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Tres
by Roberto BolañoRoberto Bolaño’s own preferred literary persona was as a poet and Tres is his most inventive and bracing collection. As the title implies, the collection is composed of three sections. ‘Prose from Autumn in Gerona’, a cinematic series of prose poems, slowly reveals a subtle and emotional tale of unrequited love by presenting each scene, shattering it, and piecing it all back together, over and over again. The second part, ‘The Neochileans’, is a sort of On the Road in verse, which narrates the travels of a young Chilean band on tour traveling north from Chile to Peru and Ecuador. Finally, the collection ends with a series of short poems that take us on ‘A Stroll Through Literature’ reminding us of Bolaño’s masterful ability to walk the line between the comically serious and the seriously comical.
The Unknown University
by Roberto BolañoPerhaps surprisingly to some of his fiction fans, Roberto Bolaño touted poetry as the superior art form. When asked, 'What makes you believe you're a better poet than a novelist?' Bolaño replied, 'The poetry makes me blush less'. In 1993, fearing for his health, Bolaño began collecting the poetry he had written since his arrival in Spain in 1977. This bilingual edition of The Unknown University represents the author's definitive work in his preferred medium.With poems written in prose, stories in verse, and flashes of writing that can hardly be categorized, The Unknown University is a showcase of Bolaño's gift for freely crossing genres. It confirms once again the undeniable genius of this giant of Latin American literature.
Plum
by Hollie McNish'She writes with honesty, conviction, humour and love. She points out the absurdities we've grown too used to and lets us see the world with fresh eyes.' Kate TempestHollie McNish, winner of the Ted Hughes Award for Poetry, has thrilled and entranced audiences the length and breadth of the UK with her compelling and powerful performances. Plum, her debut for Picador Poetry, is a wise, sometimes rude and piercingly candid account of her memories from childhood to attempted adulthood. This is a book about growing up, about flesh, fruit, friendships, work and play – and the urgent need to find a voice for the poems that will somehow do the whole glorious riot of it justice.Throughout Plum, McNish allows her recent poems to be interrupted by earlier writing from her younger selves – voices that speak out from the past with disarming and often very funny results. Plum is a celebration, a salute to a life in which we are always growing, stumbling, falling, changing and discovering new selves to add to our own messy store. It will leave the reader in no doubt as to why McNish is considered one of the most important poets of the new generation.
Light A National Poetry Day Book
by Gaby MorganA free poetry book to celebrate National Poetry Day 2015 with poems on the theme of light from Deborah Alma, Brian Moses, Chrissie Gittins, Liz Brownlee, Michaela Morgan, Jan Dean, Paul Cookson, Roger Stevens, Joseph Cohelo, Indigo Williams and Sally Crabtree.National Poetry Day is a mass celebration, a special day on which all are invited to discover and share the enjoyment of poems. It's a chance to let language off the leash and to relish the sounds that words can make when they are spoken with delight. We hope that the poems in this book - all inspired by this year's National Poetry Day theme of light - will kindle an enthusiasm for poetry that continues to grow long after the day itself,Thursday 8 October 2015, has passed.
Selected Poems: Selected Poems
by Gillian ClarkeSelected Poems gathers together the best of Gillian Clarke's poetry in a single volume. National Poet of Wales, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry and the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award, Clarke is one of the best-known names in UK poetry today, as well as one of the most popular poets on the school curriculum. Over the past four decades her work has examined nature, womanhood, art, music, Welsh history - and always with the lyric and imagistic precision by which her poetry is instantly recognisable. But perhaps her greatest inspiration is the Welsh landscape and all the human stories that it hosts: as UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has said, 'Gillian Clarke's outer and inner landscapes are the sources from which her poetry draws its strengths'. Selected Poems shows the great compass and interdependence of those two domains, and presents the finest work from one of the most important figures in poetry today.
From the Land of Shadows
by Clive James‘These literary-critical essays are compact with wit and penetration but also have a kind of freshness about them, as if the author has never got over his first rapture of enjoyment at the sheer thisness of poetry and prose. James is in the tradition of Hazlitt, Bagehot, and Desmond MacCarthy, with a gusto worthy to succeed theirs and a philosophy well set out in his own introduction. “Literature”, he writes, “says most things itself, when it is allowed to.” Criticism like this expands that allowance and adds to its pleasure’ John Bayley, Observer ‘His outstanding talent is as a cicerone, guiding the ignorant traveller with patience, knowledge and wit round some favourite literary edifice and communicating his own admiration of it to the goggling and fascinated visitor . . . the lasting impression is of our critic’s truly amazing breadth of reference’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Mr James is hungry for – and not unworthy of – engagement with important issues. A collection of dignity and coherence . . . tellingly timely’ Sunday Times
Useful Verses
by Richard OsmondWinner of the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry PrizeRichard Osmond's debut collection Useful Verses follows in the tradition of the best nature writing, being as much about the human world as the natural, the present as the past: Osmond, a professional forager, has a deep knowledge of flora and fauna as they appear in both natural and human history, as they are depicted in both folklore and herbal - but he views them through a wholly contemporary lens. Chamomile is discussed through quantum physics, ants through social media, wood sorrel through online gambling, and mugwort through a traffic cone. In each case, Osmond offers an arresting and new perspective, and makes that hidden world that lives and breathes beside us vividly part of our own. This is a fiercely inventive, darkly witty and brilliantly observed debut from a voice unlike any other you have read before - and as far from any quaint and conservative notion of 'nature poetry' as it is possible to get.
Standing Female Nude
by Carol Ann DuffyCarol Ann Duffy's outstanding first collection, Standing Female Nude, introduced readers to all they would come to love about her poetry. From lovers to wives to war photographers, the poems it contains range from the delicately poignant to the fiercely political, exploring memory, gender, childhood and place. Within it are also some of her best-known poems, including 'Education for Leisure', as well as, of course, the poem from which the collection takes its title. First published in 1985 to widespread critical acclaim, Standing Female Nude is a work of startling originality and the starting point of the Poet Laureate's dazzling poetic career.
Selling Manhattan
by Carol Ann Duffy'One of those rare books that is immediately enjoyable yet will repay many re-readings' Poetry ReviewCarol Ann Duffy's highly praised second collection, for which she was given the Somerset Maughan Award, showcases the Poet Laureate's skill even at the very start of her career. Within are poems that reveal the full range of her interests: from the dramatic monologues, to meditations on death and art, to poems of protest and poems of love. Throughout it all, though, is a resounding determination to give voices to those who are usually voiceless, and always apparent is her inimitable wit, wisdom and imagination. At once tender and sharp, moving and humourous, Selling Manhattan has dazzled both readers and critics ever since it was first published in 1987.
The Prophet (Macmillan Collector's Library #9)
by Kahlil GibranUtterly unique and beloved around the world, The Prophet is a collection of twenty-six poetic essays by the Lebanese artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. Telling the story of the prophet Al-Mustafa and his conversations with various acquaintances as he returns home after a long absence, the book touches on subjects of universal concern, including love, friendship, passion, pain, religion and freedom.Thought-provoking, comforting and wise, the simple truths of The Prophet remain compelling and rewarding to this day.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Collected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library #13)
by W B YeatsDesigned to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.All are present in this volume, which reproduces the 1933 edition of W. B. Yeats's Collected Poems and also contains an illuminating introduction by author and academic Dr Robert Mighall.As well as being one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century and the recipient of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is the greatest lyric poet that Ireland has produced. His early work includes the beguiling 'When You are Old', 'The Cloths of Heaven' and 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' but, unusually for a poet, Yeats's later works, including 'Parnell's Funeral', surpass even those of his youth.
Selected Verse: Selected From Five Centuries Of English Verse (Macmillan Collector's Library #33)
by Rudyard KiplingWith subjects as broad as militarism, the British Empire, childhood and death, the Selected Verse of Rudyard Kipling is a treasure trove of the Nobel Prize winner's most striking and moving poetry, dramatic monologues and ballads.This Macmillan Collector's Library edition includes an introduction by Lizzy Welby and the endorsement of the Kipling Society, of which Dr Welby is a Council Member.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Let Them Eat Chaos: Mercury Prize Shortlisted
by Kate TempestSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 MERCURY MUSIC PRIZELet Them Eat Chaos, Kate Tempest's new long poem written for live performance and heard on the album release of the same name, is both a powerful sermon and a moving play for voices. Seven neighbours inhabit the same London street, but are all unknown to each other. The clock freezes in the small hours, and, one by one, we see directly into their lives: lives that are damaged, disenfranchised, lonely, broken, addicted, and all, apparently, without hope. Then a great storm breaks over London, and brings them out into the night to face each other - and their last chance to connect. Tempest argues that our alienation from one another has bred a terrible indifference to our own fate, but she counters this with a plea to challenge the forces of greed which have conspired to divide us, and mend the broken home of our own planet while we still have time. Let Them Eat Chaos is a cri de coeur and a call to action, and, both on the page and in Tempest's electric performance, one of the most powerful poetic statements of the year.
Running Upon The Wires: Poems
by Kate Tempest‘Whether on stage or on the page, her language hits like lightning. It illuminates and it burns.’ GuardianRunning Upon The Wires is Kate Tempest’s first book of free-standing poetry since the acclaimed Hold Your Own. In a beautifully varied series of formal poems, spoken songs, fragments, vignettes and ballads, Tempest charts the heartbreak at the end of one relationship and the joy at the beginning of a new love; but also tells us what happens in between, when the heart is pulled both ways at once.Running Upon The Wires is, in a sense, a departure from her previous work, and unashamedly personal and intimate in its address – but will also confirm Tempest’s role as one of our most important poetic truth–tellers: it will be no surprise to readers to discover that she’s no less a direct and unflinching observer of matters of the heart than she is of social and political change. Running Upon The Wires is a heartbreaking, moving and joyous book about love, in its endings and in its beginnings.
The Odyssey: 1 (Macmillan Collector's Library #83)
by HomerHomer's great epic, The Odyssey, is perhaps Western literature's first adventure story, and certainly remains one of its finest. It describes King Odysseus of Ithaca's epic, ten-year quest to return home after the Trojan War. He encounters giants, sorceresses, sea-monsters and sirens, while his wife Penelope is forced to resist the suitors who besiege her on Ithaca. Both an enchanting fairy tale and a gripping drama, The Odyssey is immensely influential, not least for its rich complexity and the magnetism of its hero. This Macmillan Collector's Library edition uses a translation by T. E. Lawrence, now remembered as 'Lawrence of Arabia' and the author of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. First published in 1932, his translation took four years to complete and has been continuously in print ever since. It is recognized as the first translation to be both faithful to the original text and written in accessible language. This edition also features an afterword by Ben Shaw.Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
The Sugar Mile
by Glyn MaxwellA topical and accessible collection, The Sugar Mile takes its readers on a journey from wartime London to modern-day America. In a series of monologues, each beautifully drawn and intimate, Glyn Maxwell details the effects and experiences of conflict: the sense of community bounded by a distrust of strangers and foreigners; whole streets razed to the ground; homes lost, possessions misplaced and characters displaced; fears for loved-ones offset by tentative bargains with god; casual encounters given an intense, unreal edge by the context in which they occur; the routine drama and unfamiliar ‘everydayness’ of bombs, blackouts, shelters, temporary accommodation and evacuation . . . With painstaking clarity and honesty, Maxwell has captured the surrealism of a world under siege -- whether WWII or the war on terror declared post 9/11.
Tales and Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library #66)
by Edgar Allan PoeThis mesmerising, macabre collection contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, including 'The Raven', 'Annabel Lee' and 'Lenore', and a selection of his very best stories, along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems explore the familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love, but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes, such as 'The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall', 'Mesmeric Revolution', 'Hop-Frog', and 'The Imp of the Perverse'.This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Tales and Poems features an afterword by David Pinching.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
Other Passports: Poems 1958-1985 (Picador Bks.)
by Clive JamesClive James's unforgettable poetry collection, which gained him comparison to Byron and status as a 'true poet' demonstrates his wide range of interests and knowledge while never compromising his trademark wit and humour. Other Passports explores his lyrical style of poetry, alongside parodies, imitations and lampoons.
The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958-2003
by Clive JamesThe reputation of Clive James as a poet was slow to form, perhaps because he was too famous as a star journalist and television entertainer. There was also the drawback that his poetry was so entertaining it was hard for many critics to take seriously. But after the notoriety achieved by a single self-satirizing poem, ‘The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered’, one of the most anthologized poems of recent times, James’s poetic output became impossible to ignore, and his 1985 collection Other Passports was greeted with praise for its thematic scope and technical accomplishment, even by critics who still doubted his seriousness. Since then, James has emerged unarguably as one of the most prominent poets of his generation – and The Book of My Enemy (which includes Other Passports) shows why.
The Rain in Portugal: Poems
by Billy CollinsFrom former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins comes a twelfth collection of poetry offering nearly fifty new poems that showcase his trademark generosity, wit, and imaginative play.
Selected Poems
by Colette BryceShortlisted for the Poetry Pigott Prize in association with Listowel Writers’ WeekThrough four highly acclaimed collections, Colette Bryce has steadily consolidated her position as one of the most important of the younger generation of Irish poets. Possessed of a preternaturally acute ear and eye, Bryce is the recorder and observer of tense times: perhaps no contemporary poet has better mapped the fault-lines of nation and family, of love and tribal loyalty, of landscape and border. In all this, Bryce again and again declares the primacy of song as a redemptive practice, and a glorious end in itself: no voice is more accurately pitched or effortlessly musical. Selected Poems draws together the best of her poetry from The Heel of Bernadette to The Whole & Rain-domed Universe, winner of the Ewart-Biggs Award, and is a marvellous introduction to the range and sweep of Bryce’s work.
Europa
by Sean O'BrienEuropa, Sean O’Brien’s ninth collection of poems, is a timely and necessary book. Europe is not a place we can choose to leave: it is also a shared heritage and an age-old state of being, a place where our common dreams, visions and nightmares recur and mutate. In placing our present crises in the context of an imaginative past, O’Brien show how our futures will be determined by what we choose to understand of our own European identity – as well as what we remember and forget of our shared history. Europa is a magisterial, grave and lyric work from one of the finest poets of the age: it shows not just a Europe haunted by disaster and the threat of apocalypse, but an England where the shadows lengthen and multiply even in its most familiar and domestic corners. Europa, the poet reminds us, shapes the fate of everyone in these islands – even those of us who insist that they live elsewhere.
Off The Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse
by Carol Ann DuffyPoet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and her friends across the country offer poems in praise of the magic of reading. In Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has commissioned a selection of the UK's most loved and lauded poets to each write a poem in celebration of books and bookshops - the worlds they hold, the freedoms they promise, and the memories they evoke. From a basement of forgotten books to the shelves of a cramped Welsh arcade, from the poetry corner of the local bookstore to the last bookshop standing in a post-apocalyptic world, these are poems that pay tribute to all the places that house the stories we treasure.With poems from Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish Makar Jackie Kay, National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke, as well as Clive James, Michael Longley, Don Paterson, Patience Agbabi and many more, this beautiful anthology is a heart-warming reminder of how books nourish us, save us, and inspire us.
Poems of Thomas Hardy: A New Selection (Macmillan Collector's Library #90)
by Thomas HardyThomas Hardy saw himself, first and foremost, as a poet, and he wrote poetry throughout his prolific and acclaimed novel-writing years before announcing in 1896 that he would no longer write novels, much to the astonishment of his worldwide readership. Instead he went on to publish eight masterful volumes of poetry - ranging from lyrics and ballads to dramatic monologues and satire - and is now regarded as one of the greatest twentieth-century poets.Choosing the best verse from each volume, the Poems of Thomas Hardy is the perfect introduction to Hardy's lyrical, soul-searching and profoundly sincere poetry, covering subjects ranging from his grief at the death of his first wife to his experiences of war.This beautiful Macmillan Collector's Library edition is edited and introduced by editor Ned Halley.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: The Three Great Nineteenth Century Folios (Macmillan Collector's Library #1)
by Samuel Taylor ColeridgeIn The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of the best-known and best-loved poems in the English language, a grizzled old sailor stops a man on his way to a wedding and tells a terrifying story. He speaks of how he doomed the crew of his ship by shooting dead an albatross, awakened the wrath of ocean spirits, met Death himself, and must now walk the earth for ever and share his tragic tale of sin, guilt and – ultimately – redemption.This Macmillan Collector's Library edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s longest major poem features illustrations by Gustave Doré, the most remarkable wood engraver of the nineteenth century, and an introduction by writer and journalist Ned Halley.Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.