{"title":"Jhalak Poetry Prize Longlist 2026","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"i-sing-to-the-greenhearts-by-maggie-harris","title":"I Sing to the Greenhearts by Maggie Harris","description":"\u003cp\u003eA collection haunted by ghosts of colonial history, Maggie Harris’s I Sing to the Greenhearts challenges the dullness of pastoral with unbridled nature. Guyana’s Greenheart tree appears in this collection as one of many plants with attitude, plants that know their history, plants bringing the wild in from the edges. In poems set in a thriving Welsh garden, such as ‘My Banana thinks on Louise Bennett’s “Colonisation in Reverse”’, we find a world in which both ecological crisis and justice are at stake.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54951698334078,"sku":"9781781727713","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1740745547.png?v=1740747305"},{"product_id":"the-new-carthaginians-by-nick-makoha-pre-order","title":"The New Carthaginians by Nick Makoha","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn The New Carthaginians, time - and with it the world - is out of joint. A hijacked plane lands at Entebbe International Airport in 1976, triggering the crisis that leads to Uganda becoming a pariah state and later to the young Makoha's escape from the country. Concerned throughout with flight and falling, the sample and the loop, The New Carthaginians is a poetry collection of staggering originality: a work by an author at the height of his powers, in which the familiar Western canons of art, history and philosophy are prised apart and reassembled in a new configuration. Drawing on Basquiat's technique of the 'exploded' collage, Makoha's triumvirate of characters - the Poet, a Black Icarus and a resurrected Jean-Michel Basquiat - embark on a heroes' odyssey, gathering the symbols of a new mythos, through which the othering of Black life might be undone and the stage set for some fresh emergence, some transfigured understanding of myth and life. 'Hold that note,' writes the poet. 'In this place you are no longer the chorus \/ In any future, remember you are a New Carthaginian.'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54951701479806,"sku":"9781802067071","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1737470746_53cc63af-3511-46bd-b5a8-7635bd3c9570.png?v=1737543378"},{"product_id":"nature-matters-ed-by-mona-arshi-and-karen-mccarthy-wolf-pre-order","title":"Nature Matters ed. by Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Wolf","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe rise of nature writing as a cultural phenomenon is nothing new. Yet it has stirred questions relating to whose voices are privileged and heard in a space predominantly occupied by Western European traditions and writers. In Nature Matters, poets Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf seek to redress this imbalance. Their genre-defining anthology considers nature poetry from its historical roots to more recent flourishings, presenting how Black and Asian poets of past and present are decolonising this space. Committed to ecological enquiry and formal experiment, it explores fundamental themes such as climate crisis and the Anthropocene; protest and radical empathy; future ecologies; urban nature and the countryside; solitude and alienation. Revitalising conversations surrounding environmentalism and ecopoetics, this new gathering of voices is both urgent and inspirational.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Faber \u0026 Faber","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286639952254,"sku":"9780571370283","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/NatureMattersAnthology.jpg?v=1744728898"},{"product_id":"heirloom-by-catherine-esther-cowie-pre-order","title":"Heirloom by Catherine-Esther Cowie\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePOETRY BOOK SOCIETY SPECIAL COMMENDATION SUMMER 2025\u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished 24th April 2025. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in colonial and post-colonial St. Lucia, this collection examines how violence shapes four generations of women and how each generation resists the dysfunction, tyranny, and terror inherited from the previous one. As each woman strives to chart her own course, she grapples with how she both subsumes and inhabits the stories of her mother(s). Divided into four sections, each representing a successive generation, the collection uses a series of persona poems to explore themes of lineage, post-memory, colonialism, mother-daughter relationships, mental health, and violence. The collection raises poignant questions: How can memory and how it is conveyed lead to further dehumanization and continued trauma? Should the stories of the past be told? Who finds freedom in the telling, and who becomes further entrapped? Central to the book is the theme of violence. Violence has not only shaped the national and cultural identity of these women but also serves as a point of origin for their lineage. The collection explores how an initial act of violence reverberates across the four generations. This collection elegizes and celebrates the lives of women who resist destructive forces, both within and without, and who are fiercely determined to live, live, live.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286642409854,"sku":"9781800174795","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1743173325.png?v=1743173731"},{"product_id":"dantes-inferno-by-lorna-goodison-pre-order","title":"Dante's Inferno by Lorna Goodison","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me \/ there at midnight in a ramshackle state.' So begins Lorna Goodison's astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as 'uncompromising as an Old Testament prophet, stern as a Rastafarian elder'. This Jamaican Dante, a quarter-century in the making, is as much transformation as it is translation: the poet's narrator, its Dante figure, is now guided through an underworld by Goodison's great Jamaican predecessor Louise Bennett, 'Miss Lou' in the book.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGoodison draws on the entire continuum of Jamaican speech yet securely grounds the action in Dante's formal architecture, bringing an entire world to life: we encounter other poets, including Goodison's friend Derek Walcott, as well as Caribbean politicians, reggae innovators and other public figures. Here, she recreates the journey through the 'unpaved and rocky road' of Dante's Hell for a contemporary audience and attempts to do for Caribbean vernacular what Dante did for his Italian language in the fourteenth century – endow it with an entirely new vocal music and power.\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished 24th April 2025. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286646276478,"sku":"9781800174665","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1741347853_7b7724f4-7ed6-4fd2-bc2b-14f9a895745d.png?v=1741352714"},{"product_id":"why-i-am-not-a-bus-driver-by-ashley-hickson-lovence-pre-order","title":"Why I Am Not a Bus Driver by Ashley Hickson-Lovence","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished 24th April 2025. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWHY I AM NOT A BUS DRIVER is a moving and musical debut collection exploring grief, love and the power of community, from the author of The 392, Your Show and Wild East. The heart of this book beats in sync with that of the poet's late grandfather, as, sonnet after unconventional sonnet, Hickson-Lovence uncovers the micro-histories woven into the streets and journeys that shape us. These poems speak with Frank O'Hara, in their stream-of-consciousness lyricism, in meditations that dance like winding roads, both immediate and nostalgic. Committed to honouring the authentic and everyday, the real and true, human connection is the destination in this stirring collection, and every reader has a priority seat.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Bad Betty Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286646505854,"sku":"9781913268749","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1741347875_8be9d72d-055b-405b-83dd-529938c977b9.png?v=1741352719"},{"product_id":"holy-boys-by-andres-n-ordorica-pre-order","title":"Holy Boys by  Andrés N. Ordorica","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished 3rd April 2025. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHoly Boys seeks to address the lingering echoes of adolescence and the pains of living a life in the shadows of unspeakable desires and all-consuming longing. These poems are a means of finding language in youth, gathering experience in pubescence, and serving as testament to survival in a world that demands silences throughout queer life. These poems are an archive which maps physical desire and emotional needs while pushing past dogma and self-hating. They are a means of naming the many lovers and loved ones who have helped move the speaker from boyhood into manhood. This is a collection that is informed by faith, sexuality, loss and love, a celebration of the growing pains that eventually allow us to unfurl into whole beings.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Birlinn","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286647325054,"sku":"9781846976889","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1741348024_fc2f770b-508f-4439-8ea1-dea530944cf7.png?v=1741352748"},{"product_id":"my-dearest-friend-by-lady-red-ego-pre-order","title":"My Dearest Friend by Lady Red Ego","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublished 17th April 2025. \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy Dearest Friend is a collaborative collection that contains English pieces and Chinese Mandarin translations by my mother, Xiaoyu Luo, and documents our relationship since she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It has 18 previously unpublished original pieces with their respective translations, and also consists of two letters we wrote to each other. The word document contains 40 pages in total. The collaborative format of the collection is used to explore themes of Buddhist reincarnation, Chinese identity, and the circularity of grief. It is a deeply personal piece of writing that pinpoints a series of life-changing moments in my relationship to my mother and life at large.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Verve Poetry Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55286650732926,"sku":"9781913917678","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1741344897_a250b300-96d2-4b69-882a-c617523ba2e9.png?v=1741352867"},{"product_id":"foretokens-by-sarah-howe","title":"Foretokens by Sarah Howe  \u003cb\u003e Poetry Book Society Choice Winter 2025 \u003c\/b\u003e","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Howe is peerless and I look at her work, happily, with awe' OCEAN VUONG\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA landmark new collection from T. S. Eliot Prize-winner Sarah Howe, navigating the complex inheritance of family, language and colonialism – and forming a portrait of a mother in search of her past and herself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept – hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant – across continents and time.'\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of Communist China, by a woman with her own hidden motives. Now a mother herself, Howe finds herself re-examining this unreliable narrative with fresh sight. Sifting through her own history, the poet asks, how can a new generation transform a shattered inheritance? And what is lost and gained in the pursuit?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e‘From the other side of ruin \/ we found safe passage’, Howe writes in these spectacular poems of emotional heft and quickening wit, their voice salvaged from the fragments of a former self. Foretokens is a monumental work of survival and creation, turning over what is left behind as it strikes out towards astonishing new vistas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Chatto \u0026 Windus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56158437441918,"sku":"9781784746131","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1331\/9925\/files\/1771241507.png?v=1771241776"},{"product_id":"pulling-faces-by-zakariye","title":"Pulling Faces by Zakariye","description":"\u003cp\u003ePulling Faces yanks you by the collar and talks like your favourite, wayward cousin. Fresh and vivid, these poems are equal turns cheeky and world weary, defiant and mournful. 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