Poetry Books

Book SynopsisLloyd Suh is the author of plays including The Heart Sellers, The Chinese Lady, The Far Country (Pulitzer Prize finalist), Bina's Six Apples, Charles Francis Chan Jr.'s Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery, Franklinland, American Hwangap, and others, which have been produced at the Atlantic Theater Company, Public Theater, Alliance Theatre, Huntington Theater, Milwaukee Rep, Denver Center, Magic Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Children's Theatre Company, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, and the National Asian American Theatre Company among others, including internationally at the Cultural Center of the Philippines and with PCPA at the Guerilla Theatre in Seoul, Korea. Awards include the Steinberg Playwright Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Herb Alpert Award, Horton Foote Prize, and Helen Merrill Award. He served as Director of Artistic Programs at The Lark from 2011-20. A resident playwright at New Dramatists and a Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio and Ensemble Studio Theatre, he was elected in 2016 to the Dramatists Guild Council and serves as a Professor of the Practice at Princeton University. Christine Mok is Associate Professor of English at the University of Rhode Island, USA. Her work has been published in the Journal of Asian American Studies, Theatre Survey, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. She is co-editor with Joshua Chambers-Letson of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital (Methuen Drama, 2022).

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Book SynopsisKrishna Kumari: The Tragedy of India introduces readers to the first English language play in modern India.Written in 1826 by English Subba Rao, one of the first Indians to be schooled in English, Krishna Kumari depicts the true story of a princess of Udaipur who is forced to commit suicide in order to end a war started by her suitors, the rulers of the neighboring kingdoms of Jaipur and Jodhpur. Tragically, her death proves to be in vain because the mercenaries recruited by the contending rulers nevertheless proceed to plunder the region. All three kingdoms are then compelled to seek the protection of the East India Company, bringing their independence to an end.Sharp and witty, Krishna Kumari was intended to warn Indian principalities against the follies that led to the downfall of the Rajputs. Unfortunately, the play scarcely saw the light of day. Angered by Subba Rao's opposition to their power, the British

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Book SynopsisPhoebe McIntosh is an actress and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers' Lab programme, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. Phoebe won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing programme and was selected for Penguin Random House's WriteNow programme.

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Book SynopsisAlex Hill is a writer and actor. His play Why I Stuck a Flare Up My Arse for England debuted at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2023 to critical acclaim, including four-star reviews in The Scotsman and Broadway World UK. The show transferred to London's Southwark Playhouse in spring 2024 before transferring again to Adelaide Fringe Festival in Australia, in spring 2025.

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Book SynopsisSamantha Ipema is a classically trained writer/actor/director based in London and New York. After training at Royal Central's MA Classical and Stella Adler Studios, she started Wild Geese Productions in 2023 to begin creating and producing her own and other's work.As an actress, Sam has been nominated for 'Upcoming Performers to Watch For' (New York Shakespeare), 'Best Supporting Actor' (MWFF), and won 'Best Actress in a Short' (TSFF). Her pilot Dear Annie, I Hate You is named in Stage 32's Best of 2023 and Coverfly's RED List. Her first two shorts Conversations In A Waiting Room won at Independent Shorts and were nominated at NYSFF, LAFA, New Creators, and more

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Book SynopsisFraser Scott is a director from Paisley, Scotland, interested in work that speaks to audiences, that responds to the space that it's in, and tells a clear story. Fraser is a recipient of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation Scholarship & a Cross Trust Award and holds an MFA in Theatre Directing (Birkbeck, University of London) 2023-25 and a BA Filmmaking (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) 2017-20.

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Book Synopsis'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'A beautiful new edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's most iconic poems.

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Book SynopsisThe best-loved, bestselling poem ever publishedTrade Reviewan attractive new edition with a lengthy essay by Tony Briggs, who characterises the poem, memorably, as "the story of the apocalypse told to us by a kind uncle" * DAILY MAIL *a lovely new edition... Professor Briggs does us all a favour by putting before our red and weary eyes FitzGerald and this legacy from an older Iran. -- Libby Purves * TIMES *

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Book SynopsisThe perfect introduction to one of the most influential American poets - includes the controversial 'Leaves of Grass'

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Book SynopsisIn the summer of 2020, Cole Arthur Riley was desperate for a spirituality she could trust. Amidst ongoing national racial violence, the isolation of the pandemic, and a surge of anti-Black rhetoric in many Christian spaces, she began dreaming of a harbour for a more human, more liberating expression of faith. She went on to create Black Liturgies, a digital project that connects spiritual practice with Black emotion, memory, and the Black body.In this book, she deepens the work of that project, bringing together new prayers, letters, poetry, meditation questions, breath practice, and the writings of Black literary ancestors to offer 43 liturgies that can be practised individually or as a community. With a poet''s touch and a sensitivity that has made her one of the most important spiritual voices at work today, Riley invites readers to reflect on their own experiences of wonder, rest, rage, and repair, while also including liturgies for holidays like Lent, Advent and Mother'Trade ReviewCole Arthur Riley is a spiritual guide and a gift in our lives. Restoring us to ourselves and reminding us of our humanness, our fragility, and the strength of faith, she calls us back to community, to breath, to our god-given selves. Black Liturgies is true spiritual balm for our troubled times. * Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times bestselling author of What Truth Sounds Like *Black Liturgies is a garden for the soul. With rare wisdom, beautiful clarity, and generous vulnerability, Cole Riley brings her whole self to these letters, verses, and promptings, offering bright, deep truths about who we are and can be as Black women, Black people, and human beings. Hold these luminous words close and let them be your balm. * Tiya Miles, National Book Award winning author of All That She Carried *

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Book SynopsisRevision is serious business... and we're serious about revision. Scholastic study guides were created especially for the closed bookAQA GCSE English Literature examination.

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Book SynopsisAn all-pervasive fear of the future and a guilty pleasure in the excesses of the present drive Mike Bartlett's epic rollercoaster of a play from 1968 to 2525 and back again.Trade Review'Mike Bartlett has created something completely different: a three hour play of startling ambition.' Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 05.08.10 'This demented carnival confirms Bartlett, 29, as one of our most exciting young playwrights.' Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard, 05.08.10 'The play does its job of reminding us just how precarious our exhistance is.' Dominic Maxwell, The Times, 05.08.10 'Bartlett beautifully combines domestic and cosmic issues.' Michael Billington, The Guardian, 05.08.10 'Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London is the theatrical equivalent of a thrilling roller coaster ride.' Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 06.08.10

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Book SynopsisFrom Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a stunning collection of early works written from 1921-1927 and curated by award winning poet and National Book Award finalist, Danez Smith

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Book SynopsisWhy fear Shakespeare? By placing the words of the original play next to line-by-line translations in plain English, this popular guide makes Shakespeare accessible to everyone. And now it features expanded literature guide sections that help students study smarter.

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Book SynopsisThe Pitchfork Disney heralded the arrival of a unique and disturbing voice in the world of contemporary drama. Manifesting Ridley''s vivid and visionary imagination and the dark beauty of his outlook, the play resonates with his trademark themes: East London, storytelling, moments of shocking violence, memories of the past, fantastical monologues, and that strange mix of the barbaric and the beautiful he has made all his own.The Pitchfork Disney was Ridley''s first play and is now seen as launching a new generation of playwrights who were unafraid to shock and court controversy. This unsettling, dreamlike piece has surreal undertones and thematically explores fear, dreams and story-telling. First produced in 1991, it has gone on to be recognised as the annunciation of Ridley''s dark and seductive world.Trade ReviewIt's one hell of a play, Philip Ridley's The Pitchfork Disney . . . There's a deep artistry here and a searing vividness of imagination that leaves audiences shocked and subtly changed. * Scotsman *A drama that defined the era of "in-yer-face" theatre. * Evening Standard *Ridley's play, with its surreal fantasies, has an edgy, alarming potency of its own, the writing unfettered by any expectations of how a play should be. * Guardian *Flamboyantly grisly first play . . . it blazed a trail for the edgy style that the critic Aleks Sierz dubbed "in-yer-face theatre" . . . in its provocative poeticism, in its mixture of the dreamlike and the dangerous . . . it fed into later works by Jez Butterworth, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane and Anthony Neilson . . . a show that both depicts and deconstructs danger * The Times *A cornerstone of the 'in yer face' theatre movement . . . Trauma-riven denial glints darkly in the dank, soiled poetry of Ridley's prose. * Stage *Unsettling and gripping * Sunday Times *A portal through which we access long-suppressed childhood fears from which we emerge with a ghost-train passenger's sense of survival. * Jewish Chronicle *

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Book SynopsisGood evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.Trade ReviewImmaculately staged . . . reduced even a staid matinee audience to hysterics * The Times *Effortless slapstick that Keaton and Chaplin would be hard pushed to trump * Whatsonstage *For a side-splitting, jolly good laugh, The Play That Goes Wrong is exactly what the doctor ordered * British Theatre Guide *A highly developed sense of mischief and cheeky aplomb ... it's all very silly ... but it's done with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek. * Guardian *Boy does it hit the funny bone ... a rising tide of hysteria ... an enduring cult hit in the making * Daily Telegraph *This new comedy has, of course, actually done everything right . . . there are laughs to be had here . . . * Time Out London *Farce is rarely funnier; the theatre of the absurd, rarely more surreal. * Independent *often very funny . . . slapstick, done well, can reduce even the gravest souls into tears and there are some perfectly timed pratfalls here * Financial Times *these improv stand-up Lamda graduates are definitely on to something. * Daily Express *

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Book SynopsisIt Says Here is Sean O’Brien’s follow-up to his celebrated collection Europa, and has a vision as rich and wide-ranging as its predecessor. Set against shorter, ruthlessly focused pieces – vicious and scabrous political sketches and satires charting the growth of extremism and the disintegration of democracy – are meditations on the imaginative life, dream and remembrance, time and recurrence. There are elegies for friends and fellow poets; paranoiac, brooding pastorals; other poems lay bare the maddening trials of a historically literate mind as it attempts to navigate a world gone post-content, post-intellectual, and at times post-memory. At the centre of the book is the long poem Hammersmith, a shadowy, cinematic dream-vision of England during and since the Second World War. Here, O’Brien charts a psychogeographic journey through the English countryside and the haunted precincts of London, mapping a labyrinth of love, madness and lost history. The result is a stirring, illuminating document of a time of immense societal flux and upheaval by one of our finest poets and most insightful cultural commentators.'In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, O’Brien is WH Auden’s true inheritor.' Irish TimesTrade ReviewIn both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, O’Brien is WH Auden’s true inheritor. * Irish Times *

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Book SynopsisHer final collection as Poet Laureate, a frank, disarming and deeply moving exploration of loss and remembrance in their many forms. Presented in a beautiful, foiled package, this will be the poetry book of the year.

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Book Synopsis**Winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize****Longlisted for the Griffin Prize and the Massachusetts Book Award****Soon to be adapted for screen by Lena Waithe and Warner Bros.**An award-winning collection and novella exploring the realm of speculative fiction, while addressing issues as varied as abolition, Black ecological consciousness, and the boundless promise of parenthoodAcross three sequences, Joshua Bennett's new book recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building even now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems that deal with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth. The central section, The Book of Mycah, features an alternate history where Malcolm X is resurrected from the dead, as is a young black man shot by the police some fifty years later in Brooklyn. The final section of The Study of Human Life are poems that Bennett has written about fatherhood, on the heels of his own first child being born.Praise for Joshua BennettOne of the brightest intellectual and political thinkers of a new generation' Jesse McCarthyBennett conjures a spirit of kinship that, illuminated by redolent imagery, borders on mythic' New YorkerJoshua Bennett's astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable' Tracy K Smith

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Book SynopsisA beautiful paperback edition of Charles Causley's Collected Poems for Children with a foreword by poet Roger McGough and illustrated with line art by John Lawrence. This Macmillan Classics edition is a special gift to treasure, and the perfect start to a lifelong love of poetry.The poems in this collection were chosen and arranged the author. They feature a variety of subjects from funny to sad and seasons to fables – great to read aloud together.To illustrate this book, John travelled to Cornwall to meet Charles Causley. If you look carefully you will find many references to Cornwall and its history and traditions throughout the book.'Church bells ought to greet the arrival of Causley's Collected Poems for Children . . . it is so plum-pudding-rich in delight' – Children's Books History SocietyTrade ReviewChurch bells ought to greet the arrival of Causley's Collected Poems for Children . . . it is so plum-pudding-rich in delight -- Children's Books History SocietyBefore I was made Poet Laureate, I was asked to name my choice of the best poet for the job. Without hesitation I named Charles Causley – this marvelously resourceful, original poet. -- Ted Hughes

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2021 Highland Book PrizeJen Hadfield’s new collection is an astonished beholding of the wild landscape of her Shetland home, a tale of hard-won speech, and the balm of the silence it rides upon. The Stone Age builds steadily to a powerful and visionary panpsychism: in Hadfield’s telling, everything – gate and wall, flower and rain, shore and sea, the standing stones whose presences charge the land – has a living consciousness, one which can be engaged with as a personal encounter.The Stone Age is a timely reminder that our neurodiversity is a gift: we do not all see the world the world in the same way, and Hadfield’s lyric line and unashamedly high-stakes wordplay provide nothing less than a portal into a different kind of being. The Stone Age is the work of a singular artist at the height of her powers – one which dramatically extends and enriches the range of our shared experience.

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Book SynopsisColin Greer knows a lot about a lot. His rich life as an educator and author/playwright, imersed in the social and political justice trenches, is reflected in his latest poetry book alongside his wordily wisdom. The author muses on the human condition through verse, taking the lucky reader through the ordinary, the personal, the sublime, and tragic alike. IF BUT MY GAZE COULD HEAL''s 150 poems are thoughtfully broken into five thematic chapters: With or Without Which, Mischief and Melancholy, Stick out your Tongue, Phew!, and What is Hidden and Hidden From.The Reverend Billy Talen, founder of the radical performance group Church of Stop Shopping exclaimed, "reading Gaze made my hair change colour."

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Book SynopsisPoems that blur the boundaries of language and species, inviting us to imagine a new world. The expansive reworking of language in Impastoral flies through the possible voices of outsides and insides—slug, probe, horse carriage, sewer, potted plant, lab rat, vampire, bot fly, giant cow. Language, in Brandan Griffin’s poetry, is neither human nor nonhuman, and it undoes that very idea of these distinctions, so beings—slugprobe, pottedhorsesewer, telepathybarcode, mammaltexts—morph and change in between boundaries. Each of these poems is an organism, a collection of living connections, looped interiorities strung together in worlds tunneling through worlds. The poems’ composition becomes a decomposition of budding, breeding, and fluctuating. Reading this collection is an experience of becoming deformed and merged into the experiences of other beings; you are sea vent, microprocessor, cell gel, bug, a greenly translucent leaf typed half a sound at a time. Griffin invites us to imagine all possible beings and to hatch into a fresh world. Impastoral won the Omnidawn Open Book contest, selected by Brian Teare. Trade Review“Impastoral intervenes into the conventions of English orthography to grant words the capacity to visually register ‘telepithy’ between human and more-than-human beings. What appears on the page like misspelling is instead a spell-binding, the act of typing a sort of psychical sonar that allows the self to key into what lies far beyond itself: ‘why this one place that’s me/ while the sououound/ ripples and i/ wripple in it.’ The resulting poems are radical, records of mystical and ecological interconnection, prosodic and typographical experiences as ecstatic as they are wrenching. For the world to which Griffin’s poems are wired really is our world, as full of sewage and violence and digital signals as of animals and plants and insects, and to be intertwined is no paradise: ‘nature a sluice where/every creature gets flushed.’ Because these poems acknowledge the mortality at the core of being here so totally threaded together, I trust more their insights into their experience of what binds us in pleasure and wonder. And I adore this idiolect invented to let in more knowing, this language that claims, ‘The channels of gnosis are opening/again.’ Dear reader: it’s true. Ready yourself for a book like no other.” -- Brian Teare, author of Doomstead Days“Griffin is a magician whose poems whirl letters and reshape words to conjure up a new language. Impastoral entranced me with its spells and spelling: ‘breign is / brain / is two squirrels is squarrels / eels / in skull bone.’ Ranging from bats to botflies to nefarious scientists teaching farm animals to speak, a large cast of mostly non-human voices offers the reader a quasi-sci-fi ecopoetry that does not sound like anything else. It’s rare to encounter a first book that so confidently invents its style against the familiar. I felt like I was learning to read with kaleidoscope glasses. Both global and cellular, Griffin’s vision inspires us to perceive our world in fresh and memorable ways.” -- Alan Felsenthal, author of Lowly“Griffin’s febrile, fertilizing Impastoral is the most beautiful and mutually liberating work, of the symbiotic imagination, is poetry ‘suckling all species.’ Not post-lyric but compost lyric hyper sentience: Griffin’s superfine awareness joins the ritualistic decompositional forces of nature, breaking the cell walls between the biographeme and elegy with a Word that is always teeming with motion, faster than the malafouster (disaster!) it dissolves before resolving elsewhere, in the arms of the fly, with a new superabundance of being to which he adds his. These are poems of linguistic telepathy and viriditas— Hildegard von Bingen’s neologism for the ‘greening force’ of God. And Brandan is a devoted amanuensis among ‘all that goes frothing generously,’ decomposing and re-materializing in the superfine sentience teeming eternity technology that we are. God types faster, Griffin rides this, and his riding knows the working soil, the air, is already revolution. Griffin is the rare poet that joins nature in the awareness— that is already revolution—that heals and renews, that writes in the eternal, heart-root tense. Reading this work, my attention too grows to work, in the heart, to supersoaker its roots, in the earth and the ‘air glutted with sensewine,’ which is the greatest gift I can think of. Because of it I will always know a happier world.” -- Farnoosh Fathi, author of Great Guns

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Book SynopsisA poetry collection in nine sections that each take on an aspect of memory. The poems in t/here it is take multiple forms as each section reflects on variations of experience, engaging with the simultaneity of historic and present time while yearning for a future that is beyond what we can envision. In Section I, the poet grapples with ancestral legacy and connection to the natural world. Section II deals with the way one traverses the urban landscape and with various strategies of survival, and Section III recalls the observations and experiences of youth. Through nine linked poems, Section IV complicates the idea of witness under a capitalistic system bent on exploitation and devaluing the sacred human experience. Section V speaks to the lost opportunity of making profound human connections during the race to acquire more material goods. In Section VI, the poems take on the domestic and institutional places that govern our lives. A single poem forms Section VII, mapping the intersection between jazz and emotion. With Section VIII, Anderson pays homage to jazz greats and reflects on the ways that listening can carry one back to moments of growth and lamentation. The two poems that close out the book in Section IX bring the reader to a place of vulnerability, expressing the desire to be able to discern the multiple avenues of one’s journey with awareness. Trade Review“Anderson, who knows and can teach us a thing or two about the music, hears poet/pianist Cecil Taylor coming from a place ‘where the devil gives up his hold of the music.’ The devil’s loss, that devil we know, is all to our gain. t/here it is turns out to be a place somewhere ‘between spoken and vernacular,’ a place where phonemes congregate, arranging themselves into new melodies/meanings, even pronunciations. These are poems that tune your ears and turn them towards the new good news.” -- A.L. Nielsen, author of A Brand New Beggar"Anderson turns shards of memory into poems we can never forget—fleshy, raw, intimate poems that cut to the bone and cradle the heart. He summons worlds of violence and violins, revealing the secrets of a culture capable of surviving the multiple pandemics that made his world and our own. To the readers who did not know Anderson was one of America’s greatest contemporary poets.” -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original"Anderson is obsessed with sound: The pulse of his ancestors, the rhythms of nature, the inquisitive beat of his poetry, and the sound of all three meeting on the page for what, he has convinced us, is an inevitable reckoning. His poems act as throbbing, brailed maps that we want to reread, touch, and interact to record invaluable vestiges, knowing the treasure is in the questions tendered. Poems like ‘What’s in a Name’ end with beginnings.” -- Kimberly Reyes, author of Running to Stand Still“I am mesmerized by this book. I have rarely been so swept up by the music in a poet’s language as I am in reading Anderson’s unrelenting symphony of American diction, American history, and the visceral realities of his American experience. These poems buzz with wordplay, dance with lingo, shimmy with imagery. Just as much as all that, they are unflinching in their wisdom about race, about class, about all the violence and discord in our American culture. Once I picked up t/here it is, I could not . . .—scratch that. Once t/here it is picked me up, it would not let me go.” -- Jaswinder Bolina, author of The 44th of July

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

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Book SynopsisA long-awaited, comprehensive collection of renowned poet and performance artist Jayne Cortez's poetry. Like the jazz rhythms that inspired and punctuated her practice, Jayne Cortez improvised her way through and across disciplines, bridging poetry and performance with music and the visual arts to create a unique body of work. Consciously rupturing the boundaries between art and politics, Cortez's practice uneasily fits within literary movements of the 20th century, residing everywhere and nowhere between the Black Arts Movement, Surrealism, feminism, and early performance art. As intersectional as it is interdisciplinary, her work is consistently visceral and fearless, acting as a powerful expression of collective rage on behalf of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. In the words of historian Robin D.G. Kelley, her poetry was never 'protest' but a complete revolt, a clarion call for a new way of life.

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Book SynopsisA pulpy, mytho-poetic dispatch from an “anarchist jurisdiction” that explores the liberatory possibilities of community and womanhood. Enter: Local Woman, an archetypal figure, fresh from the forest into the streets of Portland, Oregon. She is a Black trans woman, seeking survival and satisfaction, giving seduction, disenfranchisement, and the contradictions of femme womanhood a face, body, and soul. In sensual, evocative lyrics, jzl jmz documents Local Woman’s movement through natural disaster, anti-fascist protest, romantic engagements, and an expanding sense of personal autonomy.

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Book SynopsisTaut and contemplative, these poems ruminate on family, exile, love, and the vagaries of human perception. Love Training encapsulates Andrés Neuman’s work as a poet, spanning two decades in a single unified collection. The book is divided into three sections that complement and respond to each other. The first, “Love Training,” focuses on family, loss, relationships, desire, and a sense of anchoring in the world. The second, “Fictions of Sight,” is concerned with questions of perception, perspective, language and creativity. The third, “I Don’t Know Why,” is a whimsical set of interconnected poems that ask unanswered questions, serving as a kind of coda. While Andrés Neuman is a rightly celebrated and widely translated novelist, he is also a lucid—and quite prolific—poet. Love Training is the first volume to make his sensitive, incisive poems available in English.

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Book SynopsisIn Ten Bridges I've Burnt, Brontez Purnell - the bard of the underloved and overlooked - turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. 'The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in,' Purnell writes, 'is simply existing.' The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges Ive Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers' rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement. With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges Ive Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.Trade Review"This book is brutal and brutally honest, but still perversely addictive because Brontez Purnell is a performer in the truest sense. Reading Ten Bridges I've Burnt, I felt tucked-in with him, along for the intimate ride, and paused only once to write down a part I’d been looking for my whole life." — Miranda July "This memoir in verse makes me enormously happy. To the things I know about Brontez Purnell add astral poet (in terms of imagination and scale) and classicist (elegant concerns). Witness it here. Lines leap out of themselves like light eruptions from the funniest angel you ever saw. I could listen to this poet for hours, drive for days on a single thought: 'in my defense/I just had to signify/that poetry/is still dangerous.'" — Eileen Myles "Brontez Purnell has impeccable comic timing and the gift of absolute candor. His poems leap off the page with insouciant, revolutionary speed. The urgent messages they deliver—with stinging wit and carefully honed critical defiance—provide inspiring models for how to perform, how to thrive, and how to write." — Wayne Koestenbaum

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Book SynopsisDelving into his life and experiences of love, loss, growing up mixed-race in Newport, and more, this is the début poetry collection from award-winning multidisciplinary artist and children's laureate Wales Connor Allen.

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Book SynopsisInspired by the fate of Julia and Winston under the watchful eyes of Big Brother of George Orwell’s 1984, Docteur Cybirdy has compiled an eclectic blend of quotes, briefs and rhapsodies: 84-19 Rhapsodies & Co from I Naming and shaming world leaders, casting light on post-genomic science, and highlighting the main triggers of the inhuman aspect of the Covid era. With courage, Docteur Cybirdy reveals her thoughts and intimate beliefs, prompting an urgent review of the role of post-genomic science in today’s world, while instilling hope for a peaceful and serene future for humanity.

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Book SynopsisTrans poet Parker Lee (author of the bestselling coffee days whiskey nights) returns with an all new collection of poetry, prose, and aphorisms. This is a journey from hopelessness through to self-discovery, self-love, and romantic love presented in three sections: moonrise, sunrise, and stardust. In moonrise, you'll follow Parker as she copes with various struggles, including alcohol abuse, disordered eating, gender dysphoria, and mental health. In sunrise, Parker finds herself coming to terms with and accepting her identity as a woman, and everything that comes with being trans in today's current political and social climate. Through that struggle, Parker comes out on the other side in stardust, dedicated to self-love, sapphic love, and trans joy. With raw vulnerability and unwavering strength, The Starlight She Becomes is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the beauty found in embracing one's true self.

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Book SynopsisONE OF CBC BOOKS’ BEST BOOKS OF 2023A jubilant, irreverent, generous collection by a poet facing terminal illness.Following his New York Times Best of the Year Dark Woods, Richard Sanger's fourth and final book is a clear-eyed and big-hearted inventory of the passions of a life well lived. Understated, tender, archly funny and achingly generous, Way to Go is a joyful catalog of Sanger's loves and a last gift from an irrepressibly jubilant poet.Trade ReviewPraise for Way to Go"Sanger wields the traditional tools of the poet—rhyme, metre and metaphor—brilliantly, and inhabits a range of speakers and situations. [...] The collection is more a celebration of life than a lament."—Toronto Star"In Way to Go, Richard Sanger uses poetry to explore his passions, give gratitude and provide humourous observations about a life well-lived."—CBC Books"Remarkable [...] We should all be so blessed (and brave) to leave such a farewell as Sanger has."—Miramichi ReaderPraise for Richard Sanger“The rueful, lucid, deliberately casual poems in Dark Woods can surprise you with their tenderness, but also with their prickly intelligence.”—New York Times“Splendidly-shaped and imagistically adroit. These are outstanding poems.”—Globe and Mail“In the poems' accentual, lightly metered stanzas we are made conscious of time passing, the body aging, and those quiet moments outside time ... understated and moving.”—Malahat Review"[Sanger's] poems are tender and often funny. Sometimes arch, sometimes bemused, he is a humane observer of daily life ... Throughout Dark Woods, his cleverness and verbal mischief enliven traditional forms."—Canadian Literature“Spectacular … Sophisticated metrical sense, teasing wit and limitless linguistic resources … The real thing: an original poet of rare talent.”—Montreal Gazette“Very accomplished … [Sanger] writes in a voice that is all his own, and its groundtone is a cleverly, progressively sophisticated one which is never merely adroit.”—Journal of Canadian Poetry

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Book SynopsisDoris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets, admired especially for poems that balance precision and control with passion and bravado. Her achievement, according to Estonian Literature, is in writing poems which are both `plentiful and fragile like a crystal...balancing on the line between the human soul and the universe, between sound and silence'. Days of Grace spans over forty years of her poetic output, showing how the sustained depth and clarity of her poetry lies in her ability to create ambiguity and suggest harmony at the same time, with a multiplicity of meanings generating the opposite of clarity: a form of hinting which at its most illuminating becomes utterly oracle-like. Such is the metaphysical sensitivity of her poetry that its moral charge is sensed almost physically. She has also been called `a priestess of love' who is fearless as well as discreet in her portrayal of love that is so `pure and elevating like mountain air' that she seems to be writing from another time or dimension.Trade Review`There is a fierce austerity and dark humour in the language.' - Ciaran Carson; `McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov's translations capture the barely capturable essence of Doris Kareva's poems which, quite suddenly, make me think of snowflakes, crystalline, and yet on the cusp of disappearance.' - Marius Kociejowski

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Book SynopsisNaomi Shihab Nye is a wandering poet. For nearly 40 years she has travelled America and the world to read and teach. Born in Missouri to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she grew up in St Louis, Jerusalem and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian- American background, the cultural diversity of Texas, and her experiences in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America and the Middle East, her poetry 'reflects this textured heritage, which endowed her with an openness to the experiences of others and a sense of continuity across borders' (Bill Moyers). Through her empathetic use of poetic language, she reveals the shining nature of our daily lives, whether writing about local life in her inner-city Texan neighbourhood or the daily rituals of Jews and Palestinians in the war-torn Middle East. Probing the fragile connection between language and meaning, she shows how lives are marked by tragedy, inequity and misunderstanding, and that our best chance of surviving losses and shortcomings is to be acutely aware of the sacred in all things.Trade ReviewHer poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life. * William Stafford *Tender yet forceful, funny and commonsensical, reflective and empathic. -- Donna Seaman * Booklist *Table of Contents10 A Big Life by Naomi Shihab Nye 12 Loose Leaf by Naomi Shihab Nye 14 Touching Tender Spots by Robert Bonazzifrom Different Words to Pray (1980) 23 Minnows 24 The Art of Disappearing 25 Kindness 27 Walking Down Blanco Road at Midnight 28 Adiosfrom Hugging the Jukebox (1982) 30 Lights from Other Windows 31 Daily 32 Making a Fist 33 Famous 34 So Much Happiness 35 Hugging the Jukeboxfrom Yellow Glove (1986) 39 Trying to Name What Doesn't Change 40 The Use of Fiction 41 Yellow Glove 43 Two Countries 44 Pakistan with Open Arms 46 Rain 47 Catalogue Army 48 What He Said to His Enemiesfrom Red Suitcase (1994) 51 Travel Alarm 54 From Here to There 55 The Attic and Its Nails 56 Voices 57 His Secret 58 Violin 59 Living with Mistakes 60 Valentine for Ernest Mann 61 What Brings Us Out 63 Saved 64 Shouldersfrom Fuel (1998) 66 Muchas Gracias por Todo 67 Bill's Beans 68 Wedding Cake 70 Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things 71 Elevator 72 Eye Test 73 One Boy Told Me 75 Boy and Mom at the Nutcracker Ballet 76 Always Bring a Pencil 77 Glint 78 Alphabet 80 Hidden 81 Lost 82 Books We Haven't Touched in Years 83 The Rider 84 Fuel 85 Across the Bay 87 Boy and Egg 88 How Far Is It to the Land We Left? 89 Pause 91 Sad Mail 92 Open House 93 Vocabulary of Dearness 94 Pollenfrom 19 varieties of gazelle (2002) 96 Flinn, on the Bus 98 Different Ways to Pray 100 My Father and the Fig Tree 102 What Kind of Fool Am I? 103 The Words Under the Words 105 The Man Who Makes Brooms 106 Lunch in Nablus City Park 108 Red Brocade 109 For the 500th Dead Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh 110 Those Whom We Do Not Know 112 Visit 113 The Small Vases from Hebron 115 My Grandmother and the Stars 116 19 Varieties of Gazelle 118 Jerusalem 120 Ducks 122 Peace 124 Stone House 126 Bloodfrom You and Yours (2005) 128 Cross That Line 129 Someone I Love 131 Isle of Mull, Scotland 132 First Day Without You in 99 Years 133 Our Time 134 Fresh 135 The Day 136 For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15 137 The Story, Around the Corner 138 During a War 139 The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab 140 He Said EYE-RACK 141 The Boy Removes All Traces from His Room 142 It is not a game, it was never a game 144 The Light That Shines on Us Now 145 I Feel Sorry for Jesusfrom Transfer (2011) 148 Storyteller 149 Knowing 150 Amir & Anna 151 'The Only Democracy in the Middle East' 152 Maximum Security 153 Remembering William Stafford 154 Real Estate 155 Tiny Cucumbers 156 Swerve 157 Where Are You Now? 158 Hello, Palestine 159 For Aziz, Who Loved Jerusalem 160 Alive 161 The Young Poets of Winnipeg 162 Dear Mediator 163 Eye Contact with a Squirrel 164 Dallas 165 Burlington, Vermont 166 For Mutanabbi Street 167 Mystery 168 Endure 169 Ringing 170 Mom Gives Away Your Ties 171 At the Block Island FerryNew Poems (2008/2015) 174 Ted Kooser Is My President 175 The First Time I Was Old 176 Letters My Prez Is Not Sending 178 What Happened to the Air 179 Parents of Murdered Palestinian Boy Donate His Organs to Israelis 180 Gate A-4 182 One Way or Another 183 Business 184 A Few Questions for Bashar Assad 185 Arabs in Finland 186 Barbershop 187 It's Good to Sit Down with a Racist Every Now and Then 188 Landmine Kills 10 Girls Collecting Firewood 189 Broken 190 Only Pine Nuts Can Stop a War

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Book SynopsisPia Tafdrup is one of Denmark’s leading poets. She has published over 20 books in Danish since her first collection appeared in 1981, and her work has been translated into many languages. She received the 1999 Nordic Council Literature Prize – Scandinavia’s most prestigious literary award – for Queen’s Gate, which was published in David McDuff’s English translation by Bloodaxe in 2001. Also in 2001, she was appointed a Knight of the Order of Dannebrog, and in 2006 she received the Nordic Prize from the Swedish Academy. The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow are the first two collections in Pia Tafdrup’s new series of books focussing on the human senses. While taste and smell dominate, the poems are equally about the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives – the disappearance of friends and family members, but also the erosion of control of one’s own existence. The themes of ecology, war and conflict are never far away, and there is a constant recognition of the circular nature of life, the interplay of the generations. Pia Tafdrup’s previous series of themed collections was The Salamander Quartet (2002–2012). Written over ten years, its first two parts were The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky’s Horses, translated by David McDuff and published by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky’s Horses and other poems. This was followed in 2015 by Salamander Sun and other poems, McDuff’s translation of The Migrant Bird’s Compass and Salamander Sun, the third and fourth parts of the quartet.Table of ContentsTHE TASTE OF STEEL I No return 15 Stages on life’s way 16 In eternal pursuit 17 Unposted letter 19 Winter blood 20 Not even in museums is there peace II Meditation 23 Stopping at the sight of swans 24 Plenty of time 25 Taste 27 Undercurrent 28 Loneliness III Off track 30 Earring 31 After frost-white shell of cold 32 Japanese cherries 33 Night country 34 Metal 36 Bodies without root nets 37 Down IV Crossroads 40 Power cut 42 Pont Neuf 44 Daily choice 45 The pets and their people 46 Time and space V War 49 The darkness machine 50 Razed city 51 The journalist’s question 52 The spring’s grave 53 A before and an after 54 View from space VI Waiting 57 Chink 58 A squirrel bids welcome 59 Despair drinks fire 60 Life with pigeons 62 Frog VII Loss 65 The anonymous part of the churchyard 66 Each in our own flame 67 Porous border 70 A display case filled with night 72 On the other side 73 Greeting from the deceased 74 Snow flowers 76 Residue 78 Threshold VIII Words 80 Crime scene 81 Mother tongue 82 Word and soul 83 Searchlight 84 Johan Borgen – a ritual 86 Poets IX Paradox 89 Harvest 90 Separation 91 The taste buds wake up 92 We are born again 93 Animal smell of light 94 Killer whales 96 Early morning THE SMELL OF SNOW I Breathe in, breathe out 101 Spirit 102 Prana 103 Fresh snow 105 Under cirrus clouds 107 Your fragrance wakes me 109 Freezing fog 110 Lovesick bird II Antitheses 112 Noses, a comparative study 114 Seduced by Gregory Pincus 115 Not a gift 116 Tags in the night 118 Cleaning poisons 120 Them or us 121 Digital odours III Meditation 125 Spring inhalation 126 Exchange of smells 127 Danish cat meets Australian stone 128 Smell of tomatoes 129 Smell-trace of a morning 131 Camellia japonica 132 Benchmarks from a long day IV Bloodstreams 137 Wrong number 138 Under the asphalt the Milky Way 139 Garlic 140 Nose to the ground 141 The cream from China V The five seasons. A catalogue of smells 145 Spring 147 Summer 149 Autumn 151 Winter 153 The fifth season VI Flashes of thought 157 Caught in the act 158 Smell blind 159 The meaning of meaninglessness 160 After showers of bullets in paradise 162 Words without smell VII Vanishing 164 The smell can be parted from the body 165 Reflection on snow and ice 167 Intense lethargy 168 Glenmorangie Highland Single Malt 169 The end of icebergs VIII Inner world, outer world 172 The smell greets me 173 Memory bank for smells 174 Insect wing 175 Nausea – a flashback 177 Stink 179 Flower shop 180 The primordial brain IX One breath makes the difference 182 Attack in Copenhagen 183 Welcome, people live here 184 I want to be a tree 185 Twelve breaths 186 The smell of books 188 There has been prismatic rain 189 The stream of smells from below 191 Notes

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Book SynopsisJo Clement's first collection confronts Romantic impressions of British Gypsy ethnicity and lyrically lays them to rest. From Wordsworth to Top Gear, her poems invite us to consider notions of otherness, trespass, and craft. She steps between ancient stopping places and mardy council estates to trill elegiac Romanes, English, and birdsong about witches, wild camping, and Silver Cross prams. Compelled by a brutal Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller diasporic legacy, Outlandish tenderly praises the poem-as-protest and illuminates a hidden and threatened culture. Born in Darlington in 1986, Jo Clement received a scholarship to gain a PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She has published two pamphlets, including Moveable Type (2020). She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Northumbria University, Editor of Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, and founded the imprint Wagtail with support from the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC).Trade ReviewIt is very rare to find a young poet with such an alert musical ear, able to listen ahead for the shape of a sound yet to be uttered. -- Sean O'BrienHere is delight – these poems, rich and strange, brim from ‘the skim/of blood that can’t settle’. Jo Clement’s gifts shine and dazzle: amongst the darting, many-layered music of her imagery and sensuous evocation of northerly landscapes gleams a clear-sightedness politically aware and historically acute. Meaning is interrogated as a riverine process and emerges, movingly, in significances found later. Part urban fable, part re-imagining of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture, these poems are beautifully made to be read and re-read, savoured for their sharp, apple-bite tenderness, their truth and wisdom, their sheer originality. -- Pippa LittleThis is the word of the weathered hand and of the hard, hale youth; the tattered treasure, the grafter and the fetter-breaking wild. These intoxicating and fine-sprung poems instantly place Clement in the front rank of Traveller writers. May they also relight our wonder at the depths of all unsung Englands. -- Damian Le BasTable of Contents11 Prefatory note 15 The Impression of Water 16 Family Silver 17 Vault 20 Inheritance 21 King Faa 22 Teesdale Erratics 23 Big Fat Gypsy Swindle 24 Cobsong 26 At Eildon 27 Smithsong 28 Market 29 Mass 30 The Sly and Unseen Day 31 Tinker’s Tea 32 Knots 33 Larch 34 The Graver 35 Wild Camp 36 Ironwork, V&A 37 Outlandish 38 Haunt 39 Crown 40 Paisley 41 Vardo 42 A Stopping-Place 43 Craft 44 Pome 45 Pollard 46 Playing Cards 48 Self-portrait as 100 Travellers 49 Wonderful Fish 50 Giftorse 51 Nightjar 52 The Romani Star 53 Le Bûcher 54 Causeway 55 Periwinkle 56 Manes 57 Polished 58 Travelling Light 59 Rite 60 Singing Lesson 62 Homecoming 64 FLASH! 65 Prophet Mark 66 Shoed 67 Dirce (The Bull’s Shadow) 68 Fetlock 69 Groundsheet 70 Aubade 71 Passage 72 Caulbearer 75 Notes and dedications 77 List of illustrations

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Book SynopsisAoife Lyall's second collection follows her widely praised debut Mother, Nature. Her book beautifully captures ordinary moments in life that crystallise in the face of crisis and threat, focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, exploring first steps, last breaths, milestones, millstones and the world behind the front door.

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