehrenbeck (Venezuela) · Questions of Home by Doreen Baingana (Uganda) · On the Last Day of Spring by Fidaa Zidan (Palestine) · Letting Go and Moving On by Louella Dizon San Juan (U.S.) · Antimemories of an Interrupted Trip by Aldri Anunciação (Brazil) · So Goes We by Jacqueline E. Lawton (U.S.) · Those Who Live Here, Those Who Live There by Geeta P. Siddi and Girija P. Siddi (India)

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Book SynopsisNigeria, England, America, Jamaica; are you proud of where you''re from? Dark skinned, light skinned, afro, weaves, who are your true brothers and sisters?When two brothers from different continents go down the street to buy a pint of milk, they lift the lid on a disunited nation where everyone wants to be an individual but no one wants to stand out from the crowd.A debut work produced at the Royal Court''s Young Writers Festival, Gone Too Far! is a comic and astute play about identity, history and culture, portraying a world where respect is always demanded but rarely freely given.Gone Too Far! premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2007 where it was awarded the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre, 2008. It is published here in an abridged form as part of Methuen Drama''s Plays For Young People series.Trade ReviewAgbaje has an astute eye and ear and offers a different perspective to her male counterparts. * Guardian *In her remarkable debut as a playwright Bola Agbaje walks two teenage black brothers around a dilapidated London council estate. She exploits their close encounters to give us a jolting lesson about the range of identities, beliefs and anxieties concealed beneath black or blackish skins. * Evening Standard *

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Book SynopsisWe think we'll be alright - because we wade through air, not water, but that's not enough.Best friends Mohsen and Kash are gearing up for the biggest night of their lives Jess Denver's pool party. There's just one problem... they can't swim.Fueled by halal Haribo and chicken wings, the pair throw themselves in at the deep end, tackling cramped cubicles and cold showers as they learn how to be at one with the water.Fierce, funny, and brimming with heart, Karim Khan examines the pressures faced by young Muslim men in this exhilarating new play about fitting in and striking out. This was published to coincide with the production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in August 2022.

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Book SynopsisThe final volume in Methuen Drama''s acclaimed series of work by Arthur Miller who, during his lifetime, was acknowledged as the greatest American dramatist of our age (Evening Standard). Featuring two plays from the 1990s and his final two plays (2002 and 2004), it offers the first ever publication of Miller''s final play, Finishing the Picture. Inspired by his experience during the filming of The Misfits with his then wife Marilyn Monroe, the play was completed and produced at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, just months before the playwright''s death in February 2005.Broken Glass (1994) is set in Brooklyn in 1938 and intertwines a woman''s obsession with the news from Germany that government thugs are smashing Jewish stores, with her strange relationship with her husband. It balances private lives with public morality. . . it is also an amazingly full-blooded piece, bursting with pain and passion. (Daily Telegraph). Mr Peters'' Connections (199

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Book SynopsisWinner of Best New Play at the 2023 UK Theatre Awards Winner of Best New Play at the 2023 Critics' Awards for Theatre in ScotlandTo keep that part of me silent. That is what is unbearable. That is why I must be free.Based on a true story, Enough of Him explores the life of Joseph Knight, an African man enslaved by plantation owner Sir John Wedderburn and brought to Scotland to serve in his Perthshire mansion.Highly favoured by Wedderburn and yet still enslaved, Knight balances on the knife edge between obligation and a soul-deep yearning for freedom. He forges a bond with Annie, a young Scottish servant working in the household, and the two of them fall in love.But the walls of Ballindean do not keep secrets their affair unsettles Lady Wedderburn, whose bitter loneliness is only deepened by the close bond her husband has with Knight. Joseph will endure bondage no longer. What happens when Joseph's dreams clash with those of the man who owns him? What become

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Book SynopsisKwame Kwei-Armah OBE is British actor, playwright, director, singer and broadcaster. In 2018 he was made Artistic Director of the Young Vic Theatre, where he has directed Twelfth Night and Tree. From 2011 to 2018 he was the Artistic Director of Baltimore Center Stage, where his directing credits include: Jazz, Marley, One Night in Miami, Amadeus and Dance of the Holy Ghosts. As a playwright his credits include Tree (Manchester International Festival, Young Vic), One Love (Birmingham Repertory Theatre), Beneatha's Place (Baltimore Center Stage, Young Vic) Elmina's Kitchen, Fix Up, Statement of Regret (National Theatre), Let There Be Love and Seize the Day (Tricycle Theatre). He has also co-authored Decolonizing the Theatre Space (2023) and written the play Elmina's Kitchen.Oladipo 'Dipo' Agboluaje is a British-Nigerian playwright and academic, born in London and educated in Britain and Nigeria. He studied Theatre Arts at the University of Benin, Nigeria, and later wrote a doctoral thesis at the Open University, UK, on West and South African drama. He won the Alfred Fagon prize for playwriting for his play Iya-lle and is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, working in partnership with the University of East London, UK. He has written the commentary and notes to the Methuen Drama Student Edition of Inua Ellams's Barber Shop Chronicles (Bloomsbury, 2021).

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Popcorn Writing Award 2024Grieving is weird and expensive.Jamie can't swim. Fuelled by guilt and a need to mend her broken family, at 30 years old, she''s taking on her biggest fear the ocean.With the help of a chipper swim instructor, a shady spiritual guide, and one cathartic crab sandwich, she questions, ''How many lengths does it take to wash away regret?''Brilliantly witty, deeply heartfelt, this play explores what lies beneath the surface of the Black diasporic relationship to water. Somebody Jones's searing debut How I Learned to Swim is ''funny with fear, liberating with grief'' (Fringe Review) and impossible to walk away from unchanged.This edition was published to coincide with the Prentice Productions show at Summerhall's Roundabout, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2024.

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Book SynopsisAs far as I''m concerned, why get paid to sit on my arse at home when I can get paid to sit on my arse in a lobbyWhere I also get paidBea''s secretly working three full-time jobs.All at the same time.And she''s still financially f*cked.Between looking after luxury flats and dogsitting the world''s ugliest pooch, she''s neck-deep in employers and it''s only a matter of time until someone finds out she''s breaking all her contracts.Armed with nothing but her smarmiest boss'' dirty secret, can Bea get herself out of the red and into the black (and into the fit intern''s bed)? Or will the plates she''s been spinning come crashing down around her and her dysfunctional family?Jobsworth is a riotous comedy about snakes and surviving capitalism written by Isley Lynn and Libby Rodliffe.This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the Pleasance Courtyard, at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Augus

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Book SynopsisAn engaging ensemble piece based on the story of the painting by Thomas Hickey showing the Three Queens of Mysore and their determination to encourage others to receive the smallpox vaccine.

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisJames Graham is a multi award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His play This House gained critical acclaim, enjoyed a sell-out run at the National Theatre's Olivier in 2013 and its 2017 West End revival was Olivier-nominated. It was chosen by popular vote as the best play of the 2010's by Methuen Drama. James created theatre history when his two plays Ink, about the early days of Rupert Murdoch, and Labour of Love, a romantic political comedy, played in theatres next to each other in the West End in 2017. James won an Olivier award in 2018 for Labour of Love and Ink transferred to Broadway in 2019, receiving six Tony award nominations. James' play The Vote (Donmar Warehouse) aired in real time on TV in the final 90 minutes of the 2015 polling day and was BAFTA-nominated. His most recent television film, Brexit: An Uncivil War (Channel 4/HBO) is nominated for a 2019 Emmy Award.

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Book SynopsisNathaniel Brimmer-Beller is a mixed-race and Jewish writer, published playwright, award-winning performer, and director for stage and screen. He is based in London, and originally from Washington, DC. He has directed more than thirty theatrical productions, and has written fifteen plays, including six acclaimed premieres at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Genius - Broadway Baby, Fringe theatre does not get much better than this - The Violet Curtain), and multiple London runs with his production company Black Bat Productions, which he founded in 2017. He has been nominated for the BBC Writersroom's Popcorn Award for Best New Writing, the Ilfeld Prize, an OffFest Award, and the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwriting, and won a Bursary Prize at South of the River Pictures' and SISTER Global's writer-performer competition Screenshot.

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Book SynopsisAn informal, informative introduction to lead mining in the Northern Pennines.

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Book SynopsisBased on the 'No Fear Shakespeare' translations, this dynamic graphic novel features an illustrated cast of characters and a helpful plot summary.Trade Review“. . . makes the Bard even more accessible. . . . its clear, black-and-white scenes often shifting into a stark, expressionistic mode that heightens the drama. Along with a nicely digestible version of the play, this will give readers a feel for Shakespeare’s language and wordplay.“ —Booklist“. . . makes the Bard even more accessible. . . . its clear, black-and-white scenes often shifting into a stark, expressionistic mode that heightens the drama. Along with a nicely digestible version of the play, this will give readers a feel for Shakespeare’s language and wordplay.“ —Booklist

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Book SynopsisThe Tempest is Shakespeare's masterpiece of magical effects, redemptive romance, poetry and politics. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features illustrations by renowned artist Sir John Gilbert and an introduction by actor, writer and director Simon Callow.Prospero has long been exiled from Italy and banished to a remote island with his daughter Miranda. He uses his magical powers to conjure up a fearsome storm, and his enemies, including his treacherous broth Antonio, are shipwrecked. There follows a play filled with murderous plots, drunken confusion, love and redemption. And along the way, the reader discovers an unmistakable message that this is Shakespeare’s own farewell to the stage.Trade ReviewShakespeare’s voice rings down the ages, and, as with innumerable other human matters, we would do well to listen to it * Independent *A magical tale of finding love and getting drunk on a tropical island * Time Out *When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language -- D. H. LawrenceThe remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good -- Robert Graves

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Book SynopsisMore of a story than a collection of poetry, Love by Night will whisk you away from your world and into the dreamy romantic night.Love by Night begins with anxious hesitation and nervous attraction, grows into tender affection, blossoms into passionate love, delves deep into whimsical dreams, and finally builds an image of an idyllic future together, as the reader develops along with the two characters of this poetic story.Written as a conversation between two points of view in constant change and flux with each other, this book invites the reader into the conversation about the love that connects one person to another, but also all of us to each other.Through this written testament to the emotional journeys books can take us on, S. K. Williams breaks down stereotypes, sexism, relationship roles, and brings awareness to mental health, grief, anxiety, depression, how to move forward, how to love in a healthy way, and, most of all, how to love yourself when it feels impossible.

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Book SynopsisThis anthology brings together extensive selections of poetry by the five most prolific and prominent women poets of the English Civil War period: Anne Bradstreet, Hester Pulter, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips and Lucy Hutchinson. It presents these poems in modern-spelling, clear-text versions for classroom use, and for ready comparison to mainstream editions of male poets’ work. The anthology reveals the diversity of women’s poetry in the mid-seventeenth century, across political affiliations and forms of publication. Notes on the poems and an introduction explain the contexts of Civil War, religious conflict, and scientific and literary development. The anthology enables a more comprehensive understanding of seventeenth-century women’s poetic culture, both in its own right and in relation to prominent male poets such as Marvell, Milton and Dryden.Trade Review‘Sarah Ross and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s readable, beautifully presented, and affordable new anthology, Women Writers of the English Civil War, makes it easier than ever before to appreciate the extent to which women poets participated in )and fundamentally contributed to) early modern experiments in poetic form.’Dianne Mitchell, Renaissance Studies -- .Table of ContentsIntroductionAnne Bradstreetfrom The Tenth Muse (1650)The PrologueThe Four MonarchiesA Dialogue between Old England and NewAn Elegy upon that Honourable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney (1650)In Honour of Du BartasIn Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen ElizabethDavid’s Lamentation for Saul and Jonathan from Several Poems (1678)An Elegy upon that Honourable and Renowned Knight, Sir Philip Sidney (1678)The Flesh and the SpiritThe Author to her BookA Letter to her Husband, Absent upon Public EmploymentAnotherIn Memory of my Dear Grandchild Elizabeth BradstreetHester PulterThe Invitation into the Country, to my Dear DaughtersThe Complaint of ThamesOn Those Two Unparalleled Friends, Sir George Lisle and Sir Charles LucasUpon the Death of my Dear and Lovely DaughterOn the Same [Tell me no more]Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty, that Unparalleled Prince King Charles the FirstOn the Horrid Murder of that Incomparable Prince, King Charles the FirstOn the Same [Let none sigh more]The Circle [1]Dear God turn not away thy faceThe Circle [2]On the King’s Most Excellent MajestyTo my Dear J.P., M.P., P.P, They Being at London, I at BroadfieldA Solitary ComplaintMust I thus ever interdicted be?Why must I thus forever be confinedTo Sir William Davenant, upon the Unspeakable Loss of the Most Conspicuous and Chief Ornament of his FrontispieceThe Weeping WishEmblem 4Emblem 20Emblem 22Katherine Philipsfrom the ‘Tutin’ Manuscript To my Dearest Antenor on his PartingA Retired Friendship, to ArdeliaFriendship’s Mysteries, to my Dearest LucasiaContent, to my Dearest LucasiaFriendship in Emblem, or the Seal, to my Dearest Lucasiafrom the ‘Tutin’ Manuscript, reverseThe WorldThe SoulInvitation to the CountryOn the 3rd September 16512 Corinthians 5:19from Poems (1664)Upon the Double Murder of King Charles IOn the Numerous Access of the English to Wait upon the King in FlandersArion on a Dolphin, to his Majesty in his Passage into EnglandOn the Fair Weather Just at CoronationOn the Death of the Queen of BohemiaTo the Right Honourable Alice Countess of CarberyTo Antenor, on a Paper of mine which J. Jones Threatens to Publish to Prejudice HimA Country LifeUpon Mr. Abraham Cowley’s Retirementfrom Poems (1667)Epitaph on her Son H. P. at St Sith’s ChurchTo my Antenor, March 16 1661/2Orinda upon Little Hector PhilipsMargaret Cavendish from Philosophical Fancies (1653)Of Sense and Reason Exercised in their Different Shapes A Dialogue between the Body and the Mind An Elegy from Poems and Fancies (1664)The Poetress’s Hasty ResolutionA World Made by Atoms Of the Subtlety of MotionOf Vacuum Of Stars A World in an Earring The Purchase of Poets A Dialogue between Man and Nature A Dialogue between an Oak and a Man Cutting him Down A Dialogue between a Bountiful Knight and a Castle Ruined in War The Clasp The Hunting of the Hare A Description of an Island The Ruin of this Island Wherein Poetry Chiefly Consists A Description of a Shepherd’s and Shepherdess’s LifeThe Clasp: Of Fairies in the BrainUpon the Funeral of my Dear Brother Lucy Hutchinsonfrom De Rerum NaturaBook 1, lines 1-152Book 2, lines 1048-1180Book 4, lines 1019-1321To Mr Waller upon his Panegyric to the Lord Protectorfrom Elegies1. Leave off, ye pitying friends2. To the Sun Shining into her Chamber2(a). Ah! Why doth death its latest stroke delay3. Another on the Sun Shine 7. To the Garden at Owthorpe10. The Recovery12. Musings in my Evening Walks at Owthorpe14. On the Spring, 166820. You sons of England whose unquenched flamefrom Order and DisorderPrefaceBook 1, lines 1-150Book 3, lines 91-188Book 9, lines 1-122from Memoirs of the Life of the Colonel HutchinsonAll Sorts of MenTextual introductionTextual notesIndex of first lines

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Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL GRIFFIN PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES BEST POETRY BOOK OF 2020 Music for the Dead and Resurrected captures the complexity of living in the shadows of imperial force, of the vulnerability of bodies, of seeing with more than the eyes. Valzhyna Mort's work is characterised by a memorial sensibility that honours those lost to the violences of nation states. In Music for the Dead and Resurrected the poet offers us a body of work which balances political import with serious play. There are few poets writing with such an intuitive sense of the balance between arcane and contemporary currents in poetry. Mort's lines are timeless, finely honed to last beyond a single lifetime.Trade Review[A] striking study of what Belarus can teach the world about state violence, collective memory, and the role of poetry in fighting tyranny . . . [Mort] captures, through language, the contours of dissent. Soviet monuments remain upright in Minsk, like concrete odes to terror, repression, and silence. And yet Music for the Dead and the Resurrected feels like its own monument, not only to Belarusians but also to victims of state violence around the world * New Yorker *

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Book Synopsis**WINNER OF THE T S ELIOT PRIZE FOR POETRY 2022** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2022** **LONGLISTED FOR THE OCM BOCAS PRIZE 2023** With Sonnets for Albert, Anthony Joseph returns to the autobiographical material explored in his earlier collection Bird Head Son. In this follow-up, he weighs the impact of being the son of an absent, or mostly absent, father, Though these poems threaten to break under the weight of their emotions, they are always masterfully poised as the stylish man they depict.Trade ReviewAfter much silence and absence in life, the poet’s father is painstakingly restored in death in a book-length “calypso sonnet” sequence ... Sonnets for Albert movingly makes peace with his shade * Guardian *A luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form -- T S Eliot Prize for Poetry 2023 judgesPraise for Anthony Joseph: "Possessing or possessed by requisite bearings, language and lore, Anthony Joseph is fully and beautifully up to the task -- Nathaniel MackeyAn exceptional talent -- Blake Morrison

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Book SynopsisThe much-anticipated debut collection by the winner of the Outspoken Performance Poetry Prize: a tender meditation on queerness and Islam''Dissolving whatever boundaries would wall us off from love, Ahsan finds a way to let it all be holy'' Victoria Adukwei-Bulley''When I speak of the word sacred, Sanah Ahsan''s I cannot be good until you say it will forever instantly spring to mind ... A masterpiece - an honour to have read this book, I am forever changed after reading its beauty'' Nikita Gill''Innovative and deeply compassionate ... multilingual verse suffused with a vital musicality and a palpable tenderness, Ahsan calls poetry into prayer and evokes a faith safe enough to be mothered by'' Mary Jean Chan''Dexterous, varied, erotic, filled with rage, worships and wonder ... I am electrified'' Pádraig Ó Tuama''Tensions of psychological drama, together with an induced sense of yearning.. what

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Book Synopsis“Wesley McNair, an unassuming, avowedly regional pastoral poet from Western Maine, is writing the best poetry of his life—poetry uniquely capable of, and interested in, addressing our larger moment.”—Los Angeles Review of Books Wesley McNair’s story-like poems have long celebrated eccentrics and misfits, the hopeful and the lost, with a tenderness that transcends the everyday. This career-spanning collection brings together his very best poems from the past four decades alongside his newest poems. Since the publication of his first book in the early 1980s, Wesley McNair has earned a reputation as a poet of place, an intimate observer of the speech and character of New England. In fact, McNair’s “place” is unlimited, as he proves in the lucid, far-ranging poems of this volume. “Whole lives fill small lines,” wrote Donald Hall of McNair’s work. He is truly, as Philip Levine wrote, “One of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.” Late Wonders: New & Selected Poems includes “The Long Dream of Home” the complete trilogy of McNair’s masterful, long narrative poems written over the last thirty years: “My Brother Running,” “Fire,” and “Dwellers in the House of the Lord.” This is a collection for anyone who believes mixing a little sorrow and little comedy makes for poetry that moves the heart.Trade ReviewPraise for Late Wonders “Not all poets are storytellers, not even close, but all of them wish they were, wish they had a better understanding of how words and images bind spells. Wesley McNair is the author of nine collections of stories in the shape of poems.” —Foreword Reviews “At 81, Wesley McNair, an unassuming, avowedly regional pastoral poet from Western Maine, is writing the best poetry of his life—poetry uniquely capable of, and interested in, addressing our larger moment. Wonders never cease.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “McNair’s poems are just sharp enough to open our eyes anew—and just smooth enough for us to think such wisdom arrived by grace alone. His work is melodic...both sanguine and realistic.” —Nick Ripatrazone, The National Review “One of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.” —Philip Levine, former U.S. Poet Laureate

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Book SynopsisOsip Mandelstam is one of the greatest of twentieth-century poets and Voronezh Notebooks, a sequence of poems composed between 1935 and 1937 when he was living in internal exile in the Soviet city of Voronezh, is his last and most exploratory work. Meditating on death and survival, on power and poetry, on marriage, madness, friendship, and memory, challenging Stalin between lines that are full of the sights and sounds of the steppes, blue sky and black earth, the roads, winter breath, spring with its birds and flowers and bees, the notebooks are a continual improvisation and an unapologetic affirmation of poetry as life.

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Book SynopsisA vivid, contemporary translation of the greatest Greek love poet—with a wealth of materials for understanding her work—by a prize-winning poet and translator   Sappho’s thrilling lyric verse has been unremittingly popular for more than 2,600 years—certainly a record for poetry of any kind—and love for her art only increases as time goes on. Though her extant work consists only of a collection of fragments and a handful of complete poems, her mystique endures to be discovered anew by each generation, and to inspire new efforts at bringing the spirit of her Greek words faithfully into English. In the past, translators have taken two basic approaches to Sappho: either very literally translating only the words in the fragments, or taking the liberty of reconstructing the missing parts. Willis Barnstone has taken a middle course, in which he remains faithful to the words of the fragments, only very judiciously filling in a word or phrase in cases where the meaning is obvious. This edition includes extensive notes and a special section of “Testimonia”: appreciations of Sappho in the words of ancient writers from Plato to Plutarch. Also included are a glossary of all the figures mentioned in the poems, and suggestions for further reading.

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Book SynopsisWith a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, this redesigned and fully reset edition of Complete Poems collects and presents all the poems published or designated for publication by E.E. Cummings in his lifetime.

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Book SynopsisThe rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” told in the style—and substance—of the great English poets from Edmund Spenser to Stevie Smith. In The Lamb Cycle, David R. Ewbank achieves the unthinkable—he writes so convincingly in the style of the great English poets that one could be lulled into thinking that Shakespeare himself was inspired to muse upon the subject of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Ewbank captures not only the style of each of the poets he chooses, but also their preoccupations and subject matter. So D.H. Lawrence’s Mary longs for her lamb as any woman longing for her lover, whilst T.S. Eliot’s Mary is recollected by an old man looking back on his life. Alexander Pope writes an “An Essay on Lambs,” and Tennyson’s lotus eaters become “The Clover Eater.” Brilliantly written, sophisticated, and laugh-out-loud funny, these poems, enhanced by Kate Feiffer’s charming illustrations, will enchant anyone who has ever read an English poem. Trade Review“What former English major wouldn’t get a kick out of The Lamb Cycle?” * Washington Post *“Truly remarkable. . . . Not only is Ewbank deeply knowledgeable about each of his thirty-two targets and their poetry, but he has an uncanny ability to ventriloquize their voices without any disrespect or mockery. . . . Endlessly delightful.” * Poetry Corner *“A tour de force for our times. The Lamb Cycle gives us a new take on Mary and her lamb. Whether evoking the Renaissance, the Victorian Age, or modern life in language and art, Ewbank and Feiffer perform with panache.” * Martha's Vineyard Times *“A silly and high-minded book, an absolute barrel of laughs for those deeply into English lit and, I suspect, a bit of fun for any sort of reader.” * Third Coast Review *“David Ewbank’s versatility in the art of literary imitation is nothing short of shapeshifting. Here are 32 high-wire acts of poetic impersonation, which ironically elevate Mary and her famous little lamb, while honoring the great English poets—all to the delight of every reader’s inner English major. Mother Goose herself rises to applaud, somehow. And Kate Feiffer’s drawings are a charming bonus.” -- Billy Collins“The Lamb Cycle made me laugh with delight even as it delivered a masterclass on poetic form. David R. Ewbank captures each of the great poets’ stylistic tics and thematic preoccupations, and imbues them with a visionary verve all his own. The poems are perfectly paired with Kate Feiffer’s elegant illustrations, brimming with wit and wonderment.” -- Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and author of MarchTable of ContentsForeword by James EngellIntroductionMary Had a Little Lamb / Mother GooseThe Silly Lambe / Edmund SpenserSonnet No. 155 / William ShakespeareTemper Rising / John DonneAcademia Lost / John MiltonThe School Steps / George HerbertTo Mary, To Get Out On Time / Robert HerrickAnnus Horribilis / John DrydenAn Essay on Lambs / Alexander PopeThe Vanity of Ovine Hubris / Samuel JohnsonThe Book of Hell / William BlakeExpulsion and Result / William WordsworthThe Crime of the Urchin Mary / Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWhy do I hate this horrid place / Emily BrontëThe Revolt of a Lamb / Percy Bysshe ShelleyOde to Cologne / John KeatsMy Man, Fred / George Gordon, Lord ByronThe Clover Eater / Alfred, Lord TennysonFriedrich Schlafbewirken’s Excogitation / Robert BrowningThe Deserted Lamb / Matthew ArnoldMistress Mary / Dante Gabriel RossettiHymn to the Lamb / Algernon Charles SwinburneA Shropshire Lamb / A. E. HousmanThe Lambkin: To Lady Mary / Gerard Manley HopkinsLamby / Rudyard KiplingAt School / Thomas HardyLoco Lamb and the Schoolman / William Butler YeatsLamb / D. H. LawrenceLittle Gaffer / T. S. EliotA Refusal to Bleat and Moan About Being Expelled from School / Dylan ThomasThe Anxiety of Age / W. H. AudenSchool Going / Philip LarkinSecond Thoughts About Mary / Stevie SmithAcknowledgementsDedication

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Book Synopsis"You'll never live more life than wha' I'm livin' through right now..." Join Gerry Potter on a voyage into social relativism and the domestic/fantastic in a punchy 'n' pithy, yet generously discursive, collection. Contemplating both the ingrained and fleeting fears of a life enlightened through c-PTSD diagnosis, these are li'l poems addressing big issues.Trade ReviewPraise for the author: "Everything poetry should be and all too often isn't." Time Out / "Gerry is about intelligence and argument and politics and protest. So must we all be." Roger Hill / "Enormous talent." Gay Times / "Intelligent, humane and searching poetry." Dr Jo Bell / "Will amuse, move, inspire and provoke." Polari Literary Salon / "One of the most radical forces in performance poetry." Designer Magazine

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Book SynopsisOur entire lives are dictated by love. Love creates our brightest joys and our deepest aches. Love cures and love scars. It brings out both the best and the worst in us. Through the highs and lows, we learn and grow, preparing ourselves to find enduring love. Lovers/Exes/Soulmate is a testament to those who take our hearts, break them, and make them whole again. From the intensity of our first loves, through the despair of heartbreak, and to finding 'the one' and beyond, this collection of poetry and prose captures the essence of humanity: to love, to lose, and to love again.

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Book SynopsisSouthern Bred is a haunting, powerful collection of gothic poems that captivate and transport the reader into the heart and soul of the Deep South.Each poem offers a glimpse into its mystery and enchantment, drawing you in with a blend of beauty and darkness. In the style of a memoir in verse, it showcases Ghigna's southern soul and his tender, yet piercing language, and affirms his place as one of the finest poets of our time.

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Book SynopsisIn October 2016 Peter Jickling left the Yukon to write in Toronto. His resulting poems document subjects ranging from subletting to subways ? illuminating quiet moments amidst noise. Sometimes sad, often funny, and always humane, Downtown Flirt is an outsider?s account of urban life.

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Book SynopsisChan is a mercurial name, representing the travellers and shape-shifters of the poems in this collection. It is one of the many nicknames of Hannah Lowe's Chinese-Jamaican father, borrowed from the Polish emigre card magician Chan Canasta. It is also a name from China, where her grandfather's story begins. Alongside these figures, there's Joe Harriott, the Jamaican alto saxophonist, shaking up 1960s London; a cast of other long-lost family; and a ship full of dreamers sailing from Kingston to Liverpool in 1947 on the SS Ormonde. Hannah Lowe's second collection follows her widely acclaimed debut, Chick, which took readers on a journey round her father, a gambler who disappeared at night to play cards or dice in London's old East End to support his family. Published by Bloodaxe in 2013, Chick was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry, and selected for the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation Poets 2014 promotion.Trade Review'This is an outstanding, unputdownable first collection' - John Glenday.; 'An unforgettable book. In an age where blurby superlatives compete on debut book covers, this one has an edge: it is ABOUT someone, namely the poet's late father, from whose name it takes its title... "Say", which exploits understatement to the full, is remarkable, and heartbreaking' - Helena Nelson, Magma.; 'Hannah Lowe's debut collection is wonderful... a book which deals plainly and honestly with big emotions and tender, dramatic personal scenes' - Declan Ryan, Ambit.; 'Lowe's poetry is vibrant and sensitive, devoted to the retrieval of "lost, forgotten things"... skilful, bittersweet' - Chloe Stopa-Hunt, Poetry Review.Table of Contents1. What I Play is Out de Window! Ribs Sax I Sax II Cherokee Pinewood Suite, unrecorded, 1958 Quintet at a Party, 1963 What is and isn't Jazz? Green Amoeba Mingus Sophisticated, slick Alpha Boy All The Bodies in the Foreign Ground, 5000 Miles From Home Coda 2. Out of Many Ran Awa, My Mulatto Boy Justice Out of Many High Yellow Brown Eyes Blue 'Honey' Hakka Paper Baby Lowe Geaneology Eleven O'Clock Child Borderliner Mitchell/Mingus Scott Joplin Rag Fourteen Days in May What Do I Remember of Sophia? What Charlie Said Chin 3. If I Could Write Honestly A Short Biography of My Father Oranges Gloves If I Could Write Honestly Shells For Ida Yam and Callalloo What Ida Said 4. Ormonde Ormonde What I know Distressed British Seamen White Stowaway Schoolboy Dressmaker Boxer Passieros Twist In Ship-breaking Johnny Cakes On Cannon Street Chan

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Book SynopsisWayne Holloway-Smith's second collection Love Minus Love is an internal universe, fragmented and glued back together with uncanny logic. A strange layering of time, in which multiple things happen at once, in a looping track of intrusive thoughts – shot through with dead cows, pop songs, dead dads, the white noise of televisions – rotten teeth are raining everywhere. Somewhere at the core of all this, the seemingly fixed boundaries of masculinity, family, trauma and mental health are blurred towards a new type of vinegary identity, in a pitch of emotional intensity that punches you right in the gut. Wayne Holloway-Smith's debut collection Alarum was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize and the Roehampton Poetry Prize as well as being a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. His poem 'the posh mums are dancing in the square' – included in Love Minus Love – won first prize in the Poetry Society's 2018 National Poetry Competition. Love Minus Love is shortlisted for the 2020 T.S. Eliot Prize and is also a Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice.Trade ReviewI rejoice in Wayne Holloway-Smith's poems, and I miss them when I'm not reading them. Love Minus Love is a gorgeous painful classic of the Dead Dad genre, and the We Are All Meat genre and the Re-Building Mum genre. It is a beautiful tapestry-album of boy agony, wit and honesty, punctuated by devastating in-parentheses-bildungsromans. It's unforgettably brilliant. -- Max PorterExciting, excoriating, gorgeous, appalling, and eye-wateringly honest. Wayne Holloway-Smith's poems are blisteringly beautiful, and probe at a siege-like nucleus of familial harm. Histories of abuse, hurt and disease are confronted and dissected in all their messy, meaty complexity, but always with love, always with hope and a sweet, sweet tenderness. One of the truest poets writing today. -- Fiona Benson

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Book SynopsisIn The Conversation, Stephanie Norgate explores relationships between nature and the city, the past and present, and character and writer. Shaped through both speech and storytelling, these visual, sensuous and imaginative poems celebrate friendship, even in grief, closeness in times of isolation and lockdown, and the longing to bridge gaps and find cures. Miracles are found in the everyday, in a child’s sleep or a lit-up house. Textiles transform into remembrancers, landscape into emotion. A contemporary Daedalus views his life from a hang-glider. A scrap of handwriting, cafe talk, an exploding car, an earthquake, the naming of fields or a line of walkers ignite conversations about place, time and the tender paradoxes of mortality. Stephanie Norgate’s first collection Hidden River (2008) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was followed by The Blue Den (2012). The Conversation is her third collection. Her poetry has been praised for the ‘depth of its lyricism’ (Jackie Wills, Warwick Review), and for being ‘energetic and generous, and displaying a ‘feeling for place, for the roots of things’ and for being ‘searching, memorable and disconcerting … She has the ear for the music of a line and the shape and strength of an image.’ (R.V. Bailey, Artemis).Trade ReviewThe poems in The Blue Den possess a brooding, magnetism which draws us into a drowned ship, a slow-worm’s narrow skull or the hand-clasp of an orang-utan. The beauty of imagery and rhythm is matched by the subtlety of the poet’s thought. -- Helen DunmoreNorgate shuns full-blown epiphany in favour of a quiet, patient unveiling of the world that invites a way of seeing, a way of thinking. These poems with their observational insistence, are charged with a phenomenological inquiry. -- Julian Stannard * Poetry Review *This is a collection packed with rewarding poetry to be read and re-read with new gems to uncover each time. -- Wendy Klein * Artemis *Table of Contents11 The House 12 Eavesdroppers 13 Word Hoards 14 Miracle 15 February Foxes 16 Sycamore 17 Dead Nettle in the Fann Street Wildlife Garden 18 Wildlife Garden in the City 29 outside some flats in Camberwell 21 Orthopaedics and Trauma, King’s College Hospital 23 Bedroom Tax 25 Evening Teaching 26 ask the heathland 27 walk in a wood after a long loneliness 28 The Machine 30 Night Walk with My Parents 31 To Wish on the Stone 32 The Bridge 34 lines prompted by an old leather travel bag 36 In Trieste 37 Jane Austen’s Visitor 38 Studio mirror: the maid speaks 39 Dalí among the cactuses 40 Time Slip 41 Sweet Woodruff 42 Comfort 43 The Night Table 44 Terrace Ghosts 45 on seeing a drift of blackthorn in April’s haze 46 Question 47 At the Stone Chamber of an Ancient Village 49 lockdown bluebells 50 above ourselves 51 To sing of soap in desperate times 53 An Hour’s Walk 55 The Sears and Roebuck sheet as Scrubs Bag 57 Through a glass darkly 58 Elegy for the Closeness of London 62 After an evening’s writing in the shed 63 The Summoner of Birds 64 The Wake 65 Your Poem 66 At St Erth 67 Walking the Path Again 69 The Conversation 70 Siskin 72 Daedalus over the Downs 74 Gate on the Downs 76 What the chair saw 77 The Clumsinesses 78 The Tile 79 Landings

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Book SynopsisJane Clarke’s third collection is far-reaching and yet precisely rooted in time and place. In luminous language her poems explore how people, landscape and culture shape us. Voices of the past and present reverberate with courage and resilience in face of poverty, prejudice, war and exile and the everyday losses of living. Across six sequences these intimate poems of unembellished imagery accrue power and resonance in what is essentially a book of love poems to our beautiful, fragile world. A Change in the Air follows Jane Clarke's widely praised previous collections The River (2015) and When the Tree Falls (2019).Trade ReviewThe poems are plain-spoken and restrained: they resist easy consolation. Their austerity serves to intensify the unmediated emotion they almost don’t want to capture… a poem might be born of personal loss, but, once completed and published, it has entered a different timespan, and becomes the forge where other minds are shaped and brightened. -- Carol Rumens * The Guardian, on When the Tree Falls *Her observation of nature is...precise, her poems are…honed to the bone. Clarke knows exactly how much to withhold so that the understated artful phrases echo eloquently across the white space of the unsaid. -- Martina Evans * The Irish Times *The Irish poet Jane Clarke has followed a great debut collection with an even better second book. When the Tree Falls talks about her farming father in his last years. It delivers a clean, hard-earned simplicity and a lovely sense of line. -- Anne Enright * The Irish Times (Books of the Year 2019) *A poet who blends the contemporary with a great sense of the ancient and the rural… There is no sentimentality, no ornamentation; every word is incredibly honed and carries a really deep emotional weight. -- Jessica Traynor * Arena, RTE 1, on When the Tree Falls *Table of Contents10 After 11 Butter for Queens 12 Raspberries 13 District Nurse 14 Dressing My Mother for Her Grandson’s Wedding 15 Given 16 Becoming 17 All the horses she’s ever loved 18 Eggs 19 All she needed 20 Milk 21 The Lookout 22 The Arch PIT PONIES OF GLENASAN 25 Christmas Morning 26 Pit Ponies of Glendasan 27 The Pay 28 Mullacor WHEN ALL THIS IS OVER 31 September 1914 32 In the dugout 33 The Game 34 After we’re gone 35 Bouchavesnes 36 Priam of Troy 37 Ling 38 When all this is over 39 Snow 40 Pianist YOU COULD SAY IT BEGINS 42 You could say it begins 44 Crossings 45 Flight 47 Family Bible 48 When the sun 51 The Dipper 52 Lazy Beds 53 skein 54 Passage 55 Wildfire 56 Rowan 57 Refuge 58 Recipe for a bog 59 spawn 60 At Purteen Harbour 61 Little Tern Colony, Kilcoole 63 Mater Misericordiae 64 The Key 65 Spalls 66 Her first 67 Wife 68 Ballinabarney 69 First Earlies 70 Shepherd 71 Fences 72 Thief in April 73 Stepping in 74 June 76 Notes 78 Acknowledgements

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Book SynopsisTo Abandon Wizardry, Matthew Caley's seventh collection, explores a world where it's harder and harder to tell what's real and what's not. Where our political and cultural reality seems so unbelievable, we search for a plot and find one that comes from the Harry Potter playbook. Our sky proves CGI, our touchstones AI. Our screens full of wonders, our streets full of decay. We could nod at Deep Fake, QAnon, fake news versus the 'truth' of official news, all manner of waning national myth or ponder the elsewhere we always think of escaping to, that will no doubt prove equally illusory. Set within this almost parallel world, To Abandon Wizardry features a long central poem where someone enjoys an alfresco Americano in Shadwell, London, while in dialogue with a mesh-protected sapling that transmits all the polyglot talk of the city. Either side of this we encounter revenants, disembowelled wizards, talking horses and flying houses, as the book forges its aesthetic out of the simulation, hyper-association, and over-stimulation of living in the 21st century. And it's all true.Trade ReviewMatthew Caley’s sixth collection Trawlerman’s Turquoise is a steer through linguistic rapids – the effect is dizzying, and psychedelic. One is left with the sense that some new order has been made manifest…in Caley’s intoxicated world the urban becomes urbane, lexicon turns lyrical. -- Cheryl Moskowitz * Magma *Table of Contents11 prologue 13 The Vulnerable 14 The Archipelagos 16 Bagatelle 17 The Nit Pickers 18 Lynx Litter 19 Luxor 21 The Blunderbuss 23 The Leaf 25 Approaches to a Door 27 The Strop 29 The Spill 30 Wispy Streamers 31 Pabl Piccass 32 Aphid Says 34 Canton for the Stranded 35 The Tickle 36 I Conjured up a Horse 38 Lamantia Street 40 The Scarf 41 from Transmitter 63 Undescended Testicles 64 The Obligations 66 Double-hooped Earrings 67 The Unbalanced 68 Unicorn Street 70 The Confessional 71 from The Drifting Recidivist Says 74 Plume Travelling 76 The Bungalow 78 Horse in the Sea Mist 81 This Pure Child 82 The Height 83 Star-wheel 84 Fusillade 85 Canton for the Wastrel 86 Depot of the Aero-houses 88 The Weathervane 89 Bollo’s Brook 92 The Lynx 94 epilogue

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Book SynopsisBy turns lyrical and sardonic, this new collection from Katie Donovan is characteristically watery candid and uncompromising in its refusal to inhabit the safer reaches of the shore. Themes of loss, widowhood and ageing co-exist with observations of her wild garden and its inhabitants, including a mangy fox she helps to survive.

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Book SynopsisCrystal traces the arc of one woman's experience after the discovery that her partner is addicted to crystal meth. In a highly original poetic act of reclamation, it plunders the drug itself and makes of it an overarching conceit to articulate the devastating impact of living with a loved one who is utterly changed.

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Book SynopsisThis eclectic anthology brings together one hundred deaf, disabled and neurodivergent poets from across the international arena, from emerging voices to world-renowned authors, and offers an urgent redress, unpicking many misapprehensions and misrepresentations.

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Book SynopsisFirst Rain in Paradise is a book about falling. Gwyneth Lewis's highly inventive poems trace an interior landscape carved from the trauma of childhood emotional abuse through subsequent chronic ill health and towards a hard-won resurrection. This work refuses to keep pain a secret. Shame is a lurking presence, but suffering doesn't preclude humour.

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