A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
W. W. Norton & Company A Grossery of Limericks
Book Synopsis
£15.20
WW Norton & Co She Had Some Horses
Book SynopsisA new edition of the beloved volume by Joy Harjo, one of our foremost Native American poets.Trade Review"She Had Some Horses is a literary event of importance. The poetry here is of mythic and timeless character, native and lyrical in its expression, profound in its reflection of a worldview that is at once precise and comprehensive. There is much of the oral tradition here, much that is worthy of our closest attention and deepest respect." -- N. Scott Momaday, author of House Made of Dawn and In the Bear's House
£12.34
WW Norton & Co The Dream of a Common Language
Book Synopsis“Certain lines had become like incantations to me, words I’d chanted to myself through sorrow and confusion” —Cheryl Strayed, WildTrade Review"The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman's heart and mind in language for everybody - language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to... No one is writing better or more needed verse than this." Boston Evening Globe
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Magdalene
Book Synopsis“Gorgeous, ferocious, lacerating, sexy, and profoundly compassionate.”—Michael CunninghamTrade Review"A smart, engrossing collection.… Readers of any religious background will find much that seems familiar in the modern-day everywoman who sees herself in the faces of a woman wearing a burka, a woman who longs for children and one who hails a taxi wearing a black suit and high heels." -- Washington Post"Marie Howe is magic. And in this book, her biggest magic trick is making the iconic biblical character, Mary Magdalene, both mystical and relatable, at once mythological and completely contemporary." -- Rumpus"In these powerful and accessible poems, Howe advocates nothing so narrow as a particular religious faith; instead, she seems to argue, loving the world, in spite and because of suffering, is life’s great risk, and its reward." -- NPR"A poignant portrait of contemporary womanhood.… This newest collection aptly demonstrates the particular strengths of Howe’s wry, bittersweet talent." -- Library Journal, starred review"Each book of Marie Howe’s is a singular accomplishment, but none is as wildly alive as this.… Howe sweeps up a life and fixes it on the page, and stands here before us, the stunned and grateful witness of all that’s taken and granted by love and time." -- Mark Doty"Marie Howe is among our most gifted poets of trauma and healing, and of where the everyday encounters the world of the sacred. In Magdalene, Howe raises the ante. She now channels the ‘woman taken in adultery’ of New Testament legend, and she is also her questing self, lover and mother, risen to the exaltation of the possible." -- Alicia Ostriker, author of The Book of Seventy"Marie Howe has always come as close as any poet since Rilke to touching eternity, simply by stretching out her hand and believing that something exists beyond her grasp, beyond her knowing. Here, with Magdalene, she somehow goes even deeper, into what it is to both be alive and a manifestation of the divine. I am, once again, in awe of her powers, at their fullest here." -- Nick Flynn
£12.34
WW Norton & Co Felon Poems
Book Synopsis“A powerful work of lyric art.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ ChoiceTrade Review"Searing... [Bett's] critique, having largely to do with the criminalization of poverty, charges these poems and flows through them, energizing their lyric force... This is a powerful work of lyric art. It is also a tour de force indictment of the carceral industrial state." -- Carolyn Forché - The New York Times Book Review"[Felon] pushes Betts's story forward, in verse that is nimble in its diction, tone and focus. The poems are about returning to everyday American life, but in an estranged and often painful way, as if blood were rushing into a long-pinned limb." -- Dwight Garner - The New York Times"[Felon] shows how poems can be enlisted to radically disrupt narrative... Betts's poems about fatherhood [are] some of the most powerful I've read... The black bars of redacted text [in the redaction poems], which usually suggest narrative withheld, here reveal its true contours... For Betts, the way to expression passes through such troubled silences." -- Dan Chiasson - The New Yorker
£12.34
WW Norton & Co John Donnes Poetry
Book Synopsis“Donald Dickson's John Donne's Poetry is the best text of Donne now available. It is scrupulously edited, and equally useful for students and for scholars.”—Harold Bloom, Yale University
£14.99
WW Norton & Co Middle English Romances
Book Synopsis"Thank heavens for Stephen Shepherd: his wit, expert editorial finesse and, not least, his critical judgment clear a path for us not only to fascinating texts, but also to an evergreen genre. The second edition of Middle English Romances guarantees pleasure and illumination." - James Simpson, Harvard University
£17.99
WW Norton & Co Miltons Selected Poetry and Prose
Book Synopsis
£17.99
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Aristophanes Plays 1
Book SynopsisThis mixture of social and political satire, bawdy with passages of lyrical beauty, offers an insight into ancient Athens and its theatre. McLeish also has translated the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus.Table of ContentsAcharnians; Knights; Peace; Lysistrata
£14.39
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Three Sisters
Book SynopsisThe play tells the story of three sisters and their brother who live in a provincial Russian town. Michael Frayn has successfully recreated the naturalness of the original text in this translation and included are notes, commentary and questions for students.
£12.28
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Methuen Drama Book of Monologues for Young
Book SynopsisThis volume contains speeches suitable for performance at auditions, individual acting classes, competitions, festivals and examination The pieces are varied in content, tone and style and are equipped with an introduction which sets the context for each piece.
£16.14
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) William Shakespeares Macbeth A Routledge Study
Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeareâs Macbeth is a timeless tale of love, greed and power, which has given rise to heated debates around such issues as the representation of gender roles, political violence and the dramatisation of evil.Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Shakespeareâs play presents: extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and performance of the text, from publication to present annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Macbeth and seeking not only a guide to the play, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Shakespeareâs text.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: Contexts, Introduction, Chronology, Source Part 2: Interpretations, Critical History, Early Critical Reception Part 3: Key Passages Part 4: Further Reading Recommended Editions of Macbeth. Contexts. The Play in Performance. Film Versions. Criticism
£29.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) The Wheel of Fire
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1930, this classic of modern Shakespeare criticism proves both enlightening and innovative. Standing head and shoulders above all other Shakespearean interpretations, this is the masterwork of the brilliant English scholar, G. Wilson Knight. Founding a new and influential school of Shakespearean criticism, Wheel of Fire was Knight''s first venture in the field - his writing sparkles with insight and wit, and his analyses are key to contemporary understandings of Shakespeare.Trade Review'For writing of this kind we cannot have too much respect.' - The Times Literary Supplement'I confess that reading his essays seems to me to have enlarged my understanding of the Shakespearean pattern, which, after all, is quite the main main thing.' - T.S. EliotTable of ContentsPrefatory note -- Introduction by T. S. Eliot -- 1 On the Principles of Shakespeare Interpretation -- 2 The Embassy of Death: an Essay on Hamlet -- 3 The Philosophy of Troilus and Cressida -- 4 Measure for Measure and the Gospels -- 5 The Othello Music -- 6 Brutus and Macbeth -- 7 Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil -- 8 King Lear and the Comedy of the Grotesque -- 9 The Lear Universe -- 10 The Pilgrimage of Hate: an Essay on Timon of Athens -- 11 Shakespeare and Tolstoy -- 12 Symbolic Personification -- 13 The Shakespearian Metaphysic -- 14 Tolstoy's Attack on Shakespeare (1934) -- 15 Hamlet Reconsidered (1947) -- Appendix: two notes on the text of hamlet (1947).
£14.99
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) William Shakespeares Twelfth Night A Routledge
Book SynopsisWilliam Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (c.1600) is one of his most captivating plays. A comedy of mistaken identities, it has given rise to thought-provoking debates around such issues as gender identity and role-playing, manipulation and deception.Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Shakespeare's spirited play offers: extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and performance of the text, from publication to the present annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism suggestions for further reading. Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Twelfth Night and seeking not only a guide to the play, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Shakespeare's text.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Contexts 2. Interpretations 3. Key Passages 4. Further Reading Index
£44.78
Taylor & Francis Ltd (Sales) Lyrical Ballads Routledge Classics
Book SynopsisWhen it was first published, Lyrical Ballads enraged the critics of the day: Wordsworth and Coleridge had given poetry a voice, one decidedly different to that which had been voiced before. This acclaimed Routledge Classics edition offers the reader the opportunity to study the poems in their original contexts as they appeared to Coleridgeâs and Wordsworthâs contemporaries, and includes some of their most famous poems, including Coleridgeâs Rime of the Ancyent Marinere.Trade Review'Must have come on like punk rock to a public groaning under the weight of over-cooked Augustanisms.' - The GuardianTable of ContentsLyrical Ballads. Preface to the Routledge Classics edition by Nicholas Roe. Foreword. Foreword to the 1991 Edition. A Selected Bibliography and List of Abbreviations. Introduction. Lyrical Ballads, 1798. Advertisement. Poems. Lyrical Ballads, 1800. Love. Poems, Volume II. Preface 1800 Version (with 1802 Variants). Notes to the Poems. Appendix A: Text of Lewti; or, the Circassian Love-Chant. Appendix B: Wordsworth’s Appendix on Poetic Diction from 1802 edition of Lyrical Ballads. Appendix C: Some Contemporary Criticism of Lyrical Ballads. Index of Titles. Index of First Lines.
£16.99
Orion Publishing Co Clare Everymans Poetry
Book SynopsisJohn Clare's verse is a celebration of country life. Clare ended his life in an asylum, yet his work expresses an innate wisdom and a profound understanding of nature and of his contemporary rural society. This is a selection of his work.
£9.25
The University of Michigan Press Jane Cooper
Book SynopsisThough she published only five volumes of poetry over the course of her career, Jane Cooper (1924–2007) was deeply admired by her contemporaries. In Jane Cooper: A Radiance of Attention, Martha Collins and Celia Bland bring together several decades' worth of essential writing on Cooper's poetry.
£18.71
Dover Publications Inc. Wilde O Salome
Book Synopsis Few works in English literature have so peculiar a history as Oscar Wilde''s play Salome. Written originally in French in 1892 and ridiculed on its publication, translated into English by Lord Alfred Douglas (Bosie himself) and again heaped with scorn, it has survived for 75 years, served as the text (in abridged form) for Richard Strauss'' world-famous opera, and emerged as an acknowledged masterwork of the Aesthetic movement of fin de siècle England.The illustrations that Aubrey Beardsley prepared for the first English edition have no less strange a story. Beardsley liked neither the play nor its author. Yet, it inspired some of his finest work. It is an open question as to how suited the drawings actually are to the text that Wilde wrote. Yet, the two, the play and the Beardsley illustrations, have nevertheless become so identified with each other as to be inseparable.This edition reprints the first edition (1894) text, with A Note on ''Salome'' by Robert Ross. The Beardsley drawings it superbly reproduces (mostly from a rare early portfolio) include not only the 10 full-page illustrations, the front and back cover designs, the title and List of Illustrations page decorations, and the cul de lampe from the original edition, but also three drawings that were not used, an alternate cover sketch, and the drawing entitled J''ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan, which Beardsley did earlier for The Studio. Furthermore, all of the illustrations are reproduced in their original state, not as expurgated in the first and most subsequent editions.
£9.49
Dover Publications Inc. Miss Julie
Book SynopsisOne of the greatest classics of modern theater the fateful drama of a willful young aristocrat''s seduction of her father''s valet during a Midsummer''s Eve celebration. Inspired by the new ideas of naturalism and psychology that swept Europe in the late 19th century, the play is reprinted here complete with Strindberg''s critical preface.
£6.83
Dover Publications Inc. There Once Was a Limerick Anthology
Book SynopsisHumor buffs and poetry lovers will laugh out loud with this captivating collection of more than 350 limericks featuring limerick legends plus renowned political figures, poets, and writers.
£6.23
Dover Publications Influential LGBTQ Works of the Nineteenth Century
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£7.00
University of California Press The Argonautika
Book SynopsisA retelling of the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece, one of the oldest extant Greek myth.Table of Contents LIST OF MAPS PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction THE ARGONAUTIKA Commentary ABBREVIATIONS SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY GLOSSARY MAPS INDEX
£24.30
Cambridge University Press Shakespeare
Book SynopsisAn active approach to Shakespeare in the classroom.Table of ContentsList of characters; The Angevin Empire; King John; What is King John about?; History, legend and drama; The relevance of King John; King John and the Bastard; The language of King John; Staging King John; William Shakespeare.
£11.09
Transworld Publishers Ltd Mort The Play
Book SynopsisDeath comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.But when Mort is left in charge for an evening, he allows his heart to rule his head and soon the whole of causality and the future of the Discworld itself, are at risk. Along the way, Mort encounters not only Death''s adopted daughter, Ysabell - who has been 16 for 35 years - and his mysterious manservant Albert - whose cooking can harden an artery at ten paces - but also an incompetent wizard with a talking doorknocker and a beautiful, but rather bad-tempered and dead, princess. He also, of course, meets Death.On Terry Pratchett''s Discworld, Death really is a 7 foot skeleton in a black hooded robe and wielding a scythe. He is also fond of cats, enjoys a good curry, and rides around the skies on a magnificent white horse called Binky.
£9.49
Faber & Faber Fool for Love
Book Synopsis''Set in a desolate motel room on the edge of the Mojave desert, the play has something of the timeless universality of a Greek tragedy . . . Like ancient classical drama, too, the action is at once brief and relentless. By the end of the 90-minute play you feel you have lived through a cataclysm . . . This is a tremendous play, bleak but savagely funny, apparently naturalistic yet also resonant and dreamlike.'' Daily TelegraphFool for Love is accompanied in this volume by The Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing his Wife, a comic operetta by Sam Shepard and Catherine Stone, which takes an irreverent view of American heroes and heroics.
£10.44
Faber & Faber Jumpers
Book SynopsisThe Incredible Radical Liberal Jumpers are a team of acrobatic professors of philosophy, whose absurd gymnastic displays reflect a bewildering world where logic has confounded belief in moral absolutes. In this dark, exuberant comedy, Stoppard brilliantly parodies the philosophy lecture, the detective thriller, the comedy of manners and the Whitehall farce, to follow a philosopher''s doomed flight to prove the existence of God in the face of an indifferent universe.This is the definitive text of Tom Stoppard''s celebrated comedy.''A dazzling, hilarious and honestly benevolent work, which creates a dramatic structure from a forbidding diversity of materials.'' The Times
£10.44
Faber & Faber Sam Shepard Plays 2
Book SynopsisSam Shepard has been described by the New Yorker as ''one of the most original, prolific and gifted dramatists at work today''. Here are seven of his finest plays, including True West and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child. Also included are Curse of the Starving Class, The Tooth of Crime, La Turista, Tongues and Savage/Love.The volume is introduced by Richard Gilman, who provides a fascinating profile of the author and places the plays in the context of contemporary American drama.
£17.09
Faber & Faber Tales from Ovid
Book SynopsisAn adaptation of Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid for the stage. Tim Supple is Artistic Director of the Young Vic. He has already adapted Grimm and Rushdie, and worked with Hughes on Spring Awakening and Blood Wedding.
£10.44
Faber & Faber Martin Crimp Plays 1 Dealing with Clair Play with
Book SynopsisThis collection of early plays confirms Martin Crimp''s reputation as one of the most original and exciting talents writing for the theatre today. It includes the plays Dealing with Clair, Play with Repeats, Getting Attention and The Treatment, and is introduced by the author.
£17.09
Faber & Faber Alfred Lord Tennyson Poems Selected by Mick Imlah
Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets in our literature.Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-92) was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, the sixth of eleven children of a clergyman. After a childhood marked by trauma, he went up to Cambridge in 1828, where he met Arthur Hallam, whose premature death had a lasting influence on Tennyson''s life and writing. His two volumes of Poems (1842) established him as the leading poet of his generation, and of the Victorian period. He was created Poet Laureate in 1850 and in 1883 accepted a peerage.
£9.25
Faber & Faber Orpheus
Book SynopsisRainer Maria Rilke''s 55 Sonnets to Orpheus remain a testimony to a writer whose significance other poets continue to testify to. Don Paterson''s translation offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work.
£11.69
Faber & Faber Martin Crimp Plays 2
Book SynopsisThis second collection of Martin Crimp''s work includes the plays Attempts on Her Life, The Misanthrope, No One Sees the Video and The Country.''Crimp writes with extraordinary precision . . . The outside world is described with almost hallucinatory clarity . . . He has discovered a dramatic form that perfectly reflects the violent, disorienting times in which we live.'' Daily TelegraphTrade Review"Attempts on Her Life; 'Crimp writes with extraordinary precision. He has discovered a dramatic form that perfectly reflects the violent, disorienting times in which we live.' Daily Telegraph; The Misanthrope; 'This is not just an updating of Moliere's great social tragi-comedy but a thrillingly sophisticated modern version of a classical play... The writing is cool, sharp and ferociously funny.' Sunday Times; No One Sees the Video; 'Crimp's dialogue is spare, edgy, rigorously controlled and often very funny. But beneath the poised surface of the words, he creates a growing feeling of tension, even of menace, of lives of quiet but nonetheless profound desperation.' Daily Telegraph; The Country; 'In the modern manner, this is a short, sharp shock, without redemption. In the language of drugs, a hit.' Sunday Times 'Martin Crimp is one of the hottest properties in Europe.' Guardian
£17.09
Faber & Faber W. H. Auden
Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past
£9.49
Faber & Faber TwentiethCentury Scottish Poetry
Book SynopsisDuring the 1920s, Scottish poetry, personified by Hugh MacDiarmid, asserted its independence, denying the claim made by T. S. Eliot that all significant differences between Scottish and English literature had ceased to exist. It was an energetic ''No'' to provincialism, and a vigorous ''Yes'' to nationalism as an enabler of poetry. On its first appearance in 1992, the retrospective and organising vision of Douglas Dunn''s now-classic anthology revealed a profounder level of achievement in modern Scottish poetry - whether in Scots, Gaelic or English - than had been formerly acknowledged, and introduced an entire canon of writing to a wider readership, edited with discrimination and exemplary lucidity.
£16.14
Faber & Faber Collected Shorter Plays
Book SynopsisThs volume contains all of Beckett''s less-than-full-length works (or ''Dramaticules'') for the stage, radio and television. Arranged in chronological order of composition, these shorter plays demonstrate the laconic means and compassionate ends of Beckett''s dramatic vision.Contents: All That Fall, Act Without Words, Krapp''s Last Tape, Roughs for Theatre, Embers, Roughs for Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune (adapted from Pinget), Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio, ...but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.
£17.09
Faber & Faber Robert Lowell
Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to the most important poets in our literature.Robert Lowell (1917-77) was born in Boston. Life Studies, published in 1959, was a watershed in American poetry, initiating an autobiographical project that became the dominating feature of his work and shaped poetry on both sides of the Atlantic. He was the renowned and controversial author of many books of poetry, including For the Union Dead (1964) and Day by Day (1977). Faber published his Collected Poems in 2003.
£8.65
Faber & Faber Selected Poems David Harsent
Book SynopsisIn an illustrious career, David Harsent has published eight collections of poetry, from A Violent County in 1969, to Legion, winner of the Forward Prize in 2005. This selection, made by the author himself, draws upon the full arc of his career and offers an outstanding concentration of, and introduction to, the full range and powers of this distinguished poet.Trade Review"'Harsent has an unusual claim to notice: you begin every poem with the certain prospect of pleasure and surprise.' Martin Amis, Observer"
£12.34
Faber & Faber Edwin Muir Selected Poems
Book SynopsisBorn on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887, Edwin Muir settled in various parts of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century - from Glasgow, to Austria and Czechoslovakia throughout to 1920s, 1930s and again after the war. Muir''s poetry bears oblique witness to the most traumatic years and events of this century, and is haunted by the symbolic ''fable'' which he longed to find beneath the surface ''story'' of mere events, as he came to terms with his own nature amidst the terror and confusion of the European maelstrom. As Seamus Heaney has written: ''Muir''s poetic strength revealed itself in being able to co-ordinate the nightmare of history with that place in himself where he had trembled with anticipation . . . His simultaneous at-homeness and abroadness is exemplary.''
£13.49
Faber & Faber William Blake
Book SynopsisIn this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past.
£9.25
Faber & Faber Dying For It
Book SynopsisHallway-dwelling Semyon is unemployed and disheartened with life. On the night of the deed, a party grows towards a glorious climax.Moira Buffini has freely adapted Nikolai Erdman's The Suicide, which was banned by Stalin before a single performance, to create Dying For It.
£10.44
Faber & Faber The Pride of Parnell Street
Book SynopsisOLD GOD''S TIME (MARCH 2023), SEBASTIAN BARRY''S STUNNING NEW NOVEL, AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOWSee, love between a man and a woman, it''s - private. It happens where you never do see it. In rooms.Italy 1 - Ireland 0...The score that marked Ireland''s demoralizing exit from Italia ''90 took its toll. No more so than for Janet and Joe Brady of Parnell Street who lost far more than the match that night. Some years on, Joe and Janet reveal the intimacies of their love and the rupture of their marriage, through interconnecting monologues that also evoke their life-long love affair with Dublin city itself. Sebastian Barry''s explores with vivid tenderness the devastating effects of public and private acts of violence. This is an intimate, heroic tale of ordinary and extraordinary life on the streets of Dublin. Fishamble''s world premiere of The Pride of Parnell Street opened at the Tricycle Theatre, London, and as part
£10.44
Faber & Faber West End Final
Book SynopsisHugo Williams''s new collection summons the poet''s past selves in order of appearance, as in an autobiography, showing in poems as clear as rock pools that the plain truth is only as plain as the props and make-up needed to stage it. Childhood and school time offer up the amateur theatricals of themselves, in poems of vertiginous retrospect; other poems itemize the professional selves of the poet''s actor-father Hugh Williams (by now as familiar and frequently depicted as Cezanne''s mountain), while the narrator - ''waiting to step into my father''s shoes as myself'' - teases out the paradoxes of identity and inheritance After this searching portraiture of the poet''s parents, the chronology opens onto the broad secular thoroughfares of adulthood, including a limpid arrangement of pillow poems which tell the same erotic bedtime story in twelve different ways. Other poems strike out decisively along roads not taken: meticulous misremembering, sinister and fecklessly
£9.99
Faber & Faber A Sleepwalk on the Severn
Book Synopsis''This is not a play. This is a poem in several registers, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead, all based on real people from the Severn catchment, talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. The poem, which was written for the 2009 festival of the Severn, aims to record what happens when the moon moves over us - its effect on water and its effect on voices.''Alice OswaldA Sleepwalk on the Severn is a poem for several voices, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead - all based on real people from the Severn catchment - talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. Commissioned for the 2009 fes
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Testament of Cresseid Seven Fables
Book SynopsisThe greatest of the late medieval Scottish makars, Robert Henryson wrote in Lowland Scots, a distinctive northern version of English. He was profoundly influenced by Chaucer''s vision of the frailty and pathos of human life. His greatest poem, and one of the rhetorical masterpieces of the literature of these islands, is the narrative Testament of Cresseid, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, which completes the story of Chaucer''s Troilus and Criseyde, offering a grim and tragic account of its faithless heroine''s rejection by her lover Diomede, and her decline into prostitution and leprosy. A work of unreconciled Shakespearean intensity, the Testament has been translated by Seamus Heaney into a confident and yet faithful modern English idiom which honours the poem''s unique blend of detachment and compassion.A master of narrative, Henryson was also a comic master of the verse fable; his burlesques of human weakness in the guise of animal wisd
£13.49
Faber & Faber Tusk Tusk
Book SynopsisCome on troops. Let''s take check: Finn Bar, slightly ruffled but still in fighting form. Maggie, could do with a full night''s sleep but otherwise all in order... Stay here. Don''t answer the door. I''ll go out and get some proper food.In a new flat, three children play hide and seek. Eliot wears a crown, little Finn, King of the Wild Thing''s, draws on the walls. Maggie climbs them. Hiding from the world, needing to be found, their one shared focus a mobile phone. Will it ring? Who will call? And what are they waiting for?Tusk Tusk is a tale of family loyalty as an uncertain future circles. Polly Stenham''s second play premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in March 2009.
£9.49
Faber & Faber The Cherry Orchard
Book SynopsisLiubov Ranevskya, a widowed landowner returns home more or less insolvent after five years abroad. Everything appears just as she remembers, but hers is a diminishing world. Her vast and beautiful cherry orchard is soon to be sold off against her mounting debts. The insistent warnings of Lopakhin, a peasant''s son turned wealthy businessman, go unheeded, and more than the family estate is sacrificed as Trofimov, the ''eternal student'' who hopes to inherit the future, tells her, The whole of Russia is our orchard.Tom Stoppard''s adaptation of Chekhov''s last play is a poignant snapshot of the great, slow-rolling change that came to a head with the Russian revolution in 1917. Tom Stoppard''s English version of Chekhov''s The Cherry Orchard had its first New York performance at the Harvey Theater, Brooklyn in January 2009, and its first London performance at the Old Vic Theatre in May 2009.
£10.44
Faber & Faber White Egrets
Book SynopsisIn White Egrets, Derek Walcott treats his characteristic subjects - the Caribbean''s complex colonial legacy, the Western artistic tradition, the blessings and withholdings of old Europe (Andalucia, the Mezzogiorno, Amsterdam), the unaccomodating sublime of the new world, time''s cunning passages, the poet''s place in all of this - with a passionate intensity and drive that recall his greatest work. Through the systolic and mesmerizing repetition of theme and imagery, Walcott carries his surf-like cadence from poem to poem, and from sequence to sequence in this celebratory and close-knit collection.
£11.69
Faber & Faber Percy Bysshe Shelley Poet to Poet
Book SynopsisPercy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was born in Sussex and died in Italy when his sailing boat overturned while returning from a visit to Byron. A radical thinker and social campaigner, Shelley wrote some of the finest lyric verse in the English language which confirms his standing as a major figure in Romantic literature.In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature.
£8.54
