Roy Fisher is known internationally for his witty, anarchic poetry which plays the language, pleasures the imagination and teases the senses. But he is at heart an English Midlander. In "Standard Midland", he confronts and worries at nuances of perception and the politics of understanding. Many of the poems are concerned with landscapes, experienced, imagined or painted, particularly the scarred and beautiful North Midlands landscape in which he has lived for nearly thirty years. Shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Poetry Award, "Standard Midland" contains work mostly written since his Bloodaxe retrospective "The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005" and his texts for the artist's book "Tabernacle", his recent collaboration with Ronald King. Publication coincided with his 80th birthday. Critic Peter Robinson published an 80th birthday festschrift with Shearsman Books, "The Unofficial Roy Fisher", with contributions by Fisher's many admirers at the same time.
Brendan Kennelly is one of Ireland's most popular and prolific poets. Over the past five decades he has written thousands of poems published in over 30 books of poetry, including three previous editions of Selected Poems. Published on his 75th birthday, this new selection presents just over a hundred of Kennelly's most essential poems. The Essential Brendan Kennelly has been edited by two lifelong admirers of his work. Like Kennelly, Terence Brown, Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Irish Literature, studied at Trinity College Dublin, and taught there for most of life. After studying at Trinity College, Michael Longley went on to become one of Ireland's leading poets and was Ireland Professor of Poetry in 2007-10.
Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. A powerful and ambiguous body of water lies at the heart of these poems, with shoals and channels that change with the forty-foot tide. Even the name is fluid -- from one shore, the Bristol Channel, from the other Môr Hafren, the Severn Sea. Philip Gross's meditations move with subtle steps between these shifting grounds and those of the man-made world, the ageing body and that ever-present mystery, the self. Admirers of his work know each new collection is a new stage; this one marks a crossing into a new questioning, new clarity and depth. 'A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like inplaces, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence'
-- Simon Armitage, T.S. Eliot Prize judges' comment.
Benjamin Zephaniah is an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children's writer and reggae artist. Born in 1958 in Birmingham, he grew up in Jamaica and in Handsworth, where he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and 'a born failure', ending up in jail for burglary. After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and has since received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He has appeared in a number of television programmes, including Eastenders, The Bill, Live and Kicking, Blue Peter and Wise Up, and played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare's Pericles in 2005. Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults -- and his poetry with attitude for children -- he has his own rap/reggae band. He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.
"Here, Bullet" is a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. Iraq war veteran Brian Turner writes powerful poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. Like Keith Douglas's poems from the North African desert in the Second World War, Turner's testament from the present war in Iraq offers unflinchingly accurate description but no moral judgement, leaving the reader to draw any conclusions. Repetitive media reports show little of people's daily experience of the five-year war. In "Here, Bullet" we see and feel the devastatingly surreal reality of everyday life and death for soldiers and civilians through the eyes of an eloquent writer who served in the US Army for seven years, with a year's tour of duty in Iraq as an infantry team leader.
Shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize. Brian Turner's first book of poems, "Here, Bullet", was a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. In "Phantom Noise" he pumps up the volume as he faces and tries to deal with the traumatic aftermath of war. Flashbacks explode the daily hell of Baghdad into the streets and malls of peaceful California, at the same time sending Turner's imagination reeling back to Iraq. If he thought he had written all he could of his Iraq experiences in
"Here, Bullet", he was mistaken, for what he saw and felt there affected him so profoundly that more poems had to be written, years later, from a place of apparent safety. Brian Turner writes a powerful poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. Like Keith Douglas's poems from the
North African desert in the Second World War, Turner's testament from the war in Iraq offers unflinchingly accurate description but no moral judgement, leaving the reader to draw any conclusions. Repetitive media reports show little of people's daily experience of the war and occupation. In Phantom Noise, as in Here, Bullet, we see and feel the devastatingly surreal reality of everyday life and death for soldiers and civilians through the eyes of an eloquent writer who served in the US Army for seven years,
with a year's tour of duty in Iraq as an infantry team leader.
Shortlisted for the 2011 TS Eliot Prize Poetry Book Society Recommendation What happens if, when the angel arrives with his message, no one's at home? In poems of lyric concentration, Grace examines our need for purpose, for the signs that might help us decide what to do with our lives. It's a desire that makes for restless spirits "€“like the woman who keeps shifting her furniture around or the invisible subjects of an early photograph, moving too fast to be captured. Other poems ask what happens when we reconcile ourselves to watching and waiting "€“whether the angle of the sun in a guest room or the colour of a bruised clementine is really 'enough to be going on with'. Haunted by a blue sky out of which something (or nothing) might come, these are poems of intensely felt moments. They create a vision both troubled and informed by doubt, where the ghost of a film star may be the closest we can come to grace. 'Poems of outstanding beauty and a decidedly celebratory wisdom that takes nothing for granted. This is poetry of the first order by a poet who really knows how to sing' "€“John Burnside 'Esther Morgan's poems are full of hints and mysteries. They dance on sensuous feet while keeping a troubled eye on the music that keeps them dancing. But there are joys here as well as anxieties, and it is the two that amplify each other into such clear, poignant and resonant shapes' "€“George Szirtes 'Morgan works like an archaeologist, creating imagined histories of lives by uncovering what was previously hidden' "€“Robyn Bolam, Magma 'Esther Morgan's poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise' "€“Antony Dunn, Poetry LondonShortlisted for the 2011 TS Eliot Prize Poetry Book Society Recommendation What happens if, when the angel arrives with his message, no one's at home? In poems of lyric concentration, Grace examines our need for purpose, for the signs that might help us decide what to do with our lives. It's a desire that makes for restless spirits –like the woman who keeps shifting her furniture around or the invisible subjects of an early photograph, moving too fast to be captured. Other poems ask what happens when we reconcile ourselves to watching and waiting –whether the angle of the sun in a guest room or the colour of a bruised clementine is really 'enough to be going on with'. Haunted by a blue sky out of which something (or nothing) might come, these are poems of intensely felt moments. They create a vision both troubled and informed by doubt, where the ghost of a film star may be the closest we can come to grace. 'Poems of outstanding beauty and a decidedly celebratory wisdom that takes nothing for granted. This is poetry of the first order by a poet who really knows how to sing' –John Burnside 'Esther Morgan's poems are full of hints and mysteries. They dance on sensuous feet while keeping a troubled eye on the music that keeps them dancing. But there are joys here as well as anxieties, and it is the two that amplify each other into such clear, poignant and resonant shapes' –George Szirtes 'Morgan works like an archaeologist, creating imagined histories of lives by uncovering what was previously hidden' –Robyn Bolam, Magma 'Esther Morgan's poetry is wonderfully elegant, poignant and wise' –Antony Dunn, Poetry London
The malarkey is over in the back of the car As soon as you turn your back, time slips. The humdrum present has become the precious, irrecoverable past. The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. Joseph Severn recalls Keats hurling a bad dinner out onto the steps of the Piazza di Spagna; the glamour of John Donne's portrait 'taken in shadows' seduces a new generation; the dead assert their right to walk through the imaginations of the living These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery. The Malarkey is Helen Dunmore's first poetry book since Glad of These Times (2007) and Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), a comprehensive selection drawing on seven previous collections. It brings together poems of great lyricism, feeling and artistry. 'What is wonderful is the unusual way her steadiness as a writer serves as a foil to the mysterious. She prefers to show, not tellThe passing of time is crucial in this collection and especially its most violent trick of making years disappear in a momenta collection filled with extraordinary, incorporeal moments and with vanishing actsThe personal poems are superb and anything but self-indulgent' “Kate Kellaway, Observer 'Her latest collection is a clear-eyed, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, meditation on time past and people losta superbly structured collection in which poems echo and answer each other' “Suzi Feay, Independent on SundayThe malarkey is over in the back of the carâ€Â¦ As soon as you turn your back, time slips. The humdrum present has become the precious, irrecoverable past. The ways in which the present longs for the past, questions it, tries to get in touch with it and stretches the power of memory to its limits, are central to this new collection by Helen Dunmore. Joseph Severn recalls Keats hurling a bad dinner out onto the steps of the Piazza di Spagna; the glamour of John Donne's portrait 'taken in shadows' seduces a new generation; the dead assert their right to walk through the imaginations of the livingâ€Â¦ These are poems and stories of loss and extraordinary rediscovery. The Malarkey is Helen Dunmore's first poetry book since Glad of These Times (2007) and Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), a comprehensive selection drawing on seven previous collections. It brings together poems of great lyricism, feeling and artistry. 'What is wonderful is the unusual way her steadiness as a writer serves as a foil to the mysterious. She prefers to show, not tellâ€Â¦The passing of time is crucial in this collection and especially its most violent trick of making years disappear in a momentâ€Â¦a collection filled with extraordinary, incorporeal moments and with vanishing actsâ€Â¦The personal poems are superb and anything but self-indulgent' –Kate Kellaway, Observer 'Her latest collection is a clear-eyed, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, meditation on time past and people lostâ€Â¦a superbly structured collection in which poems echo and answer each other' –Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday
Sarah Jackson explores the edges of writing in this uncanny book of touch. Tender, haunting, and yet beautifully poised, the poems in Pelt get right under your skin. The collection takes you on an unsettling journey between infancy and adulthood. Slipping from birds to blindness, from hides to hiding, Pelt uncovers the unfamiliar in the everyday. Pelt is written in the dark. It asks to be read through your fingertips. Striking and elegant, subtle and yet full of desire, this is a brilliant debut.'Sarah Jackson's poems are dark, strange stories, immaculately crafted. Surprising, dextrous, sometimes shocking, they compel the reader into uncertain territory. This is an assured first collection from a cool and original new voice' -POLLY CLARK'These poems have a dream-like, hallucinatory quality. Intriguing and mysterious, they transform childhood memory, myth, experiences of place, everything Sarah Jackson draws on for material, into surreal and vivid narratives' -VICKI FEAVER'Sarah Jackson's Pelt is out on its own. At once peirastic and assured, these are poems of disturbing grace and power. They have a compelling strangeness, uncomfortably intimate and elusive at the same time. It is a work of glints and disclosures, by turns gentle and menacing, diurnal and surreal, erotic and deranged. In radical and original fashion, Pelt prompts feelings 'we can neither know/ nor name'. Here is a new voice, a pelting of voices in English poetry' -NICHOLAS ROYLESarah Jackson explores the edges of writing in this uncanny book of touch. Tender, haunting, and yet beautifully poised, the poems in Pelt get right under your skin. The collection takes you on an unsettling journey between infancy and adulthood. Slipping from birds to blindness, from hides to hiding, Pelt uncovers the unfamiliar in the everyday. Pelt is written in the dark. It asks to be read through your fingertips. Striking and elegant, subtle and yet full of desire, this is a brilliant debut.'Sarah Jackson's poems are dark, strange stories, immaculately crafted. Surprising, dextrous, sometimes shocking, they compel the reader into uncertain territory. This is an assured first collection from a cool and original new voice' -POLLY CLARK'These poems have a dream-like, hallucinatory quality. Intriguing and mysterious, they transform childhood memory, myth, experiences of place, everything Sarah Jackson draws on for material, into surreal and vivid narratives' -VICKI FEAVER'Sarah Jackson's Pelt is out on its own. At once peirastic and assured, these are poems of disturbing grace and power. They have a compelling strangeness, uncomfortably intimate and elusive at the same time. It is a work of glints and disclosures, by turns gentle and menacing, diurnal and surreal, erotic and deranged. In radical and original fashion, Pelt prompts feelings 'we can neither know/ nor name'. Here is a new voice, a pelting of voices in English poetry' -NICHOLAS ROYLE
George Szirtes came to Britain as an eight-year-old refugee after the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Educated in England, he trained as a painter, and has always written in English. This comprehensive retrospective of his work covers poetry from over a dozen collections written over four decades, with a substantial gathering of new poems. It was published on his 60th birthday in 2008 at the same time as the first critical study of his work, "Reading George Szirtes" by John Sears. Haunted by his family's knowledge and experience of war, occupation and the Holocaust, as well as by loss, danger and exile, all of Szirtes' poetry covers universal themes: love, desire and illusion; loyalty and betrayal; history, art and memory; humanity and truth. Throughout his work there is a conflict between two states of mind, the possibility of happiness and apprehension of disaster. These are played out especially in his celebrated< long poems and extended sequences, "The Photographer in Winter", "Metro", "The< Courtyards", "An English Apocalypse" and "Reel", all included here.
R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) is one of the major poets of our time, as well as one of the finest religious poets in the English language and Wales's greatest poet. This substantial gathering of his late poems shows us the final flowering of a truly great poet still writing at the height of his powers right through his 70s and 80s. It begins with his autobiographical sequence "The Echoes Return Slow", which has been unavailable for many years, and goes up to "Residues", written immediately before his death at the age of 87. These powerful poems -- about time and history, the self, love, the machine, the Cross and prayer -- cover all of his major areas of questioning. This is R.S. Thomas in a winter light, his fury concentrated on the inhumanity of man and modern technology, his gaze absorbed by the God he felt in Nature, but finding nourishment in 'waste places'. At the same time he writes with resigned feeling and immense insight, as well as grim humour and playful irony, of isolation, ageing, marriage and 'love's shining greenhouses'. For Thomas, 'Poetry is that / which arrives at the intellect / by way of the heart.'
Shortlisted for the 2012 Forward Poetry Prize. People Who Like Meatballs brings together two contrasting poem sequences about rejection by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). The title-sequence, People Who Like Meatballs, is about a man's humiliation by a woman. Into my mother's snow-encrusted lap is about a dysfunctional mother-child relationship. Like all of Selima Hill's books, both sequences in People Who Like Meatballs chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish. 'Arguably the most distinctive truth teller to emerge in British poetryDespite her thematic preoccupations, there's nothing conscientious or worthy about Hill's work. She is a flamboyant, exuberant writer who seems effortlessly to juggle her outrageous symbolic lexiconusing techniques of juxtaposition, interruption and symbolism to articulate narratives of the unconscious. Those narratives are the matter of universal, and universally recognisable, psychodramahers is a poetry of piercing emotional apprehension, lightly worn So original that it has sometimes scared off critical scrutineers, her work must now, surely, be acknowledged as being of central importance in British poetry “not only for the courage of its subject matter but also for the lucid compression of its poetics' “Fiona Sampson, Guardian. 'Her adoption of surrealist techniques of shock, bizarre, juxtaposition and defamiliarisation work to subvert conventional notions of self and the feminine Hill returns repeatedly to fragmented narratives, charting extreme experience with a dazzling excess' “Deryn Rees-Jones, Modern Women Poets.Shortlisted for the 2012 Forward Poetry Prize. People Who Like Meatballs brings together two contrasting poem sequences about rejection by 'this brilliant lyricist of human darkness' (Fiona Sampson). The title-sequence, People Who Like Meatballs, is about a man's humiliation by a woman. Into my mother's snow-encrusted lap is about a dysfunctional mother-child relationship. Like all of Selima Hill's books, both sequences in People Who Like Meatballs chart 'extreme experience with a dazzling excess' (Deryn Rees-Jones), with startling humour and surprising combinations of homely and outlandish. 'Arguably the most distinctive truth teller to emerge in British poetryâ€Â¦Despite her thematic preoccupations, there's nothing conscientious or worthy about Hill's work. She is a flamboyant, exuberant writer who seems effortlessly to juggle her outrageous symbolic lexiconâ€Â¦using techniques of juxtaposition, interruption and symbolism to articulate narratives of the unconscious. Those narratives are the matter of universal, and universally recognisable, psychodramaâ€Â¦hers is a poetry of piercing emotional apprehension, lightly wornâ€Â¦ So original that it has sometimes scared off critical scrutineers, her work must now, surely, be acknowledged as being of central importance in British poetry –not only for the courage of its subject matter but also for the lucid compression of its poetics' –Fiona Sampson, Guardian. 'Her adoption of surrealist techniques of shock, bizarre, juxtaposition and defamiliarisation work to subvert conventional notions of self and the feminineâ€Â¦ Hill returns repeatedly to fragmented narratives, charting extreme experience with a dazzling excess' –Deryn Rees-Jones, Modern Women Poets.
He was indeed the nearest anybody ever got to Charlie Chaplin in printthe sentences skid and dance and hop on one leg or take a custard pie right on the chin or duck and weave and leave you gasping behind. But he is more for the wry smile than the belly laugh' This was how Sid Chaplin described Jack Common, author of two of the finest working-class novels of the 20th century, and 'the finest prose writer to come from the North-East of England'. Kiddar's Luck, his first novel, was a commercial flop when it first appeared. It has since been called a 'neglected masterpiece', remarkable for its 'linguistic mastery and insights into the lives of working people, free of illusions and false heroics' (Richard Kelly in The Independent). Jack Common was born in 1903 in Heaton, Newcastle, and grew up in the terraced streets backing onto the railway yards where his father worked. The boy Willie Kiddar in Common's account of a Newcastle childhood is a thinly veiled self-portrait, and Kiddar's Luck tells the story of his first 14 years, from conception on a Sunday afternoon to leaving school during the First World War. At 25 he moved to London, and worked as assistant editor on The Adelphi during the 30s, when George Orwell was his friend and literary mentor, later praising his essay collection The Freedom of the Streets (1938) as 'the authentic voice of the ordinary working man, the man who might infuse a new decency into the control of affairs if only he could get there, but who never seems to get much further than the trenches, the sweatshop and the jail'. V.S. Pritchett called it the most influential book of his life. Kiddar's Luck was first published in 1951 (and its sequel, The Ampersand, in 1954). After the commercial failure of his two novels, Jack Common lived in poverty for much of the rest of his life, and died in 1968.He was indeed the nearest anybody ever got to Charlie Chaplin in printâ€Â¦the sentences skid and dance and hop on one leg or take a custard pie right on the chin or duck and weave and leave you gasping behind. But he is more for the wry smile than the belly laughâ€Â¦' This was how Sid Chaplin described Jack Common, author of two of the finest working-class novels of the 20th century, and 'the finest prose writer to come from the North-East of England'. Kiddar's Luck, his first novel, was a commercial flop when it first appeared. It has since been called a 'neglected masterpiece', remarkable for its 'linguistic mastery and insights into the lives of working people, free of illusions and false heroics' (Richard Kelly in The Independent). Jack Common was born in 1903 in Heaton, Newcastle, and grew up in the terraced streets backing onto the railway yards where his father worked. The boy Willie Kiddar in Common's account of a Newcastle childhood is a thinly veiled self-portrait, and Kiddar's Luck tells the story of his first 14 years, from conception on a Sunday afternoon to leaving school during the First World War. At 25 he moved to London, and worked as assistant editor on The Adelphi during the 30s, when George Orwell was his friend and literary mentor, later praising his essay collection The Freedom of the Streets (1938) as 'the authentic voice of the ordinary working man, the man who might infuse a new decency into the control of affairs if only he could get there, but who never seems to get much further than the trenches, the sweatshop and the jail'. V.S. Pritchett called it the most influential book of his life. Kiddar's Luck was first published in 1951 (and its sequel, The Ampersand, in 1954). After the commercial failure of his two novels, Jack Common lived in poverty for much of the rest of his life, and died in 1968.
The poems in The Farewell Glacier grew out of a journey to the High Arctic. In late 2010 Nick Drake sailed around Svalbad, an archipelago of islands 500 miles north of Norway, with Cape Farewell, the arts climate change organisation. It was the end of the Arctic summer. The sun took eight hours to set. When the sky briefly darkened, the Great Bear turned about their heads as it had for Pythias the Greek, the first European known to have explored this far north. Sailing as close as possible to the vast glaciers that dominate the islands, they saw polar bear prints on pieces of pack ice the size of trucks. And they tried to understand the effects of climate change on the ecosystem of this most crucial and magnificent part of the world. Nick Drake's new collection gathers together voices from across the Arctic past “explorers, whalers, mapmakers, scientists, financiers, the famous and the forgotten “as well as attempting to give voice to the confronting mysteries of the high Arctic: the animal spirits, the shape-shifters and the powers of ice and tundra. It looks into the future, to the year 2100, when this glorious winter Eden will have vanished forever. Many of the poems from The Farewell Glacier were included in the ground-breaking High Arctic exhibition, installed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich from July 2011 to January 2012, which received substantial national publicity, including a feature on BBC Radio 4's Front Row and national press reviews. 'A scintillating collection of poemsa mastery of form and tone, and a simple, uncontrived unravelling of emotional and psychological complexities If you care about words; if you care about the impossibility but the nobility of trying to express the ineffable in language that is accessible but that stuns, then haunts you, buy this book' “Lloyd Rees, Envoi. 'Subtle, funny and tremendously moving. He has an eye for the small detail as well as the big picture. These poems brilliantly evoke time and place' “Jackie Kay.The poems in The Farewell Glacier grew out of a journey to the High Arctic. In late 2010 Nick Drake sailed around Svalbad, an archipelago of islands 500 miles north of Norway, with Cape Farewell, the arts climate change organisation. It was the end of the Arctic summer. The sun took eight hours to set. When the sky briefly darkened, the Great Bear turned about their heads as it had for Pythias the Greek, the first European known to have explored this far north. Sailing as close as possible to the vast glaciers that dominate the islands, they saw polar bear prints on pieces of pack ice the size of trucks. And they tried to understand the effects of climate change on the ecosystem of this most crucial and magnificent part of the world. Nick Drake's new collection gathers together voices from across the Arctic past –explorers, whalers, mapmakers, scientists, financiers, the famous and the forgotten –as well as attempting to give voice to the confronting mysteries of the high Arctic: the animal spirits, the shape-shifters and the powers of ice and tundra. It looks into the future, to the year 2100, when this glorious winter Eden will have vanished forever. Many of the poems from The Farewell Glacier were included in the ground-breaking High Arctic exhibition, installed at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich from July 2011 to January 2012, which received substantial national publicity, including a feature on BBC Radio 4's Front Row and national press reviews. 'A scintillating collection of poemsâ€Â¦a mastery of form and tone, and a simple, uncontrived unravelling of emotional and psychological complexitiesâ€Â¦ If you care about words; if you care about the impossibility but the nobility of trying to express the ineffable in language that is accessible but that stuns, then haunts you, buy this book' –Lloyd Rees, Envoi. 'Subtle, funny and tremendously moving. He has an eye for the small detail as well as the big picture. These poems brilliantly evoke time and place' –Jackie Kay.
Ailbhe Darcy's debut collection is a set of urgent despatches from her point of origin, Dublin, and from her skirmishes further afield: London, Paris, Africa, Eastern Europe or the States. Driven less by metaphor than by wild conceits, semantic leaps, and startling juxtapositions, these are poems that itch and pluck at the pelt of what we think we know. Darcy is an exuberant and inventive new presence in the poetry world. 'Ailbhe Darcy's work has a precision and purpose rare in one so young. Her poems turn up without a word out of place and are not content to just decorate the page with metaphors, but determined to communicate to the reader Darcy's vision of things as they are. Her words are sometimes soothing, sometimes brutal with her truths as she sees them. Never self-absorbed, she is a poet consumed by what the world around her is doing; it is this quality above all others which numbers her among the most promising new Irish poets' - Kevin Higgins. 'Here is a new writer for whom it is worth putting a kink in the usual niceties of the space-time continuumquirkiness without archness, the bellybutton fluff of youth but the empty taxis and left-behind pubs and streets of the left-behind cities afterwardsThe talent for splicing the heterogeneous together, cadavre exquis-style' “David Wheatley. 'A real find for Irish readers' “Dave Lordan, Arena, RTE Radio 1. 'a beguiling, sometimes baffling, yet unique slant on the world Read the darkly beautiful and restrained sequence 'Unheimlich', which views familial trauma through a storytelling lens, and you get an idea as to what this writer can do' “Ben Wilkinson, Stride. 'a little dazzling glimpse of honest and original thought, a new discovery and a brief peek over a new horizon for British poetry' “Catherine Woodward, Scottish Poetry Review.Ailbhe Darcy's debut collection is a set of urgent despatches from her point of origin, Dublin, and from her skirmishes further afield: London, Paris, Africa, Eastern Europe or the States. Driven less by metaphor than by wild conceits, semantic leaps, and startling juxtapositions, these are poems that itch and pluck at the pelt of what we think we know. Darcy is an exuberant and inventive new presence in the poetry world. 'Ailbhe Darcy's work has a precision and purpose rare in one so young. Her poems turn up without a word out of place and are not content to just decorate the page with metaphors, but determined to communicate to the reader Darcy's vision of things as they are. Her words are sometimes soothing, sometimes brutal with her truths as she sees them. Never self-absorbed, she is a poet consumed by what the world around her is doing; it is this quality above all others which numbers her among the most promising new Irish poets' - Kevin Higgins. 'Here is a new writer for whom it is worth putting a kink in the usual niceties of the space-time continuumâ€Â¦quirkiness without archness, the bellybutton fluff of youth but the empty taxis and left-behind pubs and streets of the left-behind cities afterwardsâ€Â¦The talent for splicing the heterogeneous together, cadavre exquis-style' –David Wheatley. 'A real find for Irish readers' –Dave Lordan, Arena, RTE Radio 1. 'â€Â¦a beguiling, sometimes baffling, yet unique slant on the worldâ€Â¦ Read the darkly beautiful and restrained sequence 'Unheimlich', which views familial trauma through a storytelling lens, and you get an idea as to what this writer can do' –Ben Wilkinson, Stride. 'â€Â¦a little dazzling glimpse of honest and original thought, a new discovery and a brief peek over a new horizon for British poetry' –Catherine Woodward, Scottish Poetry Review.
Adventurous, searching, interested in the luminous instant of reality that dwells in the perpetual now of the poem, Penelope Shuttle is a poet who clearly shares Picasso's view that 'If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the point of doing it?' This selection “drawn from ten collections published over three decades plus new work “shows both her consistency of voice and her energised openness to language and to life. Not for nothing was one of her books titled Adventures with My Horse. The new poems of Unsent are communications to and with her husband Peter Redgrove, remembering their shared past with love,wit, paradox, exasperation and a lightness of heart towards ageing and sorrow. With these poems Shuttle concludes her triptych of mourning for Redgrove, and ceases 'to weep on the world's shoulder'. If a poet's work is her personal experience of the universe then this book takes us deep into that Shuttle-verse. In earlier collections her concerns are with language as a safety net from life's difficulties and a guide through widening regions of love and motherhood. Her themes range widely: personal life, that part of our 'secret working mind' which we call dreams, the landscape of Cornwall, myth and fairytale. And she has a passionate awareness of the many ways “sacred and profane, comic, sensuous, and joyful “in which we sustain ourselves through poetry, combining a provocative intelligence with uninhibited emotional power. 'One of our most compellingly sensuous poets Shuttle is a poet of immense reach, both in the range of her subject-matter and the breadth of her language. She is both an acute observer and an inventive fiction-maker. One senses that she has her life perfectly in tune with her poetry, so that it registers the slightest variation in her state of being. In this sense, the narratives of emotional, erotic and maternal love that can be traced through these poems collocate into the drama of a life lived in the full flood of being' “Gerard Woodward, TLS.Adventurous, searching, interested in the luminous instant of reality that dwells in the perpetual now of the poem, Penelope Shuttle is a poet who clearly shares Picasso's view that 'If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the point of doing it?' This selection –drawn from ten collections published over three decades plus new work –shows both her consistency of voice and her energised openness to language and to life. Not for nothing was one of her books titled Adventures with My Horse. The new poems of Unsent are communications to and with her husband Peter Redgrove, remembering their shared past with love,wit, paradox, exasperation and a lightness of heart towards ageing and sorrow. With these poems Shuttle concludes her triptych of mourning for Redgrove, and ceases 'to weep on the world's shoulder'. If a poet's work is her personal experience of the universe then this book takes us deep into that Shuttle-verse. In earlier collections her concerns are with language as a safety net from life's difficulties and a guide through widening regions of love and motherhood. Her themes range widely: personal life, that part of our 'secret working mind' which we call dreams, the landscape of Cornwall, myth and fairytale. And she has a passionate awareness of the many ways –sacred and profane, comic, sensuous, and joyful –in which we sustain ourselves through poetry, combining a provocative intelligence with uninhibited emotional power. 'One of our most compellingly sensuous poetsâ€Â¦ Shuttle is a poet of immense reach, both in the range of her subject-matter and the breadth of her language. She is both an acute observer and an inventive fiction-maker. One senses that she has her life perfectly in tune with her poetry, so that it registers the slightest variation in her state of being. In this sense, the narratives of emotional, erotic and maternal love that can be traced through these poems collocate into the drama of a life lived in the full flood of being' –Gerard Woodward, TLS.
Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras. Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in the early 20th century.Edna Longley published an earlier edition of Thomas's poetry in 1973. Her work advanced his reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive Notes contain substantial quotations from Thomas's prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems.The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas's poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas's criticism feeds into his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as 'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas's poems.Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras. Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in the early 20th century.Edna Longley published an earlier edition of Thomas's poetry in 1973. Her work advanced his reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive Notes contain substantial quotations from Thomas's prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems.The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas's poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas's criticism feeds into his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as 'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas's poems.
From its opening page -- a refugee's first sight of England -- "Changes of Address" presents a journey through our times, a search for the meaning of 'home'. With its humour and deep honesty, its vivid storytelling, its sense of history and brilliant observations of the here and now, this book of poems is as rich and multi-layered as a novel. It brings together for the first time the whole range of Philip Gross's poetry from the 1980s and 90s -- a generous selection from his Bloodaxe, Faber and Peterloo collections along with uncollected poems and work from limited editions and collaborations. Changes of Address shows his development from the prize-winning Ice Factory to the Whitbread-shortlisted "Wasting Game", but takes the reader also into previously unknown reaches of Philip Gross territory. It does not cover his later work. He won the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2009 collection "The Water Table".
Too Black, Too Strong is Benjamin Zephaniah's latest collection from Bloodaxe, addressing the struggles of black Britain more forcefully than all his previous books. It includes poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case and other high profile political trials. Zephaniah is a poet who won't stay silent, who doesn't pull any punches, writing out of a sense of urgency and a commitment to social justice.
Anne Stevenson is a major American and British poet. Born in Cambridge of American parents, she grew up in the States but has lived in Britain for most of her adult life. Rooted in close observation of the world and acute psychological insight, her poems continually question how we see and think about the world. They are incisive as well as entertaining, marrying critical rigour with personal feeling, and a sharp wit with an original brand of serious humour. "Poems 1955-2005" is a remaking of Anne Stevenson's
earlier Collected Poems, drawing on over a dozen previous collections as well as new poems, with this book's new thematic arrangements emphasising the craft, coherence and architecture of her life's work.
Fleur Adcock is one of Britain's most accomplished poets. Her poised, ironic poems are tense and tightly controlled as well as shrewdly laconic, and often chilling as she unmasks the deceptions of love or unravels family lives. Disarmingly conversational in style, they are remarkable for their psychological insight and their unsentimental, mischievously casual view of personal relationships. Born in New Zealand, she has explored questions of identity and rootedness throughout her work, both in relation to her personal allegiances to her native and adopted countries as well as her family history, whose long-dead characters she brings to life. She has also written movingly of birth, death and bereavement, and has tackled political issues with honest indignation and caustic wit. This first Collected edition of her poetry replaces her "Selected Poems", with the addition of work from her later Oxford collections "The Incident Book", "Time-Zones" and "Looking Back". It does not cover her later collection "Dragon
Talk" (2010).
Drawing on his extensive experience of poetry workshops and courses, Peter Sansom shows you not how to write but how to write better, how to write authentically, how to say genuinely what you genuinely mean to say. This practical guide is illustrated with many examples. Peter Sansom covers such areas as submitting to magazines; the small presses; analysing poems; writing techniques and procedures;< and drafting. He includes brief resumes and discussions of literary history and literary fashions, the spirit of the age, and the creative process itself. Above all, his book helps you learn discrimination in your reading and writing -- so that you can decide for yourself how you want your work to develop, whether that magazine was right in returning it or if they simply don't know their poetic arse from their elbow. "Writing Poems" includes sections on:< - Metre, rhyme, half-rhyme and free verse.< - Fixed forms and how to use them.< - Workshops and writing groups.< - Writing games and exercises.< - A detailed, annotated reading list.< - Where to go from here.< - Glossary of technical terms.< "Writing Poems" has become an essential handbook for many poets and teachers: invaluable to writers just starting out, helpful to poets who need a nuts-and-bolts handbook, a godsend to anyone running poetry courses and workshops, and an inspiration to all readers and writers who want a book which re-examines the wriing of poems.
A celebrated winner of fiction's Orange Prize, Helen Dunmore is as spellbinding a storyteller in her poetry as in her novels. As in her fiction, these haunting narratives draw us into darkness, engaging our fears and hopes in poetry of rare luminosity. Her poems also cast a bright, revealing light on the living world, by land and sea, on love, longing and loss. "Out of the Blue" presents a comprehensive selection from her seven previous books of poetry. It also includes a collection of completely new poems
remarkable for their sensuous magic, sharp delicacy and sureness of touch.
Benjamin Zephaniah is an oral poet, novelist, playwright, children's writer and reggae artist. Born in 1958 in Birmingham, he grew up in Jamaica and in Handsworth, where he was sent to an approved school for being uncontrollable, rebellious and 'a born failure', ending up in jail for burglary. After prison he turned from crime to music and poetry. In 1989 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry, and has since received honorary doctorates from several English universities, but famously refused to accept a nomination for an OBE in 2003. He has appeared in a number of television programmes, including Eastenders, The Bill, Live and Kicking, Blue Peter and Wise Up, and played Gower in a BBC Radio 3 production of Shakespeare's Pericles in 2005. Best known for his performance poetry with a political edge for adults -- and his poetry with attitude for children -- he has his own rap/reggae band. He was the first person to record with the Wailers after the death of Bob Marley, in a musical tribute to Nelson Mandela, which Mandela heard while in prison on Robben Island. Their later meetings led to Zephaniah working with children in South African townships and hosting the President's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996.
