Search results for ""Cinnamon Press""

A compelling story of political corruption and the will to find a better was of living.

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In eleven beautifully observed stories, told with intelligent and textured prose, we travel far and wide to disparate places and distinctive cultures. Whether the protagonists are dealing with migration or climate change, acts of terrorism or the intricacies of family relationships, each story turns on a moment that touches the human condition, connecting us to a single encounter. With a finger on the political and cultural pulse, Ultramarine is a generous, finely-tuned collection for the times we live in.

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Emily needs friends. Outwardly successful, about to get married, inside she is scared and grieving. When an accident reveals a relative she never knew existed, everything changes. Jim has buried his life in a mundane job at the Ministry of Information, writing manuals to help others and hiding the secrets that continue to haunt his family. Through their distinct voices, Emily speaking from 1993 and Jim from 1915, the link between two intriguing tales emerges. As their stories come together, will Emily finally escape the past to find a life of her own? How to Keep Well in Wartime is a compelling exploration of the human condition and the importance of creating a life worth living.

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Will the past never leave the present in peace? Did you learn family tales at your grandmother’s knee? Just harmless old stories. But what of the reality behind them? The Beauty of Chell Street is the story of a family dominated by its own poisonous mythology; one which outlives them all. Nora Wilson endlessly recounts the story of her betrayal by her husband, Sam, during her heyday as the incomparable Beauty of Chell Street. Her demands to a lost God for Sam’s damnation become her only life force. Long after their deaths, when their great-granddaughter, Francine, discovers old pictures of Nora and Sam, their story obsesses her. As she collects the past, Francine is as single-minded as Nora and as ruthless as Sam. Can she even cheat time and death to get to the people who knew Nora and Sam? As betrayal weaves its way through turnabout time periods and Francine assembles her evidence, the story is told again and again into Francine’s old age while the image of Nora remains frozen, looking out from the photograph that started it all, forever the beauty of Chell Street.

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I’m doing something I’ve never done before. I’m hanging upside down in a circus hoop suspended from the beams of a redundant church in Sheffield. I’m not very far from the floor, but the way I feel I may as well be. What am I scared of? Fear just is. It’s there in the muscle memory… Now, knees gripping the metal hoop I let go with my hands and see the world upside down. Upside Down in a Hoop is memoir about loss and letting go. What is it that keeps us going through the tough times? The joy of dancing as a child? The adventures we dare to take as adults? Through fear and holding on, to freedom.

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Afterlives sees John Barnie engaging with images once again, as he did in his book A Year of Flowers. Here, Barnie deploys his skills of perception to respond to a group of paintings in Peter Lord’s art collection. These are images that have been familiar to Barnie for years, yet he approaches them with characteristic freshness and humanity. There are no mere descriptions here. Rather, Barnie inhabits the images, speaking from within or engaging with their subjects as a persona just outside the frame. And as he does so, we are taken on a narrative journey, gaining insight into not only how poetry and art interrogate one another, but how each image, peered at ‘through thick cracking varnish’, reveals layers of history and the mores that accrete into hierarchies, prejudices, injustices and the inability to read one another across cultural gaps. The poems in Afterlives reverberate with the ghosts from the pictures, whose roles are still being played out in the divisive echo-chambers of today’s insiders and outsiders. Rich with social commentary, delivered with wit, and sometimes a hint of mischief, there is a serious intent at work here: the voice of those who know ‘whose tragedy they are in’—‘their own’. And who know also that they: ‘will defy anything / that gets in their way’.

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On the surface a young professional couple, Sarah and Luke craved a different, more self-sufficient life. They traded the comfort of a two-bedroom English cottage for a derelict house in northwest Italy. The Hazelnut Grove explores the joys and demands of daring to live in search of a dream. Sarah and Luke’s chosen life is part fairy tale, part story of courage and self-reliance, as their new neighbour, nicknamed il Cattivo, the nasty one, decides to make war over the desolate hazelnut grove, a two metre strip of land behind their house. Their story is interspersed with anecdotes drawn from the author’s family’s holiday cottage in rural France. As events unfold that might have driven them away, especially Sarah, who does not share Luke’s Italian heritage, a picture emerges not only of how the Italian life has tested Sarah, but also of how she discovered in herself both a grand obstinacy and a respect for the materials and objects of that life. A chunk of rusting metal becomes, in Sarah’s eyes, an artefact with potential. Sarah becomes an artist. Set in Piedmont, renowned for its wine and food, a story of abundance and thriving slowly emerges against the challenges of a menacing neighbour, the deaths of beloved animals and the loneliness of getting to grips with an unfamiliar language and culture. When asked by English friends:‘Would you ever move back home again?’ Luke and Sarah can only answer:‘We are home.’

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Heartwarming warming and humorous memoirs about growing up in the North of England in the 1940s and 50s, written in the voice of the 11 year-old protagonist.

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From objects imbued with meaning and memory to the places that nurture and anchor us, Denise Bennett's poetry is grounded in a sense of the sacredness of the everyday. There is keen attention to justice and relationships of integrity shine a bright light into dark places. The poetry here is not only accomplished but deeply felt. It comes from a place of listening and seeing with the heart and is delivered in imagery that is lucid, precise and moving.

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When Bard and linguist, Easten wins the right to bear Perori at an Eisteddfod, he little suspects how exceptional this lute really is. Perori' means music in Welsh, but her music does more than soothe and entertain. When Easten's liege lord, Caradoc, comes under attack from an aggressive neighbour, Easten sets off to plead for assistance from Caradoc's relative, High King Cormac of Tara. On his journey from Cymru to Ireland, Easten discovers more of Perori's healing powers and soon the instrument reveals that she can also help him understand even more languages, a skill that helps with his first task of negotiating safe passage from the small Viking colony in the place that will become Liverpool, still part of the Danegeld. There he also meets a young novitiate monk from Birkenhead Priory, who becomes Easten's travel companion. When the ship is attacked by pirates and a violent storm, Perori helps to save lives on both occasions, and continues to rescue the party as they march acro

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When three troubled people find themselves snow-bound in Inverness, it's more than bad weather that they have to come to terms with...

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In this prize-winning, lyrical debut full collection, we encounter poetry that is both delicate and powerful. Yvonne Baker writes in the liminal space between the interior and exterior world, illuminating both with grace and precision.

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Vital Signs draws on the inspiration of the medical vital signs in three parts-'Body', 'Pulse' and 'Breath'-each with nine poems that explore romantic love, death and the experiences of grief and loss in a poetry that is as embodied, pulsing with life and rhythmically breathing.

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Poignant poetry pamphlet exploring fertility and its absence.

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A thought-provoking collection that delves into the depths of human emotions, relationships, and the power of language and art.

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In the initial sequence of this pamphlet, and following short lyrics, the writer explores the experience of living with long-term, and severe mental states. There is no safe haven of medical ‘pathology’ here, but an urgent rite of passage for the damaged and conflicted soul. A form of modern Purgatory—escaping the grasping jaws of Inferno, to find itself stumbling towards a rarefied, yet earthy, Paradiso. Ian Marriott’s marvellous poems inhabit rather than observe nature — in fact they do both — but are as much concerned with the human condition. They work in the area of what Hopkins called instress. The voice is calm, contained and precise, as when he watches a Pond Skater, “So perilous / this thin meniscus — / six legs spread out”. The poems too seem to tremble on the water of their vision. — George Szirtes

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Max Falkland finds herself on a new mission, this time posing as a maid of honour at the Queen’s coronation. Out of her comfort zone with an assignment that reminds her she is the daughter of a viscount, and out of her depth with the silent men in her life, she takes refuge in an archeological expedition, but a chance meeting leads to a trip that will force Max to face the most frightening moments of her career while trying to protect those she loves. The unmissable conclusion to the Max Falkland Trilogy.

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In a near-future world without privacy or freedom, life is unravelling for Luke, a teenager whose questions and individuality have no place in surveilled society. A virtual encounter with a girl who claims to live beyond the all-controlling grip of E-Government sets him on a quest not only for answers, but for escape. But is Alys real? Why are there echoes of her world in his father, Nazir Malik’s home, especially since Nazir is a celebrity artist trusted by E-Government? And what role can characters from Celtic Arthurian legend possibly play in saving the future? Most urgently, can Luke overcome the threats that surround him and find the Standing Ground?"A wonderful novel… a fresh rendition of the future that draws on technologies that are currently emerging… and on Arthurian legend… akin to Philip Pullman’s street-smart, other-worldly creations, complete with convincing, humorous and likeable characters… a gripping read."Anna Kiernan

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n Cold Crash, when Archaeologist Max Falkland, the Anglo-American daughter of a British peer, meets American John Knox in London in April 1952, her already troubled life takes on mystery. As the Cold War thriller progresses, Max finds herself in increasing danger, but three weeks after the events of Cold Crash, the point at which The Running Lie begins, Max has found an archaeological dig in London and John Knox has entered her life. But even now, can he be trusted? Max encounters both skulls and sexism on the dig site at the bombed out shell of St. Bride's Church in London. A family request sends her to the Berlin International Film Festival, away from the dig and her growing relationship with John Knox. But after she sees John in Berlin with another woman, Max forces him to confess he is an American spy. When his current case collides with her family life, Max has to find a way to navigate layers of lies. As fireworks explode for the Fourth of July party, Max must make a dangerous choice if she wants to save both John and her family. The Running Lie is a page-turning Cold War spy thriller that reboots old school cloak and dagger — Max Falkland is the James Bond of the 21st Century.

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In this fifth collection Omar Sabbagh establishes himself as a mature and distinctive voice in poetry with an extraordinary facility for language, an intense gift for observation, and a reflective and intuitive grasp of connections, especially to others. But It Was An Important Failure is an insightful, lyrical and confessional harvest of engaging poetry; the cultivation of a language garden for ‘the rigor and flow in the happiness of gardening.’

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In The Third Sister Speaks Liliana A Pasterska immerses us in the voice of Anne Brontë—a frontierswoman and trailblazing writer of the mid 19th century who stepped out of ‘female’ territory to expose the taboos of her age, including gender inequality, marital abuse, the terrible conditions in which many women teachers worked and the effects of alcohol and substance abuse. A woman at the margins of her time, Anne Brontë lived for only 29 years, yet left a wealth of acute observation and sharp insight in her writing, as well as poetry that witnesses to her personal, spiritual and literary intelligence. For all of this, her voice is the one not often heard amongst the extraordinary Brontë sisters. But here is a corrective to this. In lyrical poetry originally commissioned for a programme of music and words celebrating Anne Brontë’s bicentenary, we enter Anne’s world. In this careful and beautifully achieved debut pamphlet, the voice of the poet reaches into the voice of a young woman still calling to the modern reader across time: elegant, spare, leaving space for silence and allowing its questions to resonate long after reading:I am a teller of truth a seer—can you hear me?

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'For we are all of the dust of stars, reborn hunter and hunted, to soar splay-winged across the moon or shadow the lonely light of angler fish.’ The final lines from the opening poem in David Underdown’s new collection hint at what is to follow, poems that range from the cosmic to the domestic, but all characterised by acute observation. The reader will also find a sense of the surreal and, above all, an empathy and relish for the many oddities and poignancies of existence. The book concludes with a sequence of poems dedicated to ‘the grandfather I never knew.’

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Eleven year old Simeon Isherwood is locked inside himself — can neither walk nor talk. When he undergoes a radical new gene therapy, it seems as though he can finally make contact with the world. But Simeon, used to the tranquility of his inner world, finds himself in agony, the anxiety of new sensations and experiences catching the attention of a mysterious entity — a being god-like and aloof from humanity, which to heal the pain of a young mind it sees as its offspring. When it does, the results are catastrophic.

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Haunted by memories of a Tanzanian childhood abruptly ended when her parents were deported, Jane Bryce returns in search of the past only to be ambushed by the present. As she retraces her own and her parents’ footsteps she is surprised by unexpected connections, reaching back into the colonial past, and further, to a time of myth and legend. The key to understanding what holds these together comes to her in the form of ‘zamani’—the Swahili sea of time where spirits inhabit places and landscape, memory animates the everyday and voices from the past speak to the present. Collectively these voices paint a picture of social and political change in Tanzania over the last 50 years, and invite the author to take her place in it.

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What is the connection between the tenth century Moorish princess, Casilda, and a young Jewish woman, Miriam, completing a Masters degree in contemporary Toledo? What links both to the Spanish singer, Casilda Faertes and to her mother, another Miriam, born in Budapest and raised in Nice? Spanning a thousand years and bringing together the stories of three generations of women in North-east England, Budapest and Spain, For Hope is Always Born, follows on from This is the End of the Story and A Remedy for All Things to ask huge questions about identity and the nature of love and loss.

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A very varied and colourful collection. There are numerous poems about love, both personal and perhaps fictional. There is a strong awareness of the real world and Nature in all its varieties (not least in that very fine and unexpected poem ‘The Roses of Heliogabalus’), but nevertheless it is the sense of a strong imagination at work that transforms the Real into Poetry that is so striking about this book. This is not another volume of careful observations that have been workshopped out of existence, but something altogether more wild and meaningful. — Fred Beake What I enjoy most about Clive’s poetry is its capacity to surprise, to lull the reader into the promise of the familiar and then completely change their understanding, their expectations, their view of life itself. These are poems of nuance and feeling, tactile descriptions and human emotion, imagination and inventiveness. — Robert Garnham

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Kevin Mills is Professor of English Literature at the University of South Wales, UK. He has published widely in the field of literary studies, including three monographs and numerous essays and chapters. Three collections of his poetry have been published by Cinnamon Press. He is course leader for the MPhil in Writing and teaches, amongst other things, on Myth and Narrative.

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These are hymns and elegies; protest songs and battle cries as Jones speaks to and for the disaffected: 'We are the tapestry / The crackling cracks of modernity / Dislocated desperations stitched together / By the disparate verses of our skin / I write therefore we exist / We exist therefore i write / And from this page this scream.' In this new anniversary edition some of the poems - like his popular, ever-evolving 'the guerilla tapestry' - have been reworked for 2021, taking in the contemporary concerns of Brexit, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, Yes Cymru, food banks, asylum seekers and zero hour workers. 28 new poems turn their gaze to the personal, covering grief and loss, broken trust and marriage, betrayal and forgiveness, haunted by ghosts of both the living and the dead. An inventory of scars where love once lived. fuse / fracture also includes a selection of poems from his other publications over the past two decades: Darkness is Where the Stars Are (Cinnamon Press, 2008), The Aspirations of Poverty (Red Poets Press, 2017) and My Bright Shadow (Rough Trade Books, 2020) as well as some of his lyrics from James Dean Bradfield's recent album Even in Exile (BMG Music Publishing, 2020

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With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, the heart of a romance and the beauty of a fantastical dive into history, The Tears of Boabdil tells the story of an undercover special agent unwittingly drawn into a forbidden romance and a glimpse of a distant past that mirrors today. Longlisted for the McKitterick Prize Sworn to his country and committed to his work, Vince is an undercover agent. He masquerades as an Islamic convert to infiltrate a British Jihadi group. There, he meets Ayesha, the beautiful sister of the leaders and soon becomes entangled in a way that threatens his grip on reality. The part he’s playing takes over, and he convinces himself he’s in love. Oblivious to the danger to Ayesha and to his sanity, he lures her into a relationship. Now he must choose between a duty that strengthens barriers or a love that breaks them. “A thematically ambitious novel, interweaving multiple narrative lines. Both disturbing and arresting.” Adam Craig, author of Vitus Dreams and fiction editor for Cinnamon Press “A joy to read—a range of emotions from sympathy to horror.” Alina Voyce, author of Lifelights

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