A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Deep Vellum Publishing Something Missing From This World
Book SynopsisA bold, multilingual anthology of Yazidi poetic voices. Ten years have passed since 2014 and the seventy-fourth genocide of the Yazidis, a people who have faced ongoing persecution, displacement, and ethnic cleansing from their ancestral lands in the Kurdish regions. In the wake of this genocidal violence, new poetic voices have emerged in university campuses and IDP camps along the borders of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey, as well as from across the Yazidi diaspora. With globalizing forces compounding the erasure of their culture and traditions, the Yazidi poets in this multilingual anthology firmly stand their ground, their art a testament to Yazidi resistance and presence. This anthology joins in the poetic tradition of the Yazidis, which has historically preserved and documented instances of their traditions, dispossessions, and erasures. It is its own act of witnessing to recount the 2014 genocide for future generations. Translated from both Ar
£14.24
Monkfish Book Publishing Company The Green Sea of Heaven
Book SynopsisAuthoritative edition of Hafiz’s most important poems, including original Persian and brilliant English translationsRecent translations of Hafiz have been controversial. Omid Safi, an Islamic studies scholar at Duke, notes that “there are so many fake translations of Hafiz floating around, offering ‘versions’ that have no earthly connection to anything that the Persian poet and sage of Shiraz named Hafiz ever said. Elizabeth Gray offers us something different: poetic translations rooted in close readings of the original Persian, developed in consultation with a native speaker scholar.”A “ghazal” is usually understood to mean lyric poetry concerned with love. But what had been a courtly love lyric concerned with wine and physical beauty became, in the hands of Sufis like Farid ud-Dín ‘Attar and Jalal ud-Dín Rumi, a way to describe a mystic’s relationship with God. Ghazals also became a means of veiling from theological and political conservatives the Sufi belief in the possibility of an intuitive, personal union with God.Háfiz became the greatest of all Sufi poets, called the “Tongue of the Invisible” and the “Interpreter of Mysteries.” His command of the ghazal’s traditional imagery and themes blends eroticism, mysticism, and panegyric into verse of unsurpassed beauty. His eighty ghazals are presented in this book. Persian originals appear on facing pages to brilliant English translations of Gray and Anvar.In the afterword, Persian scholar Daryush Shayegan notes how “there is no antagonism between the earthly wine and the divine wine, just as there is none between profane love and the love of God, since one is the necessary initiation to the other.”
£17.99
Little, Brown Book Group The Hurting Kind
Book SynopsisAn astonishing collection about interconnectedness - between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves - from National Book Critics Circle Award winner and National Book Award finalist Ada Limón.''I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,'' writes Limón. ''I am the hurting kind.'' What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world''s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings - and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they ''do not / care to be seen as symbols''?With Limón''s remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions - incorporating others'' stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming wTrade ReviewBy far Limón's most self- and world-examining book, The Hurting Kind captures the hidden, marginal forces of kindness and suffering around us . . . a set of astoundingly moving poems in which the self becomes an inclusive vehicle for bridging the hurting gaps between generations, ideas and living things . . . If you only read one book this autumn, make it this one * Guardian *I can always rely on an Ada Limón poem to give me hope, but Limón's poems don't give us the kind of facile Hallmark hope; rather, her hope is hard-earned, even laced with grief or happiness . . . Limón is a master at making a simple idea (that of hindsight, seeing the bright side of things) askew. "And so I have/two brains now," she writes. "Two entirely different brains." Limón gives us two brains in her poems, too, revealing new ways to view the world -- Victoria Chang * New York Times Magazine *In one of Ada Limón's early poems, she asks, "Shouldn't we make fire out of everyday things?" For the past 16 years, that's exactly what she's done. [She is] fearlessly confessional and technically brilliant * Washington Post *These poems home in on how grief makes us human . . . [Limón] reminds readers that we are nothing without connection. If you haven't read poetry in a while, this volume might be what you need to reconnect with the form * Los Angeles Times *Brilliant . . . Throughout is the trademark wonder, and blown-out perceptivity, underscoring Limón's clarion melancholy * San Francisco Chronicle *Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation -- Tracy K. Smith * Guardian *
£11.69
Acair Weaving Songs
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£12.30
Bonnier Books Ltd Life: Poems to help navigate life’s many twists &
Book Synopsis*Donna Ashworth's new book Wild Hope is out September 2023*FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF I WISH I KNEWFor those looking for inspiration, peace and acceptance on the bumpy road that is life, Donna Ashworth's poems give insight into the enigmas of ageing, body image, family and the rapidly changing world around us.For every twist, turn and roadblock the journey has to offer, this collection provides relief to busy minds and dares us to live with a reckless abundance of joy.Readers are embracing Life- 'One of today's best poets.' ***** NetGalley- 'Donna's writing conveys so beautifully what it is to be human' ***** Amazon- 'Each time I read a poem and decide that is my favourite I turn the page and find another beautifully written, eloquent piece that resonates, comforts, and that makes you stop and reflect.' ***** Amazon- 'They are wonderful books to dip in and out of when you need inspiration, some advice, a hug, a friendly word.' ***** Amazon
£8.99
Faber & Faber Alma Mater
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£10.44
Faber & Faber Shoulder Tap
Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE POETRY PIGOTT PRIZE IN ASSOCIATION WITH LISTOWEL WRITERS'' WEEKThroughout these poems, with their roaming sense of first-person, the speakers' minds are cavernous and echoic, primal and sophisticated, observant and raw, in and out of control of themselves. The effect is unpredictable and thrilling, at once a dark art and an illumination of unease and loss and wishfulness. The collection features disquieting songs of a mutable self alongside poignant elegies, interior journeys and subtle (and not so subtle) ripostes to the legacy of Trumpism while elsewhere encounters with ghostly feet and tongues of fire consort with riffs on Baudelaire, Rilke and Laforgue. These poems twinkle with mischief and humour, making for a pungent and haunting read. Riordan a poet whose strong, rippling influence is felt by all in his wake affirms his reputation at the forefront of contemporary poetry.
£10.44
Birlinn General Unwritten Woman
Book SynopsisHannah Lavery''sUnwritten Womanis a bold and lavish call for us to see the woman in the stories we read and tell ourselves.From her search for the story, in her home city, Edinburgh, through her chilling re-telling of Robert Louis Stevenson''s Jekyll & Hyde, elevating the women in that classic tale from being written between the lines, to the woman of colour, shouting from the sidelines of our cultural landscape.
£10.44
Simon & Schuster Changing with the Tides
Book SynopsisTikTok poet Shelby Leigh presents a moving and inspirational collection of poetry about growing up and embracing all the beauty life has to offer. The perfect gift for fans of Rupi Kaur, Connor Franta, and Cleo Wade.Shelby Leigh breaks up her poignant and reflective poetry collection into two themes: the anchor and the sail. While the anchor explores issues of insecurity, heartbreak, and anxiety, the sail focuses on healing and hope after the storm.With an emphasis on self-empowerment, changing with the tides is an evocative and celebratory set of poems for anyone who dreams of following their heart and embracing their true self.Trade Review“Shelby has done it again! This collection is absolutely stunning. I loved the story it told and how it showed the growth and healing she has gone through and is still going through. There is so much to take away from this collection and I recommend it to anybody who loves poetry, especially the writing of poets like Nikita Gill or Amanda Lovelace.”—Catarine Hancock, author of shades of lovers “changing with the tides is one of those poetry collections that speaks to those who have always seen softness and strength as synonymous. Shelby's ability to write about emotional trauma with such delicacy is truly remarkable. Her sensitivity comes through in every word—making the reader feel like Shelby isn't only sharing her own personal experiences but is being mindful of the reader's comfort. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is coping with anxiety or looking for some healing words without having to read something heavy. Thank you, Shelby, for striking such a graceful balance with your poetry.”—Marya Layth, author of Driftwood “This book is full of tender sincerities that touch on issues such as anxiety, insecurity, and loss. Leigh's words move through the process of healing in a way that ultimately left me feeling uplifted and seen.”—Amanda Linsmeier, author of Our Wild Magic
£11.65
Olympia Publishers Her Blue Lagoon Heart
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£11.39
World Poetry Books Hers
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£13.49
Andrews McMeel Publishing The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective
Book Synopsis“I thought 2020 would be the year I got everything I wanted. Now I know 2020 was the year I appreciated everything I have.” From the author of Self Love Poetry comes a new collection of transformative poetry focused on reframing thoughts and seeing post-pandemic life through a rich, new, kaleidoscopic lens. The world has changed – but thankfully so have we. The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective embodies the best of who we are now. From Melody Godfred, author of Self Love Poetry: for Thinkers & Feelers, comes a collection of poems designed to reframe how we see and move through this brave new, post-pandemic world. Each pair of poems inspires a shift from the old way of thinking to the new: from guilt to gratitude, resistance to surrender, and fear to love. The left side of every spread is dedicated to the old way. The right side offers a shift in perspective that lovingly illuminates the new. Each seemingly simple poem instantly elicits a profound reset, and is coupled with beautiful line drawings that awaken not just the mind, but also the heart. The Shift’s unique poem pairings uplift the soul by offering a hopeful salve for our collective burnout. Whether you read a pair of poems a day, or consume the entire book in one sitting, The Shift will be your trusted companion as you bravely navigate the great unknown that lies ahead in the months, years and decades to come.
£11.39
SmithDoorstop Books The Naming of Names
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£10.44
Bodleian Library Shakespeare's First Folio Journal
Book SynopsisThe First Folio – the celebrated collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays – was published in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. It was compiled by John Heminge and Henry Condell, both actors in Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, and originally titled Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. Many of the plays – including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night – do not survive in any earlier printed versions. To mark the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, this high-quality journal reproduces the title pages of a selection of plays, together with the famous frontispiece featuring Shakespeare’s portrait, an engraving by Martin Droeshout. Produced in hardback with ruled pages, foiled spine, gilt page edges and ribbon marker, this is an inspirational gift for Shakespeare fans and budding writers alike.
£13.24
Seagull Books London Ltd Requiem for Ernst Jandl
Book SynopsisA lyrical requiem for Mayröcker's late partner, the writer Ernst Jandl. Austrian poet and playwright Ernst Jandl died in 2000, leaving behind his partner, poet Friederike Mayröcker—and bringing to an end a half century of shared life, and shared literary work. Mayröcker immediately began attempting to come to terms with his death in the way that poets struggling with loss have done for millennia: by writing. Requiem for Ernst Jandl is the powerfully moving outcome. In this quiet but passionate lament that grows into a song of enthralling intensity, Mayröcker recalls memories and shared experiences, and—with the sudden, piercing perception of regrets that often accompany grief—reads Jandl’s works in a new light. Alarmed by a sudden, existential emptiness, she reflects on the future, and the possibility of going on with her life and work in the absence of the person who, as we see in this elegy, was a constant conversational and creative partner.Trade Review"A magnificent translation. . . [Theobald] gives us an autofictional masterpiece of raw emotion, that will resonate with anyone who has ever given thought to how quickly life passes. . . . A web of associations and recollections, Requiem for Ernst Jandl is full of references to both the dead and the living, to literary theorists and to poets, to friends with their advice for the bereaved, and to places both real and dreamed up – and most of all, to Jandl himself. Through the powerful immediacy of her at times heart-wrenching language, Mayröcker proves that grief does not have to be private and can acquire a dignity that triumphs over any worry about decency." * Times Literary Supplement *
£9.45
University of California Press Basho
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A real landmark publication. . . . In this endlessly rewarding work of scholarship, skill and devotion we find a Bashō not just as he is customarily seen – a philosopher poet of nature – but very much as a man of the world." * RTÉ *"A comprehensive exploration of the writer and man crucial to Japan’s literary history. . . . Fitzsimons’ translations are fresh and unexpected." * Japan Times *Table of ContentsContents Bashō Chronology Introduction THE POEMS Acknowledgments Glossary Bibliography Index of Poems in Japanese (Romaji) Index of First Lines in Poems in English Index of Names
£13.49
Anthem Press Finding the Way to Long Days Journey Into Night
Book SynopsisEugene O'Neill wrote his most enduring and important plays after he won international acclaim as the first and only American playwright to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, with his health failing and spirits sunk, he and his third wife, former actress Carlotta Monterey, moved to California to escape the materialism and commercialism of a declining West, and they built a new home called Tao House. A reasonably good translation of tao is the way, and in this house, which was largely the creation of Carlotta, he found the way to his most famous play, Long Day's Journey Into Night.As an unusually explicit autobiographical drama, this play returns to 1912, the outset of O'Neill's writing career, when he confronted tragedy in his family story and found a way to dramatize his mother, father, brother, and himself in a way that has resonated with audiences since its publication and production in 1956. But this book argues that the play originates as much in the moment of its creation, 19391941in the family relationships, the historical circumstances, and the fact that this work would represent a moment of closure of his great career.Key to this heroic story of creation is the intervention of his wife, Carlotta, whose diaries enable a day-to-day observation of how the play was written. She was the driving force behind the design of Tao House, and she managed the rhythms and patterns of life within its architecture. It was her masterpiece, just as Long Day's Journey was his. This book develops a close reading of their house and marriage and also uses many of O'Neill's previous plays to illuminate the breakthrough of Long Day's Journey.This book is the most granular and at the same time the most far-reaching inquiry into how this quintessential play was written (and almost not written) and how it came into the world.
£72.00
Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Snakedoctor
Book SynopsisFrom church barn to apple orchard, from snow-covered pasture to secret moonshine cabin, Manning?s Snakedoctor reinvigorates the Kentucky pastoral through poems that find light in shadow, good in evil, love in a father?s stinging blow.Maurice Manning returns to the Kentucky countryside in his eighth collection, Snakedoctor. Existing between haunting memory and pastoral dreamscape, this quiet collection showcases Manning?s storytelling at its finest. Simple, four-beat lines hold epiphanies??the barn is just an empty church?? and announce visits from seven-foot strangers named Mr. True. Here, God is reimagined as a ?serious banjo player? who calls the world to sing. And sing Manning does. Through rhyme, blues, and haiku, Snakedoctor trains our ears to hear music in the mundane, to find beauty all around us: in the annotated margins of a well-read book, the flight of a father?s shadow puppet, the yellow centers of daisies. Punctuated by rain?s pitter-patter on a tin wash tub, and the ?ring of lonely? in a farmer?s voice as he calls his cattle home, Snakedoctor is a collection that will leave you wanting to dog-ear its pages. From childhood to fatherhood, church barn to apple orchard, moonshine to moonbeam, we leave these poems understanding Manning?s wish: ?I wanted to make a prayer and I did, / in half-sleep after the dream.?
£12.34
Salamander Street Limited i am ill with hope: poems and sketches by Gommie
Book SynopsisIn 2019 poet-artist Gommie began walking the coastline of an England with nothing but a backpack, a tent and an unusually large collection of pens. His aim? Searching for hope during increasingly hard times. From losing his way on the Dover Hills to bankruptcy in Rhyl and wild camping in Scarborough, Gommie’s extraordinary journey is still ongoing, and his findings, a deeply moving mixture of texture, illustration, poetry and verbatim conversations, are a gentle homage to the often-overlooked places we inhabit and the frequently forgotten voices we hear. Follow him @gommie_poem on Instagram.
£12.34
Black Ocean Cry Perfume
Book SynopsisLyrical poems that engage with grief and loss and the toll of overdose and addiction with an activist bent.The title of Cry Perfume is an imperative to bottle sorrow in a beautiful vessel and shed the chemicals that cloud your sight. Written over a four-year period on tour and after losing loved ones and peers to overdose, Dupuis funneled complicated grief into harm reduction advocacy, working to fundraise for and distribute overdose prevention resources in venues internationally.The slick performativity of pop, punk humor, electronic glitch and sampling, and the surprising leaps of improvisation influence these poems, but beyond music, these poems are informed by Dupuis’s larger concerns about justice and organizing. Cry Perfume is a hopeful but realistic inventory of the virtues and evils that emerge when arts and tech collide. Those dualities are cloaked in the same sparkling fragrance, and there are twinned pleasures and regrets in parting the smokescreen.
£13.60
Ohio University Press Loving Mountains Loving Men Memoirs of a Gay
Book SynopsisAppalachians are known for their love of place, yet many gays and lesbians from the mountains flee to urban areas in search of greater freedom. Jeff Mann tells his story as one who left and then returned, who insists on claiming and celebrating both regional and sexual identities.Trade Review“It is hard to overstate the importance of Jeff Mann’s Loving Mountains, Loving Men for hillbilly queers. So many of us were raised with the false dichotomy that we could be culturally Appalachian and give up our gayness, or we could be culturally gay and give up our mountain ways. In his beautifully crafted essays, Mann delivers the joyous news that identity is not a matter of either/or but both and.”“Gay Appalachian writers existed before Jeff Mann, but few could be out. Jeff knocked open the door. Mann’s essays and poems, his honesty and courage, have inspired, emboldened, affirmed, and electrified countless LGBTQ Appalachians after him. Jeff Mann is the godfather of queer Appalachian literature, and Loving Mountains, Loving Men is an urtext.”"Mann’s groundbreaking memoir has not aged in the nearly two decades since its first publication. His seamless mixture of prose and poetry continues to inform with relevance and insight what it means to be a gay man in Appalachia. Although Mann’s talent as a poet is notable not only in the poems but also in the prose, I am reminded rereading the collection that he’s also a truly gifted storyteller who transforms memoir into a page turner blending ‘loveliness and ferocity.’”“With a nod to deconstruction, Jeff Mann artfully explodes socially constructed identity binaries, in his case that of being both a proud Appalachian and a gay man. He weaves the story of his life with poetry and prose, revealing vulnerability and fierceness. As an educator, I have witnessed the profound impact of Loving Mountains, Loving Men on all of my students, but in particular, my gay students.”“A unique testimonial to the role of place in defining the self. No other author considered here captures both the pains and joys of being Appalachian so adeptly." * Journal of Appalachian Studies *“The sheer beauty of the prose in the memoir and the language of the poetry is incredible. This is one of the great watershed books of Appalachian literature. Its contribution to the fields of Appalachian studies and gay/gender studies is significant.”“A persistent theme is the familiar Appalachian love of the land and of traditional folkways. Through Mann’s eyes, we see those features, and Appalachian masculinity, anew.” * West Virginia History *
£17.99
Concord Theatricals Pirandello and Other Plays
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£11.99
Random House USA Inc Uyghur Poems
Book SynopsisAn unprecedented collection of poems spanning the rich two-thousand-year cultural legacy of the Uyghur people of Central Asia. EVERYMAN’S LIBRARY POCKET POETS.The Uyghurs have a long and glorious history of poetry, dating from the oral epics of the second century BCE through the elegant love poetry of the medieval period and up to the present moment—and much of it has never before been translated into English. Uyghur poetry reflects the magnificent natural landscapes at the heart of the Silk Road region, with its endless steppes, soaring mountain ranges, and vast deserts, as well as its turbulent history. Turkic, Sufi, and Persian influences have shaped the poetic tradition over the centuries, and more recently the modernism of the twentieth century left its mark as well. In the face of the systematic persecution of the Uyghurs in China today, which has driven many of their poets into exile, Uyghur Poems is not only a remarkable one-volume
£15.75
Harvard University Press Miracles of the Virgin. Tract on Abuses
Book SynopsisNigel of Canterbury's Miracles of the Virgin, the oldest Latin poem about miracles performed by Mary, features lively tales illustrating her boundless mercy. Tract on Abuses rails against ecclesiastical corruption. Alongside authoritative editions of the Latin texts, this volume offers the first translations of both works into English.Trade ReviewOffer[s] a fascinating amalgam of devotion, imagination, and wonder…Ziolkowski is to be congratulated for his skillful and meticulous work in bringing these little-known works to a contemporary readership. There is no doubt that many of today’s monastic readers will find these Marian miracles as fascinating and enchanting as did their medieval counterparts. -- Robert Nixon, O.S.B. * American Benedictine Review *
£25.46
West Margin Press The Aeneid of Virgil
Book SynopsisThe Aeneid of Virgil (19 BC) is an epic poem by Roman poet Virgil. Virgil’s legendary epic is the story of the hero Aeneas, a castaway from Troy whose adventures across the Mediterranean led him to Italy, where he discovered what would later become the city of Rome. Presented here in an accessible prose translation, The Aeneid of Virgil is a treasure of classical literature and a story of romance, war, and adventure to rival the best of Homer. Fleeing the destruction of Troy by Greek forces, Aeneas brings his son Ascanius and father Anchises on a voyage across the sea. Landing in Carthage, Aeneas, his family, and his crew are rescued by Dido, Queen of Tyre. There, Aeneas, despite mourning the loss of his beloved wife Creusa, falls in love with Dido, who offers him refuge and her devoted love. Knowing that he is destined to found a city in Italy, however, Aeneas abandons the queen, leading her to commit suicide. Now determined to fulfill his destiny at any cost, Aeneas sails to Sicily, journeys to the underworld, and eventually arrives in the region of Latium, where he is swept up in conflict with Turnus, the Rutulian king. Flawed and feared, Aeneas exemplifies the imperfect hero compelled by fate and the gods, yet ultimately driven through a will to survive and provide for his fledgling people. Faithfully but concisely translated into accessible English prose, The Aeneid of Virgil is best read aloud with friends and family, and iconic masterpiece of ancient Rome still relevant for our modern world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Aeneid of Virgil is a classic work of Roman literature reimagined for modern readers.
£13.49
Seven Stories Press,U.S. Love At First Sight
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£14.39
Aurora Metro Publications Dark Tales in Winter: adapted for the stage
Book SynopsisDARK TALES IN WINTER adapted for the stage by Matt Beames & Hannah Torrance A mysterious door that will not close... A haunted railwayman at his lonely post... A chilling presence haunts a quiet household... A black cat reveals a grim secret... A collection of four classic ghost stories by masters of the genre, each newly adapted for the stage. Each tale can be enacted by a single performer and together they make for a chilling evening of ghostly tales. Features: The Open Door by Charlotte Riddell The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens The Shadow by E. Nesbit The Black Cat by Edgar Allen PoeTrade Review"These Dark Tales in Winter have been put together for a thrilling evening of entertainment, certainly a striking contrast to shows typical of the festive period." - What's On.
£12.34
Columbia University Press The Fragrant Companions
Book SynopsisThe Fragrant Companions is the most significant work of literature that portrays female same-sex love in the entire premodern Chinese tradition. It is at once an unconventional romantic comedy, a barbed satire, and a sympathetic portrayal of love between women.Trade ReviewThis engaging translation makes available in lively English the maverick playwright Li Yu’s playful and convention-defying account of romantic love between two women almost four hundred years ago. Resonating with conversations about sexuality and gender identity in our contemporary social world, this adept translation not only is poised to become indispensable reading in a range of undergraduate courses but also would lend itself well to stage adaptation. -- SE Kile, University of MichiganThis expert and highly readable translation takes readers into the world of Chinese opera by presenting a new classic, rich in literary quality, delightful in its panorama of life in seventeenth-century China, and unique in its portrayal of female same-sex romance. Li Yu is an author who deserves a worldwide readership, and this volume is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of translations of his works. -- Keith McMahon, author of Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to QingThe Fragrant Companions epitomizes the premodern Chinese literary fantasy of utopian polygyny with a satirical twist. Desire between women is shown to be subversive even as it smooths the operation of a male-headed, polygamous union. Li Yu's wit fully comes alive in this elegant and entertaining translation. -- Tze-lan Deborah Sang, author of The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern ChinaA wonderful and long-awaited addition to the world canon of queer literature! Beautifully and accessibly rendered with a view toward stage production, Roddy and Wang’s translation of Li Yu’s female same-sex love story The Fragrant Companions is sure to intrigue academics, undergraduates, general readers, and theater professionals alike. -- Patricia Sieber, coeditor of How to Read Chinese DramaThis felicitous translation of The Fragrant Companions, with a comprehensive introduction, makes Li Yu’s most popular play accessible and should inspire stagings of the play across the English-speaking world. A lively translation with strong scholarly underpinnings, it is a tremendous achievement. -- Sophie Volpp, author of The Substance of Fiction: Literary Objects in China, 1550–1775Neatly dealing with both the passionate love between two intelligent and talented women and the Chinese examination-system, The Fragrant Companions is a rich and rewarding play that is approachable and yet also intriguingly different from much Western drama. -- M.A. Orthofer * Complete Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Women in Love and the Business of Men in Li Yu’s Chuanqi DramaDramatis PersonaeThe Relationship Between Role Types and CharactersNote on Editions of LianxiangbanList of ScenesThe Fragrant CompanionsAppendix: Modes and TunesNotesSelected Works on Li Yu and Same-Sex Love in Classical Chinese Fiction and DramaIndex
£21.25
Pan Macmillan Them
Book SynopsisHarry Josephine Giles is a writer and performer from Orkney. She holds an MA in Theatre Directing from East 15 Acting School and a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Stirling. Her verse novel Deep Wheel Orcadia was published by Picador in October 2021 and received the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year. Her poetry collections Tonguit and The Games were shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and the Saltire Poetry Book of the Year. Them! is her fourth poetry collection.
£10.44
Momentum Books Where Is My Home?: Selected Short Poems Of Rainer
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£6.19
HarperCollins Publishers Inc The Unfolding
Book SynopsisBoth a galvanizing wake-up call and a tender lullaby.” — Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed“What I love about Arielle’s writing is that she takes readers on this journey step by step, filled with wisdom and grace.Trade Review“There is an enduring honesty in Estoria’s words that is hard to come by. She welcomes you into places within herself that always seem to serve as portals to our own homecoming. With poetry and reflection, Estoria reminds us of the imperative of our unfolding in a world that wants us to remain small.” — Cole Arthur Riley, New York Times bestselling author of This Here Flesh "If loving and embracing yourself for who you are feels impossible, pick up this book! Arielle invites you to step into your power through her inspiring prose and beautiful reflections." — Jenna Kutcher, New York Times bestselling author of How Are You, Really? “Arielle’s words are a balm. Somehow they soothe, but also light the fire for growth. That's an achievement.” — Jedidiah Jenkins, New York Times bestselling author of To Shake The Sleeping Self and Like Streams to the Ocean "Open up to any page and discover inspiration, honesty, and wisdom. The Unfolding will leave you feeling uplifted and open to discovering more about yourself." — Justina Blakeney, author of The New Bohemians and founder of Jungalow "With the beauty, honesty, and transparency of a true artist, Arielle invites us to shed what no longer serves us and come alive to who we’re meant to be. The Unfolding reminds us that exploration is not our enemy, and that wonder can be found in our wandering." — Danielle Coke, Oh Happy Day! illustrator and activist "What a refreshing, deep breath of a book! Through poetry, art, story, and prose, Arielle beautifully embodies the freedom, invitation, and goodness of full awakening." — Sarah Bessey, New York Times bestselling author of A Rhythm of Prayer and Jesus Feminist “What I love about Arielle’s writing is that she takes readers on this journey step by step, filled with wisdom and grace. This book will help anyone seeking to unfold into their bloom.” — Morgan Harper Nichols, author of All Along You Were Blooming and Peace is a Practice “The Unfolding is a moving, fresh, unique poetry collection and a generous invitation into the mind of the poet. Both a galvanizing wake-up call and a tender lullaby.” — Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Untamed “Arielle is a sage within our generation and she's written a guidebook for anyone who has ever felt lost or needed a reminder that breaking is not the end of the story.” — Hannah Brencher, author of Fighting Forward and Come Matter Here “Arielle gently invites us to explore the uncharted places of our own lives, to face them with courage and vulnerability, and perhaps even discover an unfolding of our own.” — Jo Saxton, author of Ready to Rise "Perfectly balances the raw, unpolished, guttural feelings with the eloquence and refined beauty of one who has mastered poetry. This is a must read." — Propaganda, author of Terraform Yahoo! — "This stunning debut is as tender as you imagine it to be in addition to adding an extra dose of ecstatic joy to remind you how real-life becoming feels. A poetry book full of words to hold sacredly in your soul." "In a voice that is at once gentle and strong, Arielle shows that our process of becoming, while at times uncertain, is as beautiful as a blooming flower.” — Dr. Hillary L McBride, author of The Wisdom of Your Body “In Arielle’s raw recounting of her own journey, she beautifully mirrors our true worth and value that we are invited into remembering and finding home within ourselves.” — Ruthie Lindsey, author of There I Am “Arielle's words are breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring. The Unfolding is like a healing roadmap, nourishment for those who are thirsty for hope, growth and awakening.” — Minaa B., LMSW “Arielle tenderly offers us a richness of grace only seen from the mystics of the old. Her eloquence of story and depth of wisdom lovingly unfolds us into her process, awakening liberation in each of us.” — William Matthews, music director at New Abbey "The Unfolding is a beautiful invitation to come back to yourself, trust your inner wisdom, and just take a breath." — Jamie Varon, author of Radically Content
£19.80
Faber & Faber The Gododdin
Book SynopsisThe timeless and compelling word-music' of one of Britain's oldest cultural treasures is captured in this new bilingual edition.The Gododdin charts the rise and fall of 363 warriors in the battle of Catraeth, around the year AD 600. The men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin rose to unite the Welsh and the Picts against the Angles, only to meet a devastating fate. Composed by the poet Aneirin, the poem was originally orally transmitted as a sung elegy, passed down for seven centuries before being written down in early Welsh by two medieval scribes. It is composed of one hundred laments to the named characters who fell, and follows a sophisticated alliterative poetics. Former National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke animates this historical epic with a modern musicality, making it live in the language of today and underscoring that, in a world still beset by the misery of war, Aneirin's lamentation is not done.
£11.69
Carcanet Press Ltd This Afterlife: Selected Poems
Book SynopsisWinner of the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award 2023. Shortlisted for the London Hellenic Prize 2022. The Poetry Book Society Winter Special Commendation 2022. 'The ancients taught me how to sound modern,' A.E. Stallings said in an interview. 'They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.' For her, 'technique' is rooted in traditions of strict forms and metres, an interest that sets her apart as modern - and American - in challenging ways, for being on the face of it old-fashioned, yet ambitiously experimental among the forms she uses. Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she lives in Athens, Greece. Her poems come out of life's dailiness - as a wife, mother, teacher, an expatriate between languages, a brilliant translator of ancient and modern Greek. She also translates Latin, her most notable large work being the Penguin Lucretius, translated into fourteeners. Being a poet in Greece entails, for her, being part of that world. She was among volunteers helping refugees as they arrived in Greece, and their experience haunted her to write, 'My love, I'm grateful tonight / Our listing bed isn't a raft / Precariously adrift / As we dodge the coast guard light...' The sharp quatrain commends the observation to memory. The poems, without self-indulgence or confession, are intimate as they address 'My love', children or friends.Trade Review'[O]ne of the strongest talents to emerge in recent years.' - Poetry Magazine
£14.39
Milkweed Editions The Hurting Kind
Book SynopsisAn astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.“I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings—and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”?With Limón’s remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions—incorporating others’ stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming with horses and kingfishers and the gleaming eyes of fish. And they honor parents, stepparents, and grandparents: the sacrifices made, the separate lives lived, the tendernesses extended to a hurting child; the abundance, in retrospect, of having two families.Along the way, we glimpse loss. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories and the mysterious behavior of pets left behind. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world. “Slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still / green in the morning’s shade,” writes Limón of a groundhog in her garden, “she is doing what she can to survive.”Trade ReviewPraise for The Hurting KindAn Indie Next Selection for May 2022A Publishers Weekly “Top Ten Most Anticipated Book of Poetry” for Spring 2022A Literary Hub “Most Anticipated Book of 2022”A Books Are Magic “Most Anticipated Book of Spring 2022”A New York Times, "100 Notable Books of 2022"Longlisted for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize"So grateful am I for Limón's powerfully observant eye. There are many wonderful poems here and a handful of genuine masterpieces . . . The Hurting Kind is packed with quiet celebrations of the quotidian . . . Limón forces herself to confront, again and again in these poems, nature's unwillingness to yield its secrets—it's one of her primary subjects. The seemingly abundant wisdom of the nature world is really a vision of her own searching reflection . . . Limón is great company in the presence of the inchoate, able and willing to stand with her readers before the frightening mysteries and hopeful uncertainties of the everyday."—New York Times Book Review"I can always rely on an Ada Limón poem to give me hope, but Limón's poems don't give us the kind of facile Hallmark hope; rather, her hope is hard-earned, even laced with grief or happiness . . . Limón is a master at making a simple idea (that of hindsight, seeing the bright side of things) askew. 'And so I have/two brains now,' she writes. 'Two entirely different brains.' Limón gives us two brains in her poems, too, revealing new ways to view the world."—Victoria Chang, New York Times Magazine"In her sixth collection of poetry, The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón seeks to find the intimate connections between the seemingly disparate in the everyday: humans and the natural world, the living and the dead, the intellectual and the spiritual. The collection’s title is apt—it is a testament to the innate power of feeling, whether grief, rage, or tenderness. For Limón, the current Poet Laureate of the United States, who declares herself ‘too sensitive, a weeper… the hurting kind,’ even the seemingly banal facets of our existence deserve not only observation, but also empathy and amazement."—TIME Magazine, 100 Must Read Books of 2022"Limón’s poems are unique for the deep attention they pay to both the world’s wounds and its redemptive beauty. In otherwise dark times, they have the power to open us up to the wonder and awe that the world still inspires."—The Ezra Klein Show "[Ada Limón] is one of my all-time favorite writers, someone whose work I return to again and again for solace, inspiration, and truth."—Nicole Chung, The Atlantic"For poet Ada Limón, evidence of poetry is everywhere. It connects big ideas—like fear, isolation, even death—with little details—like field sparrows, a box of matches, or 'the body moving / freely.' The award-winning poet's sixth and latest collection, The Hurting Kind, is a testament to the power of such sensitivity . . . The power of attention, Limón conveys, is in finding out just how an individual's experience might fit into the collective experience. But in The Hurting Kind Limón takes her method even further to ask: Isn't wonder enough? . . . Above all, The Hurting Kind asks for our attention to stay tender. To know that the world is here to both guide us and lead us astray. Toward the end of the long poem, Limón writes: 'I will not stop this reporting of attachments. / There is evidence everywhere.' So don't stop looking. Just be open to what you may find. And know that the world is watching you, too."—NPR"Ada Limón is a bright light in a dark time. Her keen attention to the natural world is only matched by her incredible emotional honesty.... Considering the arc from youthful vibrancy to protective camouflage, Limón tracks the beauty of wisdom as we age. Reconciling the all too human matter of our lives within the spectacle of nature, Limón archives a suspended grace.... The Hurting Kind ... explor[es] the restorative connections between human life and the natural world. The poems reckon with vulnerability and grief in a startling and broken world."—Vanity Fair"In one of Ada Limón's early poems, she asks, 'Shouldn't we make fire out of everyday things?' For the past 16 years, that's exactly what she's done. [She is] fearlessly confessional and technically brilliant."—Washington Post“Again and again in this poetry collection, her sixth, Limón confronts nature’s unwillingness to yield its secrets—it’s one of her primary subjects. The seemingly abundant wisdom of the natural world is really a vision of her own searching reflection. 'Limón looks out her window, walks around her yard, and, like Emily Dickinson, trips over infinities,' our reviewer wrote.”—New York Times, "100 Notable Books of 2022""Ada Limón’s sixth and latest collection is a testament to the power of sensitivity. As with her previous award-winning books, The Carrying and Bright Dead Things, these poems are acutely aware of the natural world. And Limón has a knack for acknowledging nature’s little mysteries in order to fully capture its history and abundance. For her, evidence of poetry is everywhere. She connects big ideas—fear, isolation, even death—with little details, like field sparrows, a box of matches or ‘the body moving / freely.’ Above all, The Hurting Kind asks for our attention to stay tender."—Jeevika Verma, NPR, Books We Love“It’s comforting, amid a stack of thick novels and all the latest cookbooks, to keep a book of short poems to dip into like scripture. This is the latest from the open-hearted Kentucky-based poet Ada Limón, who writes earnestly about love, her Mexican American family, and the wildness of memory.”—CJ Lotz, Garden & Gun, “Best Southern Books of 2022”“In Limón’s newest collection, she writes poems suffused with nostalgia, longing, and grief, divided up by the seasons, writing of nurturing seeds, steadfast love, grief, burial. She writes of joyful wonder and powerful grief. Of getting high and staring up at cherry trees, of earning a cat’s trust, of seeing the neighbors get a tree cut down, all tangled up in stories of emotionally manipulative relationships and family discoveries and what real love looks like. Mainly, she writes about what it’s like to be ‘the hurting kind’ of person—a tender kind of person, sensitive to the pain she sees and the small joys she glimpses out in the world, soft, vulnerable, painfully empathetic. It’s the kind of person I am, and I saw myself so deeply in these poems. Limón’s hit it out of the park once again.”—BookRiot, Best Books of the Year"These poems home in on how grief makes us human . . . [Limón] reminds readers that we are nothing without connection. If you haven't read poetry in a while, this volume might be what you need to reconnect with the form."—Los Angeles Times"Brilliant . . . Throughout is the trademark wonder, and blown-out perceptivity, underscoring Limón's clarion melancholy."—San Francisco Chronicle“The Hurting Kind is a book of living language — and nowhere more than in the way words animate the poems . . . Throughout [Limón’s] work, the language is direct and unadorned while also playful and full of unexpected turns. Something similar is true of The Hurting Kind, which is a quieter book — but no less fierce for being so. . . . When Limón exclaims, in the last line of the poem and the collection, ‘I am asking you to touch me,’ she is writing out of the darkness of the pandemic, but she is also addressing something more universal and profound. What are words worth if they can’t help to bridge the gaps between us? It’s a question many of us are asking as we try to navigate this fallen world."—David Ulin, Los Angeles Times“The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón’s sixth poetry collection, embodies the interconnectedness of survival and surrender . . . Limón’s opus, a poetic sonic composition of observation, shifts between the tense positions of witness and watcher. Rather than end tidily with a conclusion, she leans into actionable hope. How could Limón have anticipated that current history would speak in harmony with The Hurting Kind? Today, more so than when I first read it, a line in the title poem hits me harder and with greater poignancy — ‘Now teach me poetry.’”—Yvonne Conza, Los Angeles Review of Books"Limón responds in her poetry to what she identifies as an ecological imperative to re-describe our relationship to 'nature' in a manner that isn't merely instrumental. The moving personal dramas that her poems detail can never be separated from the landscape in which they occur . . . Consequently, her poetry, which can feel so intimate and self-revealing, is almost constantly political at the same time . . . There are endless things to say about the articulate, complex emotional resonance of the poems in this book. Still, what Limón says about 'a life' is true as well for her book: 'You can't sum it up.'"—Forrest Gander, Brooklyn Rail "Stunning . . . [A] kind of internal whiplash, in which quiet everyday moments become the unwitting prisms through which we suddenly start to see our true selves, is a hallmark of Limón's work. Over the course of six collections of poems, she has proven herself adept at balancing whip-smart emotional observation with graceful descriptions of the natural world . . . After her last collection, 2018's The Carrying, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, she established herself as the rarest form of American poet—the kind that resonates with an audience that does not normally pay attention to contemporary poetry. Her elegant narrative poems are keenly observed, remarkably accessible, and pack an emotional wallop."—Departures“[A] shimmering new collection of poems . . . The matter of aliveness is at the very core of The Hurting Kind, a collection that feels as though it’s right on time, with verse that hews close-to-the-bone and is uncommonly relatable in its unflinching, but deeply compassionate, treatment of human pain. Rather than working to dodge the hurt, to make meaning of it so that it might be transmuted from wound into scar, The Hurting Kind is an invitation to sink into the ache, pressing willingly on the bruises wrought by ‘being a body in time, being a body alive’ . . . The Hurting Kind is a work of deep humanity, of recognizing all that’s asked of us . . . It is mercy.”—Literary Hub"This collection is a testament to survival, to the will to go on and to the way the world goes on without us. . . . Reading these poems brings the world into such focus that you can’t help but feel more tethered to it, receptive to its hurt and attuned to its wonder." — Catapult "[Limón] is a poet of both studied and innate talent and with each poem, each carefully crafted collection, Limón has gifted us with an oceanic well of wisdom, intertwining our humanity with the natural world we live within. The Hurting Kind, her latest offering, is a powerful meditation on relationships with love, loss, family, friends, interlaced with an equal intimacy with the land, trees, plants, and animals. Anyone can see themselves in these poems but, more importantly, they can sense the lessons of our ancestors and the grief we must reckon with collectively, together, if our species will survive ourselves and continue to endure."—Electric Literature "That Limón is able to inhabit both past and present in the same moment is part of what makes her poetry so evocative; that she can express it so finely is what makes her an exceptional poet. . . . In all her work, Limon examines language, often questioning rubrics and those who establish them. She is both icon and revolutionary, breaking arbitrary rules, especially if they seek to contain what is poetry, and who it is for . . . Through this stunning collection, throughout her brilliant career, Limón manages the impossible—summing up life—from a multitude of perspectives, unforgettable images, and with verse and silence. The seasons end, lives end, love ends, and then it all begins again. Therein lies our grief. Therein lies our hope."—Chicago Review of Books“Reading the collection replenished me and reminded me to be more intentional and open to the wellness that the natural elements provides for us by simply existing.”—NBC News,11 great books by Latino authors to read this month and always "The Hurting Kind is a collection not unlike her previous collections—which is to say, it’s a book of poetry that centers the heart and the non-human, or more-than-human, entities of the world. The Hurting Kind, though, feels also like a departure: a book of reflections, of looking backwards and inwards, as much as one of observation, a book of the present, of the poet’s current self and surroundings. These poems simultaneously incite and interrogate connection and its opposite, and in language that is both astonishing and accessible, the speakers in Limón’s The Hurting Kind are truth-seekers that lean into feeling, that fully inhabit their physical and emotional worlds."—The Write Question "Poetry readers have come to expect greatness from Limón. . . My most brief statement on the quality of this collection is this: If you have space to teach just one book of poetry, make it The Hurting Kind. . . . What Limón manages with The Hurting Kind is rare; the poems are at once highly specific and yet broadly relatable, both technically masterful and easily comprehensible. In sum, this collection works equally well for both the avid poetry enthusiast and the reluctant reader. If I was going to try and convince someone that poetry is our most important verbal art, I would start with The Hurting Kind. . . . The Hurting Kind is a collection that begs to be shared, and one that will inevitably show signs of wear as readers carry it with them for weeks at a time."—The Poetry Question"Like Sharon Olds and Pablo Neruda, the poets she most resembles, and clearly learned from, Limón is a lover. She writes like a hyperporous lover of the world . . . One of the greatest challenges of our time is to see the living world as having value beyond us. To acknowledge the damage done. What is, Limón appears to be asking in this remarkable book, the best we have made, the finest instrument we know, is our language of love."—John Freeman, Alta Journal"Once again, Ada Limón has written a book I don't want to put down. I find the intensity of her honest interior and environmental explorations spellbinding . . . I see the world in these poems. It may cut me up, but it will also give me back to myself again."—Camille Dungy, Orion"[Limón's] empathetic and clarifying voice has always been a balm in trying times, and The Hurting Kind arrives at just the right moment, a tender exploration of what it means to be connected to the world and the pain and joy of daily living when such things feel increasingly difficult."—Chicago Review of Books“The latest from the open-hearted Kentucky-based poet Ada Limón, who writes earnestly about love, her Mexican American family, and the wildness of memory.”—Garden & Gun“In this book, Limón gives us delightfully candid poetry of celebration and of celebrated regret.”—Logos Journal "[Limón's] bright and clear-eyes lyrics extract the most profound tenderness from the simplest moments . . . An understated, powerful, unforgettable collection, and no doubt one of the best of this year."—Booklist, Starred Review“The tender, arresting sixth collection from Limón is an ode to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth that characterizes the natural world . . . Limón’s crystalline language is a feast for the senses, bringing monumental significance to the minuscule and revealing life in every blade of grass.”—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“In The Hurting Kind, [Limón] touches on the pain of living in the world today (the wounds of the natural world, the pandemic between us), but it is not all sorrows . . . You don’t have to look hard to see the joy and the small celebrations of the things that bind us to one another. The Hurting Kind is a book composed of our connective tissue.”—Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2022”"Poet Ada Limón often writes about birds, and her new book, The Hurting Kind, is no exception. Birds are a throughline in the book—between the seasons, from childhood to present, and knowing and unknowing."—BirdNote Radio“[A] tender and intimate new collection, in which Limón asks what it means to be ‘the hurting kind’ . . . to be both perceptive and permeable to the delicate strings that connect us to each other and to the world around us. All I can say is Ada Limón never misses! Each poem is a stone in the poet’s hand being turned over and over to reveal its quartz-qualities, its secret radiances, its prismatic reflections. Lucid, as ever.” —Serena, Books Are Magic, “Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2022”“Ada Limón’s latest collection has poems for each season that transcend the page and bloom into wilderness, tenderness, hauntings, loss, all in such distilled, but grounded language. This collection speaks to our current times, reminding us of our deep connection to nature, the animal in each of us, our ghosts, the loss of something that never existed. Her writing is as enduring and intuitive as the trees.” —Julie Jarema, Avid Bookshop“The Hurting Kind reminds us to remain open and tender to the world, even with all of its hard edges. I found myself enthralled with her poems of companionship, both human and animal. Limón’s lyric style propels me toward what I love most about poetry, the liminal space between rapture and pain.” —Halee Kirkwood, Birchbark Books“Once again, I reached the end of an Ada Limón collection and immediately want to start over again. Limón writes about human and nonhuman connections across seasons—seasons of Earth, seasons of grief, seasons of loving. Limón is an insightful storyteller who draws truth from the sometimes harsh beauty of the natural world around her. A gorgeous collection!” —Ellie Ray, Content Bookstore“I read this book while sitting in my favorite chair, covered with a lap blanket as the furnace kept winter outside. As I reflected on this wonderful collection, the day’s worries evaporated and sleep came easily. I highly recommend an evening of immersion with this prose which is so beautifully written.” —Todd Miller, Arcadia Books“Reading this collection made me feel like I was standing outside with my bare feet in the grass, scrunching my toes in the soil, feeling the breeze on my face, and pondering the oneness of everything.” —LeeAnna Callon, Blue Cypress Books“The Hurting Kind is the poetry you want to read over and over again because of the magical relationships [Limón] develops between humans and nature. As a fellow bird lover, it sealed my understanding of how important birds are in the universe.” —Easty Lambert-Brown, Ernet & Hadley Booksellers“Absolutely lovely poetry that reads like a love letter to our flying feathered friends . . . The entire collection exquisitely touches on grief and pain as well as the beauty to be found in nature.” —Vicki Honeyman, Literati Bookstore“I owe a debt of gratitude to Ada Limón. I had never had a deep relationship with poetry, and then someone introduced me to her wondrous world and I have been seeking out poetic beauty ever since . . . I absolutely love her new offering, The Hurting Kind. ‘Not the Saddest Thing in the World’ is a gem that sparkles in the soul. I would love to know what your favorite will be from The Hurting Kind.” —Linda Bond, Auntie’s BookshopPraise for Ada Limón“Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of details, often playful, and driven by conversational voice.”—Tracy K. Smith, Guardian“Limón is one of the country’s finest poets. . . . She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence.”—Shelf Awareness“[Limón] writes with remarkable directness about the painful experiences normally packaged in euphemism and, in doing so, invites the readers to enter the world where abundant joy exists alongside and simultaneous to loss.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune“Limón’s poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book.”—The Millions“Limón doesn’t write as if she needs us. She writes as if she wants us. Her words reveal, coax, pull, see us. . . . [She is] a poet with the most generous of eyes.”—Nikky Finney“Lyrical, tender, and knowing . . . Limón’s poetry connects the personal and the universal.”—Garden & Gun“With the knowing directness of a letter, Limón’s poems speak to the marrow of our everyday condition . . . The power of Limón’s unflinching examination of grief and loss is only surpassed by her love of beauty and compassion.”—BOMB Magazine“Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, [Limón’s] poetic gestures entrance and transfix.”—Richard Blanco“[Limón’s] poems come closer than any poems have to Annie Dillard’s essays . . . She’s that rarest of beasts, a poet who can take you by surprise.”—New Criterion“All of Limón’s books have found a home on my bookshelf, each volume a heartfelt reckoning of what it is be alive. In her collections, I find a grace that demonstrates her versatility and wisdom as well as a ‘surrendering.’ She explains that the central question of her work is, ‘How do we live in the world?’ Yet she’s a poet as comfortable with questions as with answers.”—Guernica“Wisely observant . . . Limón’s poems personify the twinned-narrative of despair and tenacity that has become part of America’s current political and social reality. . . . A spark of courage in our dark and troubled times.”—PANK“Limón’s work is a reminder that you can write poetry about big ideas.”—America “Limón teaches me that language can still surprise me. She shows me that the juxtaposition of words not previously joined can catch me off-guard, make me feel that shimmer of resonance, of curiosity.”—SignatureTable of Contents 1. Spring Give Me ThisInvasiveSwear On ItDrowning CreekSanctuaryA Good StoryIn the ShadowForsythiaAnd Too, the FoxStranger Things in the ThicketGlimpseThe First LessonAnticipationFoaling SeasonNot the Saddest Thing in the WorldStillwater Cove 2. Summer It Begins With the TreesBanished WondersWhere the Circles OverlapWhen It Comes Down To ItThe Magnificent FrigatebirdBlowing on the WheelJar of ScorpionsThe First FishJoint Custody On Skyline and TarCyrus & the SnakesOnly the Faintest BlueCalling Things What They Are“I Have Wanted Clarity in Light of My Lack of Light”Open WaterThornsThe Mountain Lion 3. Fall PrivacyIt’s the Season I Often MistakeHow We See Each OtherSportsProofHeart on FirePower LinesHookyMy Father’s Mustache Runaway ChildInstrumentationIf I Should FailIntimacy 4. Winter LoverThe Hurting KindAgainst NostalgiaForgivenessHeatObedienceThe UnspokenSalvageWhat is Handed DownToo CloseThe End of Poetry
£17.09
Vintage Publishing Dearly: Poems
Book Synopsis'A source of uncompromising elemental warmth' Ali SmithBy turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in flux, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment.Dearly is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.BOOK OF THE YEAR OBSERVER, FINANCIAL TIMESTrade ReviewHere we see Atwood at the height of her poetic powers * New York Times Book Review *A poignant yet playful collection of verse, about endings and departures, it is sliced with clever, sharp humour * Daily Telegraph *This collection of poems is a reckoning with the past that comes from a place of wisdom and control . . . You can almost hear her speaking voice, see the twinkle in her eye . . . wonderfully observed * Observer *Atwood's first poetry collection in over a decade is intimate, lingering delicately between the human and the natural, and this world and the next * New Statesman *She's become world famous for The Handmaid's Tale, and jointly won the 2019 Booker Prize for The Testaments, but Canadian author Margaret Atwood was once better known as a poet . . . this new volume brings together some of her favourite themes, from zombies, werewolves and aliens, to the passage of time and the most pressing political issues of the day * Evening Standard *
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Barber Shop Chronicles
Book SynopsisBarber Shop Chronicles is a generously funny, heart-warming and insightful new play set in five African cities, Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos, Accra, and in London.Inspired in part by the story of a Leeds barber, the play invites the audience into a unique environment where the banter may be barbed, but the truth always telling. The barbers of these tales are sages, role models and father figures who keep the men together and the stories alive.Inua Ellams''s celebrated play was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017.Trade ReviewThis is an absolute cracker. Inua Ellams has the simple but ingenious idea of exploring black masculinity through the humble barber's shop... It's funny, fast, laced with music and dance, and performed with irresistible good humour and style... But deep down this is also a thoughtful, serious and moving piece of drama... he writes with zip and a wonderful ear, and the piece is beautifully woven. * Financial Times *It's a play crammed with questions, discussing African attitudes to parental discipline in one scene, and the role Nigerian Pidgin plays in cultural identity in the next. Idea follows idea: Christianity as a business fattening the wallets of pastors; the western media's depiction of Lagos; the way that words can be used to debase and destroy. Again and again the plays returns to the theme of black masculinity and the different shapes it can take... The tone of the play shifts fluidly from comedy to poignancy to rage... This is all handled with skill and a huge amount of warmth. Barber Shop Chronicles is a pleasure to experience. The level of joy in the room is high... Rich, exhilarating theatre that opens a window into a world of men. * The Stage *It's always bracing to watch the National open its arms, doors and repertoire to new work, new audiences, new experiences. There's certainly not been anything like this all-male, all-black piece from poet/playwright Inua Ellams, which bounces with brio as it whisks us around a series of African barber shops in six countries on two continents over the space of a single day... it becomes gradually clear that these resolutely female-free spaces are also part confessional, part psychiatrist's chair for both the staff and customers. Hefty topics ripple and re-echo over the thousands of miles that separate the establishments: how to be a father, how to be a son, how to be a man. A joke about a fly in a pint also travels effortlessly. * Evening Standard *
£11.99
Nick Hern Books What If If Only
Book Synopsis'Make me happen' Your partner's died, could things have been different? Caryl Churchill's short play What If If Only premiered in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2021, directed by James Macdonald. This edition also includes the resonant and surreal short piece, Air. 'Caryl Churchill has remade the landscape of contemporary drama – and earned herself a place among the greats' GuardianTrade Review'A truly uncompromising theatrical voice at the top of her game... [Churchill] packs more into this 20-minute piece about death, grief and the multiverse than many writers manage at seven times the length... it has a crystalline beauty, sly humour and boundless imagination' * Evening Standard *'Quietly astonishing... a taut distillation and a gripping realisation of a giddying idea that resonates long after the curtain falls' * The Stage *'Trust Caryl Churchill to pack more meaty matter into 20 minutes than most playwrights manage in two hours. Her surreal new short covers nothing less than bereavement, time and the universe – and does so with dizzying complexity... [She demonstrates] absolute mastery of her form. Like Picasso in his late sketches, she has become the essence of herself, still challenging, thoughtful and heading in directions no one else dares... a rocket of thought to propel you into the night' * Whatsonstage *'There is nobody like Caryl Churchill and it's hard to think of any writer in history so completely on top of their game at her age. [What If If Only is] just 20 minutes, but it contains whole worlds' * Time Out *'Packs many an emotional punch, traumatic and claustrophobic while laugh-out-loud funny' * Independent *'Crammed with poetry and profundity. A meditation on grief and mortality that encompasses huge existential questions about the ways humanity is messing up the planet, ourselves and each other, What If If Only is incredibly intense... a nugget of supremely accomplished theatre... It leaves you moved and marvelling afresh at Churchill's tireless inventiveness and consummate skill' * iNews *
£8.54
NeWest Press Coconut
Book Synopsis
£12.79
Pan Macmillan Christmas Poems
Book SynopsisThis beautifully illustrated collection brings together, for the first time, Carol Ann Duffy’s much-celebrated festive poems.For a decade, while she was Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy gifted her thousands of readers an illustrated poem every Christmas, transporting them in one year to a seventeenth-century festival on the frozen Thames, in another to Western Front to witness the famous 1914 truce, then to a sweet winter’s night in the South of France with Pablo Picasso and his small dog.Christmas Poems showcases Duffy’s bold and innovative voice, alongside gorgeous artwork from Rob Ryan, David De Las Heras and Lara Hawthorne, amongst others. These ten much-loved poems are gathered together for the first time in this compendium to make a perfect gift for old friends celebrating a decade’s tradition or those experiencing the magic of Duffy’s festive verse for the first time.Trade ReviewDuffy's spellbinding verse, spiced with witty, wintry illustrations, recaptures a magic most of us left behind in childhood * Intelligent Life *
£17.00
The 87 Press Scammer
Book SynopsisLuke Roberts had this to say about Scammer: “Flaubert said with my burned hand I write about fire. In Scammer, Dom Hale plunges his whole head into the datastream, dictating his blips and theme songs through mouthfuls of toxic waste. He has his own venom: it’s about style and it’s about form. These poems don’t just sprinkle on a little diction or flip a filter on or off. They’re not accessories. They perform increasingly desperate attempts to find some texture in the frictionless glow of the screen. What’s the etymology of scam? What was your mother’s maiden name? How much surplus value did Silicon Valley extract since the start of this sentence? What year is this? What’s happening? What the actual fuck? Frack the Millenium Dome. Poison the Cabinet. Napalm Eton. Cancel the biopic of Northern Rock. Scammer is what we’ve been asking for in our sleep. A diagram of dead ends. A blueprint of cracks in the infrastructure. It reads just as good forwards as backwards, at any speed, straight to the head. You could cook an egg on it. You could cook two. It’s legit.”
£13.49
The Poetry Translation Centre The Cartographer
Book Synopsis
£7.00
not a cult LLC Violet in Some Places
Book SynopsisViolet in Some Places is the life of a man enveloped in the raw, nurturing magic of matriarchs. If ever there was a guide toward masculine vulnerability, power through listening, a rosetta stone for empathy— it is here in the silky, poetic prose beautifully woven throughout this empowering collection from Cebo Campbell.
£11.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Mother Courage and Her Children
Book SynopsisThis new Student Edition, featuring the classic John Willett translation of the play, includes an introduction by Katherine Hollander, which explores the following:* Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis)* Themes (war; nature; capitalism)* Dramatic devices (epic theatre)* Production history and critical reception* Academic debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist)* Further studyWidely regarded as Brecht''s best work, Mother Courage and her Children was written in 1938-9 and received its premiere in Zurich in 1941. Mother Courage - a canteen woman serving with the Swedish Army during the Thirty Years War (1618-48) - follows the armies, selling provisions and liquor to the troops. Both her sons die in the war and her dumb daughter, Kattrin, is mortally wounded as she beats a drum to warn the town of Halle of an impending attack. Yet, all the while, Mother CTable of ContentsChronology Contexts (Thirty Years War, 1618-1648; World War II and exile; sources; influential figures such as Brecht, Margarete Steffin, Helene Weigel and Karin Michaelis) Themes (War; Nature; Capitalism) Dramatic Devices (Epic Theatre) Production History and Critical Reception Academic Debate (Marxist, feminist and postmodernist) Further Study MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN
£10.99
Concord Theatricals Rodgers Hammersteins Oklahoma
£10.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Life of Pi
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2022 Olivier Award for Best New PlayLife of Pi will make you believe in the power of theatre (Times).After a cargo ship sinks in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, there are five survivors stranded on a lifeboat - a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, a Royal Bengal tiger, and a sixteen year-old boy named Pi. Time is against them, nature is harsh, who will survive?Based on one of the most extraordinary and best-loved works of fiction - winner of the Man Booker Prize, selling over fifteen million copies worldwide - and featuring breath-taking puppetry and state-of-the-art visuals, Life of Pi is a universally acclaimed, smash hit adaptation of an epic journey of endurance and hope.Adapted by acclaimed playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, this edition was published to coincide with the West End premiere in November 2021.Trade ReviewIt will make you believe in theatre. A triumph. * Sunday Times *Everything about this production is amazing * Evening Standard *Roar it out. This is a hit. * Times *
£10.99
Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press Meditations in an Emergency
Book SynopsisFrank O'Hara was one of the great poets of the twentieth century and, along with such widely acclaimed writers as Denise Levertov, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley and Gary Snyder, a crucial contributor to what Donald Allen termed the New American Poetry, 'which, by its vitality alone, became the dominant force in the American poetic tradition.'Frank O'Hara was born in Baltimore in 1926 and grew up in New England; from 1951 he lived and worked in New York, both for Art News and for the Museum of Modern Art, where he was an associate curator. O'Hara's untimely death in 1966 at the age of forty was, in the words of fellow poet John Ashbery, 'the biggest secret loss to American poetry since John Wheelwright was killed.'This collection is a reissue of a volume first published by Grove Press in 1957, and it demonstrates beautifully the flawless rhythm underlying O'Hara's conviction that to write poetry, indeed to live, 'you just go on your nerve.'
£11.69
WW Norton & Co Oedipus Tyrannos
Book Synopsis
£7.99
Concord Theatricals The Lightning Thief
Book Synopsis
£10.99
