Search results for ""Author Karen McCarthy Woolf""

Ten: the new wave presents poetry from some of the most exciting new poets in Britain today. These ten poets were selected for The Complete Works 2 mentoring project, a groundbreaking initiative to promote diversity and quality in British poetry, initiated by the writer Bernardine Evaristo. The poets follow on from the first group to take part in this scheme, whose work was published in Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra's anthology Ten: new poets from Spread the Word (2010). Most of those poets have gone on to win awards and have their poetry collections published. The new poets in this anthology are Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingonyi, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Adam Lowe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire. These poets have backgrounds in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa, and their work draws on their multicultural heritage and tapestry. Many of them also work across art forms and have enjoyed success as playwrights, graphic artists and even in the martial arts. Talented, adventurous and culturally rich, these poets will open up new landscapes for the reader.

Read more less

'Extraordinarily inventive, witty, moving and profound.' Bernardine Evaristo'If you read one novel this year, let it be Top Doll. This is innovative, exquisitely crafted storytelling at its finest.' Malika BookerWhen reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for 50 years, the elusive Clark spoke to few--in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all.Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA.Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and ultimately, what it means to be human.'An astonishing combination of depth, compassion and beauty. A constant series of delicious surprises.' Leone Ross***Praise for An Aviary of Small Birds:'Beautiful, painful, pitch-perfect . . . McCarthy Woolf's tuning fork always rings true.' Guardian'I loved Karen McCarthy Woolf's technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak.' Maggie Gee, The ObserverPraise for Seasonal Disturbances:'A strange and stunning collection from a true writer. Vulnerable, hilarious and wise.' Warsan Shire'An unclassifiable book, revolutionary in its engagement with form, stunning in its intersectional politics, and an extraordinary achievement . . . It will break you, in a good way.' Poetry School Books of the Year 2017

Read more less

Second Place winner of the 2020 Laurel Prize for Ecopoetry. A 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Following her groundbreaking 2014 debut An Aviary of Small Birds (`technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak' - Observer), Karen McCarthy Woolf returns with Seasonal Disturbances. Set against a backdrop of ecological and emotional turbulence, these poems are charged yet meditative explorations of nature, the city, and the self. A sinister CEO presides over a dystopian hinterland where private detectives investigate crimes against hollyhocks; Halcyon is discovered as a dead kingfisher, washed up on an Italian beach. Lyrical and inventive, McCarthy Woolf's poems test classic and contemporary forms, from a disrupted zuihitsu that considers her relationship with water, to the landay, golden shovel, and gram of &. As a fifth-generation Londoner and daughter of a Jamaican emigre, McCarthy Woolf makes a variety of linguistic subversions that critique the rhetoric of the British class system. Political as they may be, these poems are not reportage: they aim to inspire what the author describes as an `activism of the heart, where we connect to and express forces of renewal and love'.

Read more less

With contributions from Jay Bernard, Malika Booker, Kat Francois, Jay T. John, Anthony Joseph, Ishion Hutchinson, Charnell Lucien, Vladimir Lucien, Rachel Manley, Tanya Shirley and Karen McCarthy Woolf. What does it mean to fight for a ‘mother country’ that refuses to accept you as one of its own? Britain’s First World War poets changed the way we view military conflict and had a deep impact on the national psyche. Yet the stories of the 15,600 volunteers who signed up to the British West Indian Regiment remain largely unknown. Sadly, these citizens of empire were not embraced as compatriots on an equal footing. Instead they faced prejudice, injustice and discrimination while being confined to menial and auxiliary work, regardless of rank or status. As a collaborative project, co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, BBC Contains Strong Language and the British Council, Unwritten Poems invited contemporary Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora poets to write into that vexed space, and explore the nature of war and humanity – as it exists now, and at a time when Britain’s colonial ambitions were still at a peak. Unwritten: Caribbean Poems After the First World War is a result of that provocation and also includes new material written for broadcast and live performance.

Read more less

An Aviary of Small Birds is both elegy to a stillborn son and testament to the redemptive qualities of poetry as a transformative art. The book opens at the birth, which paradoxically becomes the moment of death when, after a long labour and an emergency caesarean, the baby's heart gives out. For the mother, her body flooded with endorphins, euphoria gives way to shock, followed by an intense and visceral grief. However, just as grief itself is not linear, so too the book follows an emotional rather than a strictly chronological arc, lyric rather than narrative. At the same time, McCarthy Woolf's formal experimentation allows an intellectual and metaphysical line of enquiry to emerge. Ultimately, it is a closely felt connection with the natural world, particularly with water and birds, that allows the author to transcend the experience and honour the spirit of her son.

Read more less

'Extraordinarily inventive, witty, moving and profound.' Bernardine Evaristo'If you read one novel this year, let it be Top Doll. This is innovative, exquisitely crafted storytelling at its finest.' Malika Booker When reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for 50 years, the elusive Clark spoke to few--in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all. Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA. Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and ultimately, what it means to be human.'An astonishing combination of depth, compassion and beauty. A constant series of delicious surprises.' Leone Ross ***Praise for An Aviary of Small Birds:'Beautiful, painful, pitch-perfect . . . McCarthy Woolf's tuning fork always rings true.' Guardian'I loved Karen McCarthy Woolf's technically perfect poems of winged heartbreak.' Maggie Gee, The ObserverPraise for Seasonal Disturbances:'A strange and stunning collection from a true writer. Vulnerable, hilarious and wise.' Warsan Shire'An unclassifiable book, revolutionary in its engagement with form, stunning in its intersectional politics, and an extraordinary achievement . . . It will break you, in a good way.' Poetry School Books of the Year 2017

Read more less

Ten: poets of the new generation presents the work of ten exciting British poets from diverse backgrounds. It is the third anthology from The Complete Works poetry mentoring scheme, a national programme supporting exceptional black and Asian poets founded by the writer Bernardine Evaristo in 2007. Already making a big impact on the British poetry scene, poets from the series have included Sarah Howe, the 2016 winner of both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award; Mona Arshi, winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2016; and Warsan Shire, who collaborated with Beyonce on her visual album, Lemonade in 2016, which featured many of Shire's poems. This latest anthology in the Ten series will not disappoint readers hoping to discover more exceptional talent. It includes poets with even more diverse backgrounds ranging from Somalia and Nigeria through to Jamaica and the multiculturalism of Macau, and features the first poet from Latin America. These are poets who interrogate race and explode any ideas of a page/stage divide. Fierce, unexpected, sometimes beautiful and always passionate, here are ten poets to savour and enjoy. The poets included are: Raymond Antrobus, Natacha Bryan, Leonardo Boix, Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Will Harris, Ian Humphreys, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Momtaza Mehri, Yomi Sode and Degna Stone. The Complete Works III is directed by Dr Nathalie Teitler, with thanks to Arts Council England for their generous funding. Copublication with The Complete Works III.

Read more less

In 2008 the level of poets of colour published by major presses was less than 1%. By 2020 it was over 20%. The Complete Works Poetry – an initiative spearheaded by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo – played a significant role in this change. Supporting 30 poets from 2008 through to 2020, The Complete Works produced an unprecedented number of prizewinners, including the Forward Prizes (3), T.S. Eliot Prize (2), Ted Hughes Award (2), Somerset Maugham Award, Dylan Thomas Prize, Rathbones Folio Prize and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. TCW Fellows have also gone on to judge every major poetry award, and to take on significant roles in academia and translation, publishing over 40 collections. The Complete Works has become the most successful collective ever formed in British poetry. Mapping the Future offers new work by all 30 writers the programme has supported, including Warsan Shire, Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Roger Robinson, Inua Ellams, Malika Booker, Sarah Howe, Will Harris, Kayo Chingonyi, Jay Bernard, Yomi Sode and Karen McCarthy Woolf. It also includes highly personal and politically engaged essays re-drawing the map of British poetry by 10 of the 30 poets, touching on some of the most significant topics of our time. Mapping the Future is not just a magnificent anthology of some of the best UK poets, it is also an exploration on how poetry in Britain has become much more inclusive over the past 15 years: what has been won, and what is still being fought for. This anthology offers a timely insight into British poetry and how the voice of the ‘other’ continues to take centre-stage in pivotal times. Mapping the Future is edited by poet Karen McCarthy Woolf, editor of the second two Ten anthologies in The Complete Works series, with Dr Nathalie Teitler, director of The Complete Works.

Read more less