Search results for ""Don Paterson""

Don Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain's major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed close readings of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poetry, it presents Paterson as a major lyric poet.

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Don Paterson is one of Britain’s leading contemporary poets. A popular writer as well as a formidably intelligent one, he has won both a dedicated readership and most of Britain's major poetry prizes, including the T. S. Eliot Prize on two occasions, the Forward Prize in every category, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In this first comprehensive study of Paterson’s poetry, Ben Wilkinson presents him as a modern-day metaphysical, whose work is characterised by guileful use of form, musicality, colloquial diction and playful wit, in pursuit of poetry as a moral and philosophical project. Drawing on a wide range of commentators, Wilkinson traces Paterson’s development from collection to collection, providing detailed close readings of the poems framed by theoretical and literary contexts. An essential guide for students, specialists, and the general reader of contemporary poetry, it presents Paterson as a major lyric poet.

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This is the first collection of critical essays on the prize-winning contemporary British poet, Don Paterson. In 10 original chapters, leading literary critics and writers discuss the social, historical and personal dimensions of Paterson's poetry and prose including Rain, Orpheus, Landing Light, The Eyes, God's Gift to Women, Nil Nil, The Book of Shadows and Reading Shakespeare's Sonnets. A critical introduction and an opening interview with Don Paterson clearly situate his work in dialogue with the Modernist, Movement, contemporary and theoretical voices that inform it. The book shows that Paterson is a figure who actively negotiates his place within literary history, as well as confronting that history with lyric grace, humour and directness. It is the first critical study of Don Paterson's writing. Web-based recordings by Don Paterson of the poems that are discussed in the volume available on the EUP website. 10 new critical essays, by contributors including Derek Attridge and John Kinsella, an introduction, an interview with Don Paterson, a biography and bibliography. It explores Paterson's Scottish contexts, his aphorisms, his poetic theory and lyric practice, his sonnets, his irony and modes of speech as well as translation, spirituality, father-son relations, the poetry avant-garde and poetry publishing.

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Shakespeare's Sonnets are as important and vital today as they were when first published four hundred years ago. Perhaps no collection of verse before or since has so captured the imagination of readers and lovers; certainly no poem has come under such intense critical scrutiny, and presented the reader with such a bewildering number of alternative interpretations. In this illuminating and often irreverent guide, Don Paterson offers a fresh and direct approach to the Sonnets, asking what they can still mean to the twenty-first century reader.In a series of fascinating and highly entertaining commentaries placed alongside the poems themselves, Don Paterson discusses the meaning, technique, hidden structure and feverish narrative of the Sonnets, as well as the difficulties they present for the modern reader. Most importantly, however, he looks at what they tell us about William Shakespeare the lover - and what they might still tell us about ourselves.

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Aphorisms have been described as 'the obscure hinterland between poetry and prose' (New Yorker) - short pithy statements that capture the essence of the human condition in all its shades. In this New and Selected, master of the form Don Paterson brings the best examples from his two previous volumes together with ingenious new material relevant to today's world. Moving and mischievous, canny and profound - these wide-ranging observations of no more than one or two lines demonstrate that the aphorism is the perfect form for our times. Consciousness is the turn the universe makes to hasten its own end. * Agnosticism is indulged only by those who have never suffered belief. * Poet: someone in the aphorism business for the money.

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Poets have been fascinated and challenged by the sonnet ever since it was imported from Italy to England in the sixteenth century. With its fourteen lines, inexhaustibly variable, it has met particular needs of almost every major poet from Thomas Wyatt to Paul Muldoon. Don Paterson, himself an adept of the form, has devised an anthology that is both a sharing of personal favourites and a celebration of high moments in the sonnet's history. His introduction and wonderfully insightful notes provide a history and commentary that will prove illuminating to the casual reader and indispensable to the student or aspiring sonneteer.

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In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning Landing Light, Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct. In an assembly of masterful lyrics and monologues, he conjures a series of fables and charms that serve both to expose us to the unsettling forces within the world and simultaneously offer some protection against them. Whether outwardly elemental in their address, or more personal in their direction, these poems - to the rain and the sea, to his young sons or beloved friends - never shy from their inquiry into truth and lie, embracing everything in scope from the rangy narrative to the tiny renku. Rain, which includes the winner of this year's Forward Prize for the Best Individual Poem and an extended elegy for the poet Michael Donaghy, is Don Paterson's most intimate and manifest collection to date.

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Don Paterson is one of our most acclaimed contemporary poets, possessed of “an infinite sensitivity to the world” (Zadie Smith). But his current standing gives few hints of his hilariously misspent youth. An indifferent student prone to obsessions (with girls at school and . . . origami), Paterson nevertheless made clear early on his immense gift for observation. In Toy Fights, he vividly re-creates the customs of the Scottish working class, from the titular childhood game (“basically twenty minutes of extreme violence without pretext”) to the virtues of the sugary sweet known as tablet. When American pop culture arrived, Paterson fell hard for the so-called outlaw sound; by his teens, he was traveling with his father, a Stetson-wearing “country” musician, and becoming guitar-mad himself. A memoir of family, music, and highly inventive profanity, Toy Fights is an unforgettable account of the years we all spend in rehearsal for real life.

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Since his debut, Nil Nil, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993, Don Paterson has lit up the poetry scene in the U.K. His dazzling, intensely lyric and luminous verse has delighted readers ever since, and won many awards along the way. God's Gift Women took the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997, Landing Light won it again in 2003 and the Whitbread Award besides, and Rain (2009), his most recent collection, won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. This selection, drawn from twenty years of work, is made by the author himself and includes not only those poems from his four single volumes, but his thrilling and original adaptations of the poems of Antonio Machado and Rainer Maria Rilke. For any readers unfamiliar with Don Paterson's work, this Selected Poems offers the perfect introduction to this most captivating of writers; and for fans, an essential gathering from a master craftsman.

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'A classic of its kind.' William Boyd'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant.' Scotsman'A work of dazzling craft.' Times Literary Supplement'A memoir in a million.' Sunday Times** Chosen as a Time Book of the Year ** Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate.When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of toy fights,working with his country-and-western singer dad, obsessing over God, origami, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, playing guitar and descending into madness.While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become'A book that swan-dives into the filthy waters of growing up and resurfaces clear-eyed, bearing pearls.' Financial Times 'Paterson is arguably Scotland's finest writer at work today, his sense of the absurd is acutely honed, his wisdom hard-won.' The National'Wonderful, aggressively wise and always - especially at its most serious - devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer

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The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse is a timeless collection of Scottish poetry. It contains over three hundred poems ranging from the early medieval period to the twenty-first century, and paints a full-colour portrait of Scotland's poetic heritage and culture.Edited and introduced by award-winning poets Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Peter Mackay, and including poems by Robert Burns, Carol Ann Duffy, Sorley MacLean, Violet Jacob, William Dunbar, Meg Bateman, George Mackay Brown, Màiri Mhòr nan Òran, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jackie Kay, Liz Lochhead and many more, The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse is a joyous celebration of Scotland's literary past, present and future.

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Other Ways to Leave the Room features the work of three of the most beloved and lauded poets currently at large. Between them, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Nick Laird write lyrical, luminous and often darkly witty poems about the rugged wildness of the Scottish landscape; about fatherhood; about whisky-drinking, alcohol abuse and tenement life; about sex, love and the pursuit of the spiritual; about childhood in the Ireland of the Troubles, and about the strange possibilities of the technological future. What all three have in common is an ability to combine observations of gritty real life with a sense of the mythical proportions always lurking just under the surface of the everyday.The Penguin Modern Poets are succinct guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the curious reader and the seasoned lover of poetry to encounter the most exciting voices of our moment.

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This new collection from Don Paterson, his first since the Forward prize-winning Rain in 2009, is a series of forty sonnets. Some take a more traditional form, some are highly experimental, but what these poems share is a lyrical intelligence and musical gift that has been visible in his work since his first book of poems, Nil Nil, in 2009. Addressed to children, friends and enemies, the living and the dead, musicians, poets and dogs, these poems display an ambition in their scope and tonal range matched by the breadth of their concerns. Here, voices call home from the blackout and the airlock, the storm cave and the séance, the coalshed, the war, the ringroad, the forest and the sea. These are voices frustrated by distance, by shot glass and bar rail, by the dark, leaving the 'sound that fades up from the hiss, / like a glass some random downdraught had set ringing, / now full of its only note, its lonely call . . .'In 40 Sonnets Paterson returns to some of his central themes - contradiction and strangeness, tension and transformation, the dream world, and the divided self - in some of the most powerful and formally assured poems he has written to date. This is a rich and accomplished new work from one of the foremost poets writing in English today.

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Exquisitely sharp, deeply humane and brutally hilarious, Toy Fights is a future classic from one of the greatest writers of his generation.'Devastatingly funny.' Geoff Dyer'Thought-provoking, hilarious, sardonic and scarily brilliant' Scotsman'Laugh-out-loud funny' Herald on SundayThis is a book about family, money and music but also about schizophrenia, hell, narcissists, debt and the working class, anger, swearing, drugs, books, football, love, origami, the peculiar insanity of Dundee, sugar, religious mania, the sexual excesses of the Scottish club band scene and, more generally, the lengths we go to not to be bored.Don Paterson was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1963. He spent his boyhood on a council housing estate. When he wasn't busy dreading his birthdays, dodging kids who wanted to kill him in a game of Toy Fights, working with his country-and-western singer dad, screwing up in the Boys' Brigade, obsessing over God, origami, The Osmonds, stamps, sex or Scottish football cards, he was developing a sugar addiction, failing his exams, playing guitar, falling in love, dodging employment and descending into madness. While he didn't manage to figure out who he was meant to be, the first twenty years of his life - before he took a chance, packed his guitar and boarded a train to London - did, for better or worse, shape who he would become.

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'So open it anywhere, then anywhere, then anywhere again. We're sure it won't be long before you find a poem that brings you smack into the newness and strangeness of the living present, just as it did us' (from the Introduction)In The Zoo of the New, poets Don Paterson and Nick Laird have cast a fresh eye over more than five centuries of verse, from the English language and beyond. Above all, they have sought poetry that retains, in one way or another, a powerful timelessness: words with the thrilling capacity to make the time and place in which they were written, however distant and however foreign they may be, feel utterly here and now in the 21st Century.This book is the condensed result of that search. It stretches as far back as Sappho and as far forward as the recent award-winning work of Denise Riley, taking in poets as varied as Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath and Gwendolyn Brooks along the way. Here, the mournful rubs shoulders with the celebratory; the skulduggerous and the foolish with the highfalutin; and tales of love, loss and war with a menagerie of animals and objects, from bee boxes to rubber boots, a suit of armour and a microscope.Teeming with old favourites and surprising discoveries, this lovingly selected compendium is sure to win lifelong readers.

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'The Arctic' in Don Paterson's powerful new collection is the name of a bar frequented by the survivors of several kinds of apocalypse. The poems gathered here are as various as the clientele: elegies for the poet's musician father; tales of the love lives of gods and the childhoods of psychopaths; troubled encounters between men and women; odes to movies and the male anatomy; studies of art and ambition, politics and parenthood. Other voices enter the fray in renderings of Cavafy, Montale and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. And in the fourth part of Paterson's ongoing poem 'The Alexandrian Library', the poet-as-amateur scientist - from a weather station at the top of Ben Nevis to the cellar of The Arctic - bears witness to the imminence of man-made extinction. By turns urgent, railing and tender, these are poems of and for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous writers.

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'The Arctic' in Don Paterson's powerful new collection is the name of a bar frequented by the survivors of several kinds of apocalypse. The poems gathered here are as various as the clientele: elegies for the poet's musician father; tales of the love lives of gods and the childhoods of psychopaths; troubled encounters between men and women; odes to movies and the male anatomy; studies of art and ambition, politics and parenthood. Other voices enter the fray in renderings of Cavafy, Montale and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. And in the fourth part of Paterson's ongoing poem 'The Alexandrian Library', the poet-as-amateur scientist - from a weather station at the top of Ben Nevis to the cellar of The Arctic - bears witness to the imminence of man-made extinction. By turns urgent, railing and tender, these are poems of and for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous writers.

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Rainer Maria Rilke's 55 Sonnets to Orpheus remain a testimony to a writer whose significance other poets continue to testify to. Don Paterson's translation offers a radiant and at times distressing version of the great work.

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Don Paterson's latest collection of poetry starts from the premise that the crisis of mid-life may be a permanent state of mind. Zonal is an experiment in science-fictional and fantastic autobiography, with all of its poems taking their imaginative cue from the first season of The Twilight Zone (1959-1960), playing fast and loose with both their source material and their author's own life. Narrative and dramatic in approach, genre-hopping from horror to Black Mirror-style sci-fi, 'weird tale' to metaphysical fantasy, these poems change voices constantly in an attempt to get at the truth by alternate means. Occupying the shadowlands between confession and invention, Zonal takes us to places and spaces that feel endlessly surprising, uncanny and limitless.

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Nil Nil, Don Paterson's first volume of poetry, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993 and heralded the arrival of a major new talent. The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.

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The Poem attempts to answer several questions: what is a poem? In what way is its use of language distinct? What conditions allow it to arise, and what is its cultural purpose? And how, exactly, do poems work? Part polemic, part technical treatise and part meditation, The Poem is an ambitious contemporary ars poetica. Paterson looks at the writing, transmission and reading of poetry with wit and scholarly flair, drawing together literary analysis, linguistics, metaphysics, psychology and cognitive science in a thorough exploration of how and why poems are composed.The Poem takes the form of three long essays. 'Lyric' attends to the music and sound patterns of poetry, and the way in which they work to deepen poetic sense; 'Sign' develops a new theory of metaphor, metonym and symbol, and looks at how ideas of 'meaning' change under poetic conditions; 'Metre' addresses poetry's relationship to time and to the rhythms of speech, then builds a theory of prosody from the ground up, proposing some radical correctives to existing metrical theory along the way.Through his various professional guises - as major prize-winning poet, as Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and as Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan - few are better placed to grant this insider's perspective. For all those intrigued by the inner workings of the art form and its fundamental secrets, The Poem will challenge, intrigue and surprise.

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WINNER OF THE WHITBREAD PRIZE FOR POETRY 2003Landing Light is Don Paterson's most accomplished and spiritual collection to date. In these poems, he guides us down the labyrinths of our deepest and most private concerns, pursuing the intimacy that the spoken - as well as the printed - word brings. Ceaselessly inquiring, deftly tuned into the emotional crackle of the world, Paterson explores the swings of light and dark that mark our most troubling feelings: utterance and silence, disclosure and concealment, and ultimately the need to both renew and to face finality.'I couldn't get Don Paterson's brilliant Landing Light out of my head.' Spectator'The most animated and animating volume of new poems I have read for years.' Times Literary Supplement

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After the huge success of Nil Nil (a Poetry Book Society Choice and winner of the Forward Prize best first collection), Don Paterson's second collection was impatiently awaited. His readers were not disappointed. In God's Gift to Women, straight autobiography mixes with invention, exaggeration, technical dazzle and sheer cheek to produce a book quite unlike any other.

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Nil Nil, Don Paterson's first volume of poetry, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 1993 and heralded the arrival of a major new talent. The book presented a new and urgent poetry of dream-life, mystery and music, sexual obsession and the consolations of drink - all delivered with great formal skill and imaginative daring.'One of the finest first books of poems I've read for ages.' Paul Muldoon'If you are wondering whether great poems are still being written, you ought to read Don Paterson's.' Charles Simic'One of the most ferociously talented of all British poets.' Catherine Lockerbie

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'This is the night mail crossing the border,Bringing the cheque and the postal order...' -- W.H. AudenWordsworth was the first laureate of locomotives: in fact he railed against them, and against the consequent opening up of the Lakes to holiday hordes ('On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway'). His dismay was echoed down the decades by disturbed ruralists, and yet the train has become part of our psychic landscape: some of the best-loved English poems - Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', or Philip Larkin's 'Whitsun Weddings' - have celebrated carriages, platforms and waiting rooms, while locomotion has inspired some of the most characteristic poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Stevenson, Hardy and MacNeice, Betjeman and Auden (whose 'Night Mail' was written to accompany a 1930s GPO documentary about the postal express from Euston to Glasgow).Co-edited by two of our most distinguished poets, Train Songs offers a round tour - from Wordsworth to Hugo Williams and beyond - starting from the poetry of departures and brief encounters, but taking in the American Blues, the troop trains of two world wars, and the addiction to speed which characterised the European revolutions. Trains have carried the freight of history from the Industrial Revolution onwards - the Armstice in 1918 was signed in a railway carriage, the death camps were organised around train timetables - and this new anthology shows how the train in all its forms has exercised a unique hold upon our collective unconscious.

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Robert Burns (1759-96) was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, Scotland. The publication in 1786 of his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, made him famous overnight, and saw him feted by Edinburgh society. But Burns made no money from his writing and quickly fell on hard times, returning to farming in Dumfries and, when that failed, to work as an excise officer. He devoted his final years to poetry and the writing of Scottish songs.

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A unique collection of interviews with contemporary poets at the height of their craft. How does a subconscious thought become an award-winning poem? Journalist, Rosanna McGlone, speaks to some of the country's leading poets to find out. Don Paterson, Sean O'Brien, Gillian Clarke, and many more, explore the development of a single poem from rough notes to a final version to provide invaluable insights for writers and poetry enthusiasts alike.

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The Poetry Book Society was founded by T.S. Eliot to share the joy of poetry. It's a unique poetry book club and every quarter our expert selectors choose the very best new books to deliver to our members across the globe. Our lively quarterly magazine is packed full of sneak preview poems from all the selected poets, alongside exclusive interviews, insightful reviews by the Ledbury Critics and extensive listings of every book and pamphlet published this quarter.The Autumn 2022 Bulletin features Sandeep Parmar, Zaffar Kunial, Mark Pajak, Don Paterson, Alycia Pirmohamed, Jorie Graham, and Vénus Khoury-Ghata translated by Marilyn Hacker.

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Love sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare's sonnets are the best ever written. But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love.Some appear to be written to a young man, some to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery - why did Shakespeare write them, and to whom? - each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive.INTRODUCED BY ANDREW McMILLAN'This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love' Don Paterson, Guardian

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The poems in Sylvia Plath's Ariel, including many of her best-known such as 'Lady Lazarus', 'Daddy', 'Edge' and 'Paralytic', were all written between the publication in 1960 of Plath's first book, The Colossus, and her death in 1963. 'If the poems are despairing, vengeful and destructive, they are at the same time tender, open to things, and also unusually clever, sardonic, hardminded . . . They are works of great artistic purity and, despite all the nihilism, great generosity . . . the book is a major literary event.' A. Alvarez in the Observer This beautifully designed edition forms part of a series with five other cherished poets, including Wendy Cope, Don Paterson, Philip Larkin, Simon Armitage and Alice Oswald.

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The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination. Featuring:Ali Smith, Phill Jupitus, A.L. Kennedy, Alan Cumming, Kerry Hudson, Greg Hemphill, Carol Ann Duffy, Chris Brookmyre, Alison Watt, Alasdair Gray, Leila Aboulela, Ian Rankin, Selina Hales, Sanjeev Kohli, Jackie Kay, Damian Barr, Elaine C. Smith, Abir Mukherjee, Anne Glover, Alan Bissett, Louise Welsh, Jo Clifford, Ricky Ross, Trishna Singh, Cameron McNeish, Alexander McCall Smith, Carla Jenkins, Don Paterson, and many more . . .

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The Book of St Andrews juxtaposes poems, stories and memoirs with scant regard to chronological order, but in the confidence that each contribution, lively in its own right, may also enhance the others. The anthology, like the town, contains golfers, kids from the caravan site, students and professors, born Fifers and visitors from near and far parts of the planet. Some contributors live and work in St Andrews; others passed through some time ago; one or two, like Homer or St Andrew, never saw the place, but are linked to it regardless. Here are specially written stories by Meaghan Delahunt, A.L. Kennedy, and Sarah Hall; new poems by Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and Don Paterson; memoirs by Kay Redfield Jamison and Ian Rankin.

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The first step on the road to change is to imagine possibility.Imagine A Country offers visions of a new future from an astonishing array of Scottish voices, from comedians to economists, writers to musicians. Edited, curated and introduced by bestselling author Val McDermid and geographer Jo Sharp, it is a collection of ideas, dreams and ambitions, aiming to inspire change, hope and imagination. Featuring:ALI SMITH, PHILL JUPITUS, A.L. KENNEDY, ALAN CUMMING, KERRY HUDSON, GREG HEMPHILL, CAROL ANN DUFFY, CHRIS BROOKMYRE, ALISON WATT, ALASDAIR GRAY, LEILA ABOULELA, IAN RANKIN, SELINA HALES, SANJEEV KOHLI, JACKIE KAY, DAMIAN BARR, ELAINE C. SMITH, ABIR MUKHERJEE, ANNE GLOVER, ALAN BISSETT, LOUISE WELSH, JO CLIFFORD, RICKY ROSS, TRISHNA SINGH, CAMERON McNEISH, ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH, CARLA JENKINS, DON PATERSON, AND MANY MORE . . .

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In Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned a selection of the UK's most loved and lauded poets to each write a poem in celebration of books and bookshops - the worlds they hold, the freedoms they promise, and the memories they evoke. From a basement of forgotten books to the shelves of a cramped Welsh arcade, from the poetry corner of the local bookstore to the last bookshop standing in a post-apocalyptic world, these are poems that pay tribute to all the places that house the stories we treasure.With poems from Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke, as well as Clive James, Michael Longley, Don Paterson, Patience Agbabi and many more, this beautiful anthology is a heart-warming reminder of how books nourish us, save us, and inspire us.

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‘Carol Ann Duffy is the most humane and accessible poet of our time’ - GuardianIn this stunning anthology of ninety nine modern and classic poems, Carol Ann Duffy delves into the powerful and unique bond between parent and child. Empty Nest contemplates growing old, the love of a parent, the everyday of family life, as well as poems that explore darker terrains – grief, loss and estrangement. Some of our favourite poets are collected here, such as Elizabeth Bishop, Jackie Kay, Simon Armitage, Shakespeare, Imtiaz Dharker, Seamus Heaney and Don Paterson.These poems are by turns wry, moving, profound, funny, melancholic and wise; they will console and comfort those suddenly facing a house that may be much cleaner, but is also much quieter, than it once was. There is something here for every reader to treasure.‘Wonderful . . . a poet alert to every sound and shape of language’ - Telegraph

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This book features new essays on Burns' special place in Scottish, English and Irish literary culture. This volume examines the innovative and technically accomplished nature of Burns' poetry. Close readings explore his dialogues with earlier poets such as John Milton, Thomas Gray, Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson and these sit alongside analyses of the creative responses of his contemporaries and literary heirs including William Wordsworth, James Hogg, Thomas Dermody, Hugh MacDiarmid, George Mackay Brown, Don Paterson and Seamus Heaney. They demonstrate how Burns drew on Scottish vernacular traditions, English poetry and 18th-century sentimentalism to create his own, new kind of poetry. The contributors include leading poet-critics Douglas Dunn and the award-winning Burns author Robert Crawford alongside experts in poetry criticism Stephen Gill and Patrick Crotty. It features two poems written especially for the volume by Bernard O'Donoghue and Andrew McNeillie.

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A Year of Scottish Poems is a glorious collection of 366 poems to keep you company for every day of the year.Reflecting the changing seasons, landscape and history of Scotland and her people and marking key dates in the Scottish calendar – from Burns Night to Hogmanay – these poems are powerful, thoughtful and uplifting.Compiled by Gaby Morgan, with an introduction from the National Poet for Scotland, Makar Jackie Kay, this collection is bursting at the seams with the strongest voices in Scottish poetry including Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Mackay Brown, Sir Walter Scott, Liz Lochhead, Don Paterson, Nan Shepherd, Stewart Conn, Kathleen Jamie, Elma Mitchell, John Rice, Muriel Spark, Iain Crichton Smith, Julia Donaldson, Kate Clanchy, Carol Ann Duffy and many more to deliver magic on every page that lasts a whole year!

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‘Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom’Sonnets are for romantics, starry-eyed lovers and ardent hearts. And Shakespeare’s sonnets are the best ever written.But this is why they are also for cynics, for star-crossed lovers and for those who know the anguish of unrequited love. Some of them are written to a young man, some of them to a woman. And although the poems are full of mystery – why did Shakespeare write them, what was his sexuality? – each one speaks to us from across the centuries of love, hate and the intensity of being alive.Includes exclusive content: In the 'Backstory' you can find a short, handy, funny guide to everything you might want to know about Shakespeare and his sonnets.‘This is a crazy, all-consuming, feverish and sweaty love; love, in all its uncut, full-strength intensity; an adolescent love’ Don Paterson, Guardian

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Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and her friends across the country offer poems in praise of the magic of reading. In Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned a selection of the UK's most loved and lauded poets to each write a poem in celebration of books and bookshops - the worlds they hold, the freedoms they promise, and the memories they evoke. From a basement of forgotten books to the shelves of a cramped Welsh arcade, from the poetry corner of the local bookstore to the last bookshop standing in a post-apocalyptic world, these are poems that pay tribute to all the places that house the stories we treasure.With poems from Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke, as well as Clive James, Michael Longley, Don Paterson, Patience Agbabi and many more, this beautiful anthology is a heart-warming reminder of how books nourish us, save us, and inspire us.

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‘A miracle, an instant classic.’ Slavoj Zizek, philosopher The tragedy is done, the tyrant Macbeth dead. The time is free. But for how long? As Macduff pursues dreams of national revival, smaller lives are seeding. In the ruins of Dunsinane, the Porter tries to keep his three young boys safe from the nightmare of history. In a nunnery deep in Birnam Wood, a girl attempts to forget what she lost in war. Flitting between them, a tortured clairvoyant trembles with the knowledge of what's to come. A collaboration between two of the world's most eminent Shakespeare scholars, "Macbeth, Macbeth" is a unique mix of creative fiction and literary criticism that charts a new way of doing both, sparking a whole new world from the embers of Shakespeare's original tragedy. ”Macbeth, Macbeth” weaves a thread that enrichens the original classic with the manic energy of Tristram Shandy, the grim intensity of Crime and Punishment, and the existential absurdity of Waiting for Godot. 'A thrilling re-imagination of Shakespeare’s darkest play.' Lucy Bailey, theatre director‘Shakespeare, I suspect, would have been delighted.’ Don Paterson, poet

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To mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy brings together a dazzling array of contemporary poets (sixty in fact) to write about each of the sixty years of Her Majesty's reign. An all star line up - which includes such celebrated writers as Simon Armitage, Gillian Clarke, Wendy Cope, Geoffrey Hill, Jackie Kay, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Don Paterson and Jo Shapcott, alongside some of the newest young talent around - address a moment or event from their chosen year, be it of personal or political significance or both. Through a series of specially commissioned poems, Jubilee Lines offers a unique portrayal of the country and times in which we have lived since 1953, culminating in an essential portrait of today: the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, the way we honour and remember. Brilliantly introduced by Carol Ann Duffy, Jubilee Lines is an unforgettable commemoration: not only a monarch's reign but of a way of life.

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What has happened to the lost art of memorising poems? Why do we no longer feel that it is necessary to know the most enduring, beautiful poems in the English language 'by heart'? In his introduction Ted Hughes explains how we can overcome the problem by using a memory system that becomes easier the more frequently it is practised. The collected 101 poems are both personal favourites and particularly well-suited to the method Hughes demonstrates. Spanning four centuries, ranging from Shakespeare and Keats through to Thomas Hardy and Seamus Heaney, By Heart offers the reader a 'mental gymnasium' in which the memory can be exercised and trained in the most pleasurable way. Some poems will be more of a challenge than others, but all will be treasured once they have become part of the memory bank.This edition is part of a series of anthologies edited by poets such as Don Paterson and Simon Armitage and features an attractive new design to complement an anthology of classic poems.

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This impressive volume provides over 1,500 thoroughly revised and updated entries on modern poets active from 1910 to the present day. An extensive guide to the lives of influential poets writing in English, in Britain and around the world, this companion helps to illuminate the influences, inspirations, and movements that have shaped the lives and works of our best-loved poets. First published in 1994 as the Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English and compiled by a team of 230 experts, including famous poets such as Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion, this edition also includes new biographical entries on more contemporary poets such as Don Paterson, Anne Carson, John Kinsella, and Leslie Marmon Silko. It also contains insightful entries by well-known peers, such as Seamus Heaney on Robert Lowell and Anne Stevenson on Sylvia Plath. The A-Z biographies are complemented by new appendices including coverage of poetry groups and movements and lists of anthologies and important poetry prizes and prize-winners. In addition, many entries include details of in-depth supplementary material available online on the dedicated companion website. This superb reference work is the ideal companion for students of English Literature, Language, and Creative Writing, as well as for anyone with an interest in modern poetry.

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This is the first book to take political devolution as an organising context for the presentation and discussion of main currents in contemporary Scottish poetry. The book combines thematic chapters with in-depth analysis of key poets writing in English, in Gaelic and in Scots, to address the central issues raised in work that is responding to changes in the socio-economic and political environment over recent decades: the influence of tradition (both national and international); the question of language; the rise of women's writing; the relationship between poetry and politics; and the importance of place to the Scottish imagination. The chapters demonstrate a broad range of interests, while also offering detailed analysis of the many ways writers broach their subject matter; including close readings of poetry by Edwin Morgan, Kenneth White, Aonghas MacNeacail, Kathleen Jamie, John Burnside, Robin Robertson, Mick Imlah and Don Paterson, among others. Chapters by practicing poets and by academics deliver senses of the current range and quality of poetry in Scotland. Key Features *A thorough guide to contemporary Scottish poetry and poets, making the book an ideal course text *Reflects the ways in which the work of Scottish poets reflects a radical cultural independence following Devolution *Provides authoritative essays by the leading experts in the field *Includes a valuable synoptic bibliography

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