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Poetry Books
Austin Macauley Publishers Outrageous Rhymes
Book Synopsis
£6.99
Austin Macauley Publishers Faith by Reflection II
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£5.99
Orion Publishing Co Night Feeds and Morning Songs
Book SynopsisThe perfect gift for Mother''s Day! For those at any and all stages of motherhood.''I read every single poem and wished that I''d had this book when I was pregnant, and feeding a baby, and watching her grow.'' Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover GamesA collection of honest, fierce and beautiful poems about being a mother, from pregnancy and birth to growing up and leaving home. Curated by acclaimed anthologist Ana Sampson, Night Feeds and Morning Songs examines motherhood from all angles, capturing the mess and the madness, to the joy and the wonder. Immerse yourself in classic verse from Carol Ann Duffy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jackie Kay and Sylvia Path, to poems from bold new voices Kate Baer, Liz Berry, Nikita Gill and Imogen Russell Williams to name but a few.Trade ReviewI read every single poem and wished that I'd had this book when I was pregnant, and feeding a baby, and watching her grow. I longed for such a book of observations on what it is to make a human. * Sophie Heawood, author of The Hungover Games *A beautiful collection, capturing that soft everyday magic of having babies - it's nice to have comradeship in this very particular type of love. * Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock *If any book could distil the tender furious overwhelm of motherhood, I think it's this one. * Imogen Russell Williams *Ana Sampson's collection of poems is just the thing to dip into after the night-time feed. * Fabulous Magazine *
£9.49
Orion Publishing Co Where Hope Comes From
Book Synopsis''Absolutely beautiful and soul-enhancing poems'' Matt HaigWritten against the backdrop of global crisis, Nikita Gill''s new collection Where Hope Comes From shines a light into the darkness as we begin our journey back to hope. Weaving words that explore our collective trauma, her poetry takes us on a journey through the five stages of grief to the five stages of hope through the life cycle of a star. The collection features her most popular poems to date Love in the Time of Coronavirus and How to be Strong, alongside new material and beautiful watercolour illustrations.If you, or someone you know is mourning the loss of a loved one, or a way of life; let Nikita''s words help you through the process to heal.
£13.49
Orion Publishing Co The Beautiful Poetry of Football Commentary
Book SynopsisRoma have risen from their ruins!Manolas, the Greek God in Rome!The unthinkable unfolds before our eyes.This was not meant to happen, this could not happen . . . this is happening!Peter DruryIf football is the beautiful game, then commentators are its poets.Whether it''s the brevity of Barry Davies, the boundless enthusiasm of Clive Tyldesley or the sheer eloquence of Peter Drury''s monologues, the canon of football commentary is replete with memorable lines that would have some of the great classical orators nodding in appreciation. Curated by football journalist Charlie Eccleshare, The Beautiful Poetry of Football Commentary is a glorious anthology of iconic lines, set out as poems, celebrating the best commentators that have ever graced a microphone. Each poem is accompanied by ''scholarly'' analysis capturing the enduring power of language on the beautiful game.So, drink it in, and immerse yourselfTrade Review"It is a privilege to be part of this excellent work" - Martin Tyler, English Football Commentator"There have been some brilliant lines of commentary down the years and Charlie's academic deconstruction of them is terrific. I'm both grateful and incredibly flattered to be included. To share such lovingly compiled pages with Motson, Davies, Wolstenholme, Butler and Coleman feels almost impossible." - Peter Drury, Lead Main Commentator for NBC Sports and former Lead Main Commentator for Premier League Productions.
£9.99
Hachette Books Ireland Windfall
Book SynopsisWhat does Ireland''s nature poetry say about us as a people? How does it speak to us of our past, our inheritance, the values to which we aspire? What clues lie within its language that connect us to our deeper selves and our place within our communities and environments?As varied as our plants, animals and habitats, Windfall: Irish Nature Poems to Inspire and Connect presents a portrait of an ever-changing vista. Jane Carkill''s captivating original illustrations of Ireland''s rich and diverse natural world add to the sense of enchantment and wonder.Each poem pays attention to nature while also reflecting on the loves and losses of our everyday lives. Award-winning poet Jane Clarke''s selection includes some of our best-known poets, from Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley, Paula Meehan, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Paul Muldoon.There are poems here to make us laugh and cry, to help us celebrate and grieve; poems to put wor
£17.84
Walker Books Ltd Shakespeares Words of Wisdom Panorama Pops
Book Synopsis
£6.00
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Low Pay Dont Pay Modern Plays
Book SynopsisAn uproarious new version of Dario Fo's frenetic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! which, although set in Italy, has an all too familiar ring to it. Housewives Antonia and Margherita, fed up with high prices in the supermarket, take matters into their own hands and start shoplifting. Keen to keep their light-fingered antics from their husbands, Giovanni and Luigi - not to mention the police - the women are forced to resort to more and more inventive hiding places, and more and more elaborate cover stories, in this legendary comedy.Nobel prize winner Dario Fo is Italy's leading contemporary playwright, renowned for his hilarious satires including Accidental Death of an Anarchist. He has re-written his classic farce Can't Pay? Won't Pay! to take into account the global banking crisis and this translation, by world-leading Fo scholar Joseph Farrell, hints at UK current affairs too, including the credit crunch and MPs' expenses scandal. Although first writt
£11.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC An Ideal Husband
Book SynopsisSos Eltis is a Fellow in English at Brasenose College, Oxford, and a member of the Oxford University English Faculty. She is also a senior member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society and a member of the board of Oxford Playhouse Theatre. She has written extensively on Victorian and modern drama, and on Oscar Wilde in particular.Russell Jackson is Allardyce Nicoll Chair in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.
£11.67
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Springboard Shakespeare King Lear
Book SynopsisKing Lear is a towering drama of personal and national tragedy. This accessible introduction offers a springboard into the play, taking a hands-on, performance-based approach, exploring the challenges and the rewards it presents to actors, audiences and students. Springboard Shakespeare: King Lear has a three-part structure: whether you''re watching or reading, Ben Crystal takes you through exactly what you need to know Before, During and After the play. He combines a genuine passion and understanding of Shakespeare with his experience as an actor, giving the reader a clear route to thinking about, understanding and enjoying King Lear.Trade ReviewHaving Crystal as a companion through the stickier parts of Hamlet and Macbeth is like going to the theatre with an intelligent friend. * The Independent *How different it might have been if we’d had Ben Crystal’s sparky little books to introduce us. My Shakespearean epiphany would have come much sooner...[the books] lead newcomers into the play in question in a gentle, upbeat, unpretentious way. Fresh and slim, they’re about as far as could be from dusty, dry study guides relating to school exams...much better than the average theatre programme...I’d like to see them on sale in theatre bookshops, and/or wherever there’s a production of one of these plays...I’d also recommend them for classroom use. -- Susan Elkin * The Independent on Sunday *A highly worthwhile series, which should prove to be valuable for directors, actors and students…This formula really works. As an experiment, your dedicated reviewer tried out Macbeth in preparation for and following on from the Eve Best production of the Globe. The experience was definitely improved, with some of the tips on words and language proving especially helpful and enlightening… These really are excellent little guides that will prove informative to almost anybody with an interest in the subject. -- Philip Fisher * British Theatre Guide *
£13.93
Spark Antony Cleopatra
Book SynopsisNo Fear Shakespeare gives you the complete text of Antony and Cleopatra on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand translation on the right.
£7.99
Pan Macmillan The Overhaul
Book SynopsisKathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. Her poetry collection The Tree House (Picador 2004), won both the Forward Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead was shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Prize. Kathleen Jamie's non-fiction books include the highly regarded Findings and Sightlines. She teaches at Stirling University and lives with her family in Fife.Trade Review' a perfect match for the primal Scottish landscapes she evokes and against which she explores human relationships . . . beautifully cadenced . . . utterly convincing . . . unquestionably a fine poet . . . she achieves a beautifully balanced classical simplicity.' The North magazine
£10.44
Pan Macmillan The Christmas Truce
Book SynopsisDown at the Front, on a cold winter's night in 1914, amidst the worst war the world had ever seen, an inexplicable silence spread from man to man. Belief was in the air. Then the soldiers ceased fire and the magic of Christmas took hold . . .Carol Ann Duffy's brilliant poem celebrates the miraculous truce between the trenches, when enemy shook hands with enemy, shared songs, swapped gifts, even played football, and peace found a place in No Man's Land.With gorgeous colour illustrations by David Roberts, this special, full size edition of The Christmas Truce is a Christmas gift to treasure.Trade ReviewA short history lesson to make children learn and grown men weep * Independent on Sunday *
£10.44
Pan Macmillan Dorothy Wordsworths Christmas Birthday
Book SynopsisIt is Christmas Eve, 1799, and Dorothy Wordsworth is awake in the dead of night. She stands outside in the winter cold, waiting patiently.When the new day breaks it will bring family and friends to Dorothy's door. For tomorrow is a double joy: tomorrow is her Christmas Birthday.Carol Ann Duffy's wonderful poem Dorothy Wordsworth's Christmas Birthday takes us to the frozen landscape of the Lake District, where a merry celebration is about to begin in the Wordsworths' cottage.Gorgeously illustrated by Tom Duxbury, this festive poem evokes the snowy Lake District as Dorothy celebrates her birthday with her brother William Wordsworth and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.Trade ReviewDuffy's spellbinding verse, spiced with witty, wintry illustrations, recaptures a magic most of us left behind in childhood -- Maggie Fergusson * Intelligent Life *A tiny time machine that transports us to a frosty Cumberland in 1799 * Independent *
£9.49
Chronicle Books There are Girls like Lions
Book SynopsisAn anthology of poems about the experience of being a womanWith 30 rousing and empowering poems: For mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, partners, and friends, There Are Girls Like Lions is a celebration of womanhood in all its dimensions, including love, beauty, friendship, motherhood, work, aging, and much more. This powerful collection of poems will resonate with any modern woman. • Foreword by award-winning American poet Cole Swensen who has authored more than ten books of poetry• Striking illustrations in metallic ink throughout• With poems from a variety of women poets including Margaret Atwood, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Kimiko Hahn, Elisabeth Hewer, Rachel Zucker, Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye, and moreFans of the novel An American Marriage, The Future is Feminist, and Women of Resistance will be inspired and empowered by There are Girls Like Lions.Discover 30 poems that honor and celebrate the experience of being a woman.• Packaged in an attractive case with foil stamping ready to give or receive • Great Mother''s Day, birthday, or anytime gift for the strong women in your lifeTrade Review"There Are Girls Like Lions is a new illustrated poetry anthology about being a woman. 'This is a collection that erodes stereotypes,' says poet and editor Cole Swensen. 'Poetry is unique in the arts in making voice literal - we speak out, we have our say. No one of these voices speaks for everyone, but through them, we all have a voice.' Read their voices, and find yours too, in the new book." -- Psychologies
£999.99
Little, Brown Book Group There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce
Book SynopsisOne of Oprah Magazine''s Ten Best Books of 2017A TIME Magazine Best Paperback of 2017Publishers Weekly''s Ten Best Poetry Collections of SpringA Most Anticipated book at Buzzfeed, NYLON and BustleOne of i-D''s emerging female authors to read in 2017 ''Outstanding collection of poems. So much soul. So much intelligence in how Parker folds in cultural references and the experiences of black womanhood. Every poem will get its hooks into you. And of course, the poems about Beyoncé are the greatest because Beyoncé is our queen.'' Roxane Gay ''I can and have read Morgan Parker''s poems over and over . . . She writes history and pleasure and kitsch and abstraction, then vanishes like a god in about 13 inches.'' Eileen Myles''Morgan Parker has a mind like wildfire and these pages are lit. I can''t recall being this enthralled, entertained, a
£9.49
Little, Brown Book Group Enter the Water
Book SynopsisAN OBSERVER BEST POETRY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023''A dark-light beauty'' Ali Smith''Totally compelling, Enter The Water pulls you along like a current. Gentle, deft, spacious yet searingly vivid, it wanders like our narrator and shows us both nature and the city through new eyes . . . This book will sneak up on you and leave its music long ringing in your ears'' Cecilia Knapp''Enter the Water is both visceral and perceptive, a discomfort formulated in great tenderness and pain'' Bhanu Kapil ''Enter the Water has horizons and wit and allusion and rhyme and disenchanted politics and birds, and lines that hit the reader right in the heart . . . The writing is original and perfectly pitched . . . A significant debut'' Ian Pattersoni sat in a chapel the other night in my big gay coat talking to a god whose answer is only sometimes no no that was a lie the hTrade ReviewA dark-light beauty -- Ali SmithEviction, insomnia, techno-divination and mythologies that "begin with a bird" mark the psychic "circumference" of Enter the Water. This is "a narrative of trying" performed or lived as a book of poetry. Gates open unexpectedly, startling both the person exiting a space and the one peering in. It's this quality of being "both in and out always" that I most appreciate about Jack Wiltshire's writing. It's a place that's both visceral and perceptive, a discomfort formulated in great tenderness and pain. All the water in the book, all the animals and insects and birds: help. How "the felt-tip green of a butterfly" is a form of titration: a way to follow something, to look up, to stay connected, until it disappears -- Bhanu KapilEnter the Water has horizons and wit and allusion and rhyme and disenchanted politics and birds, and lines that hit the reader right in the heart. The emotional depth and intellectual scope are extraordinary. The writing is original and perfectly pitched, the developing narrative shares an anger at the uncaring corruption of the world with an awareness that being a person means "it is lonely being at the centre of things". A significant debut. -- Ian PattersonTotally compelling, Enter The Water pulls you along like a current. Gentle, deft, spacious yet searingly vivid, it wanders like our narrator and shows us both nature and the city through new eyes. With razor sharp questions and keen observations, our systems of power and privilege are destabilised and the precarity of existing in the current moment is exposed. This is a book full up to the throat with feeling; the intensity and inexpressibility of love, of uncertainty and displacement. But it's also funny, wry and original. This book will sneak up on you and leave its music long ringing in your ears -- Cecilia Knapp, author of Peach PigEnter the Water tempts you to wade straight in. And it will take only the briefest of dips, a toe in the water, before you find yourself needing to read on... [Wiltshire's] writing is fresh, funny and serious -- Kate Kellaway * Observer *Part Beckett, part Robert Macfarlane on LSD -- Philip Terry * Guardian *
£13.49
Little, Brown Book Group The Principle of Rapid Peering
Book SynopsisSelf-seeding windis a wind of ever-replenishing breath.-from ''The Walk, or The Principle of Rapid Peering''The title of Sylvia Legris'' melopoeic collection The Principle of Rapid Peering comes from a phrase the nineteenth-century ornithologist and field biologist Joseph Grinnell used to describe the feeding behaviour of certain birds. Rather than waiting passively for food to approach them, these birds live in a continuous mode of ''rapid peering''. Legris explores this rich theme of active observation through a spray of poems that together form a kind of almanac or naturalist''s notebook in verse. Here is ''where nature converges with words,'' as the poet walks through prairie habitats near her home in Saskatchewan, through lawless chronologies and mellifluous strophes of strobili and solstice. Moths appear frequently, as do birds and plants and larvae, all meticulously observed and documented with an oblique sense of the pandemic mar
£10.44
Little, Brown Book Group Sharks in the Rivers
Book SynopsisPublished in 2010, Ada Limon's debut collection Sharks in the Rivers announced the arrival of a beloved poet - now the 24th US Poet Laureate, National Book Award winner, Time Magazine woman of the year 2024. An extraordinary collection - at once urbane and earthy - Sharks in the Rivers navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature.
£11.69
Headline Publishing Group LVOE II
Book SynopsisIn the highly anticipated follow-up to LVOE: Poems, Epigrams & Aphorisms, three-time New York Times bestselling author Atticus is inviting readers to take a deeper look behind the mask as he continues his powerful journey inward in search of love, peace, and acceptance.LVOE. Volume II is an expanded exploration of self-love, meditation, meaning, loss, and romance from the internet''s favourite poet. Atticus implores his instantly recognizable lyrical style, gorgeous illustrations, and relatable themes to once again dazzle readers, inspiring them to look within. This collection will feature all-new poems, each paired with beautiful sketches that bring the words alive from the page.LVOE. Volume II looks forward, backward, but most importantly inward to the often confusing yet hopeful human experience.
£15.29
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC The Cheviot the Stag and the Black Black Oil
Book SynopsisWritten during the 1970s, John McGrath's winding, furious, innovative play tracks the economic history and exploitation of the Scottish Highlands from the post-Rebellion suppression of the clans to the story of the Clearances: in the nineteenth century, aristocratic landowners discovered the profitability of sheep farming, and forced a mass emigration of rural Highlanders, burning their houses in order to make way for the Cheviot sheep. The play follows the thread of capitalist and repressive exploitation through the estates of the stag-hunting landed gentry, to the 1970s rush for profit in the name of North Sea Oil. Described by the playwright as having a ceilidh format, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil draws on historical research alongside Gaelic song and the Scots' love of variety and popular entertainment to tell this epic story. A totally distinctive cultural and theatrical phenomenon, the play championed several new approaches to theatTrade Review[McGrath] was Britain’s Brecht, Scotland’s Dario Fo . . . A creative powerhouse who was often out of fashion, but never out of action . . . Today, few speak, far less make theatre, with such ideological intent. * Guardian *The late John McGrath's hugely important fusion of Highland ceilidh and old-fashioned Scots musical theatre . . . still remains alive and contemporary. As play it has everything, and it throws it at you in generous handfuls; laughter, farce, drama, live song and dance, finely researched political intent. . . . as a love song to a beautiful, damaged culture and a warning of the dangers of unchecked capitalism it still rings astonishingly true. * Independent *arguably the single most important show in the whole history of Scottish theatre: important not only because of its angry, hilarious, brilliantly-researched political content, still almost frighteningly relevant today, but because its ceilidh form, and its passionate commitment to touring to communities large and small, galvanised an irreversible change in what Scotland thought theatre was, what it could do, and who its audience might be. . . . John McGrath's great play will reach out to a new generation, and continue to evolve, develop, and live, along with the story of Scotland itself. * Scotsman *Table of ContentsJohn McGrath: Politics, Aesthetics and Biography; Plot; Commentary; Context: McGrath’s Theatre for Community; Influences: from Brecht to Music Hall; Theatre Without Walls: 7:84 to NTS; The Cheviot as a “World” Play; Issues: Land, Development and the Highlands; Imperialism, Nationalism and “Devolutionary-Britain”; Language and Clearance: Peripheralising Culture; The Cheviot: From Peasant to Petro-Drama; Structure; The Ceilidh as Dramatic Form: Reeling and Repetition; Comedy, Pantomime and Political Satire ; Production and Audience; “Live” History: Chronology and Capitalist; Modernity; Conclusion: A Play for Today?; References; Further Reading; The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil; Notes; Questions for Further Study.
£10.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Connections 500
Book SynopsisDrawing together the work of 12 leading playwrights, this National Theatre Connections anthology celebrates highlights from 21 years of the Connections festival with a retrospective selection of plays. Featuring work by some of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries, and together in one volume, the anthology offers young performers between the ages of 13 and 19 an engaging selection of plays to perform, read or study.Each play has been specifically commissioned by the National Theatre''s literary department over the years, with the young performer in mind. In 2016, these plays were then performed by approximately 500 schools and youth theatre companies across the UK and Ireland, in partnership with multiple professional partner regional theatres at which the works were showcased. The anthology contains all 12 of the play scripts; notes from the writer and director of each play, addressing the themes and ideas behind the play; and production notes and exTable of ContentsBlackout by Davey Anderson Eclipse by Simon Armitage What Are They Like? by Lucinda Coxon Bassett by James Graham I'm Spilling My Heart Out Here by Stacey Gregg Gargantua by Carl Grose Children of Killers by Katori Hall Take Away by Jackie Kay It Snows by Bryony Lavery, Steven Hoggett & Scott Graham The Musicians by Patrick Marber Citizenship by Mark Ravenhill Bedbug by Snoo Wilson, Gary Kemp and Guy Pratt
£20.89
Orion Publishing Co Alfred Lord Tennyson
Book SynopsisTennyson was one of the true great Victorian poets - much of his work is known throughout the world:''Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die''''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all''His genius is expressed through the precision and delicacy of the language of his lyrical poems. Some of his words were engraved in the 2012 Olympic village and his early poetry was a major influence on and inspiration for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Tennyson initially declined a baronetcy - indeed, he wrote a substantial amount of unoffical political poetry. To this day, he remains one of Britain''s most popular poets.''No man ever got very high by pulling other people down... Don''t knock your friends. Don''t knock your enemies. Don''t knock yourself'' Tennyson
£6.99
University of Texas Press Poetic Justice
Book SynopsisThis anthology of Moroccan poetry by over seventy contemporary poets presents a significant contribution to the field of Moroccan literature in translation and will appeal to readers with an interest in Arabic poetry in general and the Moroccan dialect inTrade ReviewKapchan’s collection brings together a rich and varied tapestry of Morocco’s many poetry traditions, addressing themes as various as desire, political prisons, and spirituality. * Al-Fanar Media *Table of Contents Acknowledgments On Translation and Ethnography Abdelghani, Mahmoud Achaari, Mohammed Adnan, Taha Adnan, Yassin Aissa, Idriss Akhrif, Mehdi Alahyane, Ayad Arouhal, Khadija Ammach, Jamal Azaykou, Ali Sedki Azrhai, Abdelaziz Barakat, Ahmed Bassry, Aicha Benchemsi, Rajae Benjelloun, Abdelmajid Benjelloun, Abdelmajid Ben Jelloun, Tahar Benmoussa, Ouidad Bennis, Mohammed Bentalha, Mohammed Berrada, Omar Bouanani, Ahmed Boudouma, Jamal Bouhlal, Siham Boujbiri, Mohamed Boussrif, Salah Chebchoub, Fatima Chouhad, Moulay Ali El Aoufi, Boujema El Assimi, Malika El Hajjam, Allal El Khassar, Abderrahim El Khayat, Rita El Maïmouni, Mohamed Elmannani, Abdellah El Ouadie, Salah El Ouazzani, Hassan Farid, Mohamed (Zalhoud) Guennouni, Mohammed-Khammar Hamrouch, Abdeddine Hmoudane, Mohamed Houmir, Mostafa Ikbal, Touria Jouahri, Abderrafi Kadiri, Mourad Khatibi, Abdelkébir Khaïr-Eddine, Mohammed Khaless, Rachid Khoudari, Najib Laâlej, Ahmed Tayeb Laâbi, Abdellatif Lahbabi, Mohammed Aziz Lamrani, Wafaa Lemsyeh, Ahmed Loakira, Mohamed Maadaoui, Mostafa Madani, Rachida Majdouline, Touria Mansouri, Zohra Mejjati, Ahmed Meliani, Driss Mesnaoui, Driss Amghar Mesnaoui, Nafiss Morchid, Fatiha Moumni, Rachid Mourad, Khireddine Moussaoui, Abdesselem Moussaoui, Jamal Najmi, Hassan Nissabouri, Mostafa Ouagrar, Mohamed Ouassat, Embarek Oussous, Mohamed Rabbaoui, Mohamed Ali Rajie, Abdellah Salhi, Mohammed Sebbagh, Mohamed Serghini, Mohamed Serhane, Abdelhak Serhani, Mounir Souag, Moha Tebbal, Abdelkrim Zrika, Abdallah
£21.59
Duke University Press Maroon Choreography
Book SynopsisIn Maroon Choreographyfahima ife speculates on the long (im)material, ecological, and aesthetic afterlives of black fugitivity. In three long-form poems and a lyrical essay, they examine black fugitivity as an ongoing phenomenon we know little about beyond what history tells us. As both poet and scholar, ife unsettles the history and idea of black fugitivity, troubling senses of historic knowing while moving inside the continuing afterlives of those people who disappeared themselves into rural spaces beyond the reach of slavery. At the same time, they interrogate how writing itself can be a fugitive practice and a means to find a way out of ongoing containment, indebtedness, surveillance, and ecological ruin. Offering a philosophical performance in black study, ife prompts us to consider how we—in our study, in our mutual refusal, in our belatedness, in our habitual assemblage—linger beside the unknown. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book ATrade Review“Maroon Choreography reads like liner notes for a dance unwitnessed except by sound, or a dramaturgy for a dance recorded by the mud and roots of trees who would have been the only audience. It is obscure but everywhere. More unknowable than little known. It participates in the important recent critical practice that goes beyond applying or extending theory and instead insists there is something else to perceive and another way to perceive it.” -- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of * Dub: Finding Ceremony *“With great erudition and deep musicality, fahima ife has written a funky, rigorous, and lyrical investigation of what it is to have been made to have and not have a body. An incredible tempest of a book.” -- Fred Moten, author of * Black and Blur *“ife invokes recent thinkers for whom the inherited rules and categories of what we have learned to call civilization look like acts of Western oppression. Against those categories, with sublimity and verve, ife’s verse raises up a defiant ‘queeribbeanness,’ celebrating ‘unruly contemporary dancers’ and other ‘black bodies” that ‘struggle to name our lives as sovereign, on our own terms.’ Spectacularly allusive in its canny, concise segments, sometimes programmatic but more often simply learned, Ife’s ‘tremulous / antegrammatical’ work invokes ‘the black morning of baldwin / across the river in another country.’” -- Stephanie Burt * New York Times Book Review *"Reading this text is an exercise in letting go of the familiar to practice otherwise. Through breathing, sitting, humming, and pausing with this text I am consistently reminded (as if one could forget) that our compulsory education systems are colonially choreographed. . . . To engage with this book in the field of comparative and international education is to practice asking more of ourselves and our work while making another world possible." -- Cee Carter * Comparative Education Review *“It is not often that an academic text takes you on a journey. fahima ife’s book of essays and poetry, Maroon Choreography, invites us to theorize not by defining and analyzing but rather by inhabiting an undocumented past of escape from slavery that links to present-day escapes from slavery’s afterlife. In this process of imagining, the text engages with an important conversation within Black studies, critical theory, and performance studies.” -- Omar Ricks * Dance Chronicle *"Maroon Choreography . . . inspires as possibility for what poetry might be, how it might bring forth homage and critical theory about Blackness in new forms and fresh ways of thought. It disassembles. I’m drawn to books of all sorts that unravel dominant discourses that plague our imaginations, and ife does that." -- Dawn Lundy Martin * Brooklyn Poets *"Maroon Choreography . . . . [is] a radical work that emerges from centuries of the informal, from the pneumatic symphony of all of us, but specifically of Blackness, 'in the slickness of joy,' and takes to the snake with great force. ife proposes questions that are rarely asked, perspectives refusing popular thought. They invite us to sit with them, to float, ascend, transcend, practice, to move through something not written by the choreography of coloniality — and to breathe 'in the upper air unseen.'" -- Cameron Lovejoy * Fugue *Table of ContentsA Prefatory Note ix Recrudescence 1 Porous Aftermath 15 Nocturnal Work 51 Maroon Choreography 79 Coda 93 Anindex 117
£17.09
House of Anansi Press Ltd ,Canada Procession
£14.24
Pan Macmillan Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust
Book SynopsisBlending the critical essay with poetry, Gate of Lilacs is a collection of verse written by Clive James in response to – and profoundly inspired by – the work of Marcel Proust.'James picks out the characters, the motifs and the moments that set his memory ablaze, just as Marcel was able to conjure such visions from a tisane-infused madeleine' – Literary ReviewOver a period of fifteen years Clive James learned French by almost no other method than reading À la recherche du temps perdu – commonly translated as In Search of Lost Time, or Remembrance of Things Past. Then he spent half a century trying to get up to speed with Proust's great novel in two different languages. Gate of Lilacs is the unique product of James's love of and engagement with Proust's masterpiece. With À la recherche du temps perdu, Proust, in James's words, 'followed his creative instinct all the way until his breath gave out', and now James has done the same. In Gate of Lilacs, James, a brilliant critical essayist and poet, has blended the two forms into one.I had always thought the critical essay and the poem were closely related forms . . . If I wanted to talk about Proust's poetry beyond the basic level of talking about his language – if I wanted to talk about the poetry of his thought – then the best way to do it might be to write a poem.In the end, if À la recherche du temps perdu is a book devoted almost entirely to its author's gratitude for life, for love, and for art, this much smaller book is devoted to its author's gratitude for Proust.Clive James (1939–2019) was a broadcaster, critic, poet, memoirist and novelist. His acclaimed poetry includes the collection Sentenced to Life and a translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy, both Sunday Times bestsellers. His passion for and knowledge of poetry are distilled in his book of criticism on the subject, Poetry Notebook, and, written in the last year of his life, his personal annotated anthology of favourite poems, The Fire Of Joy. Praise for Clive James:'He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time' – Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times'Wise, witty, terrifying, unflinching and extraordinarily alive' – A.S. Byatt, critic and author of Possession: A Romance'Clive James is a true poet' – Peter Porter, London Review of BooksTrade ReviewJames writes with exquisite perception and surgical precision; he is a poet of powerful argument and emotional force * The Times *A writer whose commanding voice contains a constant variety of colour and tone -- Robert McCrum * Observer *After writing poems for 50 years, his technique is deft and assured * Independent on Saturday *He is a unique figure, a straddler of genres and a bridger of the gaps between high and low culture. He will be seen, I think, as one of the most important and influential writers of our time -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *Part of a great burst of late fruition . . . graceful in its thought, moving in its insights, and often written with a fluidity that makes me wish he had done more of this sort of thing. I'll also put it on my students' reading list to remind them that, whatever the universities tell us, we can't understand something until we have responded to it creatively * New Statesman *James picks out the characters, the motifs and the moments that set his memory ablaze, just as Marcel was able to conjure such visions from a tisane-infused madeleine * Literary Review *
£17.00
Graphic Arts Books Arms and the Man
Book SynopsisRaina Petkoff has grand ideas about heroism and war that are soon thwarted by a Swiss solider using her bedroom to hide from the authorities. Arms and the Man is a three act play that’s filled with insightful observations about politics, tradition and courtship. Raina is a young woman who’s hopelessly devoted to her fiancé Sergius Saranoff. While he’s away at war, she meets Captain Bluntschli, a Swiss mercenary who enters her bedroom seeking shelter from enemy troops. During his short stay, the pair engage in a lively discussion about battles and bravery exposing their opposing views. This random encounter sparks a series of events that leads to a political and emotional awakening that changes Raina’s life forever. Arms and the Man is one of George Bernard Shaw’s earliest successes. It’s a refreshing commentary on the romanticism of war and faulty traditions. The play was originally produced in 1894 and has been performed around the world for more than hundred years. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Arms and the Man is both modern and readable.
£6.78
Graphic Arts Books The Countess Cathleen
Book SynopsisThe Countess Cathleen (1892) is a verse drama by W.B. Yeats. Dedicated to Maud Gonne, an actress and revolutionary whom Yeats unsuccessfully courted for years, The Countess Cathleen underwent several editions before being performed in its final version at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1911. Based on an Irish legend, the play, set during a period of intense famine, follows a land-owning Countess who decides to sacrifice her wealth and property in order to save the starving Irish people. As dusk gathers, a family prepares for dinner in their rural home. The fire is lit, and Shemus, the father, has returned home from a day of hunting with nothing to show for it. As they scrounge what they can to make themselves a meal, the Countess Cathleen arrives to ask them for directions. Touched by their suffering, the Countess returns home and begins to wonder what she can do to alleviate their difficult circumstances. Impatient, Shemus yells to the darkening woods to welcome whatever being, angel or devil, that would bring them money or something to eat. When two merchants arrive offering him gold for his services, it appears that the Countess, despite her good intentions, may already be too late. The Countess Cathleen is a drama written in blank verse that explores themes of poverty, faith, and Irish independence. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of W.B. Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen is a classic of Irish literature reimagined for modern readers.
£6.06
Graphic Arts Books Selected Poems
Book SynopsisSelected Poems (1923) is a collection of poems by American poet Robert Frost. Dedicated to Edward Thomas, a friend of Frost’s and an important English poet who died toward the end of the First World War, Selected Poems is a wonderful sampling of poems from Frost’s early collections, including A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. Known for his plainspoken language and dedication to the images and rhythms of rural New England, Robert Frost is one of America’s most iconic poets, a voice to whom generations of readers have turned in search of beauty, music, and life. “Mowing” envisions the poet’s work through the prism of rural labor. “There was never a sound beside the wood but one / And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground. / What was it it whispered?” The speaker does not know, but continues his task, hypnotized by its rhythm and simple music. In “After Apple-Picking,” as fall gives over to winter, the poet remembers in dreams how the “Magnified apples appear and disappear, / Stem end and blossom end” as he climbs the ladder into the heart of the tree. Both a symbol for life and a metaphor for the poetic act, apple picking leaves the poet “overtired / Of the great harvest [he himself] desired”, awaiting sleep as he describes “its coming on,” wondering what, if anything, it will bring. “The Road Not Taken,” perhaps Frost’s most famous poem, is a meditation on fate and free will that follows a traveler in an autumn landscape, unsure of which path to take, but certain he cannot stand still. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Robert Frost’s Selected Poems is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.
£6.78
Graphic Arts Books Harlem Shadows
Book SynopsisHarlem Shadows (1922) is a poetry collection by Claude McKay. Published at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem Shadows earned praise from legendary poet and political activist Max Eastman for its depictions of urban life and the technical mastery of its author. As a committed leftist, McKay—who grew up in Jamaica—captures the life of Harlem from a realist’s point of view, lamenting the poverty of its African American community while celebrating their resilience and cultural achievement. In “The White City,” McKay observes New York, its “poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed” and “fortressed port through which the great ships pass.” Filled him with a hatred of the inhuman scene of industry and power, forced to “muse [his] life-long hate,” he observes the transformative quality of focused anger: “My being would be a skeleton, a shell, / If this dark Passion that fills my every mood, / And makes my heaven in the white world’s hell, / Did not forever feed me vital blood.” Rather than fall into despair, he channels his hatred into a revolutionary spirit, allowing him to stand tall within “the mighty city.” In “The Tropics in New York,” he walks past a window filled with “Bananas ripe and green, and ginger-root, / Cocoa in pods and alligator pears,” a feast of fresh tropical fruit that brings him back, however briefly, to his island home of Jamaica. Recording his nostalgic response, McKay captures his personal experience as an immigrant in America: “My eyes grew dim, and I could no more gaze; / A wave of longing through my body swept, / And, hungry for the old, familiar ways, / I turned aside and bowed my head and wept.” With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Claude McKay’s Harlem Shadows is a classic of Jamaican literature reimagined for modern readers.
£7.49
Andrews McMeel Publishing These Are My Big Girl Pants: Poetry and Paintings
Book SynopsisWith vibrant ribbons of color and joyous words, These Are My Big Girl Pants depicts the complexities and nuances of being a woman in this world.From award-winning artist Amber Vittoria comes These Are My Big Girl Pants, a collection of poetry and artwork that embraces womanhood and all of its inherent intricacies. Overarching themes of enlightenment, analysis, and independence speak to young adulthood, and adulthood in all of its many forms, as each poem and accompanying piece of art helps women face these emotional and physical changes. A celebration of femininity and the female body, These Are My Big Girl Pants leverages naïve artistic approaches, like simple line and brush strokes, against deep and meaningful poetry and prose, creating a true exploration of individuality, female empowerment, and emotion.
£10.79
Manchester University Press A Sonnet to Science: Scientists and Their Poetry
Book SynopsisA sonnet to science presents an account of six ground-breaking scientists who also wrote poetry, and the effect that this had on their lives and research. How was the universal computer inspired by Lord Byron? Why was the link between malaria and mosquitos first captured in the form of a poem? Who did Humphry Davy consider to be an ‘illiterate pirate’? Written by leading science communicator and scientific poet Dr Sam Illingworth, A sonnet to science presents an aspirational account of how these two disciplines can work together, and in so doing aims to inspire both current and future generations of scientists and poets that these worlds are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary in nature.Trade Review‘Illingworth offers six beautifully wrought biographies - finding humour, lyricism and humanity in the lives and work of these six scientist-poets.’ Alice Roberts, author of The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being and presenter of Digging for Britain, Coast and Time Team'This excellent book is a creative collision of Hadron-like proportion, scattering fragments of intellectual curiosity, fluency and unpretentiousness across every page. One of my "discoveries" of 2019.’ Lemn Sissay, MBE'Hard to put down! A fascinating book full of comprehensive biographies showing the development of and influences on the poet scientist, illustrated with generous amounts of poetry!' Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell ‘A wonderfully eclectic and uplifting collection celebrating how some of the most remarkable stories of scientific endeavour are fuelled by poetic imagining, and revealing how the gaps between well-worn facts are often infused with things poetical. Great stuff!’Iain Stewart, Professor of Geoscience Communication, Director, Sustainable Earth Institute, University of Plymouth and Presenter on BBC Science'By focusing on scientists who wrote poetry, A Sonnet To Science dispels the myth that scientists need to be logical and always think scientifically. It shows that poetry was practiced by the first programmer, by the discoverer of electromagnetism, and by a Nobel Prize-winning malaria researcher, so why shouldn’t other scientists dabble in poetry as well?'Eva Amson, Forbes, August 2019'It is a comprehensive work, sensitive to both the sciences and the poetries, and is of itself an exemplar of the importance of science communication.'Public Understanding of Science Blog -- .Table of ContentsIntroduction1 The romantic scientist: Humphry Davy (1778–1829)2 The metaphysical poet: Ada Lovelace (1815–52)3 The lyrical visionary: James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79)4 The medical metrist: Ronald Ross (1857–1932)5 The reluctant poet: Miroslav Holub (1923–98)6 The poetic pioneer: Rebecca Elson (1960–99) EpilogueIndex
£19.00
Manchester University Press The False One: By John Fletcher and Philip
Book SynopsisAdvertised in its Prologue as a prequel to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One is the first literary work completely to revolve around the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra. In its deployment of their liaison as a venue for the exploration and criticism of contemporary political manoeuvring and its high-spirited and pungent appropriation of Roman history, the play proves to be one of the most compelling Jacobean dramatizations of the classical past. This Revels Plays edition offers the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of The False One, with a thorough introduction that provides new insights on the date and the theatre of the play’s first performance, examines the playwrights’ reworking of their sources and explores the theatrical potential of a play that has hitherto regrettably been lost to the dramatic repertory.Trade Review'…a major contribution to the editorial history of this drama… an impressive feat of scholarship: a comprehensive edition worthy of an excellent, scholarly series. Lovascio’s edition is not only a significant milestone in the editorial history of the play; it reveals The False One as a drama that bristles with humour and spectacle worthy of performance, and offers wonderful insights into collaborative practises during the period and the presentation of Rome on the Jacobean stage.’Early Modern Literary Studies -- .Table of ContentsList of illustrationsGeneral editors’ prefaceAcknowledgementsAbbreviations and referencesIntroductionDating and authorshipA Blackfriars play?Staging Rome: Republic and empireSourcesThe titleCritical receptionStage historyThe textThe false oneAppendix 1: Latin transcription of passages from Lucan’s Pharsalia cited in the CommentaryAppendix 2: ‘Look out, bright eyes, and bless the air’Index
£60.00
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC A Little Resurrection
Book SynopsisAN IRISH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A Little Resurrection is the debut full-length collection from acclaimed poet Selina Nwulu. In these reflections on being and blackness, informed by empathy and intellectual curiosity, Nwulu melds the golden light of Senegal with the harsh winds of Yorkshire. Here, blackness itself is complicated, and the resonances of being are extended to offer an image of the self in a state of flux – a fugitive spirit battling the harm of erasure. In its profound joy, all the more powerful for being hard-won, A Little Resurrection heralds the branching out of an important trajectory in Anglophone poetry.Trade ReviewAnother British debut, and part of the stellar new Bloomsbury poetry list edited by Kayo Chingonyi, is Selina Nwulu’s A Little Resurrection, a poignant, funny and moving collection marking the arrival of a new talent * Irish Times, Best New Poetry of 2022 *Praise for Selina Nwulu: "Nwulu uses her pen as a compass directing us from her living room across the globe . . . Poetry that breaks through roadblocks and borders, that is its own passport, its own common language -- Joelle TaylorThe poems in The Secrets I Let Slip capture that liminal space where the body seems to reside in two spaces at the same time. The poet skulks effortlessly in the background of immigration borders and job centre interviews, producing imagery where her subjects are ‘a collection of atoms shredding and dividing’ and the body is constantly in motion yet static -- Malika Booker
£9.49
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Customs
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the 2023 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlisted for the 2022 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize A New Yorker Essential Read of 2022 A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2022 An NPR Best Book of 2022 A Literary Hub Best Reviewed Poetry Collection of 2022 _______________ ‘Witty and incisive… [Sharif] masterfully traverses the landscape of exile and all its complicated grief’ New York Times _______________ The devastating second collection by Solmaz Sharif, author of Look, a National Book Award finalist With Customs, Solmaz Sharif offers a series of poetic refusals, weighing nuanced questions about what it means to belong to a place. In the face of hard borders these poems seek a reckoning with the structures, in society, in language itself, by which these limits act on us. Sharif examines what it means to exist in the nowhere of the arrivals terminal; to navigate a continual series of checkpoints, officers, searches, and questionings that can become a relentless challenge; a mutating shibboleth. Through the poet's adept balancing of tonal and formal elements, these poems interrogate the ‘customs’ of the nation-state, of the English language, of the paces these systems put us through. But this work is not enjoined to a hopeless quest. Instead, the propulsive force that informs each line, each white space, and punctuation mark, is a powerfully galvanizing and healing force. Customs reminds us of the generative possibilities of restlessness, of seeking in each poem to refresh what it is a poem can be and do.Trade ReviewWitty and incisive… [Sharif] masterfully traverses the landscape of exile and all its complicated grief * New York Times *This collection, while shaking an elegant fist at “the wide hallways / of a great endowment”, is a useful dispatch from within such rooms * GUARDIAN, Best recent poetry *Striking * BOOKSELLER *A thought provoking and enjoyable read * PULSAR POETRY *Sharif gives us a poetry (and a person) caught at the adjunct between two possibilities, the border at which ambiguity (that most faithful repository for poets through the ages) can be weaponised. But it is the beauty of Customs that, in standing at this boundary, we can catch the light beyond * THE ARTS DESK *I really love ... Solmaz Sharif’s Customs. I love the book’s precision and truthfulness and find I continue to turn to it for something like help -- R. O. Kwan * The Cut *Sharif masterfully blends, develops, and transforms her imagery throughout Customs in such a seamless and unexpected way that the reader effortlessly follows these gorgeous, golden, and intelligent threads all the way to the brink of epiphany and beyond * New York Review of Books *Rooted in unrootedness; migration, borders and displacement are all themes in Sharif’s poems. This book asks us to consider how powerful language can be, and to use it carefully * NPR, Books We Love *As she masterfully traverses the landscape of exile and all its complicated grief, Sharif manages, with conviction and consistency, to make the reader feel welcome * New York Times Book Review *The ostensible clarity of borders and checkpoints gives way to a terrain of fundamental uncertainty, a geography of elusive thresholds * New Yorker, Best Books of 2022 *Dazzling . . . Sharif’s language is spare and all the more sharp for what remains, for all that she has left out, as the sculptor does with a slab of marble. . . . This is poetry – this is a poet – that marvels us in manners minute and majestic -- Mandana Chaffa * Ploughshares *Sharif masterfully blends, develops, and transforms her imagery throughout Customs in such a seamless and unexpected way that the reader effortlessly follows these gorgeous, golden, and intelligent threads all the way to the brink of epiphany and beyond * New York Journal of Books *Blistering in its clear-sightedness, this collection offers a fierce, beautiful closing that dares to imagine ‘a beckoning, a way.’ A bold and uncompromising book with virtuosic emotional range; highly recommended * Library Journal, starred review *Sharif's commanding voice reverberates throughout this complex and confident collection * Publishers Weekly, starred review *Sharif demonstrates remarkable talent in her ability to so deftly portray the traumatizing balance required to live in the West with deep roots in Iran * Booklist, starred review *Spectacular . . . In a massive feat, Customs continues the work of Look, pushing its mission forward with a new slate of sharp, memorable pieces that are set to inspire yet another generation * Cleveland Review of Books *Sharif’s ruminations on language in Customs - and how to keep it alive and potent - cement her position as one of the most thoughtful poets working today * Harvard Review *
£9.49
Pan Macmillan The Tradition
Book SynopsisWINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR POETRYThe Tradition by Jericho Brown, is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.A Poetry Book Society Choice'To read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius.' Claudia RankineJericho Brown’s daring poetry collection The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown’s mastery, and his invention of the duplex – a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues – testament to his formal skill.Trade ReviewTo read Jericho Brown's poems is to encounter devastating genius. -- Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American LyricSome folks write poems, Jericho Brown writes gospel. -- Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us DeadBrown’s poems are flirtatious, teasing us with moments of sexual and emotional vulnerability . . . In Brown’s poems, the body at risk — the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in eros — is most vulnerable to the cruelty of the world. But even in their most searing moments, these poems are resilient out of necessity, faithful to their account of survival, when survival is the hardest task of all. * New York Times *His lyrics are memorable, muscular, majestic . . . Brown's poems are living on the page. -- Ilya KaminskyThese astounding poems by Jericho Brown don't merely hold a lens up to the world and watch from a safe distance; they run or roll or stomp their way into what matters?loss, desire, rage, becoming?and stay there until something necessary begins to make sense. Like the music that runs through this collection, they get inside of you and make something there ache. It's a feeling that doesn't quite go away?and you won't want it to. This is one of the most luminous and courageous voices I have read in a long, long time. -- U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. SmithExquisite, incisive, as full of the spirit as the soil, the breath and the body, Jericho Brown’s newest collection The Tradition is today’s essential poetry. -- John Keene, author of CounternarrativesIn his latest collection, award-winning poet Jericho Brown dissects how hate is experienced in the U.S. Brown confronts the nation’s painful history in poems that tackle racism and other forms of discrimination, connecting the country’s past with the aspects of ugliness that still plague the present. The Tradition raises imperative questions about the definition of safety and the true meaning of freedom. * Time *Global and deeply personal at once, and vibrating off the page * Lit Hub *His latest book addresses themes of evil, masculinity, race and trauma with striking clarity. * New Statesman *Searing . . . [Brown] challenges stereotypes about blackness, desire and queerness — and finds moments of joy. The collection is compelling and forceful because it wonderfully balances the dark demands of memory and an indomitable strength. As the poem “Duplex” notes: “None of the beaten end up how we began./ A poem is a gesture toward home.” * Wall Street Journal *
£10.44
Pan Macmillan The Vulture
Book SynopsisThe vulture, the presiding genius of Gerard Woodward’s collection, is at once sympathetic and awful, intimate and other. Woodward naturally positions himself at uncomfortable borders and thresholds, and in doing so alerts us to the flimsiness of the conceits of home, of family and human culture. Many poets have challenged our lazy habit of addressing nature though the pathetic fallacy; few have had the nerve to consciously embrace it as a subversive strategy, through which we can explore the strange intimacies we share with other life-forms. The Vulture shows insects and animals and plants invade, infect and fuse with us at every turn; elsewhere, the architecture of our lives, our houses, gardens, careers and bodies, are revealed as the provisional drafts they are. No contemporary poet unsettles like Woodward: he does so through no easy surrealism, but instead an extraordinary ability to render our home the alien planet it is, and give conscious voice and vivid shape to the terrible sense of precariousness that lies just below our waking state.
£10.44
Pan Macmillan Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings on
Book SynopsisErudite and entertaining in equal measure, Somewhere Becoming Rain is a love letter from the much-loved writer Clive James to one of the world’s most cherished poets: Philip Larkin.'This is the finest critic of his generation on the best poet of his lifetime' – The TimesClive James was a life-long admirer of the work of Philip Larkin. Somewhere Becoming Rain gathers all of James's writing on this towering literary figure of the twentieth century, together with extra material now published for the first time.The greatness of Larkin's poetry continues to be obscured by the opprobrium attaching to his personal life and his private opinions. James writes about Larkin's poems, his novels, his jazz and literary criticism; he also considers the two major biographies, Larkin's letters and even his portrayal on stage in order to chart the extreme and, he argues, largely misguided equivocations about Larkin's reputation in the years since his death.Through this joyous and perceptive book, Larkin's genius is delineated and celebrated. James argues that Larkin's poems, adored by discriminating readers for over half a century, could only have been the product of his reticent, diffident, flawed, and all-too-human personality.'A collection to savour two-fold – for the genius of Larkin and the playful erudition of James' – Financial TimesTrade ReviewThe brilliance of James’s analysis, his clear-sighted view of Larkin’s solitude and humanity, and the fragile friendship between the two recorded in the book’s final pages, provide a monument to human connection and isolation together. It’s a perfect example of the “almost instinct” Larkin managed to prove “almost true” (hedging his bets to the end) – that what will survive of us is love. -- Andrew Hunter Murray * Guardian *A collection of witty essays by a great critic about a great poet . . . What will survive of Larkin is the work, and this small book is a joyful immersion in it. This is the finest critic of his generation on the best poet of his lifetime * The Times *To read a major critic on a major poet is one of the great pleasures. Clive James’s passion for the work of Philip Larkin, his intense scrutiny which reveals an extraordinary empathy makes Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings on Philip Larkin an outstanding book. -- Melvyn Bragg * New Statesman, Books of the Year 2019 *This slim collection of Clive James’ writings on Philip Larkin demonstrates both a life-long passion for the poet’s work and a deep critical endeavour to rehabilitate his reputation as one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. A collection to savour two-fold – for the genius of Larkin and the playful erudition of James * Financial Times, Best Books of 2019 *This is a tribute to Larkin’s poems. James is good at reminding us why and how they were powerful, multivalent and memorable . . . He is also unusually observant. His parallels between Larkin and Montale are elucidating * TLS *Few contemporary critics display the passionate commitment to the idea of poetry, and to the idea of poetry's centrality to civilized life, that James does -- John Banville * New York Review of Books *One of the most important and influential writers of our time -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times *‘[James] was what you might call a massive Philip Larkin fan. His specific fandom was feverish and absolute – and also, because he was Clive James, deeply considered and beautifully expressed . . . it’s a privilege to look back at Larkin – all of Larkin – through the prism of [James’s] appreciation * Atlantic *Perceptive . . . This volume also allows the reader to delight in James’s own prose, which surely rivals Larkin’s in the wit and insight stakes * The Crack *The late Clive James had much in common with Philip Larkin . . . In verse and prose, both blazed with wit and wrote scores of memorable lines . . . although their work was laced with sadness, few writers since have written with such beauty and gratitude about the world * Review 31 *
£9.49
Pan Macmillan The Lamplighter
Book Synopsis‘Ambitious, defiant, angry and gripping . . . the bitter story of slavery through the experience of four women’ Guardian'Jackie Kay’s work, formally expansive and inclusive . . . is always about the opening up of our notions of identity' Ali Smith, author of How to Be BothIn The Lamplighter award-winning poet and Scottish Makar Jackie Kay takes us on a journey into the dark heart of Britain’s legacy in the slave trade.First produced as a play, on the page it reads as a profound and tragic multi-layered poem. We watch as four women and one man tell the story of their lives through slavery, from the fort, to the slave ship, through the middle passage, following life on the plantations, charting the growth of the British city and the industrial revolution. Constance has witnessed the sale of her own child; Mary has been beaten to an inch of her life; Black Harriot has been forced to sell her body; and our lead, the Lamplighter, was sold twice into slavery from the ports in Bristol. Their different voices sing together in a rousing chorus that speaks to the experiences of all those brutalised by slavery, and lifts in the end to a soaring and powerful conclusion. Stirring, impassioned and deeply affecting, The Lamplighter remains as essential today as the day it was first performed. This is an essential work by one of our most beloved writers.Trade ReviewOne of Scotlands most celebrated living writers. * Spectator *Kay’s strength as a poet has always been her clear, plain style, and its fearless spoken poignancy * Daily Telegraph *Ambitious, defiant, angry and gripping . . . the bitter story of slavery through the experience of four women * Guardian *Jackie Kay’s work, formally expansive and inclusive, often an exploration of the hurt done by small-mindedness and its attendant exclusivity, is always about the opening up of our notions of identity . . . Kay has always been a watcher, a tracer of the “true” story. -- Ali Smith, author of How to Be BothI am still reeling from The Lamplighter . . . It reads like the ballad of four enslaved women as they tell us their personal horrors. This book lays bare Britain’s role in the slave trade and it is an illuminating look at truths we would rather leave in the darkness. It is as beautiful as it is devastating. -- Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie BainThe Lamplighter is a heart-breaking ballad about four enslaved women and also a necessary look at Britain’s silent history in the slave trade. Ms. Kay is incredibly warm and humane as a writer; every line is tender and suffused with love. * Wall Street Journal *
£9.49
Pan Macmillan Paradise
Book Synopsis‘Tempest has a gift for shattering and transcending convention.’ New York TimesPhiloctetes lives in a cave on a desolate island: the wartime hero is now a wounded outcast. Stranded for ten years, he sees a chance of escape when a young soldier appears with tales of Philoctetes’ past glories. But with hope comes suspicion – and, as an old enemy emerges, he is faced with an even greater temptation: revenge.Kae Tempest is now widely acknowledged as a revolutionary force in contemporary British poetry, music and drama; they continue to expand the range of their work with a new version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes in a bold new translation. Like Brand New Ancients before it, Paradise shows Tempest’s gift for lending the old tales an immediate contemporary relevance – and will find this timeless story a wide new audience.Trade ReviewTempest . . . doesn't just leap off the page, but leaps into your throat and demands to be shouted all the way out. -- Marlon JamesOne of the brightest British talents around. [Tempest's] spoken-word performances have the metre and craft of traditional poetry, the kinetic agitation of hip-hop and the intimacy of a whispered heart-to-heart . . . drawing on ancient mythology and sermonic cadence to tell stories of the everyday * Guardian *Tempest stitches together words with such animate grace that language acquires an almost tactile quality . . . [An] hypnotically persuasive vision * New York Times *Breathe[s] new life into old classic forms . . . I loved its vision, powerful and merciful. -- Ali Smith, on Brand New Ancients
£10.44
Vintage Publishing We Are All From Somewhere Else: Migration and
Book Synopsis*First published as The Mara Crossing, now with new and updated material*'A prodigy, a book of wonders. Wonder, pity and terror, the searing section of voices in transit coercing compassion - and beyond that, empathy' IndependentHome is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does 'native' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?In ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration - from the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts to Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, braving a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa. Human migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. In a series of incisive portraits, Padel turns to the struggles of human displacement - the Flight into Egypt, John James Audubon emigrating to America (feeding migrant birds en route), migrant workers in Mumbai and refugees labouring over a drastically changing planet - to show how the purpose of migration, for both humans and animals, is survival.Trade ReviewA vertiginous compendium, a prodigy, a book of wonders: it is Montaigne’s and Darwin’s 21st-century child * Independent *A broad-ranging meditation on all things migratory...This is a book of raw interfaces and unnerving encounters. Magnificent poems... a triumph of imagistic ingenuity * Guardian *(A) thoughtful and often quite magical mix of prose and poetry…What is just as fascinating as Padel’s central theme is the insight that she also gives us into poetry, or rather, into the creation of a poem. * Independent on Sunday *The Mara Crossing is a major meditation on migration. The prose is crystalline, the poems full of the wonderful material stuff of life. It's a poet's book to the core, a passionate exploration of her subject, proving that pressures on cells, bodies, creatures (human and other), and on the planet itself, are fit and essential matter for poetryA glorious fabric, weaving lyricism and hard facts, poetic insight and scientific detail unwinding from the multitudinous threads of geographical migration. A beautiful, far-ranging book about physical journeys and all they might mean to humans and animals alike * Mark Cocker *In this sweeping an unconventional book about migration, Padels commendably calls for compassion and open borders. Her poems and essays are a lyrical tribute to the instincts and whims that catalyse movement, and the trials and beauties that come with motion... there are wonders of nature in this collection which will give pause to sensitive readers * The Economist *In an original, wonderfully imaginative series of reflections, moving between essayistic insights, condensed metaphors of poetry, mysteries of microbiology and animal or human journeys, Ruth Padel takes migration as her subject and the whole earth as her province. A thrilling, poignant, richly illuminating investigation of the energies which create life and drive history * Eva Hoffman *Who would have thought that a poet would write about one of the most fascinating aspects of behavioural biology and human striving? A remarkable, beautifully constructed book, interleaving science and history, clear prose and evocative poems * Professor Patrick Bateson, President of the Zoological Society of London *This book is an extraordinary mixture of poetry, prose, fact and fantasy. * Saga Magazine *An engrossing meditation on the theme of migration…reads like a collaboration between Dorothy Wordsworth and Darwin. * Sunday Telegraph *
£11.40
Hodder & Stoughton Marigolds, Myrtle and Moles: A Gardener's Bedside
Book Synopsis'Charming miscellany of rhymes and reflections celebrating the garden'CHOICE***The perfect bedside book for the green-fingered - hilarious and touching poems on a gardening theme written and introduced by the nation's favourite gardener and presenter of ITV's Grow Your Own At Home and Love Your Garden, Channel 5's Secrets of the National Trust and with his own show on Classic FM.From touching poems on the peony, the snowdrop and the sweet pea to hilarious verse on Emily the Gardener and the Garden Design Course, this is Alan Titchmarsh's heartfelt and entertaining celebration of his favourite space - the garden.Trade Review'Charming miscellany of rhymes and reflections celebrating the garden' * Choice *
£11.69
Vehicule Press States of Emergency
Book Synopsis
£12.71
Arsenal Pulp Press Buzzkill Clamshell
Book Synopsis
£15.60
Coach House Books Beowulf
Book SynopsisCBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS OF 2022LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARDhwæt, another Beowulf translation? Not exactly… Welcome to Denmark’s Heorot Hall, where King Hrothgar invites to his banquet table everyone but Grendel, Saxon’s cradle-made monster. Dissing this ur-outsider initiates a predictable and monstrous backlash, a Mediæval fracas that only the eponymous Beowulf can quash. Sailing across the whaleroads, he arrives to “quell and queltch and quatch the Grendel beast.” Beowulf, that still-recognizable hero, embodies a “blank” function, a motive-driven yet motiveless megastar. He’s the young, fit, male, self-sacrificing protagonist-interloper who will fight any monster to protect his people. Or to defend strangers. Or to gain a reputation. Or because he just really wants to… In her rendering of Beowulf, Nicole Markotić offers a rollicking cover song of fantastical text. These pages will surprise readers as they introduce new ways to embrace, challenge, or click with Anglo-Saxon heroics. Writing original poems, Markotić de-stories the story of one man, who mostly does not play well with others, who fights monsters (and defeats their mothers, too), and who practically invents the poetic tradition of entitled bravery. Upending the tale with her fresh and enchanting style, Markotić gives a nod to previous translations, winks at canonical critics, bares historical biases, all while gifting transmogrifying pages that will whet your whimsy!"Nicole Markotić takes the original English-language epic and reprocesses it. That is, she rereads, rewrites, reimagines, rethinks, and retells it, all at the same time. The result is the story re-understood. The phrasing and incantation is Markotić’s own (and our era’s own), deployed with deliciously textured and diverse registers of language. Blake saw infinity in the palm of his hand. Markotić puts a millennium in yours." —Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour"Beowulf, with its unfathomable monsters and monster-slaying hero, its bro world of mead, boasting, weapons, and booty, remains a stubbornly relevant template for much of our contemporary scene. Nicole Markotić’s After Beowulf handles all this with dazzling sprezzatura. It is a pleasure to follow the narrating, condensing, commenting voice as it sashays through a range of verbal registers from high Olsonic to comic book pratfall, snark to scholarship. After Beowulf provides an up-to-date reading of Beowulf through the eyes of a feminist poet. And it continually suggests what things might be like after Beowulf." —Bob Perelman, author of Jack and Jill in Troy"The collision of ancient and colloquial language creates bursts of humour as my dude Beowulf makes his way into the banquet hall and beyond. Linger here to experience the aesthetics of poetry in action: vibrant and intensely moving, we feel the wrenching pain of Grendel’s mother. Markotić’s language is thick with meaning and light with humour: a creation of the most projective of verses." —Jacqueline Turner, author of FlourishTrade Review"Beowulf has been translated time and time again, whether by scholars just trying to be as accurate as possible, or people thinking outside of the box, or people who literally are just here for a good time like Nicole. After Beowulf is the tale of Beowulf, but it does address why the Geats were so terrified of his death. Nicole just happens to tell it all in the funkiest, funniest way possible. It even had me reading it out loud at one point, trying to do funny voices and keep up with the flow." –Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the The Southern Bookseller Review"An irreverent romp and, paradoxically, a work of scholarship." –Barb Carey, The Toronto Star"Reworking one of the earliest of epic poems through English and Danish traditions, there is a swagger to Markotić’s lyric, one propelled by both character and the language, writing a collage of sound and meaning, gymnastic in its application and collision." – rob mcclennan
£12.34
Copper Canyon Press,U.S. Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry: Expanded
Book SynopsisIn her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes ?Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends? This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders.?While Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison were an unlikely pair to become friends, they shared an intimate correspondence of handwritten letters that often included new poems. After Kooser was diagnosed with cancer, Harrison sensed his friend?s poetry becoming ?overwhelmingly vivid,? and their friendship deepened through the exchange of brief poems that captured ?the essence of what [they] wanted to say to each other.? After hundreds of poems were sent back and forth through the mail, they found this volume hidden within the stacks of envelopes and postcards.In her loving Foreword to this expanded anniversary edition, Naomi Shihab Nye writes ?Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry is one of the dearest, most appealing books ever published. These poems are tiny delicious American haiku affectionately exchanged between two friends? This slim volume acts as a palate-cleanser, a spirit-booster, a little rocket-ship of wonders.?Wise, wry, and penetrating, these epigrammatic, aphoristic poems explore love and friendship, pausing to celebrate the natural world, aging, everyday things and scenes, and poetry itself. This expanded edition includes a dozen new poems, and when asked why none of the poems have attributions, one of the co-authors replied, ?This book is an assertion in favor of poetry and against credentials.?
£15.19
Copper Canyon Press,U.S. The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas
Book SynopsisNobel Prize-winner Tomas Tranströmer explores the personal and political, the ecological and existential, through poems that expand like the widening scope of a telephoto lens.With slow strokes and subtle, rich lines, The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer is evidence of a Nobel Prize-winning poet tracing the world with his pen. A stunning testament to an illustrious career, The Blue House gathers poems and writings from Tranströmer’s fourteen collections into a single book. Original Swedish sits alongside their English translations as Patty Crane translates his words into revelatory language acute in the understanding of human change and loss.Subtle in politics and exact in imagery, the poems of The Blue House range from agile haiku to cinematic prose. Social phenomena are observed in rich detail—a “dictator’s bust” presiding over a train car of doomed passengers—and the collection is propelled by empathy and curiosity. Under Tranströmer’s watchful eye, no subject is overlooked: Milij Balakirev, the Russian composer; Nils Dacke, the Swedish peasant who led a rebellion against the king; and him, the stranger who forgets his name by the roadside. From the personal to the political to the existential, Tranströmer’s poems act as a telephoto lens, granting us reinvigorated access to the world we live in.
£26.09
