Search results for ""arc publications""

John Kinsella’s poetic and intertextual reworking of John Milton’s dramatic poem, Samson Agonistes, confirms Milton as one of the many influences in Kinsella’s poetic output. His fascination with Milton’s “tale of conflicted belief, values and desires” is stated at the outset in the `Argument’, and in what follows, Kinsella echoes many of Milton’s themes as he explores how the cyborg Samson – both a symbol of uncontrolled violence and a pacifist peacemaker – must come to terms with his participation in his own powerlessness and incarceration. Stephen Chinna’s introduction and Tim Cribb’s afterword are invaluable in setting the central dramatisation in context.

Read more less

Michael O'Neill's Return of the Gift is a volume about what is given and what is lost. Writing unsentimentally and with insight about powerful subjects such as the death of his mother, caring for his father, and his own recent diagnosis of cancer, the poet speaks of and to his personal and historical life and also explores themes of elegy and friendship. Memories are woven vividly throughout a thematically varied yet coherent collection, in which a witty and moving pleasure in living and language is always to the fore.

Read more less

Aneta Kaminska is a Polish poet, author of eight volumes of poetry. She has a wonderful ear for language and her specialty is poetry brimming with linguistic games. She is also a prolific translator of contemporary Ukrainian poets. This chapbook presents a selection of Kaminska's own poetry from across the years. Through the fracturing of language, with word and sound-play or othertimes a deceptive simplicity, Kaminska's poems pull us up short with their visceral honesty. Whether she is writing about the female body, a Jewish cemetery, the pandemic or the invasion of Ukraine, her poems are at once fierce and intimate. She is a unique voice which cannot be ignored, its freshness and immediacy discovered and relayed to us in ingenious ways by her translators. - Maria Jastrzebska

Read more less

For Gilles Ortlieb, the day’s ration is hard won. He takes the art of noticing to a new level, petrifying us with moments of bleakness and ushering us out of them through his humanity. He states things as they are, with exactitude, with authenticity, and with humour and his voice is compelling. Ortlieb is among the very best poets writing in France today, and this bi-lingual selection of his work will cement his growing reputation in the anglophone world."A poet of uprootedness and displacement, with a uniquely gentle and rueful wit" -TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT"It is no disservice to Gilles Ortlieb, not to place him among the “visionaries”. Rather, he is possessed of an eye that can discern, within the thicket of the real, the unnoticed, which may be its accessory or its reject. For the unnoticed is also this: the thing we conceal from ourselves." -JACQUES RÉDA"Reading the poems of Gilles Ortlieb, one’s focus is never blurred. Rather, everything is extraordinarily distinct. One emerges with clearer vision, and with an increased interest in the world." -JEAN-PIERRE LEMAIRE

Read more less

Orbita, founded in Riga in 1999, is a collective of Latvian poets writing in Russian whose unique work plays at the boundaries between various creative genres and cultures.This volume combines poetry, translation, imagery, web technologies, video and sound to offer a diverse introduction to Orbita’s vital and consistently innovative art.

Read more less

The tenth-century Saint Sunnivamade a miraculous voyage fromIreland to the Western Norwegianisland of Selja, where she tookrefuge in a cave. In 1170, her incorruptrelics were translated from Seljato Bergen Cathedral. This is anattempt to liberate Sunnivafrom her story.

Read more less

Harald Hardrada was the greatest warrior of his age. Wounded, aged 15, at Stiklestad (1030), the most savage battle ever fought on Norwegian soil, he went on to fight in Russia, Byzantium, Sicily, the Balkans, Asia Minor and Jerusalem. He returned to Norway in 1045 to contest and win the crown and was killed in the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. A man of ferocious energy, burning ambition, cunning, cruelty and vengefulness, and a man enormously attractive to women, Harald is a larger-than-life figure and one that has fascinated the poet Kevin Crossley-Holland. In this sequence of short poems, he assumes the persona of Harald during his formative years in Byzantium and writes about his engagement with warfare, leadership and love. Passionate, terse and often witty, these poems - revelations rather than narratives - contrast the glittering hard-edged northern world, still half in thrall to the old Norse gods, with the softer, more seductive south.

Read more less

We may have heard of, or even read, Sunzi's Art of War, but this anthology is the first opportunity that the majority of English-language readers will have to read first-hand accounts from those involved, one way or another, in the on-going conflicts in ancient China. The bleak and barren terrain, the inclement weather - icy blasts of wind, snow-blizzards one moment and sandstorms the next - the music of the steppes, reed-pipes sounding strange melodies across the frozen wasteland, troops setting out from some barracks on the Wall, never to return, the whitened piles of bones they leave behind after their deaths in battle, the widows and orphans pining for them thousands of miles away... these are recurring themes in this anthology which spans more than sixteen centuries and includes the work of 50 poets. Conventional `border poems' (poems about heroism and the lot of the common soldier thousands of miles away from home) sit side by side with eyewitness accounts, and the majority of these poems are translated into English for the first time, which is what make s this anthology so important. The anthology's title is inspired by a famous painting of a poet who fashioned a sweet-sounding flute from an iron sword. As the translator, Kevin Maynard, says: "Out of the discord of war we humans can still conjure up sweet music."

Read more less

A hotel with mysterious guests, a city where the moon wanders, an abandoned seaside pavilion, are some of the places visited in this, Richard Lambert's second collection. Structured around a movement from city to sea and always alert to the emotional resonance of landscape, The Nameless Places dwells on those spaces that lie at the edge of our lives and vision, and that seem somewhere between reality and dream. The collection culminates in a sequence that follows a journey made along the course of a river from its source to its mouth. Here, an English landscape's margins are investigated - suburb, waste ground, marsh, and estuary beach. In poems that are formally various (rondeau, villanelle and sonnet) and conjuring an atmosphere of melancholy, The Nameless Places explores forgotten and neglected spaces - both of the mind and of our physical world.

Read more less

The Wound is the latest collection from esteemed Australian poet John Kinsella, whose previous accolades include the Grace Leven Poetry Prize, the John Bray Award for Poetry, the Age Poetry Book of the Year Award, and three-times winner of the Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Poetry. Kinsella describes himself as a 'vegan anarchist pacifist', and The Wound was inspired by his anger towards the destruction being wrought on the West Australian coastal bushland by the controversial proposed construction of the Roe 8 Highway Extension, which environmentalists protested would endanger the area's wildlife, the biodiversity of which is equal to that of the whole of England. In this collection Kinsella mixes mythology with modernity, as this collection includes two books of poems, the first inspired by the character of Mad King Sweeney from Irish epic Buile Shuibhne, and the second comprised of works 'interacting' with poems written by German Romantic Friedrich Hölderlin.

Read more less

Capan's poetry manages to sound ancient and traditional while being firmly rooted in today's world; it is both thoroughly Turkish and at the same time European - and beyond that, part of a greater world literature. Many of his poems are personal, and in this book he looks back at times past, remembering friends and family and places that have touched his life for ever. The natural world is ever-present, especially the sea which moves restlessly, powerfully, relentlessly throughout, and the lucidity and simple beauty of these poems in Ruth Christie's exquisite translation remain with you long after you have put this book down.

Read more less

Detailing the lives of Syrian women living in Paris, these poems, capturing the unheard voices of women whose lives are suppressed in unimaginable ways, allow us to explore moments never mentioned in the news reports. Potent and never failing to capture the essence of the feminine experience with a remarkable amount of insight.

Read more less

Kevin Crossley-Holland’s name will be familiar to readers of all ages for his historical novels, his re-telling of the Norse myths and his many volumes of poetry. Previously published by the late Enitharmon Press, he is a very welcome newcomer to Arc with his twelfth collection – his first for six years – inspired by the “heavenly squelch” of his own north Norfolk where “the word on the tip of your tongue may be sacramental”. As Ronald Blythe puts it: “His language has been honed by the Norfolk and Suffolk climate itself, and has the polish of split flint.”

Read more less

Larissa Miller's poems take the reader on a peculiar voyage of unforgettable, potent, and arresting images. Through an array of bewildered speakers Miller leaps from the habitual world into the absurd and places us directly in the strangeness of existence. Miller's use of language is charged with rapture, sensuality and irony.

Read more less

"The world of Little's poems is a dark one, for sure, where "the harm / the damage" we humans inflict - on the environment, on one another - is rendered unflinchingly. Her poems about family, for instance, make it clear that 'social distancing' is not just a phenomenon of the past two years. Love is present too, often inextricably bound up with the pain it can cause ("I keep loving you like an old bruise / still tender") but expressed in such rich and startling language, it is its own reward." Esther Morgan "Opening a book by Pippa Little I know I will find the kind of directness one can trust. There will be images that make the world of a page real... That is what Pippa Little does so well. And she does it with wide range, with different modes, various poetics... we find that the landscape therein is our solitude: however inventive it is also bare, like a person who cannot sleep and stares and stares all night at a blank wall. Which is to say, we recognize ourselves in these pages, our days, our questions. And the pages fortify. Why? Because they are honest." Ilya Kaminsky

Read more less

It is generally accepted that Paul Celan is a notoriously ‘difficult’ poet to understand, yet this small collection, with an introduction by a leading expert on Holocaust poetry, and with each of the ten poems accompanied by a brief note which acts as a contextual orientation for the reader, is an excellent starting-point for anyone who is not familiar with his poems.

Read more less

Half-Light & Other Poems brings together the most important and enduring poems by this neglected writer, one of Russia's great 19th century poets. In a new translation by Peter France, the philosophical, social and iterary struggles of Russia under Tsar Nicholas I are brought to vivid life in the verses of a man who felt profoundly and was highly skilled at expressing his emotions and beliefs in dazzling, often fantastical fashion.

Read more less

Self-Portrait with a Swarm of Bees combines the poet's unerring instinct for the surprising perspective on commonplace objects or events with a mischievous delight in the detail of the absurd. Wagner is a vigilant, yet playful, chronicler of the quotidian, his meticulous handling of image and sound forging a worldly, almost luminous palpability.

Read more less

The poet Ian Crockatt has published two superb translations of Viking poetry with Arc- Crimsoning the Eagle's Claw: the Viking Poems of Rognvaldr Kali Kolsson, Earl of Orkney and The Song Weigher: the Complete Poems of Egill Skallagrimsson, Tenth Century Viking & Skald - and in this chapbook he uses the same highly-wrought form developed by the Skalds (the professional poets employed by the kings and earls of the Viking courts of the 9th to 13th centuries) to tell a quasi-Viking tale set in the landscapes and seascapes once under Viking control - the West Coast of Scotland where he used to live, and the north-east corner of Scotland where he now lives.

Read more less

Latin America is known to be producing some of the most exciting literature in the world today. With the region's rich intersecting traditions, history of migrations, political movements, and commitment to poetic innovation, the women poets who are currently working there are some of the fiercest and most creative voices in the 21st century. Temporary Archives brings together 24 of the most widely-read women poets working in Spanish, Portuguese and indigenous languages throughout the Latin American continent, who are in dialogue with each other, their traditions, and with the current literatures and political movements in the region. With a vibrant women's movement gaining increasing traction in countries such as Chile, Argentina and Mexico, this anthology is a timely contribution to the works currently being published in English translation.

Read more less

The poems of The Flowers of Evil were written in Paris at a time of revolution andaccelerating change – the beginning of mass culture, the rise of consumerism and themiddle-class, the radical redevelopment of the city by Haussmann – and they provide many parallels with the malaise and uncertainties of contemporary capitalist societies.Here we find poems about love (and love-hate), birds and beasts, Paris scenes and street people; about spiritual revolt, wine, death, travel and faraway places. The poet's voice is by turns ironical, angry and compassionate, his words charged with anguish, desire and rapture.

Read more less

A modern sensibility suffused with urban sophistication. In everyday scenes he shows us what's most noble in human relationships, alongside the basest fears and anxieties. Irony and sarcasm somehow never seem to obscure the warmth of Karlis's voice and his attention to intimate details. This book represents Karlis at the peak of his poetic power: gripping, vivid and not a little romantic. Karlis himself says: "I try to say something that I would like to present as beautiful or, on the contrary, something that can not and must not be taken as beautiful."

Read more less

The Dutch poet, anthologist and translator Menno Wigman died in 2018 at just fifty-one, several years after being diagnosed with a rare heart condition likely caused by an allergic reaction suffered in his adolescence. This memorial pamphlet is intended as a tribute to the poet and as a companion to Window-Cleaner Sees Paintings, my selection of Wigman's poetry published by Arc in 2016.

Read more less

Krystyna Milobedzka, one of Poland's leading and most innovative poets, was first published in 1960; her early volumes were singled out by Stanislaw Baranczak for their "dramatic ungrammaticalness", as they speak about elementary human relationships - between woman and man, mother and child - "in a language that is 'being thought'." Her prose poems, rooted in the body and earth, reveal an immediacy of expression, "seemingly uncontrolled, reporting the birth of the yet unspecified thought: a sentence broken off, a sudden mental leap, an ellipsis, a slip of the tongue." Nothing More, Milobedzka's first full-length book in English, samples her entire career. Here her kinship with the world, a unity in multitude, is reported in imperfect jottings, with "words broken in half broken to quarters". Commenting on her sparse diction, the poet explains: "I think it would be best if each writer could invent their own language to write down the very little they have to say. Only the necessary words." Elzbieta Wojcik-Leese invents her own translated language to convey Milobedzka's experimental poems into English. More 'collaborations' than translations, according to Robert Minhinnick in his introduction to this book, they are "the fruits of an exemplary literary symbiosis."

Read more less

Doris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets, and 'Shape of Time' is her eleventh book of poetry and her first full collection to be published in the UK. The poet suggests that it is composed like a piece of music in three 'movements'. The first, 'After the World', presents, as its central theme, a post-apocalyptic picture of despair; the second, 'Deo et Die', develops - by drawing on the beauty of nature and language - a measured message of hope; and the third, 'Shape of Time', through a process of re-evaluation and reconstruction, consolidates a new order. A short fourth part, 'Zero Point Reflection' by way of a finale, reflects on what has gone before from a slightly different perspective which serves to underline the ambiguities and uncertainties of the poet's journey through time. Doris Kareva observes the anguish of existence and experience in a style that is pared-back, bone-clean, needle-sharp. Her work has indeed the notation of the music of inwardness, of its despairs and its mediating flashes of illumination. And thus her poetry has its being in a time and place where past, present and future exist simultaneously.A " Penelope Shuttle, from her Introduction to 'Shape of Time'

Read more less

These poems are written from across Lev Loseff's life, contemplating his native Russia from both a literal and a figurative distance, while at the same time casting a sometimes jaundiced eye on the alien culture of America in which he spent the final years of his life. Loseff's poetry excels in complex imagery, rich literary allusion, and is abundant in formal experiment. Whether absorbed by the world of literature (particularly his fellow poets) or relating real-life experiences, Loseff conjures up a restless and frequently disturbing universe in this unusual collection. "His poetry is full of intellectual high-wire acts. Every poem is like a circus turn, under the big top and without a net. In poetry like this there is nothing either natural or unnatural, but only past-mastery." Alexandr Genis

Read more less

Birhan Keskin's (b. Kirklareli, Turkey, 1963) poetry is finely-honed and minimal and at the same time, powerfully visual, evocative and exact. Meaning and music overlap, lines dissolve, restart and repeat. Fluid and elusive, her poems inhabit a space between cognition and remembering, testimony and invention. This book selects work from six of Keskin's books, including her prize-winning collection Ba, and George Messo's outstanding translation enables us to appreciate to the full the work of this exceptional poet.

Read more less

"At the Edge of Night", a selection from four recent collections by Anise Koltz, brings the work of Luxembourg's best-known poet to the attention of the English-speaking literary world for the first time. Written in Koltz's prolific seventh decade, these brief poems - with their short, unpunctuated lines, clearly separated stanzas and powerful, direct language - are both personal and universal. This is not a gentle book. These poems pulse with anger, anger directed at the poet herself and her personal circumstances, and also at life, the world and God. Koltz originally wrote in German but switched to French which her translator, Anne-Marie Glasheen, believes gives her work some of its artistic power: this is poetry unlike any I have come across before. It feels utterly European - it speaks to the reader directly, jumping cultural barriers. It is poetry which is knife-sharp, clear and dazzling.

Read more less

An astonishing musical quality resonates throughout this collection, full of echoes and recapitulations tying the epic range of material together. From fairy tales to the Bible, Jerusalem to Hollywood, Cromwell to the Suffragettes, cafes to graveyards, the reader is taken to iconic times and landmarks, to breathe in the herbs of history. This is a world where whipped cream is not innocent, just as William Morris wallpaper has significance. Here chance encounters and solitary confinements constantly push at what communication, language and, ultimately, poetry can do. As rich in emotional truth as intellectual risk, this collection always provides enough space for the reader to enter its playful, if unsettling, symphony and engage wholeheartedly.

Read more less

"The Flights of Zarza", published in 1992, appeared in the decade in which democratic rule returned to Argentina after seven years of brutal dictatorship and state terror, a period which Kofman, a Jew, likened to Germany before and during the Second World War. The post-dictatorship years of the late 80s were characterised by their rampant consumerism and hyper-inflation, and in an environment that was becoming more and more like a US shopping mall, poetry seemed like one of the last bastions of the 'internal voice', no longer an escape from military repression but a refuge for the literary language of a whole society. For Kofman, however, as Andrew Graham-Yooll explains in his illuminating introduction to this book, this was not the end but a new beginning, and his poetry expresses the divide between the past and the need to move on, the break of the new poetry of the 90s with the politics of the 70s.Kofman's fourth published collection is very much part of this new expression as it follows the androgynous Zarza (here a pugnacious male, there a seductive female) in his/her travels the length and breadth of Argentina and beyond. Its images are strong and colourful, its narrative vigorous, and its language direct, all of which make for an exciting first encounter, in Ian Taylor's superb translation, with this outstanding Argentinean poet.

Read more less

"The greatest female poetic voice of our time." Rimbaud Revue"Burine's themes are the grand commonplaces of poetry – love and time, death and memory – and I am grateful for the introduction to her beautiful and intriguing work." Glyn Pursglove, Acumen.Introduction by Susan Wicks.Translated by Martin Sorrell.

Read more less

Meister (1911-1979), whose first book of poetry appeared only months before the Nazis came to power, is a mysterious and strange poet. His work abounds in syntactical and philosophical ambiguity which is perfectly captured in this illuminating new translation of poems drawn from the Collected Poems published at the end of Meister's life.Introduction by John Hartley-Williams.Translated by Jean Boase-Beier.

Read more less

Alamgir Hashmi has been writing poetry for the past forty years, and is the first English-language writer to bring such recognition to English writing in Pakistan. Of his work, Ted Hughes wrote: "Hashmi's poems are a delight – sinuous and assured, serious with a light touch, full of character, surprise, authenticity. I read them with intense pleasure."Introduced by John Kinsella

Read more less

Midnight and Other Poems is the first full-length poetry collection to be published in the UK by this remarkable Palestinian writer, previously known to English-language readers for his highly-acclaimed autobiography I Saw Ramallah (Bloomsbury, 2004). "Midnight and Other Poems is the most powerful and interesting collection I have read for a very long time."R.V. Bailey"Never mind that I speak not a word of Arabic. Mourid Barghouti's poetry shines through the translation. There are arresting images on almost every page."Raymond HumphreysMourid Barghouti has spent many years in exile, and his long poem 'Midnight' is a rich montage of images of the land of his birth and the strong emotional responses to which these images give rise. Here, anger, frustration and despair are juxtaposed with yearning and tenderness in Barghouti's powerful and evocative account of occupation, violence and oppression. The shorter poems which comprise the second half of the book are, by turns, dramatic and hard-hitting, contemplative and reflective, and together present an equally powerful and graphic picture of the poet's homeland.In Radwa Ashour's excellent translation, and with a helpful introduction by Guy Mannes-Abbott who recorded a number of conversations with the poet over a period of several weeks, this selection of Mourid Barghouti's poems marks an important addition to the body of Arabic literature available to English-language readers world-wide. Mourid Barghouti was born in July 1944 in Deir Ghassana near Ramallah, Palestine. He has published twelve books of poetry, the last of which is Muntasaf al-Layl / Midnight, Beirut, 2005. His Collected Works came out in Beirut in 1997. A Small Sun, his first poetry book in English translation, was published by The Aldeburgh Poetry Trust in 2003. In 2000, he was awarded the Palestine Award for Poetry. He lives in Cairo.About the translator:Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian writer and scholar, currently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Ain Shams University, Cairo. Well-known as a novelist and writer of short stories, she has also co-edited a major work on Arab Women's literature. As a translator, she has translated into English much of the poetry of Mourid Barghouti, to whom she has been married for many years. In 2007, Radwa Ashour was awarded the Constantine Cavafy International Prize for Literature. About the introducer:Guy Mannes-Abbott has written about writers and thinkers from across the world for The Independent, Guardian, New Statesman and other publications. He has written catalogue essays on contemporary Indian art, speculative essays about London and taught at the AA School of Architecture in London. He is the author of a series of widely published texts – poems, stories and aphorisms called e.things.

Read more less

James Byrne is a widely-travelled poet and editor, and in this, his 4th book from Arc, he reflects on the places, their histories and people that have made a lasting impression on him. He journeys to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox' Bazar; through Bangaladesh on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway; from Mexico City to the ancient city of Puebla and back again; from Quito to the Ecuadorian city of Esmeraldas and back to Peru; through Turkey, along the north coast of Germany, from Buenos Airies to Uruguay and back and finally to the Spanish city of Granada. So vivid are his descriptions of his travels that the reader is enveloped in colours, sounds, scents and surrounded by people.

Read more less

This collected edition commemorates the 10th anniversary of Julia Darling's death, and includes a substantial selection of unpublished work. Jackie Kay writes: "The poems are funny, irreverent, moving and never sentimental. You can recognise yourself in them, recognise your family. They are warm, full of compassion; [...] a shining bright light."

Read more less

'Shape of Time' is Doris Kareva's eleventh collection and, as with all her books, its publication was hailed as a major literary event in Estonia. In style, it is more restrained than her earlier collections but its themes are the same - love and its great enemies, death and time - and the poems still retain the romantic bravado and recklessness that make her work so compelling. Doris Kareva is arguably Estonia's leading female poet. Born in Tallinn in 1958, she studied English Language and Literature at Tartu University and from 1978-1993, and from 1997-2002, she worked for the cultural weekly Sirp. From 1992-2008 she was the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO in Estonia, and from 2009 Chief Editor of the family journal Meie Pere. Since 1978 she has published 14 collections of poetry, which have been translated into over 20 languages, and one collection of essays.

Read more less

"Crowe knows just how much to give and how much to hold back, offering fleeting glances and sometimes strange images... These are sinewy, questing poems, alive with memory and attentive to the interior landscape." PBS selectors on Figure in a Landscape "Words which come to mind when reading Anna Crowe's wonderful poetry are 'honest', 'affectionate', 'elegiac', 'skilful', 'natural', 'lucid'. Douglas Dunn on Punk with Dulcimer With their inviting blend of elegance and musicality, and captivating breadth of cultural reference, Anna Crowe's poems offer an illuminating insight into the marvels of and uncanny links between the natural world and its creatures, and the shifts of light and shade in our own lives – most touchingly, when vulnerable and bereft. Not on the Side of the Gods, constantly demanding a pause for reflection or gasp of wonderment, is both celebratory and – as in the opening poem, “The Gecko” – imbued with a heart-stopping tenderness and sense of loss. Stewart ConnI read Not On The Side Of The Gods with growing admiration. It was like wandering through a fabulous living museum, filled with places and plants, birds and other creatures and, often, most movingly, with the people they call to mind. Anna Crowe does exactly what the caddis-fly larva does in her poem, 'Jeweller in the Galerie Électra, Paris' - building for each vulnerable creature a house of jewelled words. What I came away with was not just the richness and precision of her descriptions but a cornucopia of sounds, not least the wonderful music of her voice.. Vicki Feaver

Read more less

Manuel Forcano, the outstanding Catalan poet, is a great traveller, and the poems in this, his first full-length book in English translation, embrace the cities, the landscapes and the people of the Middle East. Drawn from his four most recent collections, these poems use geographical and historical references to deepen and inform the narrative, and also to lay before the reader the idea of the continuity, over many centuries, of human love and desire. The beauty, joy, grief and tenderness in these poems are universal and belong to every kind of human affection – indeed Forcano has been described by the Catalan journalist and academic Pere Ballart as ‘our foremost love poet’.Anna Crowe’s beautiful translations demonstrate a remarkable understanding of, and sensitivity to, Forcano’s poetry, so much so that one might say that Maps of Desire represents the perfect union of poet and translator.

Read more less

This selection of Kim Seung-hee’s most recent poems is drawn half from her ninth collection, Hope is Lonely, and half from her tenth collection, Croaker on a Chopping Board. Focusing on humanity’s utter fragility through, among others, the themes of death, hope, depression and love, often seen through the lens of sorrowful womanhood, these poems, be they modernist or romantic in idiom, also comment on political and social issues, and Korean society and culture in general. Brother Anthony’s deeply sensitive translation, and his informative preface, make the work of this major Korean poet available for the first time in the UK.

Read more less

Commenting on Hoskote's poetry on the Poetry International website, the poet and editor Arundhathi Subramaniam observes: "His writing has revealed a consistent and exceptional brilliance in its treatment of image. Hoskote's metaphors are finely wrought, luminous and sensuous, combining an artisanal virtuosity with passion, turning each poem into a many-angled, multifaced experience."

Read more less

Emery brings an unusually wide-ranging poetic vocabulary to the encounters in Modern Fog, depicting wildlife on the Norfolk Broads or a multi-storey car park with equal fluency. These are elegiac, tough-minded poems of marked originality and scope."It's as if these attentive, atmospheric, musical poems can light up everywhere: seascapes, edgelands, interiors, even a carpark. Chris Emery's art is at once earthy, spiritual, dreamlike and exact. So often, the language is irresistible: 'Above us, in its immaculate empire, / a bird whirrs up and saves / its eyes for the militant hour.'"-Moniza Alvi

Read more less

Ellen Hinsey's new book-length sequence, The Illegal Age, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century's dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy, The Illegal Age chronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst. As Marilyn Hacker has written, "In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz... this is a daring text - for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind." Written in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that - rather than an "Age of Anxiety" - we may indeed be facing the start of the "Illegal Age".

Read more less

Karl Marx was born in Germany but spent most of his life as a stateless exile in Paris, Brussels and London, where he died in 1883. As a student, he had dreamed of following a literary career and worked on poems, a novel and a play, before realising that his future lay elsewhere. Some 120 of his poems from 1836-7 survive and this chapbook contains a selection of poems in the tradition of German Romanticism, love poems to his future wife Jenny and satirical verse.

Read more less