A haiku, an ode, a sonnet, a limerick, an elegy ... more poetry,please.
Poetry Books
Smith|Doorstop Books On Poetry
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£10.44
SmithDoorstop Books COAL
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£9.50
i2i Publishing Across the Line
Book SynopsisForged on the fields of a 1970s council estate and telling a story 55 years in the making, these beautifully crafted poems take you on an unflinching journey. Spanning five decades and crossing three continents, Anthony Brough’s debut collection of poems brings to life, with visceral and tender clarity, his journey from a scruffy working class kid, to inspirational teacher and sharp social observer Reflecting both Mancunian and Liverpudlian working class roots, Across the Line provides stolen glimpses of what it felt like to grow up on an everyday estate, with nature and the post-industrial landscape the setting for the trajectory of a life. With typical Northern lyricism and humour, these poems take you on a journey through the natural world, allow you to bask in the warm glow of developing friendship and occasionally leave you stunned with their brutal honesty. The poems found within Across the Line are a heartfelt exhortation to challenge all that corrals us and instead embrace the adventures that life provides.
£10.43
Salmon Poetry Exquisite Prisons
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£10.45
Two Rivers Press Goldhawk Road
Book SynopsisIn Goldhawk Road, her eighth collection, Kate Noakes raises questions of identity – the who and where we are, the where and who we want to be. She returns to London after six years spent shuttling back and forth to Paris for work. An observant and curious flâneuse, Kate explores her new city and the wider country with fresh eyes on the geography, the natural and the human history, while other poems here take us on travels further afield to the varied landscapes of the USA, Japan’s temples and gardens, the Australia of her childhood and imagination and, of course, to France in both its sadness and beauty.Trade Review‘Kate Noakes’s poems sparkle with striking images and mischievious humour yet are always dart-precise when articulating the human condition, the impact of art, the crisis of a changing climate and the magnetic pull of place. In Goldhawk Road, Noakes observes the world from her west London vantage point, but the poems reach out to a broader sense of self and belonging. And even in the collection’s darker moments, there is consolation: “I know we are living in the end / of days. Still, there is art." This collection speaks to that truth’ — TAMAR YOSELOFF
£10.44
Two Rivers Press The Adjustments
Book SynopsisIn The Adjustments, Claire Dyer's fourth collection with Two Rivers Press, the poet explores the vagaries of time and experience. As a narrative in reverse, her book scrutinises the fine tunings of life - from what's expected to what happens - and the associated search for equilibrium in a world that's constantly changing.
£10.79
Two Rivers Press Music Awake Her
Book SynopsisMartha Kapos imagines sonata form as a narrative structure in this remarkable, and psychologically acute, showcase for poems written over nearly 30 years. With an afterword by Lawrence Kramer: Sonata, What Do You Want of Me?
£11.69
Crumps Barn Studio Love Covers All Things: a beautiful study in
Book Synopsis"You see me at my worst, you see me at my best I have been used, I have been abused I have been broken, I have been mended, I have been lied to. I have been called all sort of names I have been the cause of everything broken, so they claim Who am I? I am the one that catches you when you fall" Love has many layers. This heartfelt collection of original poetry explores the ups and downs of life's relationships. A beautiful study of the power of personal connection.Trade ReviewPraise for Beverley Gordon: "I wanted to saviour every word and pace my way through, but I couldn’t put it down ... this collection is relevant and thought provoking, I laughed I smiled and I thought it was deep ... what a great little read" ~ 5 stars
£7.59
Five Leaves Publications Fragments
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£8.22
The Conrad Press fearsmallLOVEBIG
Book Synopsis‘fear small LOVE BIG’ is a pocket guide to the human condition, ideal for keeping by the bedside and dipping into when you need inspiration, reassurance, and gentle advice. A perfect antidote to the chaos and confusion of our times, this collection of clear, direct, and radiantly honest poems encourages the reader to look within for solutions. They are like gems gathered by an awakening soul, one who has gained plenty of experience along his own spiritual path from fear to love, from head to heart; and one who now accompanies others on their ‘voyages in time’. The text is sprinkled throughout with notes which honour some of the author’s sources of inspiration as well as offering suggestions for further reading.Table of ContentsDedication 9 Prologue 10 Introduction 11 1 Unalome 12 2 Winter Sun 16 3 Out of Reach 18 4 Eat Drink Work Sleep 21 5 Carousel 23 6 Arrogance 26 7 Breaking the Spell 30 8 Success 33 9 Another Tune 36 10 Chasing Me 40 11 The Screen 45 12 Fractured Narrative 47 13 Identity 51 14 Gravity 57 15 Cosmic Seed 61 16 Beyond Belief 64 17 Qualia 68 18 The Shadow 70 19 Claim Your Peace 80 20 Clarion Call 82 21 Sovereign 85 22 Mountain of Light 88 23 The Diamond Soul 98 24 Vitality 101 25 Merkablah 105 26 Contentment 107 27 The Door 109 28 Crossing the Rubicon 113 29 Out of the Blue 115 30 Pathway 117 31 All by Yourself 119 32 Mindless Meditation 121 33 Alignment 124 34 Superman 127 35 Sacred Lover 130 36 Paradox 132 37 Chocolate 133 38 Welcome 135 39 Wonder 137 40 Gratitude 139 41 Courage 143 42 Abandon 146 43 Faith 149 44 Terminus 150 45 Rise 152 Epilogue 154 Afterword 155
£9.49
The Conrad Press In the Blink of an Eye
Book Synopsis‘In the Blink of an Eye’ is a compelling, poetically courageous collection of poems which evokes a long, and intensely felt, experience of life. It is full of gems of expression, emotion and thought. John wrote most of the poems in his middle thirties during a challenging time in his life. The only exception was the Preface which came to him in 2001 while he was in Australia. As John says: ‘I see the Preface as being inspired by what I call the “Crocodile Dundee” philosophy of the comparative insignificance of humans compared to the everlasting environment we live in.’
£9.49
The Conrad Press When Robert Burns Came to Tea and other poems
Book SynopsisIn this second collection of poetry, Bridget Nolan explores the human experience in some unexpected ways. Her ability to stir emotions provokes thought, triggers laughter and occasions tears. From the comical title poem ‘When Robert Burns came to Tea’ to the heartbreaking ‘Why would I Imagine?’ Bridget presents a collection of stories in poetic form. In her varied style, she conveys a myriad thoughts and feelings: the joy of love; the pain of a continuing sense of loss; the embarrassment of a hospital visit and the comfort of the natural world are all woven into the narrative of this diverse collection. This anthology celebrates the human condition in all its shades of dark and light.
£10.44
Valley Press House Anthems
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£21.25
The Emma Press Accessioning: 2023
Book SynopsisAstute, precise, and unsettlingly calm, Accessioning is an index of lives encased in museum glass, and then brought to life. Through poems about ‘fossilised fruit seeds’ and the sofa where Emily Bronte died, Wetton questions how we curate the lives of those living and dead, in a pamphlet about looking, processing, and memorialising. Whether considering preserved wedding-cakes, a non-existent art exhibition or a human scream, these poems speak to the impossibility of containment and question our ability to map and categorise. This is a pamphlet of poems about the stories that we tell ourselves, the memories that we construct, and the ways that we value and devalue people, animals and objects alike.
£7.00
The Emma Press Mate Arias
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£7.59
Dedalus Press Savage Acres
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£10.45
Sansom & Co Egon Altdorf Poems + Images: Poems + Images
Book SynopsisAltdorf’s earliest poems, written during military service and as a prisoner of war, reflected on nature, poetry and art. Beginning a new life, post-war, as an artist, Altdorf explored how the human figure might be depicted through increasingly abstract representations. Similarly, he refined his poetry to create ‘a new, free, melodic’ language’ with ‘a simple, song-like beauty’. Presenting Altdorf’s poetry alongside his art reveals a powerfully interconnected vision shaped but not defined by war: a humanitarian outlook informed by a profound spiritual belief.
£17.00
The Liffey Press The Boundless and Miraculous: Found Poems in the
Book SynopsisThe boundless and miraculous is what Vincent van Gogh believed we should all seek – and to be satisfied with nothing less. This is exactly what he achieved in his art, despite many profound difficulties which he recorded in his letters. These letters later became recognised for their literary virtues, such as simplicity, clarity, spontaneity and rich imagery. Such qualities are among those most prized in poetry. In The Boundless and Miraculous, extracts from Van Gogh’s letters are presented as ‘found poems’ – writing not originally intended to be a poem, reinterpreted as such – mainly in the form of sonnets. They record many of the pivotal moments in Van Gogh’s life and his struggles and emotional state at these times are evident in the content and tone of the writing. There are also his views on the work of other artists, both his contemporaries and those who went before him. In particular, the poems encapsulate much of the thinking behind the way van Gogh’s art developed, and notably the thought processes behind some of his most iconic paintings. With 87 colour plates, The Boundless and the Miraculous celebrates Van Gogh’s spectacular art as well as his wonderful writing in what could be considered a series of brief autobiographical sketches. A fabulous gift book aimed at all lovers of Van Gogh’s work, this volume will also make a major contribution to our understanding of his short and amazing life. To Theo You must understand how I regard art. One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want is difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. I would like to reach the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply, feels subtly. What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity. Very well – assuming that, I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm – pure harmony. The Hague c. 21 July 1882Trade Review"Stapleton’s accessible and illuminating collection of sonnets works well as a series of glimpses into the consciousness of a great artist; the diary of a soul. It captures the voice of a man whose life was a constant struggle but who maintained good grace to the end. The poems are accompanied by a wealth of images of van Gogh’s work that complement the subject matter." The Sunday Times (UK); "Finding poetry in the letters of Vincent van Gogh..." The Irish Times
£17.06
Smokestack Books Autumn Manuscripts
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£999.99
Flapjack Press Strikingly Invisible
Book SynopsisAn all-new poetry collection from the creator, writer and performer of the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, A Normal… Written between October 2018 and July 2019, these poems are concerned with the nature of change, identity, worth, and other abstract notions that get in the way of lunch. “Distinctly funny.” - Time Out “The Alan Bennett of poetry.” - The Scotsman “Witty and uncannily accurate with his observations.” - The Stage “Dovetails bittersweet poetry with a sublimely observant wit.” - The Guardian “A gentle giant of stand-up poetry.” - The ListTrade Review“Henry Normal’s book Strikingly Invisible is a communion with the life we share with nature. This book explores the soul we share partly with the world. We have dark moments and light. We have eternally shifting positions, freezing and thawing to those around us. The purity of rain to the spectrum of storm, we endure and share elements of life together, mother nature and man. We are it and it is us. With our unusual formations and beautiful growths. Both destined to die yet to live forevermore via the legacy of our bones. Strikingly Invisible follows a man’s journey, Normal’s journey, flooded with stabs of sadness, sprinklings of joy, splashes of humour and dashes of romance. Experiencing the natural beats of life that we all share, along with a constant undertone of existentialism as the man we follow feels the overwhelming weight of the natural cycles that govern us, that governs the world. In his own words he calls it ‘the inevitable decline’. The communion Normal creates, the constant tapping in to humanity and nature even penetrates the critic. Normal’s self-referential poem ‘Warning – deconstruction in progress’ positioned half way through the book breaks down the fourth wall and takes the power away from the critic, removing the mask of judgment just as he begins to feel the judgments forming. Using the self-doubt of the creative as a lightning rod, Normal removes their thunder by laying on paper all the negative his head bares turning it into a layer of protection in a raw, personal, picking-a-scab type of way. Protection from those who wish to confirm his suspicions and quell his aspirations, to keep that small light of hope burning. This changes the way the critic views the piece. It allows them to feel the shared vulnerabilities of humanity with their comforting façade stripped away, forcing them back to sit where the reader sits for a short time. Allowing us all to be one, all be relatable, all to feel our fears and hopes within the entwined world of man and nature. Allowing all of us to glance at the wild and civilised, cruel and free cycle we are a part of in a more introspective way.” – Emily Sanderson, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature
£9.50
Smokestack Books Anxious Corporals
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£7.59
Smokestack Books Attempts on Death
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£8.54
Lucent Dreaming Uncommon Anthology of New Welsh Writing
Book SynopsisIn this anthology, we tread the common ground of not having. But our lives are very different and each of our voices spins a different tale. Read on, and you will discover (un)common worlds. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
£10.80
Nine Arches Press Father Myself
Book SynopsisIn 2022, James McDermott lost his sixty-year-old father to COVID after three weeks in intensive care. In his second collection from Nine Arches Press, McDermott explores his father's complex illness and death; the pandemic; grief; growth and how as a queer boy then a bereaved son, he had to learn to father himself.
£10.79
Nine Arches Press This Is How I Fight
Book SynopsisHow do we maintain connection in times of disruption? This Is How I Fight by Rosie Garland interrogates gods, beasts and monsters, but not to hammer down simplistic answers. Through a queer perspective, poems shift between human and other, exploring where we might find the courage needed to forge a way through the world, one word in front of the other, proposing kindness as a radical act.
£10.79
Tangerine Press Only Poets Piss in Sinks The Uncorrected Billy Childish
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£13.50
Parthian Books Little Universe
Book SynopsisThe poems in Natalie Ann Holborow's Little Universe are an exploration of tumultuous human emotions and nature's ever-present rhythms.
£9.50
Parthian Books Breaking a Mare
Book SynopsisBreaking a Mare is an investigation of silence, goodness and girlhood. It invites readers into the barn, the sawdust mill, the rodeo arena. These poems expose the hard work women do on farms, the loss of rural landscapes and the role death can play in these spaces.
£9.50
Cyhoeddiadau Barddas Y Golau yn y Gadair
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£11.97
Wave Books Selected Poems
Book Synopsis"[Selected Poems] offers readers a chance to catch on to one of the most distinctive talents of our time, one of the few who can genuinely startle...Ruefle is clearly one of the best American poets writing, and her body of work is remarkable for its spiritual force, intelligence, stylistic virtuosity, and adventurousness."--Tony Hoagland of all things standing furthest from what is real, stand these trees shaking with dispensable joy ...Mary Ruefle is the winner of the 2011 William Carlos Williams Award and has authored ten collections of poetry; The Most of It, a book of prose; and A Little White Shadow, a collection of erasures. She teaches at Vermont College.Trade Review"Her Selected Poems, like the work of William Carlos Williams, is a testimony not only to the power of artfulness, but to human empathy."--Rodney Jones, from his 2011 William Carlos Williams Award citation "This first retrospective collection from Ruefle, which selects from her nine previous books of poetry... shows her to be a poet of visionary imagination, abiding sensitivity, and melancholy humor."--Publishers Weekly "One of the enjoyable paradoxes of reading Ruefle's work is how easy it is to read, but how many possible meanings you can make. Though sometimes described as an experimental or "post-avant" poet, I have always found Ruefle's work intelligently accessible, charming and reader-friendly."--Jeannine Hall Gailey, The Rumpus "Ruefle is clearly one of the best American poets writing, and her body of work is remarkable for its spiritual force, intelligence, stylistic virtuosity, and adventurousness."--Tony Hoagland, On the SeawallTable of ContentsStanding Furthest; Transpontine; Replica; The Intended; From Memory; Patient; Without an Acre; All the Activity There Is; Barbarians; Perfume River; At the North Pole; The Beautiful Is Negative; The Last Supper; Pen and Ink; Depicted on a Screen; Heaven on Earth; The Beginnings of Idleness in Assisi; Lapland; Diary of Action and Repose; How It Is; Timberland; Cul-de-Sac; The Pedant's Discourse; Instrument of the Highest; Naked Ladies; Towards the Correction of Youthful Ignorance; Trust Me; Entirely, Eventually; Nice Hands; Rain Effect; Cold Pluto; Out of a Hundred; Merengue; Topophilia; Perpetually Attempting to Soar; Talking to Strangers; The Brooch; The Cart; The March; Ancestors; The Butcher's Story; The Hand; Minor Figure; Glory; The Wild Rose Bush; The Balloon; Perfect Reader; Tilapia; The Passing of Time; When Adults Talk; Marked; Argosy; Sentimental Education; Chilly Autumn Evenings; The Jewel; County Fair; The Letter; Pressed for Details; The Edge; Furtherness; Thistle; Nothing Like the Earth; Full Moon; Silk Land; Against the Sky; Mariposa and the Doll; Patina; Mercy; Among the Musk Ox People; Seven Postcards from Dover; The Tragic Drama of Joy; The Great Loneliness; The Feast; Zettel; Japanese Bloodgod; Magnificat; My Life as a Farmer (by James Dean); Critique of Little Errors; Concerning Essential Existence; Do Not Disturb; The Little I Saw of Cuba; In the Office of the Therapist I Behold the Extinguished Guests; The Nutshell; Why I Am Not a Good Kisser; Proscenium Arch; Oh Myrtie; From Here to Eternity; A Picture of Christ; Gathered on a Friday in the Hour of Jupiter; How I Became Impossible; The Tenor of Your Yes; My Happiness; The Meal That Way Always There; Kiss of the Sun; Pontiac; My Timid Eternity; Sweet Morning; The Imperial Ambassador of the Infinite; After a Rain; Thirteen; Lines Written on a Blank Space; Little Questions; Quick Note About the Think Source; Kettle; Lullaby
£11.39
Mage Publishers Forugh Farrokhzad: Another Birth & Other Poems:
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£22.49
Mage Publishers When They Broke Down the Door: Poems
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£19.94
CavanKerry Press Dialect of Distant Harbors
Book SynopsisThis poetry collection explores themes of home, grieving, and kinship. With wonder, empathy, and even rage, Dialect of Distant Harbors summons a shared humanity to examine issues of illness and family. Dipika Mukherjee’s poems redefine belonging and migration in a misogynistic and racist world. “A grievous vastness to this world,” she writes, “beyond human experience.” As the world recovers from a global pandemic and the failure of modern government, these poems are incantations to our connections to the human family—whether in Asia, Europe, or the United States. Dialect of Distant Harbors focuses on what is most resilient in ourselves and our communities.Trade Review“Mukherjee's latest poetry collection is a penetrating, intercontinental and reflective sheaf of poems on aging, illness, faith, and family written in a keen diasporic music. Mukherjee is skilled in various poetic forms. Her vision is clear and her sensory awareness of the stuff of human experience is stunning. As she says, ‘sometimes the third eye is a camera, / sometimes a fist to the heart.’” * Maya Marshall, author of ‘All the Blood Involved in Love’ *“Mukherjee’s masterful lyricism and storytelling complicate the immigrant narrative: ‘hundred is the sum of me. . . I have a hundred ways to be.’ From her native Delhi to her adoptive Chicago, to New Zealand, Kuala Lumpur, and beyond, her poetic kaleidoscope refracts the self like ‘the light of many Buddhas carved into stone, holy and potent.’ Lush, fierce, and tender, these poems sing of family and childhood, love and loss, while grappling with cultural identity, migration, womanhood, and race. If, as Czeslaw Milosz says, language is the only homeland, then to read this book is to rediscover that beloved yet elusive soil, and ‘to live again in that house on stilts, taste / the sharpness of anchovies / dried on bamboo vines.’” * Angela Narciso Torres, author of ‘What Happens Is Neither,’ ‘Blood Orange,’ and ‘To the Bone’ *“Whether writing ghazals or haibuns or unpacking the brutality of recent historical events, Mukherjee’s collection is a hybridic journey of translations, storytelling, reportage, lyrical unfoldings, and acts of witness. Language and lineage take center stage as the palimpsest of memory, history, and utterance is explored. Though steeped in elegies for the dead, Mukherjee’s book is also praise-filled and empowering as she guides us through a detailed terrain of muslin petticoats, Weird Al, Calcutta heat, and ‘black diamonds under bare feet,’ as well as the rich odors of smeared chutney, woodsmoke, and ink. By the end, I feel Mukherjee’s ‘benediction / in the prickle of my scalp.’” * Simone Muench, author of ‘Orange Crush’ and ‘Wolf Centos’ *“Among contemporary poetry exploring the complicated subject of ‘where I’m from,’ Mukherjee’s work stands out in these frank, fast-moving, and musical poems. She takes us into worlds of food, fragrance, and ‘goddesses,’ as well as ‘women / who bury infant girls in the ground, into / milk vats to drink until they drown.’ Her poems reside in Chicago, Calcutta, Delhi, and Door County, Wisconsin, as intimate as they are political. A woman relaxes on a downtown sidewalk enjoying an impromptu concert by a street musician, and a mother arriving at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is panicked when her nine-year-old son is led away for an inspection of his ‘foreign passport.’ A poem takes its epigraph from the widely publicized gang-rape and murder of a young woman on a bus in Delhi in imagining a communal shawl, ‘stained,’ by physical evidence and memory, worn by all women who experience sexual violence. As a poet with a doctorate in Sociolinguistics, Mukherjee enjoys and honors languages, occasionally mixing in Bengali, her ‘chalice of magic.’ She has a well-tuned ear and feel for form, knowing when to write in tight, alliterative lines, when to swing across the page, and when to write in the prose of a haibun. Reading this book is a sensory pleasure, musically and visually.” * Debra Bruce, author of ‘Survivors’ Picnic,’ ‘What Wind Will Do,’ and ‘Sudden Hunger’ *"Mukherjee’s work is kaleidoscopic in its scope and emotion, a thoughtful examination of migration, belonging, and recovery in a profoundly racist world that leaves room for the full range of emotions associated with resilience. Alternating between wonder, love, and at times even rage, Dialect of Distant Harbors is a remarkable achievement in making sense of our modern world through verse." * Chicago Review of Books *Table of ContentsWanderlust GhazalBangkok, 1956SleepDreamscapes: HaibunBuddham Sharanam GachchamiAwshukh; DiseaseMonsoon; DelhiK Block, Chittaranjan ParkGoing back to where I’m fromTurn awayThis ShawlRewoundAfter the Ice-stormA QuestionThese Words Once Danced in Red JootiesPrinters Row, ChicagoWhile his Guitar Gently Weeps, I turnAt Door County, WisconsinDynamiteDescent from the Winter GardenDreamers, 2017Foreign PassportSay The NamesDeath, A CrowSupermoon in AprilLearning not to ApologizeSaudadeBenign NegligenceMigration, Exile...These Are Men’s WordsThe Dialect of Distant HarborsA Diptych at the SeasideKeeping the FaithHindustani Musalmaan: An Indian MuslimSempiternal FireAmsterdam!Guan Yin in the HuangshanMountain EchoesIt may have been the third glass of wineDamp Red Earth and Pouring Rain (Pankti)Aphorisms from the Malay Archipelago
£14.25
Ugly Duckling Presse Bribery
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£9.50
Dzanc Books Dont Do It We Love You My Heart
Book Synopsis“Fink’s a better guide than Dante had through our hells and heavens.” - Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and LitIn a wide range of lyrically rich poems, award-winning poet Jonathan Fink interrogates the perpetual mysteries and resonances at the convergence of national identity, historical influence, and personal experience.In Don’t Do It—We Love You, My Heart, Jonathan Fink interweaves a welcome range of poetic styles including expansive, narrative poems, shorter, lyrical poems, and intricate one-sentence poems that are sustained over multiple pages to deliver his most intimate collection to date. Charting changing national and personal landscapes, Fink’s writing explores such diverse subjects as growing up in West Texas at the conclusion of the Cold War; ekphrastic poems about the paintings of Goya, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft; the intuitive language he shares with his infant daughter on a quiet evening before she falls asleep; and the famous story of a suicide prevented on the George Washington Bridge—the jumper stayed by the man who tells him, “Don’t do it-we love you, my heart.” The imperative, urgent compassion conveyed in the stranger’s command thrums through all the poems in this collection, compelling the reader outward to deeper connections and lived empathy.
£12.34
Black Ocean Echo's Errand
Book SynopsisLyrically inventive, ekphrastic poems that interrogate art, race, and humanity’s dark history.These poems stress the weight of what it means to speak from and in an already “known” world. In this debut collection from Keith Jones, the opening poems tarry with and think alongside the paintings of Cy Twombly. If Twombly is a painter of the Middle Sea, this song series conjures the longue durée of the Middle Passage. The poems then turn to resituate a “you” and “I” in a world, our world, disfigured by false and deathly approximations of the “human.” Perched on the jagged-edge of how many known and unknown catastrophes, how do we remake, rethink, reimagine, repair in language and act our relations to one another and to the earth? In the thinking and feeling of these poems, the great recursive swirling arcs of Twombly’s painterly line recur and intersect.Beyond the materiality of Twombly’s paint, beyond the materiality of the poem, we arrive at a profound place of thought, a kind of state, perhaps a republic of many worlds, alive to all our relations and how much they matter.Trade Review“The poetry of Keith Jones never loses velocity as a skimming gleam of consciousness just short of earth. Shortness of breath where the ladders of written words go up and down at the same time, not messages, or facts you can contradict, the errands they are on are like boomerangs of wind and echoes of elven hammers and javelins. We live in echo time.”—Fanny Howe“In Keith Jones’ world, we can only know by feeling. Both generous and violent—as being beat, beaten, and slapped by the surrealist’s hand—the poems capture the weary, needy state of human body: what it is to have a body, to need love, to feel pain. Jones’ voice comes across, always, like an oracle’s beating heart, like a prayer whispered at the altar of the word.”—Anaïs Duplan
£10.19
Wakefield Press Great Liberty
Book SynopsisA previously untranslated gem of Surrealist prose poetry from the acclaimed French novelist In 1941, Julien Gracq, newly released from a German prisoner-of-war camp, wrote a series of prose poems that would come to represent the only properly Surrealist writings in his oeuvre. Surrealism provided Gracq with a means of counteracting his disturbing wartime experiences; his newfound freedom inspired a new freedom of personal expression, and he gave the collection an appropriate title, Great Liberty: “In the occult dictionary of Surrealism, the true name of poetry is liberation.” Gracq the poet rather than the novelist is at work here: Surrealist fireworks lace through bewitching modernist romance, fantasy, black humor and deadpan absurdism. A later, postwar section entitled “The Habitable Earth” presents Gracq as visionary traveler exploring Andes and Flanders and returning to the narrative impulse of his better-known fiction. Julien Gracq (1910–2007), born Louis Poirier, is known for such dreamlike novels as The Castle of Argol, A Dark Stranger, The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest. He was close to the Surrealist movement, and André Breton in particular, to whom he devoted a critical study.
£12.34
Wave Books Milk
Book SynopsisIn her latest collection, Dorothea Lasky brings her signature style—a deeply felt and uncanny word-music—to all matters of creativity, from poetry and the invention of new language to motherhood and the production of new life. At once a personal document as it is an occult text,Milk investigates overused paradigms of what it means to be a creator and encapsulates its horrors and joys—setting fire to the enigma that drives the vital force that enables poems, love, and life to happen.
£12.34
BOA Editions, Limited When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further
Book SynopsisIn this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family--the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes--all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love. In the Hospital My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the time & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn't want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical cafe. My mother was in the hospital & she didn't want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn't trust my father to be it. You always forget something, she said, even when I do the list for you. Even then. Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.Trade ReviewWINNER OF THE A. POULIN, JR. POETRY PRIZE ON NPR BOOKS'S LIST OF 'POERTY TO PAY ATTENTION TO: 2017'S BEST VERSE' ON TRACK FOUR JOURNAL'S LIST OF 'TEN OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED POETRY COLLECTIONS BY PEOPLE OF COLOR IN 2017' "What does Millennial poetry look like? One answer might be this wild debut from Chen Chen. He seems to run at the mouth, free-associating wildly, switching between lingo and 'higher' forms of diction. Nothing's out of bounds or off limits, no culture too 'pop' to find its place in poetry ... nor anything too silly to point the way toward serious aims. And yet this is a deeply serious and moving book about Chinese-American experience, young love, poetry, family, and the family one makes amongst friends." --NPR Books "The collection, as the title itself suggests, is about 'further possibilities,' about revising, reinventing, and reimagining the relational modes we currently have. If we are all tasked with being 'someone 'for' someone else--a son, a friend, a partner, a student, a dear love,' we cannot afford to be complacent or static in the ways that we inhabit and think about those relations. Interdependence is at the heart of Chen's writing, and if we are to survive in these troubled times, we must continue to believe that there really are new ways to find the impossible honey." --Up the Staircase Quarterly "The word 'stanza' means one thing when it refers to a poem: a snippet of text, a line or several. In Italian, it means 'room.' Poet Chen Chen combines those definitions when he writes, thinking: what should be in the room of this poem? In his earlier work, he began to answer that question with pieces that explored his own intersecting identities, parts of himself that other people told him could not exist at once..." --PBS Newshour "Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman's multitudes and of Langston Hughes's blues, of Dickinson's 'so cold no fire can warm me' and of Michael Palmer's comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life's sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and--if we are willing to laugh at ourselves--humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I'll be reading for the rest of my life." --Jericho Brown "Chen Chen is already one of my favorite poets ever. Funny, absurd, bitter, surreal, always surprising, and deeply in love with this flawed world. I'm in love with this book." --Sherman Alexie "The radioactive spider that bit Chen Chen [isn't that how first books get made?] gave him powers both demonic and divine. The bite transmitted vision, worry, want, memory of China, America's grief, and People magazine, as well as a radical queer critique of the normative. What a gift that bite was--linguistic, erotic, politic and impolitic, idiosyncratic and emphatic. What a blessing and burden to write out of the manifold possibilities of that contact." --Bruce Smith "I so deeply love this poet's imagination where old shoes might walk back up the steps of a house, where one speaker pledges 'allegiance to the already fallen snow' and another says 'Let's put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we've just been given our names.' In precise and gorgeous language, Chen Chen shows us that the world is strange and bright with ardor. He reminds us of the miracle of the sensual and sensory. This is a book I will return to whenever I forget what a poem can do, whenever I am in need of song or hope. If a peony wrote poems in a human language, I think that these would be his poems. If the rain wrote poems... I mean: this is an important work by an astonishing and vital voice." --Aracelis Girmay
£11.39
Button Poetry Birthright: Poems
Book SynopsisA heartbreaking archive of place and placeness.
£14.39
Anthology Editions Do Angels Need Haircuts?: Poems by Lou Reed
Book SynopsisIn August of 1970, 28-year-old Lou Reed quit the Velvet Underground, moved home to Long Island, New York, and embarked on a fascinating alternate creative path: poetry. Spending months in relative isolation, the musician refashioned himself, publicly vowing to never again play rock and roll. Reed wrote verse and contributed his work to journals and small press publications. “I’m a poet,” he proclaimed from the stage of St. Mark’s Church in March 1971. Though his retirement from music wouldn’t last—only six months later he began recording his debut solo album—Reed’s passionate identification with the written word was solidified, and would last the rest of his life.Do Angels Need Haircuts? is an extraordinary snapshot of this turning point in Reed’s career. This book, the first to be produced by the Lou Reed Archive, gathers poems, photographs from the era—by Mick Rock, Moe Tucker, and others— as well as images from rare poetry zines. Featuring a new foreword by Anne Waldman, archival notes by Don Fleming, and an afterword by Laurie Anderson, Do Angels Need Haircuts? provides a window to a little-known chapter in the life of one of the most singular and uncompromising voices in American popular culture.Trade ReviewNot just for diehard devotees of Lou Reed. If you like those strange things called books, you’ll probably find something interesting here from the man who was an inspiration to Bono and Bowie and The Sex Pistols and a million others -IndependentAs a poet, he must be counted as a solitary artist. And so, Lou, thank you for brutally and benevolently injecting your poetry into music. -The GuardianLeaping from the quotidian to the profound in the space of a line [Reed’s poems often bury their wisdom in deadpan humour] - Dazed DigitalThe poems echo many of the qualities of Reed’s songs that fans throughout the decades have loved: his sensitive portrayals of society’s outsiders... unique approach to gender fluidity, deliciously vicious streak, and an arguably under-celebrated sense of humour- The Times UKThe book, which also includes photos and other ephemera, is a fascinating glimpse into a tangent that Reed’s biographers tend to gloss over. - Pitchfork "These Are the Best Lou Reed Books"Lou Reed may be punk's godfather, but he also figures in a great American poetic lineage including the Beats and the New York School—and a new book of his writing, Do Angels Need Haircuts?, offers compelling evidence. . . . [Do Angels Need Haircuts] shows an artist at a crossroads. . . . Reed's message-in-a-bottle to his mentor, like the rest of Do Angels Need Haircuts?, is a touching portrait of the artist as a young-ish man, following his muse, doing his work, tending his soul. - Rolling Stone"Striking portraits and fascinating ephemera" - Mojo UK"Taut and contemporary" - The Times“ [Do Angels Need Haircuts?] can be read in the same 45 minutes or so that it took Reed to record it—but you can be haunted by it and think about it and return to it and consult with it for a heck of a lot more than 45 minutes. If this is what we can expect from archivist Don Fleming and his stewardship Reed's incredible legacy, we have much cause for optimism. . . . Reed really did evolve tremendously as an intellectual over the course of his life, so to see such a detailed, close-up crystallization of this one rather short season at its culmination on that one-of-a-kind evening is incredible. The portrait it paints of him is so specific and clear it's easy to say it makes you feel like you were there that night." - Megan Volpert, PopMatters"A line that could have been written by an angry young poet from Trump’s America... penned decades previously, by the bard of New York’s grimy rock’n’roll underbelly: Lou Reed." Don Fleming, The GuardianTable of ContentsForeword We Are The People, 3 Playing Music is Not Like Athletes, 5 Whiskey, 7 This is Not The Age of Curtsy, Barely Civil Strangers Passing, 9 Force It, 11 He Thought of Love in the Lazy Darkness, 13 Since Half of the World is H2O, 15 Lipstick, 17 A Bed Trip, 19 Do Angels Need Haircuts?, 23 Spirited Leaves of Autumn, 27 The Murder Mystery, 31 Archival Notes, 57 Afterword, 67
£999.99
OR Books Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism
Book SynopsisA collection with a feminist ethos that cuts across race, gender identity, and sexuality.Creative activists have reacted to the 2016 Presidential election in myriad ways. Editors Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan have drawn on their profound knowledge of the poetry scene to put together an extraordinary list of poets taking a feminist stance against the new authority. What began as an informal collaboration of like-minded poets—to be released as a handbound chapbook—has grown into something far more substantial and ambitious: a fully fledged anthology of women’s resistance, with a portion of proceeds supporting Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights.Representing the complexity and diversity of contemporary womanhood and bolstering the fight against racism, sexism, and violence, this collection unites powerful new writers, performers, and activists with established poets. Contributors include Denice Frohman, Elizabeth Acevedo, Sandra Beasley, Jericho Brown, Mahogany L. Browne, Danielle Chapman, Tyehimba Jess, Kimberly Johnson, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Maureen N. McLane, Joyce Peseroff, Mary Ruefle, Trish Salah, Patricia Smith, Anne Waldman, and Rachel Zucker.Trade ReviewPraise for Women of Resistance Cited by Autostraddle as one of the "Queer and Feminist Books to Read in 2018" "Here we have 49 women and men and queers and inter-sexuals throwing their everything at this moment in time when the patriarch is really shaking, and it looks like he’s about to tumble down. We’ve got this shiny new book. People are scared that nothing will be left after he falls except a bunch of poems. Pick up this glowing book as you’re crawling through the rubble, and poem by poem and page by page you’ll begin to know that you’ll be okay. You’re in there, and so are your friends. You won’t starve, you’re safe and strong thanks to all these proud, funny, violent, trembling words. Start memorizing. Cause the future is here and this stuff is true." — Eileen MylesTable of ContentsPart I: Kiss Me, Kate - Sandra Beasley Female - Kimberly Johnson The Children's Chorus - Jacqueline Jones LaMon Civil Rights - Jacqueline Jones LaMon The Ride Home - Jacqueline Jones LaMon Over Mate - Ruth Irupe Sanabria Image - James Allen Hall Wedding Dress - James Allen Hall Good & Evil Shoes - Jan Beatty Getting a UTI - Laura Theobald Untitled - Laura Theobald Rib - Hope Wabuke Skin II: Firebird - Hope Wabuke Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits - Rachel Zucker And Still I Speak of It - Rachel Zucker Part II: January, after El Niño - Ryka Aoki 13 - Aracelis Girmay To the Husband - Aracelis Girmay Elegy with a White Shirt - Cynthia Dewi Oka Poem Beginning with Items from The Vienna Museum of Contraception and Abortion - Joyce Peseroff A Woman and Her Job - Elizabeth Clark Wessel That's Where You Disappear - Monika Zobel Of the Swan - Jericho Brown The Legend of Big and Fine - Jericho Brown Ladies Weekend in Brooklyn - Danielle Chapman To the Protesters Outside the Planned Parenthood Near My Job - Elizabeth Acevedo dowry - Safia Elhillo zihour - Safia Elhillo after - Safia Elhillo Part III: If 2017 was a Poem Title - Mahogany L. Browne Heritage - Kaveh Akbar Poem for Suheir Hammad - Trish Salah Ode to the Pantsuit - Lauren Alleyne Madame X-- - Lauren Alleyne Matriot Acts - Anne Waldman Am Ha'aretz - Rosebud Ben Oni Stanzas for the Resistance - Todd Hearon The March - Achy Obejas Meanwhile - Maureen McLane Heidenröslein - Maureen McLane Hagar in the Wilderness - Tyehimba Jess To the breasts when it's over-- - Ellen Hagen To the woman on St. Nicholas Avenue whose thigh was a wilderness blooming-- - Ellen Hagen Kiss of the Sun - Mary Ruefle Lucky Ladies Sestina - Jill McDonough Accident, Mass. Ave - Jill McDonough
£10.44
not a cult LLC Landsmoder
Book SynopsisLandsmoder, by the Salvadoran poet, historian, and performance artist Elena Salamanca, is a searing, and sometimes grotesque, exploration of the intersections between nationalism, dogma, patriarchy, and violence. Originally read aloud from the oldest standing monument in San Salvador’s centro histórico, the performance poems in Landsmoder retool the laudatory pomp of patriotic ceremony to protest the weaponization of national myth as a mask for erasure, cruelty, and neglect at the hands of the state. This unflinching collection, whose title comes from a Norwegian word that Salamanca translates as “madre de la patria” — or “mother of the nation/homeland/fatherland”— is a work of feminist grief, rage, and irony populated with churning wombs, bloodied flags, and ratteboned she-wolves. Appearing now in a bilingual edition nearly a decade after it was first performed, Landsmoder remains an urgent subversion, loud as ever, both on and off the page. Trade Review"In its unique combination of protest, performance, and translation, this book opens Salamanca’s truly monumental work to new audiences and future generations." –Diego Báez, Poetry Foundation
£13.29
White Pine Press Inquest
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£15.68
White Pine Press Still Some Light in the House
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£15.82
Acre Books Metabolics – Poems
Book SynopsisIn this debut poetry collection, a single speaker tries to control her body and negotiate her time with digital devices, all the while navigating identities, impulses, and relationships that are often in tension.Metabolics, a book-length poem, borrows the movements of metabolic pathways to consider how nature accomplishes both balance and deep transformation. In visual figures and prose blocks that bridge the divide between poetry and nonfiction, Jessica E. Johnson employs scientific idioms to construct an allegory about a family in the Pacific Northwest. The region becomes a character in its own right, with cedars, moss, and heavy cloud knitting the mother, father, boy, and girl into their setting. This far-reaching volume also serves as a study of the ecologies of contemporary parenting, with adults and children affected by “feeds” both on screen and off as their bodies metabolize food, the environment, and excess feelings such as rage. From climate change to kombucha to smartphones and curated produce, the smallest details of daily life in “Plasticland” catalyze a larger examination of selfhood: “Despite so many attempts to resolve this tension, sometimes you are you and also sometimes mother just as light can be both particle and wave.”Trade Review“Capturing the ephemeral ways in which one is strange to oneself—the edges of self, of forests, of spaces, of existence entangled with the limitation of the shapes of things, this book, full of multi-species encounters, enacts the discontinuous and porous nature of selfhood and of being more than what can be contained within the confines of a body. With a keen perception and a lyricism that penetrates like light, Metabolics is a collection that will possess you.” * Janice Lee, author of 'Separation Anxiety' and 'Imagine a Death' *“Johnson metabolizes the strange rituals of daily life into poetic language. With a ‘vast, provisional body,’ she moves between the home and the world, touching and consuming the real (plastic, cats, trees, devices) and the virtual (the internet, social networks, texts) in entangled ‘cycles within cycles.’ Once you enter this book, it too will consume your attention. It will eat your imagination until you become ‘something more than you imagined.’” * Craig Santos Perez, author of 'Habitat Threshold' *“Metabolics is a song for our times where ‘the car consumes refined bones’ and the speaker’s ‘energy is taken up. . . by the emotional exoskeleton of text threads with their fibrous connection to all your feelings.’ Metabolics pinpoints the environmental conditions of late capitalism where the ‘wonderland sky’ is threatened by ‘the understory tinder quick to catch,’ and ‘the trees said nothing so the children screamed their songs.’ What does it mean to mother now? To teach? To live in a body at the edge of a forest that is ready to burn? Each prose poem in Metabolics is a window into these questions, and yet each poem captures much more than a moment in time. Johnson’s poetics requires us to confront our troubled present, regard the ‘chemical conspiracy between trees. . . bodies listening to bodies.’ What a marvelous book.” * Tyler Mills, author of 'Hawk Parable' *“‘Herein to hold my dailiness I have borrowed the language of certainty.’ Johnson’s Metabolics transports the reader into a twining, double helix of ‘job and sweat and screen time and so many kinds of holding,’ entangling threads of motherhood, organic growth and decay, digital overload, anthropogenic awareness, and the body’s own softening with keen critique and powerful bafflement. Like mycorrhizal fungi, each strand and each poem feeds every other, creating a stronger, larger, more mysterious whole. Johnson’s voice is both detached and interior, plainspoken and strange-syntaxed; at times I was reminded of Eavan Boland’s attention to the domestic, at times of C. D. Wright’s haunting journeys through scientific/historic fact. In the end, though, Metabolics is utterly its own unique experience, one that will leave the reader inspired to re-examine and re-engage the deep strangeness of our daily lives. I am so grateful to have read this book.” * Elizabeth Bradfield, author of 'Toward Antarctica' and 'Theorem' *“These poems do just what we hope poems will do: they wake us up to our lives. Clear-eyed, they trace in loving micro-attention how the day happens in our bodies, our minds, our devices, our plastics, our politics, our dreams. They are about mothering, and they are about mothering attentiveness. Through such care, language transforms into ‘CO2 wafting into an open leaf pore,’ and we breathe again.” * Eleni Sikelianos, author of 'Your Kingdom' *"Metabolic, a gripping, felt collection littered with beautiful phrasings and insights, is grounded in those quiet, wordless moments of satiety that take us by surprise and keep us rooted to the world and to ourselves. . ." * Mom Egg Review *"The domestic is both glorified and made strange in Jessica E. Johnson’s Metabolics. This hybrid book-length poem of twelve connected pieces is attuned to language and image in a way that provides a unique portrait of family and environment (specifically the Pacific Northwest) as the speaker interrogates the self and what it means to live in a world that prizes devices over forests." * RHINO *"The veil-like lace Johnson places over the everyday allows the reader a different view of the life she’s living as a mother, teacher, wife, poet, and person in the world. With close reading the veil is lifted and prismatic truths shine." * Joan Biddle's Blog *
£14.00
Mage Publishers The Mirror Of My Heart: A Thousand Years of
Book Synopsis
£69.29
John F Blair Publisher Woodsmoke
Book SynopsisWoodsmoke is a poetry collection that renders the experience of living out life in a single, exquisite place—“in the shadow of the mountain my father said was mother to us all”—Mount Pisgah in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Wayne Caldwell, author of the novel Cataloochee, brings us the waning days of Posey Green, who cuts his own firewood, looks after himself, and tends to the land where his wife Birdie and her people are buried. Posey’s colloquial narrative poetry is presented as found verse, conjured from Posey’s internal musings—and these poems alternate with those of a new neighbor, a sympathetic female poet who observes Posey and his surroundings and creates a more formal poetic record of his days.Trade Review"The beauty of Woodsmoke is that it gives us the pleasures of both poetry and prose as it unveils not only the story of one man’s life, but the story of a whole culture. I’ve long admired Wayne Caldwell’s novels, and I’m now an admirer of his poetry. Woodsmoke is an absolute delight." —Ron Rash, In the Valley and Serena "Sit in a quiet place, preferably in front of a woodfire, take deep breaths, and listen to Posey Green. His voice is a beautiful elegy for a southern Appalachian language and mindset almost gone." —Charles Frazier, Varina and Cold Mountain "A beautiful book that reminded me of things about our culture that are so often overlooked. Woodsmoke and Posey are rooted in the core of the Appalachian spirit: a commitment to hard work, the land, and neighborliness. Like splitting and stacking wood, this collection of poems honors the complex intricacies of a life so many might refer to as simple or easy." —Savannah Sipple, WWJD and Other Poems "Alert to the equal importance of nature’s most miniscule creatures and the power of one’s true love, this collection touches on the common threads that bind us all together." —Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Even As We Breathe "Skeptical, thoughtful, funny, proud, and humble, Posey Green tells the most telling truths. I read this volume through, then read it again. For dessert." —Fred Chappell, As If It Were and I Am One of You Forever "At once familiar and alive with curiosities and the kind of delight in the unknown I seek out in a book of poems, Woodsmoke brings me to a familiar landscape and breaks it open for me to feel anew." —Matthew Wimberley, All the Great Territories
£11.89
