{"title":"All PBS Selections","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"new-and-selected-poems-elaine-feinstein","title":"The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems by Elaine Feinstein \u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spring Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePBS Special Commendation - Spring 2017\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e  I did not emulate my uncles’ lives, spent graciously\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e           in serving public good,\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e  their pleasure: clubs, fine meals, and cultured friends.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e         Mother, forgive me, I did all I could.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThey won position. I wrote poetry.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElaine Feinstein’s poems are the harvest of a lifetime in literature. This selection, made by the author herself, gathers work from over half a century of published writing, and is completed by a section of new poems.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe selection ranges from early poems of feminist rebellion and tender observation of children to elegies for the poet’s father and close friends, reflections on middle-age, the conflicts in a long marriage, and meditations on the lot of refugees. In new poems Feinstein records her treatment for cancer, her feelings of dread in the clinic and unexpected moments of  ‘extravagant happiness’. The exploration of memory is at once a source of ironic amusement and an acknowledgement of human transience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e ‘\u003cem\u003eElaine Feinstein is our great poet-storyteller, as emotionally intelligent as she is observant.\u003c\/em\u003e’  - Fiona Sampson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e ‘\u003cem\u003eBeautiful, generous, wonderfully intense poems ... Anyone who has ever felt comforted in grief by words, or who has lived through that tension between tenderness, longing and guilt, will recognize their precision and their truth.\u003c\/em\u003e’ - Ruth Padel on \u003cem\u003eTalking to the Dead\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘\u003cem\u003eShe is an extremely fine poet. She has a sinewy, tenacious way of penetrating and exploring the core of her subject that seems to me unique.’ - \u003c\/em\u003eTed Hughes\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDue out 23rd Feb 2017 from Carcanet Press.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36044928775,"sku":"9781784103200","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Elaine_Feinstein_cover_image.jpg?v=1483540771"},{"product_id":"falling-ill-by-c-k-williams","title":"Falling Ill by C.K. Williams \u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spring Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePBS Recommendation - Spring 2017\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eC.K. Williams\u003c\/strong\u003e (1936-2015) was the most challenging American poet of his generation, a shape-shifting poet of intense and searching originality who made lyric sense out of the often brutal realities of everyday life. His poems are startlingly intense anecdotes on love, death, secrets and wayward thought, examining the inner life in precise, daring language.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the past half-century, he took upon himself the poet's task: to record with candour and ardour â€˜the burden of being aliveâ€™. In Falling Ill, his final volume of poems, he brought this task to its conclusion, bearing witness to a restless mind's encounter with the brute fact of the body's decay, the spirit's erasure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten with unsparing lyricism and relentless discursive logic, these brave poems face unflinchingly â€˜the dreadful edge of a precipiceâ€™ where a futureless future stares back at them. Urgent, unpunctuated, headlong, vertiginous, they race against time to trace the sinuous, startling twists and turns of consciousness. All is coming apart, taken away, except the brilliant art to describe it all as the end is coming. All along is the reassurance of love's close presence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere are no easy resolutions, false consolations. Like unanswered prayers, they are poems of deep interrogation â€“ a dialogue between the agonised â€˜Iâ€™ in its harrowing here-and-nowness and the elusive â€˜youâ€™ of the beloved who flickers achingly just out of reach.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eC. K. William's \u003cem\u003eFalling Ill\u003c\/em\u003e will take its place among the enduring works of literature about death and departure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eâ€˜One feels in the textures of Williams's writing a pure conviction and a commitment to seeing a higher dimension to poetry. When Williams writes of educating the soul and of the spiritually transforming power of beauty, he is convincing.â€™ â€“ Ian Tromp, \u003cem\u003ePoetry\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eâ€˜Beautifully intricate, contentious, strikingly ardent poems by one of our great contemporary poets.â€™ â€“ Joyce Carol Oates, \u003cem\u003eThe Millions\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eâ€˜As an artifact of [Williams's] life, the book is timely and essential, passionately elaborating on all the major themes of Williams's oeuvre: sex, death and dying; the loneliness of living on the earth without a present God; the disjunction between psyche and society. Williams was known for his insistently ethical approach to writing poemsâ€¦ and what is most powerful about these later poems is his willingness to follow through. There are poems of great beauty here.â€™ â€“ Katy Lederer, \u003cem\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/em\u003e, on \u003cem\u003eSelected Later Poems\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDue out 23rd February 2017 from Bloodaxe Books.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36046553159,"sku":"9781780373553","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/C_K_Williams_-_Falling_Ill_stolen_from_Bloodaxe_website.jpg?v=1483542654"},{"product_id":"stranger-baby-by-emily-berry","title":"Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry \u003cb\u003e Spring Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePBS Recommendation - Spring 2017 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe powerful new collection from award-winning poet, Emily Berry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEmily Berry’s \u003cem\u003eDear Boy\u003c\/em\u003e was described as a ‘blazing debut’, winning the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2013. \u003cem\u003eStranger, Baby\u003c\/em\u003e, its follow-up, is marked by the same sense of fantasy and play, estrangement and edgy humour for which she has become known. But these poems delve deeper again, in their off-kilter and often painful encounter with childhood loss. This is a book of mourning, recrimination, exhilaration and ‘oceanic feeling’: 'A meditation on a want that can never be answered.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDue out 2nd February 2017 from Faber.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36047109767,"sku":"9780571331321","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Emily_Berry_-_Stranger_Baby_stolen_from_Faber_website.jpg?v=1483543210"},{"product_id":"still-life-with-feeding-snake-by-john-burnside","title":"Still Life with Feeding Snake by John Burnside \u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spring Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePBS Recommendation - Spring 2017 \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom our earliest childhood experiences, we learn to see the world as contested space: a battleground between received ideas, entrenched conventions and myriad Authorised Versions on the one hand, and new discoveries, terrible dangers, and everyday miracles on the other. As we grow, that world expands further, to include new species, lost continents, the realm of the dead and the lives of others: cosmonauts swim in distant space, unseen creatures pass through a garden at dusk; we are surrounded by delectable mysteries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe question of this contested, liminal world sits at the centre of \u003cem\u003eStill Life with Feeding Snake\u003c\/em\u003e, whose poems live at the edge of loss, or on the cusp of epiphany, always seeking that brief instant of grace when we see what is before us, and not just what we expected to find. In ‘Approaching Sixty’, the poet watches as a woman unclasps her hair: ‘so the nape of her neck\/is visible, slender and pale\/for moments, before the spill\/of light and russet\/falls down to her waist’. This, like each poem in the book, becomes an essay in still life and a memento mori, illuminating transient experience with a profound clarity and a charged, sensual beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDue out 2nd February 2017 from Cape. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cape Poetry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36047395079,"sku":"9781910702413","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Burnside_John_-_Still_Life_with_Feeding_Snake_Stolen_from_Cape.png?v=1483543679"},{"product_id":"the-book-behind-the-dune-by-anders-sanchez-robayna-translated-by-louis-bourne","title":"The Book, Behind the Dune by Andérs Sánchez Robayna \u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spring Translation Choice \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Book, Behind the Dune\u003c\/em\u003e is a long unitary poem about the birth of a poetic consciousness and its development in a world marked by the discovery of beauty, eroticism and the reality of evil. Influenced by St. Augustine, \u003cem\u003eThe Cloud of Unknowing\u003c\/em\u003e and Wordsworth’s \u003cem\u003eThe Prelude\u003c\/em\u003e, the poem, full of literary, artistic and philosophical references, is simultaneously a meditation on the meaning of time and its manifestations—its epiphanies—in a concrete life. The reflection on historical time leads the poet to the reality of “the pain of the world,” but also towards a world that is incessantly and continually beginning. As Yves Bonnefoy puts it, “Sánchez Robayna knows what ‘the new time’ expects of us which Rimbaud foresaw as ‘very severe’.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Book, Behind the Dune (El libro, tras la duna)\u003c\/em\u003e, already translated into French, Italian, Czech, German and Arabic, is presented here for the first time in English.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished by Shearsman Books on \u003cstrong\u003e17.02.2017\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Shearsman Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36404407111,"sku":"9781848615229","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/The_Book_Behind_the_Dune.jpg?v=1484144340"},{"product_id":"complicity","title":"Complicity \u003cb\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Spring Pamphlet Choice \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the 2016 Laureate's Choice poets, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTom Sastry was born in 1974. He is a second generation Original. His mother is Originally English and his father Originally Indian. He grew up in Buckinghamshire and has lived in Bristol since 1999. He thinks that not belonging is more interesting than belonging. He has spent most of his life in bedrooms, classrooms and offices. He enjoys having to deny that he is an anarchist. C\u003cem\u003eomplicity \u003c\/em\u003eis his first pamphlet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Tom Sastry navigates the mysterious everyday in this honest and often funny collection, making friendships and love affairs new and strange.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e– Carol Ann Duffy\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smith\/Doorstop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36966804679,"sku":"9781910367704","price":7.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Complicity.png?v=1484826490"},{"product_id":"on-balance-by-sinead-morrissey-b-pbs-summer-choice-b","title":"On Balance by Sinead Morrissey \u003cb\u003eSummer Choice\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTeetering on the brink of various crises, Sinéad Morrissey’s poems consider spectacular feats of human engineering – ships, planes, robots – from our radically unstable perspective, struggling for poise. Poems become pliable; the dead speak.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Poetry Book Society","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40382514503,"sku":"9781784103606","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9781784103606.jpg?v=1492077334"},{"product_id":"fast-by-jorie-graham-b-pbs-summer-recommendation-b","title":"Fast by Jorie Graham \u003cb\u003e Summer recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003ePBS Summer 2017 Recommendation \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJorie Graham’s new book is characteristically exhilarating and inventive, exploring the limits of the human and the dark seductions of the post-human.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished by Carcanet in June 2017.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40382926151,"sku":"9781784104702","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9781784104702.jpg?v=1492077275"},{"product_id":"silent-in-finisterre-by-jane-griffiths-b-pbs-summer-recommendation-b","title":"Silent in Finisterre by Jane Griffiths \u003cb\u003e Summer Recommendation\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003ePBS Summer 2017 Recommendation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe houses and landscapes of childhood exert a strong presence in Silent in Finisterre. Recalled by name, in incantation, or described in ways that recapture their irreducible reality to a child for whom they are the totality of the world, they become a kind of memory theatre: for Jane Griffiths physical things are remembered both for their own sake and to explore how they continue to shape the self.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStyle impresses as much as content in her resonantly evocative poems, with sentences played against line breaks to create constant small disruptions of the expected sense, while predictable phrases and forms of words are summoned only to be rewritten. Here language is not a transparent means of conveying a message but a medium that – no less than charcoal or oil paint – materially affects what is expressed through it. Form and subject are as inextricably entwined as ‘the echo of port in the night’s starboard, \/ the terra firma that is silent in Finisterre’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJane Griffiths' Another Country: New \u0026amp; Selected Poems was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2008, and followed by Terrestrial Variations in 2012. Silent in Finisterre shows her extending her explorations of people and place with delight at being in the world, despite the threat of loss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Jane Griffiths is a poet attracted to the cross-hatchings of matter and spirit; inner and outer; air and water; foreignness and a sense of home…she has something of the Dutch still-life painter's eye: the comprehension of solid form as nothing, finally, but the effect of light. Sensuously wrought and even, at times, subtly erotic, her poems simultaneously evoke another level of pure abstraction, with words in place of coils of paint.' – Adam Thorpe, Guardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'For Griffiths, meaning is not so much to be teased out of the universe as it is to be seen. Her underlying conviction seems to be that, if we can eliminate our own warring needs, distractions and expectations, we can read the language of the world.' – Rose Solari, Poet Lore\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A major achievement... outstanding...complex and subtle in thought, supple of tone and piercing in its observation.' - Sarah Broom, Times Literary Supplement\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The extraordinary exuberance of Jane Griffiths's poems is a product of their strange balancing between the image and the idea. The images seem to have a verbal life of their own, generated by a dominating thought that the reader is hardly aware of. But then it dawns on you, slowly but unforgettably, and you enjoy the things in the poem all the more when you see what they are for.' - Bernard O'Donoghue\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished by Bloodaxe books April 2017\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Poetry book society","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40383247751,"sku":"9781780373560","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/image_3bf23317-e1e6-44df-8476-8cc4bd036697.jpeg?v=1489416834"},{"product_id":"night-sky-with-exit-wounds-by-ocean-vuong-b-pbs-summer-2017-recommendation-b","title":"Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong \u003cb\u003e Summer Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e and \u003cb\u003e Forward Prize Shortlist \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003ePBS Summer 2017 Recommendation \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn extraordinary debut from a young Vietnamese American, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other. Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects – love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire – and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention: ‘…the chief of police\/facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola.\/A palm-sized photo of his father soaking\/beside his left ear.’ This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘These are poems of exquisite beauty, unashamed of romance, and undaunted by looking directly into the horrors of war, the silences of history. One of the most important debut collections for a generation.’ Andrew McMillan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePublished by Cape 4th April 2017\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cape Poetry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40383556743,"sku":"9781911214519","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/image_a4be64c9-9bfa-43c0-b4e4-84273ac2bc27.png?v=1489417551"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-by-colette-bryce","title":"Selected Poems by Colette Bryce \u003cb\u003e Summer Special Commendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePoetry Book Society Special Commendation Summer 2017\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSelected Poems draws together the best of Colette Bryce's highly acclaimed and prize-winning collections; including The Heel of Bernadette (2000), winner of the Aldeburgh Prize, The Full Indian Rope Trick (2004), short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Whole \u0026amp; Rain-domed Universe, shortlisted for the Forward Prize and winner of the Ewart-Biggs Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoving from the melodic to the political, from the humorous to the nostalgic, Bryce's poetry explores home, escape, family and childhood. Her Selected Poems is a perfect compilation of her most impressive work and the perfect introduction to one of poetry's most lyrical voices.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eColette Bryce\u003c\/strong\u003e is an Irish poet currently based in the North East of England. Her previous collections with Picador include The Heel of Bernadette (2000), winner of the Aldeburgh Prize, The Full Indian Rope Trick (2004), short-listed for the T S Eliot Prize, and Self-Portrait in the Dark (2008). From 2009 to 2013 she was Poetry Editor for Poetry London. She received the Cholmondeley Award for her poetry in 2010.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41590675527,"sku":"9781509840380","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Selected_Poems_-_Colette_Bryce.jpg?v=1491214430"},{"product_id":"the-bees-have-been-canceled-by-maya-catherine-popa-b-summer-pamphlet-choice-b","title":"The Bees Have Been Canceled by Maya Catherine Popa \u003cb\u003e Summer Pamphlet Choice \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003ePBS Summer 2017 Pamphlet Choice\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The poems in The Bees Have Been Canceled are ravenous, rich, and exquisitely built. Maya Catherine Popa's language makes visible how yearning tethers the mind to the world and how hurt spawns an astonishing self-awareness. Her gaze alights on beauty and violence; it 'scurries from birth to blight.' Such attentive looking brings closer the brokenness of the world. This gaze is also restorative; it alleviates and mends and delights.\" - Eduardo C. Corral\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Maya Catherine Popa's The Bees Have Been Canceled is haunted by violence and catastrophe, by the consequences of human desire turned to incommensurate ends, and anxious about the resources of language. There are no glib answers, only a certain kind of belief (the kind Emily Dickinson might recognize) embodied afresh in poems that are richly textured, and filled with energy, wit, and intelligence. Popa's work is serious, but there's joy here, too, in a balance that defies gravity.\" -Averill Curdy\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished by Southword Editions, Feb 2017\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Southword Editions","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41936788999,"sku":"","price":5.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/popa_front_cover_lighter_002.jpg?v=1492684998"},{"product_id":"mama-amazonica-b-poetry-book-society-autumn-choice-b","title":"Mama Amazonica by Pascale Petit \u003cb\u003e Poetry Book Society Autumn Choice \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cstrong\u003ePoetry Book Society Choice\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMama Amazonica is set in a psychiatric ward and in the Amazon rainforest, an asylum for animals on the brink of extinction. It reveals the story of Pascale Petitâ€™s mentally ill mother and the consequences of abuse. The mother transforms into a giant Victoria amazonica waterlily, and a bestiary of untameable creatures â€“ a jaguar girl, a wolverine, a hummingbird â€“ as she marries her rapist and gives birth to his children. From heartbreaking trauma, there emerge luxuriant and tender portraits of a woman battling for survival, in poems that echo the plight of others under duress, and of our companion species. Petit does not flinch from the violence but offers hope by celebrating the beauty of the wild, whether in the mind or the natural world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMama Amazonica is Pascale Petit's seventh collection, and her first from Bloodaxe. Four of Pascale Petit's previous six collections have been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. From the reviews:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Pascale Petitâ€™s Fauverie is astonishing, one of those books that breaks new ground in how to approach writing about the unwritable.' â€“ Ruth Padel, London Review Bookshop Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The voice of Fauverie speaks both bravely and with bravura from the heart of its material. There is conspiracy in these poems and great beauty. They venture into the cellar of the past, summon up memory and conjure it into a firework display of metaphoric brilliance.' â€“ Helen Dunmore, Chair of Judges, 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Pascaleâ€™s poems are as fresh as paint, and make you look all over again at Frida and her brilliant and tragic life.' â€“ Jackie Kay, The Observer (Books of the Year), on What the Water Gave Me: Poems After Frida Kahlo\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'This is a wonderful and red-raw collection that captures pain, love and loss.' â€“ The Independent, on The Zoo Father\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A brave and unsettling collection. These are psychological explorations of relationships and power struggles that take risks. â€“ Robyn Bolam, Poetry Review, on The Huntress","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46633198663,"sku":"9781780372945","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Pacale_Petit_-_Mama_Amazonica.jpg?v=1499093620"},{"product_id":"the-tragic-death-of-eleanor-marx-by-tara-bergin-b-poetry-book-socity-autumn-recommendation-b","title":"The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx by Tara Bergin \u003cb\u003e Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eA 2017 Poetry Book Society Recommendation\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eShortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2017\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFollowing her 2013 debut \u003cem\u003eThis is Yarrow\u003c\/em\u003e (winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize and the Shine \/ Strong Award), Tara Bergin returns with her second collection, \u003cem\u003eThe Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx\u003c\/em\u003e. The poems draw on folksong, fairytale and theatrical monologue as Bergin explores the alluring and sometimes tragic consequences of translation. When she committed suicide in 1898, Eleanor Marx (daughter of Karl Marx, pioneering sociologist, and translator of Flaubert’s \u003cem\u003eMadame Bovary\u003c\/em\u003e) imitated Flaubert’s heroine, Emma. Both women, in their own ways, died passionate deaths, and Bergin’s poems are concerned with intense love, intense grief. With a sing-song rhythm and dark humour, they play off the natural theatricality of great lovers, great writers and great readers who, like the fancy-dressed children in ‘Mask’, are both ‘themselves and strangers’. ‘That’s all they wanted.’","brand":"Carcanet Press Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46633908807,"sku":"9781784103804","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Tara_Bergin_-_9781784103804_b42a0ef8-f388-4c74-b906-0dc40757c1d0.jpg?v=1499094027"},{"product_id":"the-darkness-of-snow-by-frank-ormsby-b-poetry-book-society-autumn-recommendation-b","title":"The Darkness of Snow by Frank Ormsby \u003cb\u003e Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry Book Society Recommendation\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTheÂ Darkness of SnowÂ \u003c\/i\u003eis Frank Ormsby's most varied and versatile collection to date. It includes three substantial sets of poems whose themes are refreshingly and sometimes painfully new. One is a suite of poemsÂ  â€“Â sombre, good-humoured, flippant â€“ about theÂ early stages of Parkinson's Disease. Ormsby was diagnosed as having the disease in 2011. Another was prompted by the work of Irish painters in Normandy, Brittany and Belgium at the end of the 19th century.Â \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are also further explorations of his boyhood years in Fermanagh, while poems set in Belfast reflect the aftermath of the Troubles and celebrate the city's current phase of recovery andÂ restoration. The book ends with a narrative poem aboutÂ the trial of an unnamed tyrant in which we learn about the Accused (as he is called), about the villagers who have travelledÂ  to bear witness to the atrocities carried out in the village, and about one of the interpreters, who understands the slipperiness of Truth.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTheÂ Darkness of Snow\u003c\/i\u003eÂ covers work written since Frank Ormsbyâ€™s retrospective,Â \u003ci\u003eGoatâ€™s Milk: New \u0026amp; Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003eÂ (2015). His broad range and eye for the particular combine to make this an exceptional collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Frank Ormsby belongs to that extraordinary generation of Northern Irish poets which includes Ciaran Carson, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon and Tom Paulin. He is a poet of the truest measureâ€¦ From his earliest work Ormsby has favoured a natural shapelinessâ€¦ A plain-speaking, down-to-earth utterance may be the norm, but it teeters on the verge of taking flight, and sometimes gives way to an exquisitely refined lyricism.â€™ â€“ Michael Longley\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜Reading these new poems and returning to those read decades ago has been a delight because Ormsby is a poet of enviable gifts. He has a fine ear and a sharp eye and, above all, his poems are memorable.â€™ â€“ David Cooke,Â \u003ci\u003eThe Manchester Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜\u003ci\u003eGoatâ€™s Milk: New and Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, by Frank Ormsby, reminds us why we missed this poetâ€™s wry and concise voice during the 14-year gap in his writing life; and the new poems extend and ratify his unique angle of vision.â€™ â€“ Patricia Craig,Â \u003ci\u003eThe Irish Times\u003c\/i\u003eÂ (Books of the Year)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46635096391,"sku":"9781780373669","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Frank_Ormsby_-_The_Darkness_of_Snow.jpg?v=1499094790"},{"product_id":"mancunia-by-michael-symmons-roberts-b-poetry-book-society-autumn-reccomendation-b","title":"Mancunia by Michael Symmons Roberts \u003cb\u003e Poetry Book Society Autumn Recommendation \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cspan\u003eMancunia is both a real and an unreal city. In part, it is rooted in Manchester, but it is an imagined city too, a fallen utopia viewed from formal tracks, as from the train in the background of De Chirico’s paintings. In these poems we encounter a Victorian diorama, a bar where a merchant mariner has a story he must tell, a chimeric creature – Miss Molasses – emerging from the old docks. There are poems in honour of Mancunia’s bureaucrats: the Master of the Lighting of Small Objects, the Superintendent of Public Spectacles, the Co-ordinator of Misreadings. Metaphysical and lyrical, the poems in Michael Symmons Roberts’ seventh collection are concerned with why and how we ascribe value, where it resides and how it survives. Mancunia is – like More’s Utopia – both a no-place and an attempt at the good-place. It is occupied, liberated, abandoned and rebuilt. Capacious, disturbing and shape-shifting, these are poems for our changing times.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Cape Poetry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46635840455,"sku":"9781911214298","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Mancunia_9781911214298_2.jpg?v=1499095210"},{"product_id":"feral-by-kate-potts-br-b-pbs-autumn-recommendation-2018-b","title":"Feral by Kate Potts \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eThese poems are luminous despatches from the charged, porous boundary between â€˜animalâ€™ and â€˜humanâ€™. They pull apart and remake definitions and categorisations of wildness and civilisation, training their focus on the language we use to describe youth, social class, and the body. From iron horses to grizzly bears, from deep-water fish to scanderoons,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eFeral\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eroams the limits of power, language, and love. Cinematic, playful, edgy, tender, startlingly imaginative and strange,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eFeral\u003c\/i\u003eâ€™s voices carve out a space in the borderlands. Â \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKate Potts'Â \u003ci\u003eWhichever Music\u003c\/i\u003eÂ was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first book-length collection,Â \u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011.Â \u003ci\u003eFeral\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eisÂ her second collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Intricate, vital-tender, dazzling work â€” Pottsâ€™ poetry sings even as it bares its teeth.' â€“ Eley Williams on\u003cem\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eFeral\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'\u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eis a gem of book in which Kate Potts conjures a poetry which astonishes and moves the reader. The texture of her language â€“ its deft and surprising turns, its intense musicality â€“ allows the many voices in these poems to soar. Her curiosity and profound intelligence means that the poems range wonderfully far and wide in setting and subject-matter from the urban clutter of contemporary settings, to modern variations on pastoral, to Penelope weaving, to a beached whale, and more. Kate Potts is a poet whose ear and eye for her work are as close to perfect as can be:\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eis pure gold.' â€“ Jo Shapcott\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜There is perhaps something otherworldlyâ€¦ in the rich musicality of Kate Pottsâ€™ collection. Her poems bubble and squeak with every phonic device you could desireâ€¦ itâ€™s lithe, bony, sinuous, a writhing lexis that grips its subject hard, sending explorative tendrils deep and offers a powerful conversational voice.â€™ â€“ Noel Williams,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe North\u003c\/em\u003e, on\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜An engrossing debutâ€¦a human, personal engagement between writer and reader.â€™ â€“ Charlie Cocksedge,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePN Review\u003c\/em\u003e, on\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜Her voice is unusual, mesmerising and, at its best, shakes handfuls of words in the readerâ€™s eye like stardust.â€™ â€“ Clare Crowther,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry London\u003c\/em\u003e, on\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePure Hustle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜Kate Potts is a pickpocket of human experience in this tightly-rhythmed, assonance-jellied, beetle-drawer of a pamphlet. Her skill is not simple pathology, she animates archived fact with human uncertainty and underbellies the leery pose of her urban nature-mortes with anatomical and emotional fragility.' â€“ Jen Hadfield on\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhichever Music\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7323853324321,"sku":"9781780374161","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/feral.jpg?v=1527861269"},{"product_id":"playtime-by-andrew-mcmillan-br-b-pbs-autumn-recommendation-2018-b","title":"Playtime by Andrew McMillan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn these intimate, sometimes painfully frank poems, Andrew McMillan takes us back to childhood and early adolescence to explore the different ways we grow into our sexual selves and our adult identities. Examining our teenage rites of passage: those dilemmas and traumas that shape us – eating disorders, masturbation, loss of virginity – the poet examines how we use bodies, both our own and other people’s, to chart our progress towards selfhood.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMcMillan’s award-winning debut collection, physical, was praised for a poetry that was tight and powerful, raw and tender, and playtime expands that narrative frame and widens the gaze. Alongside poems in praise of the naivety of youth, there are those that explore the troubling intersections of violence, masculinity, class and sexuality, always taking the reader with them towards a better understanding of our own physicality. ‘isn’t this what human kind was made for’, McMillan asks in one poem, ‘telling stories learning where the skin\/is most in need of touch’. These humane and vital poems are confessions, both in the spiritual and personal sense; they tell us stories that some of us, perhaps, have never found the courage to read before.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Cape Poetry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7323858239521,"sku":"9781911214373","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/cover.jpg.rendition.460.707_1c7ce30d-d825-4c17-90f7-1f9e6203a3dd.png?v=1527861498"},{"product_id":"the-illegal-age-by-ellen-hinsey-br-b-pbs-autumn-choice-2018-b","title":"The Illegal Age by Ellen Hinsey \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Choice 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eEllen Hinsey's new book-length sequence,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ccite\u003eThe Illegal Age\u003c\/cite\u003e, is a powerful investigation into the twentieth-century's dark legacy of totalitarianism and the rise of political illegality. It explores the enduring potential for human beings to set neighbour against neighbour and commit final acts of violence. A book of lyrical reflection and prophesy,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ccite\u003eThe Illegal Age\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003echronicles the arrival of a new, disquieting reality unfolding in our midst.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs Marilyn Hacker has written, \"In dialogue with Celan, Szymborska, Milosz... this is a daring text - for its political acuity, and for its demonstration of the power in poetry to recount, remember, move the heart while opening the mind.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWritten in parallel with her first-hand research into the rise of authoritarianism carried out over the last decade, Hinsey's volume warns that - rather than an \"Age of Anxiety\" - we may indeed be facing the start of the \"Illegal Age\".\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Arc Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7437544652833,"sku":"9781911469377","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/bg_The_Illegal_Age_front.jpg?v=1531300073"},{"product_id":"as-slow-as-possible-by-kit-fan-br-b-pbs-autumn-recommendation-2018-b","title":"As Slow As Possible by Kit Fan \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cspan\u003eKit Fan's \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ccite\u003eAs Slow As Possible\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a book of changes, of unlikely bridges between far-flung places and times, a collection of shape-shifting, trans-migrant poems that travel across geographies and time zones. There are poems about the slow life of trees which establish links across time and space, about environmental catastrophe, art in war zones, artworks that travel across time, all of them reflecting on mortality and survival. Divided into three parts, the book weaves back and forwards between East and West, past and present, art and memory, pivoting around a central sequence called 'Genesis', an uncanny re-telling of Chinese creation myths in the language of the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ccite\u003eAuthorised Version\u003c\/cite\u003e\u003cspan\u003e. The first part of the book is a brilliantly chromatic travelogue, while the collection ends with a more grounded sequence, 'Twelve Months', focusing on a kind of diurnal poetic house-keeping, based on the poet's migrant life in Yorkshire.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Arc Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7437619691553,"sku":"9781911469438","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/As_Slow_As_Possible_front_rgb.jpg?v=1531323411"},{"product_id":"the-distal-point-by-fiona-moore-br-b-pbs-autumn-recommendation-2018-b","title":"The Distal Point by Fiona Moore \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"","brand":"Happenstance Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7437632077857,"sku":"9781910131442","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Distal_Point_Happenstance.jpg?v=1531319570"},{"product_id":"fishtank-by-selima-hill-br-b-pbs-autumn-pamphlet-choice-2018-b","title":"Fishtank by Selima Hill \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Pamphlet Choice 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"","brand":"Flarestack Poets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":7437673168929,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Selima_Hill.jpg?v=1531323047"},{"product_id":"republic-of-motherhood-liz-berry","title":"The Republic of Motherhood by Liz Berry \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Winter Pamphlet Choice 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis title is currently reprinting, and orders will be dispatched once copies are available\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eand found it a queendom, a wild queendom.’\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this bold and resonant gathering of poems, Liz Berry turns her distinctive voice to the transformative experience of new motherhood. Her poems sing the body electric, from the joy and anguish of becoming a mother, through its darkest hours to its brightest days. With honesty and unabashed beauty, they bear witness to that most tender of times – when a new life arrives, and everything changes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chatto \u0026 Windus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9449246851119,"sku":"9781784742676","price":8.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/image.jpg?v=1537350129"},{"product_id":"coming-of-the-little-green-man-john-agard","title":"The Coming of the Little Green Man by John Agard \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e PBS Winter Special Commendation 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWinner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2012\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry Book Society Special Commendation\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eJohn Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past 40 years with his mischievous, satirical fables which overturn all our expectations. In his eighth Bloodaxe collection we enter a world of play and parable â€“ in which the little green man stands for all pesky outsiders â€“ in provocative poems charged with contemporary resonance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhich box should the little green man tick on the question of identity? Will the little green man survive as a minority of one in a multiracial London? What if the little green man volunteers to give blood to 21st-century humankind?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWinner of the Queen's Gold Medal, the Caribbean-British poet brings to bear his trademark trickster wit that bridges the metaphysical and the political, the comic and the poignant, the oral and the literary.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜... if Agard had not already been forged in the roller-coaster aftermath of empire, there would be an urgent need for society to invent someone like him.â€™ â€“ William Wallis,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eFinancial TimesÂ  Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'Many of us know his poetry through its popularity in schools, with its Â delightful mixture of subversion and levity... but\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlaying the Ghost of Maimonides\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003eis far from a children's book... This is a complex, adult text that grapples with sectarian extremism, the Torah and Koran, humankind's perpetual \"tribal\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eIliad\u003c\/em\u003e\"... But it is also an attempt to recalibrate spiritual poetry to contain our new reality' - Clare Pollard,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Poetry Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜John Agard's poetry is a wonderful affirmation of life, in a language that is as vital and joyous as we are able to craft it in the Caribbean, in spite of our history of distress.â€™ â€“ David Dabydeen\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'John Agardâ€™s most ambitious book yet and a wholly original take on the endless wars of the 21st centuryâ€¦ Itâ€™s a clever and entertaining book, with wisdom accompanying the perplexity.' â€“ Andy Croft,Â \u003cem\u003eMorning Star\u003c\/em\u003e\u003ci\u003eÂ \u003c\/i\u003e[onÂ \u003cem\u003ePlaying the Ghost of Maimonides\u003c\/em\u003e]\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eâ€˜â€¦a forward-facing collection that tackles the big issues of war, religious intolerance, and how we relate to each other as neighbours inhabiting the same fragile planet.â€™ - Lisa Kelly,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eMagmaÂ \u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e[on\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlaying the Ghost of Maimonides\u003c\/em\u003e]\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9479672102959,"sku":"9781780374185","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/59d6809381168.jpg?v=1538127530"},{"product_id":"perseverance-raymond-antrobus","title":"The Perseverance by Raymond Antrobus \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e PBS Winter Choice 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp class=\"blog-header\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Perseverance\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis the remarkable debut book by British-Jamaican poet Raymond Antrobus. Ranging across history and continents, these poems operate in the spaces in between, their haunting lyrics creating new, hybrid territories.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"text-body\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Perseverance\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a book of loss, contested language and praise, where elegies for the poet’s father sit alongside meditations on the d\/Deaf experience.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9479689502767,"sku":"9781908058522","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/theperseverance_frontcover.jpg?v=1538127737"},{"product_id":"weather-in-nomal-carrie-etter","title":"The Weather in Normal by Carrie Etter \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eCarrie Etter’s fourth poetry collection focuses on her hometown of Normal, Illinois, in the American Midwest. \u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Weather in Normal\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis not a set of straightforward memories but a slowly shifting entity, like a moving storm.  The book opens with ‘Night Ode’, a poem set on a single street at night, the protagonist walking and feeling the oppressive summer heat, the humming of cicadas and the various ages she has walked the same road: “sixteen, nineteen, twenty-four, thirty-seven…”. This introduces us to the main themes of memory and recollection, of mature reflections on youthful experiences, of multiple, shifting perspectives.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first of the book’s three arcs explores the family’s relationship to the weather and place, from the father’s obsession with the weather, to the brutal effects of the winters on the family, resulting in broken bones, the recognition of poverty, and the father’s paralysis. Yet the relationship to place also includes its appreciation. Etter offers us a vivid impression of the American prairie with its cornfields extending to the horizon. She muses on the various meanings of ‘Prairie’ and understands a landscape can haunt the imagination the way the past haunts the present.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second arc explores the effect of the loss of the family home in the long poem ‘Afterlife.’ The house is a place of memory and of dream, an upbringing in a house crowded with sisters and then with her sisters’ children: “once three sat atop\/ the upright piano\/ playing the keys\/ with their feet”. What is it to return, in imagination, to the house in which her father died? Can one ultimately relinquish one’s childhood home to its new owners?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book’s final arc concerns the effects of climate change in Illinois, in part through the long poem, ‘Scar’, chronicling these effects—the greater occurrence of extreme weather, the loss of species, etc. – as well as human responsibility for them. Just as\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Weather in Normal\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003ebegin with music in ‘Night Ode’, so it ends with ‘And Now for a Kind of Song,’ a eulogistic poem relishing the poet’s relationship to Illinois.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9479823425583,"sku":"9781781724590","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/The_Weather_In_Normal.jpg?v=1538129866"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-kathleen-jamie","title":"Selected Poems by Kathleen Jamie \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eKathleen Jamie’s\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003egathers together some of the finest work by one of the foremost poets currently writing in English. Although Jamie is perhaps best known for her writing on nature, landscape, and place,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eSelected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eshows the full and remarkably diverse range of her work – and why many regard her work as crucially relevant to our troubled age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo poet currently writing has a keener eye or ear; no poet has paid more careful attention to the other consciousnesses with whom we share the planet – and no poet has Jamie’s almost miraculous ability to show us just how the world might look when the human eye ceases to gaze on it. This exceptional collection of poetry, spanning several decades, allows readers to chart the development of one of our most important contemporary talents, and serves as perfect introduction to her work.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9479911931951,"sku":"9781509882953","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/original_400_600_1.jpg?v=1538130920"},{"product_id":"triumph-of-cancer-chris-mccabe","title":"The Triumph of Cancer by Chris McCabe \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2018 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cspan\u003eHaving published \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eCenotaph South\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e in 2016 – the second in his Magnificent Seven non-fiction series – we are delighted to welcome another Chris McCabe poetry book to Penned in the Margins. McCabe’s first collection since the critically-acclaimed \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpeculatrix \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e(2014), \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Triumph of Cancer \u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003eis a brave, unexpected book of lyric poems that morph and grow on every reading.\u003c\/span\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9480317730863,"sku":"9781908058607","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/thetriumphofcancer_highres.jpg?v=1538136113"},{"product_id":"healing-next-time-roy-mcfarlane","title":"The Healing Next Time by Roy McFarlane \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2018\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eRoy McFarlane’s second poetry collection,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eThe Healing Next Time,\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a timely and unparalleled book of interwoven sequences on institutional racism, deaths in custody and of a life story set against the ever-changing backdrop of Birmingham at the turn of the millennium. Here forms a potent and resolute narrative in lyrical and multidimensional poems which refuse to look the other way or accept the whitewashed version of events.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eCourageous, rageful and mournful, these are poems of Black history and Black presence, poems of witness and poems of activism. McFarlane’s intricate lines make record of injustice and mark the names of those who have lost their lives and dignity to prejudice and hatred.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eThe Healing Next Time\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ealso asks vital questions of the future, and of the reader – and reminds us where the power to change things lies. It is also a poetry of personal discovery, of revelation and resilience – where the influence of Jazz and of James Baldwin infuse and shape this unique, remarkable book.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e'Claudia Rankine's 'Citizen' contains the following key exchange from a visit to the UK: “Will you write about Duggan? The man wants to know. Why don't you?” Few rose to this challenge but Roy McFarlane's distinguished new collection\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eThe Healing Next Time\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003etakes on a whole history of official abuse and killing here with powerful and technically various poetry. McFarlane traces our hostile environment for new citizens, particularly those of colour, into some ugly corners, but it is a book of great love too, even when he’s dancing with ghosts, as he does here in a wonderful poem of that name. I cannot recommend\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eThe Healing Next Time\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003eenough.'\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"textnormal mobile-undersized-upper\"\u003e— Ian Duhig\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nine Arches","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9480324317231,"sku":"9781911027454","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/The_Healing_Next_Time_Cover.jpg?v=1538136248"},{"product_id":"stockholm-syndrome-igor-klikovac","title":"Stockholm Syndrome by Igor Klikovac, trans. John McAuliffe \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Spring Pamphlet Choice 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eIgor Klikovac is a poet whose work is as shaped by his Sarajevo roots as by his travels: the poems, often up in the air, between places, among the clouds that increasingly pass over European nations, are brilliantly observed, ironic and densely material, then spaciously open to what he misses and remembers and can do justice to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMcAuliffe is one of the most gifted and versatile poets of his generation\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e– Poetry Book Society on the translator\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smith|Doorstop","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9537422557231,"sku":"9781912196180","price":5.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/McCauliffe-Stockholm_Web.png?v=1539614337"},{"product_id":"kingdomland-by-rachael-allen","title":"Kingdomland by Rachael Allen \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PBS Spring Choice 2019 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eKingdomland\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis the debut poetry collection of Rachael Allen – a writer of rare vision and flair. The world she creates is suffused with surreal images and uncanny incidents. Unexplained violences and strange metamorphoses take shape in the ‘glowering dusk’. And yet, all too clearly, we recognise life here on earth, its everyday griefs, dysfunctions and injustices. Where distinctions between murder and bloodletting, corruption and consumption are blurred. Where a pet tarantula or mimic octopus might find itself beside glands and processed meats. Landscapes shift and identities dissolve: ‘the red bricks of the day’ exist ‘in a woman’s chest’, a human presence is ‘embedded in the walls’. All appears changed, but familiar.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntercut with oblique verse fragments and a series of linked sequences, Allen blends elements of fiction and ekphrasis to create a haunting and unforgettable debut.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Faber \u0026 Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9863498563631,"sku":"9780571341115","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/kingdomland.jpg?v=1546436517"},{"product_id":"your-relationship-to-motion-has-changed-amish-trivedi","title":"Your Relationship to Motion has Changed by Amish Trivedi \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Spring Recommendation 2019 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e﻿Published 15th March 2019\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eYour Relationship to Motion Has Changed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, Amish Trivedi’s second book, is an exploration through a wandering mind in the middle of external chaos. The poems trace private and public histories, from Lincoln mythos to serial killers, tied together through contorted bodies, whipped lungs, one eye firmly on the abyss, and one hand reaching back from it. “One more nightmare and I’m out,” but what are we waking into?\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Shearsman Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9863506001967,"sku":"9781848616332","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/amish-trivedi-your-relationship-to-motion-has-changed-21b7b6ae.jpg?v=1546437082"},{"product_id":"discipline-by-jane-yeh","title":"Discipline by Jane Yeh \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Spring Recommendation 2019 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eDiscipline\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, her third collection, Jane Yeh depicts a haunting and hilarious variety of lives, from an endangered young rhinoceros to the denizens of the 1980s New York club scene. These multifaceted poems explore what identity isn’t and is, as performance, as struggle, as change, as art with penetrating wit, channeling the voices of outsiders, artists, misfits, and others. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eDiscipline\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003einhabits the space between the real and the surreal, a mash-up of deadpan humour and heartbreaking imagery where novelty T-shirts and lady astronaut centaurs can coexist. The poems are triggered by videos, paintings and installations by contemporary artists, animals and city life. They bristle with striking details and observations. Imaginary landscapes converge with episodes from recent history: power, resistance and the structures of oppression are seen inexorably in operation. These miniature dramas perform their own autopsies: ‘Sweet, then sour. My lips the colour of Doubt’.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9863506886703,"sku":"9781784107079","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9781784107079.png?v=1548943164"},{"product_id":"witch-rebecca-tamas","title":"WITCH by Rebecca Tamás \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Spring Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eWITCH\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e by \u003c\/span\u003eRebecca Tamás\u003cspan\u003e is a raw, strange book of poems that merges feminist exploration with occult expression and ecological language. At turns lyrical, philosophical and obscene, Tamáss astonishing debut evokes the sexual prowess of nature as an organism that swallows and consumes. These are poems that unsettle the reader, taking them to dark, magical places where earth and blood, politics and pornography, intermingle; they celebrate poetry as a small, bright, filthy song.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA visceral, unflinching and darkly witty first collection that introduces a major new voice in British poetry.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9865442000943,"sku":"9781908058621","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/witch_draft_cover.png?v=1546508254"},{"product_id":"surge-by-jay-bernard-br-b-pbs-summer-recommendation-2019-b","title":"Surge by Jay Bernard \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eJay Bernard’s powerful debut is a queer exploration of the black British archive, tracing a line between two significant events in recent British history: the New Cross Massacre of 1981 in which thirteen young black people were killed in a house fire – and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. The collection stems from research undertaken about the New Cross Fire during a 2016 residency at the George Padmore Institute.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chatto \u0026 Windus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237578866735,"sku":"9781784742614","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/image_c59a1d55-ed7a-4a31-a656-415942986c63.jpg?v=1554282037"},{"product_id":"hand-skull-by-zoe-brigley-br-b-pbs-summer-recommendation-2019-b","title":"Hand \u0026 Skull by ZoÃ« Brigley \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eZoÃ« Brigleyâ€™s third collection\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eHand \u0026amp; Skull\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003edraws on early memories of the Welsh landscape and the harshness of rural life as well as on her later immersion in the American landscape and her perception of a sense of hollowness in particular communities there. Other strands include the horror of violence, especially violence towards women, contrasted with poems which offer comfort by working as beatitudes or commentaries on life as it exists now, seeking a way of being that is more beautiful, often in relation to her children. There are also epistolary poems, letters to or from real, imagined and remembered women like the artist Georgia Oâ€™Keeffe, Thomas Hardyâ€™s Tess, and Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopinâ€™s\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Awakening\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'The poems in ZoÃ« Brigleyâ€™sÂ \u003ci\u003eHand \u0026amp; Skull\u003c\/i\u003eÂ are strange-making, unsettling, and thrilling in their originality. Here Brigley bravely confronts what it is to be a woman in a world that sees women as prey, the â€œtautness of fearâ€ enacted in the tautness of each line, each word. Like Georgia Oâ€™Keeffe, whose work permeates the book, Brigley explores landscape and the body, often braiding the two: â€˜I donâ€™t know\/ it now, but I am about\/ to bend. The snap of a branch, or bone\/ under a human hand.â€™Â \u003ci\u003eHand \u0026amp; Skull\u003c\/i\u003eÂ is a brilliant book â€“ and proof that ZoÃ« Brigley is one of the best poets writing today.' â€“ Maggie Smith, author ofÂ \u003cem\u003eGood Bones\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237596266543,"sku":"9781780374727","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/5c7908c06370f.jpg?v=1554282145"},{"product_id":"deaf-republic-by-ilya-kaminsky","title":"Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Choice 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eDeaf Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e opens in a time of political unrest in an occupied territory. It is uncertain where we are or when, in what country or during what conflict, but we come to recognise that these events are also happening here, right now. This astonishing parable in poems unfolds episodically like a play, its powerful narrative provoked by a tragic opening scene: when soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear - in that moment, all have gone deaf. Inside this silence, their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story then follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting their child; the daring Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theatre; and Galya's puppeteers, covertly teaching signs by day and by night heroically luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eDeaf Republic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Faber \u0026 Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237695488047,"sku":"9780571351411","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9780571351411_-_Ilya_Kaminsky.jpg?v=1554282803"},{"product_id":"erato-deryn-rees-jones","title":"Erato by Deryn Rees-Jones \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eNamed after the Greek muse of lyric poetry, \u003cem\u003eErato \u003c\/em\u003ecombines documentary-style prose narratives with the passionate lyric poetry for which Rees-Jones is renowned. Here, however, as she experiments with form, particularly the sonnet, Rees-Jones asks questions about the value of the poet and poetry itself. What is the difference, she asks in one poem, between a sigh and a song? \u003cem\u003eErato’\u003c\/em\u003es themes are manifold but particularly focus on personal loss, desire and recovery, in the context of a world in which wars and displacement of people has become a terrifying norm. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the narrative of transformations that unfold, the invocation of Erato also carries with it a sense of \u003cem\u003eerrata \u003c\/em\u003eand erasure.  As stories and ideas are repeated, and recurring imagery -- of fires, bees, birds – is continually reframed, we are asked to replay, rethink, rename. How do we step out from the ‘perpetual loop’ of trauma? And how do we find a way of processing painful change? Here, bewilderment in the face of ongoing historical tragedy is countered by the Rees-Jones’s close and careful attention to immediate or remembered experience, and the importance of the body, whether this is lying awake at night with a sleepless child, the felling of a backyard tree, walking in Paris observing the encampments of refugees, or the dreamlike conversation she has with the radio about bombs and the use of drones.  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eErato \u003c\/em\u003eincludes elegies for family members and close friends, including an impressive and moving long poem ‘I.M.’. Also included here is the autobiographical ‘Caprice’ in which Rees-Jones explores with musical abandon ‘the scribble-mess’ of self, and the ‘grainy, atomized emotion coursing through in middle age’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThroughout \u003cem\u003eErato \u003c\/em\u003ethere is a compelling sense of continued curiosity, of thoughtful questioning, of questing for truths.  The author’s background in the classics, her immersion in modern poetry as well as a deep interest in modern art, all combine to influence the essential quality of this work. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Here is the poet as rhapsode, an open channel for giddily overlapping streams of grief, desire, bewilderment, awe and rage.\" – Josh Cohen\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"Deryn Rees-Jones shows us that in the right hands lyric is the sharpest, subtlest and most devastating instrument we possess.\" – Sasha Dugdale\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237740412975,"sku":"9781781725108","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/51_6J0QQyAL.jpg?v=1554283198"},{"product_id":"million-petalled-flower-of-being-here-vidyan-ravinthiran","title":"The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here by Vidyan Ravinthiran \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eVidyan Ravinthiranâ€™s second collection is a book of sonnets for his wife. These are love poems that turn analytical, consider the world, and in which the pronoun â€˜weâ€™ aspires to stand for a larger community, including (if you like) the readers themselves. Many describe life in northern England for a mixed-race couple, considering both the redemptive force of love and the cultural origins of our discontent.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBrexit; racist and sexist abuse; class; our work-life balance, and our relationship with institutions (be it our employer, or the NHS); taboos surrounding mental health; civil war in Sri Lanka; media representation of minorities; immigrant anxieties: these poems look inward, but also outward. Worrying at the link between society and our private lives, they scorn a politics which would put us in separate boxes. Love, and imagination, may not conquer all, but as recent shocks suggest, â€˜weâ€™ must at least try to understand people different from us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the reviews of\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eGrun-tu-molani\u003c\/em\u003e:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'As a very rare kind of British poet indeed - one from a Sri Lankan background readers might expect Vidyan Ravinthiran to have a lot of important things to say.Â  He does, but, like Oscar Wilde, whom this witty and ambitious debut quotes twice,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eGrun-tu-molani\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003ealso delights in wrong-footing expectations of earnestness' â€“ Jeremy Noel-Tod,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eSunday Times.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e'â€œGrun-tu-molaniâ€ is borrowed from Bellowâ€™s phrase meaning â€œman wants to liveâ€ and Ravinthiranâ€™s verse seems driven by a comparably urgent impulse, to perfect his craft. From translations of ancient Tamil texts to contemporary riffs on recession and technology, he combines formal range with wit as well as moral, sensual and emotional complexity' â€“ Maria Crawford,\u003cspan\u003eÂ \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e, Summer books 2014.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bloodaxe Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237761712175,"sku":"9781780374765","price":12.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/5ba5515138dff.jpg?v=1554283375"},{"product_id":"whereas-layli-long-soldier","title":"WHEREAS by Layli Long Soldier \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Special Commendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eWHEREAS\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003econfronts the coercive language of the United States government in its responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes, and reflects that language in its officiousness and duplicity back on its perpetrators. Through a virtuosic array of short lyrics, prose poems, longer narrative sequences, resolutions, and disclaimers, Layli Long Soldier has created a brilliantly innovative text to examine histories, landscapes, her own writing, and her predicament inside national affiliations.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237823217711,"sku":"9781529012804","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/original_400_600_1c5cb159-0a69-4815-aeba-fcda89f7e341.jpg?v=1554283680"},{"product_id":"following-scan-will-last-five-minutes-lieke-marsman","title":"The Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes by Lieke Marsman, trans. Sophie Collins \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Summer Translation Choice 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eIn\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Cancer Journals\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eAudre Lorde wrote, ‘I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilise into yet another silence, not to rob me of whatever strength can lie at the core of this experience, openly acknowledged and examined.’ Founded on this same principle,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Following Scan Will Last Five Minutes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas written in the three months following Dutch writer Lieke Marsman’s cancer diagnosis. A series of short poems anchored by an essay that speaks directly to Lorde’s journal entries and personal reflections on cancer, Marsman considers, among other things, the state of contemporary Dutch politics and – via Susan Sontag’s\u003ci\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eIllness as Metaphor\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e– the rhetoric surrounding her disease. A work of poetry, social criticism and autobiography,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Following Scan\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eis an honest and dryly comic account of a period in the author’s life that elides pretension in search of autonomy and self-knowledge. Beautifully translated by the poet Sophie Collins, the book also includes a translator’s note in the form of a letter to her author and friend.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is the work of two remarkable poets in collaboration and conversation. Lieke Marsman has evolved a stringent poetics of limit and capacity, of body and language and self. The scan is a metaphor for Marsman’s particular quality of attention - committed and complete.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Pavilion Poetry","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":11237881741359,"sku":"9781786942135","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/31Lh69QUe7L.jpg?v=1554284027"},{"product_id":"the-tradition-jericho-brown","title":"The Tradition by Jericho Brown \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Choice 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eJericho Brown’s daring poetry collection \u003ci\u003eThe Tradition \u003c\/i\u003edetails the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown’s poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown’s mastery, and his invention of the duplex – a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues – testament to his formal skill. \u003ci\u003eThe Tradition\u003c\/i\u003e is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Picador","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012322062383,"sku":"9781529020472","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/tradition.jpg?v=1563290610"},{"product_id":"after-formalities-anthony-anaxagorou","title":"After the Formalities by Anthony Anaxagorou \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e﻿A knife is pulled. An Uber driver is racially abused on the day of the Brexit referendum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA father bathes his son in ice water. A schoolboy drives a drawing pin into a map of the world. The threat of violence is never far away in Anthony Anaxagorou's breakthrough collection After the Formalities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTechnically achieved, emotionally transformative and razor-sharp, these are poems that confront and contradict; poems in which the scholarly synthesises with the streetwise, and global histories are told through the lens of one family. Anaxagorou 'speaks against the darkness', tracking the male body under pressure from political and historical forces, and celebrates the precarious joy of parenthood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe title poem is a meditation on racism and race science that draws on the poet's Cypriot heritage and is as uncomfortable as it is virtuosic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElsewhere, in a sequence of prose poems that shimmer with lyric grace, he writes, 'I'm your father \u0026amp; the only person keeping you alive.'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012358860847,"sku":"9781908058652","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/aftertheformalitiesfrontcover_002.jpg?v=1562317207"},{"product_id":"fleche-mary-jean-chan","title":"Flèche by Mary Jean Chan \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eFlèche\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(the French word for 'arrow') is an offensive technique commonly used in fencing, a sport of Mary Jean Chan's young adult years, when she competed locally and internationally for her home city, Hong Kong. This cross-linguistic pun presents the queer, non-white body as both vulnerable ('flesh') and weaponised ('\u003ci\u003eflèche\u003c\/i\u003e'), and evokes the difficulties of reconciling one's need for safety alongside the desire to shed one's protective armour in order to fully embrace the world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCentral to the collection is the figure of the poet's mother, whose fragmented memories of political turmoil in twentieth-century China are sensitively threaded through the book in an eight-part poetic sequence, combined with recollections from Chan's childhood. As complex themes of multilingualism, queerness, psychoanalysis and cultural history emerge, so too does a richly imagined personal, maternal and national biography. The result is a series of poems that feel urgent and true, dazzling and devastating by turns.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012393070639,"sku":"9780571348046","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9780571348046.jpg?v=1562317562"},{"product_id":"unknown-soldier-seni-seneviratne","title":"Unknown Soldier by Seni Seneviratne \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis is a collection of huge depth and resonance. Its stimulus is a collection of photographs of the poet’s late father, then a young man, originally from colonial Sri Lanka, who was serving as a radio operator in an otherwise all white platoon in the 1939-45 desert war in North Africa. As for so many who came back from war to start or resume a family life, there was a great gulf of silence, an unwillingness to speak of those experiences. The collection begins and ends in an imaginative recreation of the life suggested in those photographs, many reproduced in this collection. There is connection with a much-loved father, but also a sense of the unknowable.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSpeaking in both in the voice of the father and of the unknown photographer, poems explore the mix of male camaraderie and casual racism of that experience, but also the deep affection hinted at in the way the photographer has framed “Snowball” in his lens. From this imaginative core, poems move out to make connections with the remembered and known life of a father who died too soon, to self-reflections on the poet as remembrancer, creator and actor in the world. There are moving poems on the meaning of inherited objects – a paper-knife, letters – and inherited ways of being – the birdwatching that provides a rich source of imagery. The personal moves out to the resonances of what was, in its origins, a story of migration.  Here the father’s success in finding of a home in Yorkshire is seen to contrast sharply with the tragedies of migrant deaths in the face of fortress Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a work of great beauty, whose lucid simplicity of language is married to a rich complexity of structure and the bird-flight of images that connect poem to poem. There is humour, too, in the revenant voice of the mother who inserts herself into the poet’s memory and demands in her “broad Yorkshire vowels […] ‘Why is your dad getting all the attention?’”\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012425216047,"sku":"9781845234515","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9781845234515_0.jpg?v=1562849135"},{"product_id":"the-gravity-wave-peter-sirr","title":"The Gravity Wave by Peter Sirr \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cdiv\u003ePeter Sirr draws on the classics — Homer, Catullus, Sappho — to ask if we, in comparison, live in a disenchanted world:\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cem\u003eDiminished? Really? Gods don’t hold us, the temples\u003cbr\u003ewither, the priests are all in sales\u003cbr\u003ebut the sun still shines, the oxen low\u003cbr\u003eand the winedark sea is still as dark as wine.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/blockquote\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eHe acknowledges world-traumas — the Final Solution, “Shahad, Rawan, Maram \/ this hand in the rubble \/ these broken shutters \/ shrapnel on the bed cover” — while risking, as Auden had it, a voice of affirmation and praise. I admire this book for how it registers the weight of the world, and also for its creative resistance to the brutality of the actual.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv\u003eSirr combines vivid forms, their hewn heft . . . with a felicitously wrongfooting weirdness all his own: “as if here we might be, when it’s all over, \/ walking through fields of Lidl”; “the deviceless avenue \/ notified by trees, alerted \/ by fuchsia, montbretia”. Each poem seems written with immense care, not only to arrange words scintillatingly, but also to preserve the briefest, most otherwise-ephemeral details. Reading these poems, we’re reminded that exactly where we’re vulnerable is where change is possible.\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"The Gallery Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012453920815,"sku":"9781911337652","price":10.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/The_Gravity_Wave_PBK_Peter_Sirr.jpg?v=1562318137"},{"product_id":"lilies-from-america-carmen-bugan","title":"Lilies from America: New \u0026 Selected Poems by Carmen Bugan \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePBS Autumn Special Commendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e“[…] a word-smithy that is now owned by an incorruptible woman of letters. Her words are in open view and in plain hearing for the eyes and ears of people who value every single tongue but not the forked one.”\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—Christopher Ricks,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eDead Ground 2018-1918\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“I can certainly attest […] now, after being in Bugan’s world of ‘frail syllables’, that such an equilibrium between history and art is not only possible, but is often the only way to assuage pain, to release the caged birds, to free oneself from the shackles of grief.” —Simon Gatev,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eDundee University Review of the Arts\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Carmen Bugan has the ability to transform deeply personal experiences into poetic language without losing the radiant particulars from which they sprang.” —Frank Beck,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Manhattan Review\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Shearsman","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":12012481544239,"sku":"9781848616738","price":10.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Carmen_Bugan_Book_Cover.jpg?v=1562318436"},{"product_id":"split-juana-adcock","title":"Split by Juana Adcock \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePBS Winter Choice 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e \u003cem\u003eSplit \u003c\/em\u003eis the Poetry Book Society Choice for Winter, 2019.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eJuana Adcock’s \u003c\/em\u003eSplit\u003cem\u003e begins with a conversation between a woman and a snake and ends with thirteen voices affirming the vitality, difficulty and necessity of attuned communication. These poems question where we might find fulfilment, power and hope, and it turns out that’s rarely where we’ve been taught they exist. \u003c\/em\u003eSplit\u003cem\u003e is at once playful, philosophical, angry, nuanced and ultimately transformative. \u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003cspan\u003eJuana Adcock's \u003cem\u003eSplit\u003c\/em\u003e is one of the most exciting debuts I've ever read. Formally and linguistically innovative, Adcock's poetic dialogues expand the terms of lyric address to interrogate language itself. Here we find both violence and desire at the level of the word, upending the rootedness of power with tremendous skill and captivating authority. – \u003cstrong\u003eSandeep Parmar\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blue Diode","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":30286119764015,"sku":"9781916405127","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/Split_FINALfrontcover.jpg?v=1569589883"},{"product_id":"deluge-charlotte-ansell","title":"Deluge by Charlotte Ansell \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDeluge by Charlotte Ansell, as with her previous work, displays an unerring emotional honesty. Confronting displacement, ageing, therapy, family, as well as social shifts like gentrification, Charlotte draws perspective from the community she lives in and distils it into the stunning exhortations and vignettes that make up this collection. Having moved from boat moorings in London to boat moorings in Sheffield, Deluge nods to the change with poems such as Queen of the North, which opens with \"Oh my God Sheffield why\/ do you always leave your coat at home?\" and Dear Canal, a private note to the waters \"still harbouring\/ knives, forks and spoons.\" In poems like Jennie, Deluge and the heartbreaking Emptied, both Charlotte's empathetic range and formal restraint are in evidence, confirming a unique ability to pick at the most complex of the heart's dilemmas with clear language and refreshing directness.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Flipped Eye","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":30286135066671,"sku":"9781905233557","price":6.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/fe_deluge_front.jpg?v=1569590234"},{"product_id":"tangling-with-the-epic-kinsella-dawes","title":"Tangling with the Epic by John Kinsella and Kwame Dawes \u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePBS Winter Recommendation 2019\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003eIn writing 110 single or double Spenserian stanzas in dialogue with each other, Kwame Dawes and John Kinsella thoroughly deconstruct and recompose ideas about the epic.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt times, the “stern constraints \/ of syllable and rhyme” construct the satisfying rigour of a lacerating Swiftian satire – almost as means of preventing a collapse into the incoherence of prophetic rage; at other times rhyme creates the beauty of form and the shapeliness of thought.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVarious epics of empire, past and present are sternly demolished: from the deceitful myths of the virtuous enterprise of the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson, to the Caribbean “where battles\/ for tiny rocks were waged”, to Australian narratives of white nationhood, or the bloated Trumpian lies of MAGA. There is also, inevitably, a sense of caution about each writer’s own epic enterprise, for Kinsella “this desire I have that marries\/ the north to the south”, or for Dawes the “hopes of grand mercy” we are constantly forced to abort.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn response there is the comfort to be drawn from “pilfering small graces” of moments of epiphany, but in the very construction of the dialogue there is the metaphor of “the entangled webbing\/ we spin” – as if one cannot not be part of some vaster human network, what Kinsella names later as the “slow unfolding\/ of an epic that can’t really locate itself in time or place…”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor the reader, there is much pleasure to be had in tracing the ways in which images, ideas and words migrate between poems, commented on, turned on their heads, or mined for meanings other than those seemingly intended. As the third of this sequence, distinctive personas, biographies, approaches to poetic form and language take the poetry in in the direction of the dramatic.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Peepal Tree Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":30286140604463,"sku":"9781845234522","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/products\/9781845234522.jpg?v=1569590422"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.poetrybooks.co.uk\/collections\/all-pbs-selections.oembed?page=9","provider":"The Poetry Book Society","version":"1.0","type":"link"}