Search results for ""Author Emma Dai'an Wright""

How does it feel to be a foreigner? Can you choose where you call home? What if you reject your home or your home rejects you? Homesickness and Exile is a fascinating collection of poems about the fundamental human need to belong to a place, as poets from across the world provide profound and moving insights into the emotional pull of countries and cities. Poems about homecoming, departure and both voluntary and involuntary exile provoke reflections on alienation and identity, and a recurring theme is the yearning for a sense of belonging and acceptance by a place. This anthology is inspired by the Tristia, a collection of poems written by the Roman poet Ovid after he was banished from Rome by the Emperor for an unknown misdemeanour. Homesickness and Exile expands on Ovid's themes and considers spiritual as well as physical exile in the modern world, with poets writing about rootlessness and geographical ennui.

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A sequence of poems set in an imagined city, examining the impact of post-industrialisation and the effect of toxic political leadership on the collapse of cities and communities. The poems offer perspectives from various characters living in the City, from the tour guide to the photographer to the hostess at Kissorama.

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What does it mean to die in a movie scene? To exist on the peripheries? James Trevelyan takes twelve cult action films of the 1980s and 90s and gives life where it was extinguished too early. Speaking in the voices of such poignantly disposable characters as Cougar (Top Gun), GIRL (Lethal Weapon) and Donald Gennaro (Jurassic Park), Trevelyan provides a humorous and heart-breaking exploration of morality, mortality and our sense of self. With 9 black line drawings by Emma Wright.

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A true adventure story set in the vividly-evoked Old West and told through verse and prose poems. We follow the progress of the bounty hunter Harry Love, on his triumphant tour of California with the supposed head of horse-thief Joaquin Murrieta in a jar, and the Five Joaquins, a notorious gang of outlaws hard on Love's tracks.John Clegg was born in 1986 and works in a bookshop in London. His first collection, Antler, was published by Salt in 2012. His poems have been featured in The Salt Book of Younger Poets, Best British Poetry 2012 and Best British Poetry 2013. In 2013 he received an Eric Gregory award.

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A beguiling collection of observational poems and literary parodies which explore and celebrate snail culture, as told by a prematurely-crushed snail poet. Jamie McGarry of Scarborough and Valley Press writes with infectious verve and his poems are frequently romantic and always very funny. Several poems examine snailkind's unhealthy adoration of slugs – the rebels without shells of the kitchen garden – and highlights include a thrilling travel account ('A Snail of Two Cities') and a poignant account of moving house ('A Shell of My Former Self'). This book features a number of joyous homages to human poets including Robert Frost, John Betjeman, T.S. Eliot and Gervase Phinn, and was previously published by Valley Press.Jamie McGarry founded small publishing operation Valley Press in 2008, which he continues to run to this day. Uncovering and translating the original 'snail diary' in 2009, Jamie made it his mission in life to honour the author's memory, and spread the word of his literary prowess far and wide.

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Village of dunes. Valley of slumber-dust.Sandsnarl is a settlement steeped in sand – though where it came from and how long ago is a matter of tall tales and steely whispers. The sand itself makes accurate record-keeping impossible. It is drug, ore, plague and delicacy. The inhabitants of this region (or is it a fallen kingdom?) talk and think through its haze. Some alter their shape, as if shaved by it. Others seethe, resisting its rattle and buzz.These poems eavesdrop, extract, sift. Together, they make up a brief impression of time and place, a Buñuelian musical without the music.

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What’s so good about being fast? Sometimes a little patience goes a long way, and a slow thing can be just what you need. Slow walks, slow thoughts and slow afternoons in the sun provide inspiration for the poets in Slow Things, an anthology which celebrates taking life at a leisurely pace and existing in the present. As ice, traffic and a giant wooden boulder all advance with a soothing inevitability, the poets invite us to see the beauty in the accretion of tea-stains in a teapot and the unwavering stare of a loris.

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Call and Response is a sequence of sonnets from the perspective of a daughter, addressed to her mother during her mother's illness. Hard-edged yet tender, the poems explore the darker side of familial bonds and the strange ways suffering can heal old wounds.

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The Goldfish is a sumptuous, surreal exploration of femininity. The poet inhabits the voice of a goldfish through a series of linguistically experimental poems which plunge us into the glass bowl and invite us to gaze out. The poems are in turn sensual, spiky, and queasy, as the poet satirizes the patriarchy and issues a rallying cry for women broken down by society. Halfway through the book, the scope opens out to the world beyond the goldfish bowl, via the story of a free spirit passing through customs, a paean "to our white husbands", and a letter which heals old wounds.

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At one remove from parental authority, aunts play a crucial role in the upbringing of children across the world. This anthology puts these women in the spotlight and explores what it means to be – and feels like to have – an aunt, historically and today. Some aunts are biological, some are chosen, but all have an impact on the way we learn to move through the world. Poets in this volume tell stories of glamorous confidants, akin to older siblings, and of older women, tough and worldly-wise, who offer their nieces and nephews a different perspective on life. Above all, the book restores their centrality to young people’s development and to family life.

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Urban Myths and Legends is a lively collection of poems by modern poets who have taken inspiration from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The poems all tell stories which include a transformation – some inspired directly by the Metamorphoses and some completely new and of our time. Wings sprout, leaves fall and no state is certain, as the poets channel Ovid’s mischief and whisper tales of just and unjust deserts.

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An anthology of instructional poems by modern poets dispensing advice on love, seduction, relationships and heartbreak. Produced to look like an old-fashioned schoolbook, complete with diagrams, the Poetic Guide professes to help while offering a combination of stone-cold wisdom and highly dubious romantic advice.With poems from Jo Brandon, John Canfield, Jade Cuttle, Mel Denham, Amy Key, Anja Konig, Cheryl Moskowitz, Abigail Parry, Rachel Piercey, Richard O'Brien, Christopher Reid, Jacqueline Saphra and Liane Strauss.Christopher Reid's most recent book is Six Bad Poets (Faber). Among his earlier publications, A Scattering was declared Costa Book of the Year 2009, while The Song of Lunch became a BBC2 film starring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson. Andrew Wynn Owen won The Times Stephen Spender Prize in 2011 and a Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2008. Liane Strauss teaches literature and creative writing at Birkbeck College and The Poetry School. She is the author of Leaving Eden (Salt Publishing, 2010) and Frankie, Alfredo (Donut Press, 2009). Abigail Parry was recently appointed Assistant editor at The Rialto magazine.

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Can you imagine a world without bees? Did you know that dung beetles are awesome recyclers? Insects pollinate, recycle and are an important food source for many animals – they’re tiny but mighty superheroes of the animal kingdom. This is an anthology of children’s poems which will educate and excite youngsters about the fascinating world of insects. With factual notes alongside the poems, and black line illustrations.

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In rural Wales, wandering the dunes west of Pwllheli, John Fuller has composed a letter on the subject of travel: warning against it, wondering about people’s presences and absences, and serenely admiring ‘the Wales of sheep and song’. His correspondent, young Andrew Wynn Owen, replies with friendly enthusiasm, matching John’s poetic form while flouting his advice and hopping from gallery to garret via Luxembourg and Venice. Between them, they consider: is it better to risk seeming ‘stay-at-home, | A stick in mud’ or ‘to pass life scared | Of stillnesses’ AWOL is an infinitely charming collaboration between the eminent poet John Fuller, with a career spanning over 50 years, and bright young poet Andrew Wynn Owen, whose first pamphlet was published in 2014. Beautifully produced in a large square format, this book is illustrated throughout in full-colour with watercolours and line drawings by Emma Wright. The epistolary poems are composed in terza rima in tetrameter lines, reflecting both poets’ love of metre and formal challenges.

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In an island kingdom, Don Armando dreams of a dragon-slaying adventure like heroes used to perform. And in a laboratory in a gleaming city, scientist Haplo Nous tinkers towards an atom bomb. Past, present and future collide in Andrew Wynn Owen’s rip-roaring tale, full of rhythmical fireworks and joyous anachronism. This is a clash between chivalric heroics and modern scientific enquiry, and a shaggy-dog story taking in farmers, fisherpeople, flying machines and general derring-do.

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