bloodaxe books ltd tyne and wear (367 results)

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Like the work of the European poets who have nourished him, David Constantine's poetry is informed by a profoundly humane vision of the world. Many of the poems in his latest collection spring from particular localities: Scilly, the North of England, Southern France, the Aegean, Wales; others from certain places (loci) in literature and mythology. Inspired by such 'local habitations' and the people who live there, the poems of Elder express gratitude and loyalty, but also grief at every harm and death. Published on his 70th birthday, David Constantine's tenth book of poetry sounds many personal elegiac notes as well as - in the story of Erysichthon, for example - anxiety at the abuse of Earth, but there is also much celebration of love, beauty and the hope and aspiration in human beings to live well in the time allowed. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Fine. Look, Clare! Look! is the story of a year. When Clare Pollard set off on a six-month world trip, she wanted to write a long poem which engaged with what she saw and felt during her travels. On her return, she discovered that her father was seriously ill, and his funeral was held on New Years Eve. Clare Pollards third collection is a book about journeys and home. She looks closely at both global issues and the blossom in her yard. Beginning as a meditation on western guilt against the backdrop of SARS and the Iraq War, it ends by looking at our closest relationships, in poems that deal with a pregnancy scare and her engagement, as well as illness and loss.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This book helps readers, writers and teachers to hack their way into the jungle of contemporary poetry. It informs, demystifies, illuminates and excites. It gives a realistic account of the poetry scene in Britain and Ireland, corrects common misconceptions and allows young or new writers to see themselves in context. Paul Hyland has written the book he wanted to read when he started getting into poetry. * Modernists to Martians: Groups, movements, fashions and influences. Jargon and hype: What it all means in plain English, from the ludic to the ludicrous. * Key books: Which are the most important collections and the most influential anthologies? Which are the poems of our time? * Poetry readings: The circuit and the circus. The importance of the ear, the power of the spoken word versus the ego-trip turn-off. * Getting into print: The editor's eye view. Submitting work to magazines and publishers. How to target editors and save time, paper and money. * Competitions and prizes: Winning words. Competition poems. Do prizes lead to publication? Awards and bursaries. * Organisations: Poetry societies, Arts Councils, regional arts boards etc. Who your allies are. How they help and how you should approach them. * Critical help: Where you can get feedback and advice. Postal services, pundits and gurus. Courses, workshops and writers-in-residence. * Nice Little Earners: Jobs poets can do. Readings, writers-in-schools, residencies. * Resources: A wealth of information and listings, together with provocative chapters on both Riches and Paranoia. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Why do we need another anthology of poetry solely by women? Several different groups of women writers emerged over the past thirty years who pioneered, fought to be published, reflected on subject-matter previously thought 'inappropriate' and who blazed into our consciousness with a train of glorious transgressions. Now here is a group of new writers from Britain and Ireland who've absorbed and developed the recent legacies of other women poets. All thirty published their first collections during the past ten years. These are poets of the moment, writing with an energy, inventiveness and intelligence fit for the 21st century. They pay no attention to the restrictions of this universe. They're Making for Planet Alice. Prepare to be transported. The contributors to this anthology are Moniza Alvi, Eleanor Brown, Siobhan Campbell, Kate Clanchy, Tessa Rose Chester, Julia Copus, Jane Duran, Gillian Ferguson, Janet Fisher, Linda France, Elizabeth Garrett, Lavinia Greenlaw, Vona Groarke, Sophie Hannah, Maggie Hannan, Tracey Herd, Jane Holland, Jackie Kay, Mimi Khalvati, Gwyneth Lewis, Sarah Maguire, Sinead Morrissey, Ruth Padel, Katherine Pierpoint, Alice Oswald, Deryn Rees-Jones, Anne Rouse, Eva Salzman, Ann Sansom and Susan Wicks. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Living life to the full means offering trust as well as embracing vulnerability. That delicate balance was the pivot of Micheal O'Siadhail's previous book of poems, A Fragile City. In this new collection, he measures how a life can be lived in the intensity of 'our double time', alert to its threats, ambiguities and frailties, seizing pivotal moments and tracing the intricacies of families and friendships. Our Double Time ranges through tradition and renewal, lovemaking and gratitude, sufferings and secrets, birth and death, music and abundance. Like O'Siadhail's earlier work in Hail! Madam Jazz, these new poems resonate with a jazz-like vitality, both light and dark. Each poem is a motif expanding into movements that culminate in this glorious symphony in double time. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?' Mae Wests racy wisecrack could have been aimed at this book, which is packed with 69 high-calibre, sharp-shooting poems. Pleased to See Me bulges with boldly playful and seriously sensual treatments of everything you ever wanted to know about sex but never thought to find in a poem. Pleased to See Me is a sassy and unashamedly saucy celebration of fleshly pleasures by some of our finest poets. These are very sexy poems not just because they are about sex, says Astley, but because their luscious language is handled with wit and sureness of touch. This is the first book to show how the way poets write about sex has changed dramatically. As in so much else, the boundaries have shifted. Sex in modern poetry as in films, novels and music is treated freely and frankly, with passion, tenderness and a great sense of fun. Expect surprises and reversals as well as creepiness and unease, coupled with in-your-face exuberance. Were talking strong language and strong emotion here. Editor Neil Astley caught the zeitgeist in Staying Alive, his highly praised anthology of poems on every aspect of modern living. Now he turns to more intimate matters, bringing you a spicy selection of X-rated contemporary poems for reading in bed. Pleased to See Me covers and uncovers everything we like doing with our bodies, both women and men. These are poems to have fun with. Read them to your lover. Make this your personal pillow book. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone. These poems are concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead the underworld and the human living world and the exquisitely intense being of both. They possess a spare, eloquent lyricism as they explore the bliss and anguish of the voyage. Inside the Wave, Helen Dunmores tenth and final poetry book, was her first since The Malarkey (2012), whose title-poem won the National Poetry Competition. Her final poem, 'Hold out your arms', written shortly before her death and not included in the first printing of Inside the Wave, was added to all subsequent printings. Her posthumous retrospective, Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 (2019), covers ten collections she published over four decades up to and including Inside the Wave. Costa Book of the Year 2017, winner of the 2017 Costa Poetry Award. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Sylva Fischerova is one of the most formidable Czech poets of her generation. A distinguished classicist who teaches at Charles University in Prague, she writes poetry with a vivid imagination as well as historical reach, and was first published in English as a young poet by Bloodaxe in 1990. Her poetry moves in and out of historical events, with an understanding and loving eye on our frailties as well as our corruptive acts, against the backdrop of her commanding sense of space and time, and 'makes beauty from monsters'. Mixing semantic and sonorous sense, her poems come to life through metamorphosed moments, showing that nothing can be taken literally in a world 'endowed with sense and meaning'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. With work by 150 writers and artists, The Book of Cats is the most comprehensive cat anthology published. It is extravagantly illustrated with over a hundred pictures, 16 in full colour. The Book of Cats includes: P.G. Wodehouses Webster, Sakis Tobermory, Kipling's Cat that Walked by himself, T.S. Eliots Macavity and Growltiger, Christopher Smarts cat Jeoffrey, and Don Marquiss mehitabel. The cat classics of Walter de la Mare, W.W. Jacobs and Edgar Allan Poe. Catty stories from Patricia Highsmith and Jean-Paul Sartre. Cat tales by Ted Hughes, Paul Gallico and Giles Gordon. The cats of Robert Southey, Theophile Gauthier and Feline thoughts by Aldous Huxley, Henry Fielding and Mark Twain. Cat poems by Robert Graves, Marianne Moore, Dorothy L. Sayers, Thomas Gray and Alan Sillitoe. Pussycat rhymes by Ogden Nash, Stevie Smith and Roger McGough. Cat paintings by Bonnard, Chagall, Lucien Freud, Gainsborough, Hockney, Gwen John, Paul Klee and Douanier Rousseau. In all, a rich, affectionate medley of prose, poetry and picture in praise of that most elusive and fascinating of creatures the cat. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This landmark book celebrates two decades of poetry by women from Britain and Ireland, covering all the major figures, from Fleur Adcock to Carol Ann Duffy. It charts the irrepressible growth and flowering of women's poetry, showing how the women's movement bestowed a permission and confidence on these many distinctive female voices: no longer apologetic, often courageous, always powerful. The older generation is represented in the work of poets such as Stevie Smith, Ruth Pitter, E.J. Scovell and Elizabeth Jennings, re-forging the missing link in the continuing chain of work in which inner and outer worlds are shown from a woman's perspective. Anne Stevenson has written: 'No artist can be optimistic in days of spiritual decay, but it is possible to be honest . And joyful.' Honesty and vitality combine to produce a remarkable energy and spirit, contained and celebrated in this selection, from the measured and lyrical in the work of Freda Downie to the passionate and primitive in Deborah Randall's tooth and claw. Kathleen Jamie weaves a fierce intelligence and keen intuition into the subtle and highly original rhythms of her work. The poems of Carol Ann Duffy dramatise a broad repertoire of voices, while Medbh McGuckian's exquisitely patterned imagery draws together the diverse threads of male and female, thought and feeling, pain and pleasure. In the world of U.A. Fanthorpe the menace of darkness is illuminated by bright sparks of humour, an engaging sense of fun. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. E.A. Markhams iconic anthology Hinterland opened up new territory for many readers, with its substantial selections by 14 key poets with photos, interviews, essays by the poets themselves. It became a set text for the Open University and at many universities and colleges in Britain and the Caribbean. Since Markham compiled his selection over 30 years ago, the work of the poets he documents has become even more important, historically signi?cant and highly influential. The poets featured in depth are Derek Walcott, Martin Carter, Louise Bennett, Kamau Brathwaite, Dennis Scott, James Berry, Mervyn Morris, E.A. Markham, Olive Senior, Grace Nichols, Lorna Goodison, Fred DAguiar, Michael Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson. The product largely of offshore islands Jamaica, Trinidad, Britain, etc (Guyana being the exception) West Indian poetry in English has often been located on the fringes of the central experience. Its popularity is widely associated with local colour, linguistic and tonal innovation, thought to be lacking in the English mainstream. This collection shows that the most vital and challenging poetry of the British Caribbean heritage is both local in its urgency and informed by a hinterland of experience deeper than the geography of the islands politics. E.A. Markham, writing in 1989. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A greatest hits, best of golden oldies compilation (with some new stuff) from 'Comedy's poet laureate' (Independent). Poet, comic, singer, songwriter and glasses-wearer, John Hegley has captivated and devastated audiences all over the country, in theatres and festivals, at gigs at the Edinburgh Festival, and with numerous appearances on radio and television. This new compilation shows the breadth of his appeal, with seriously funny, cleverly comic poems on everything from love, family, France, art and the sea to dogs, dads, gods, taxidermy, carrots, spectacles and - of course - potatoes. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Death can happen in an instant, but grief takes time and can be the greatest pain we shall ever have to bear, for which there is no anaesthetic. It is unknown territory which most people face with little or no preparation. This anthology encompasses a wide range of personal experience from a great number of contemporary poets. These poems deal with the complexity of death, bringing to the surface the unmentionable: the anger, fear, bewilderment, despair, guilt, remorse, relief, the humour, the love and the many questions we ask ourselves to make sense of it all. Every bereavement is different because every relationship is different. There is no limit to the time it takes. While this may not be a comfortable book, it is a comforting one which celebrates life and offers hope to those who have been bereaved. It can help to know that others have suffered such loss and survived. This is not a book to read from cover to cover in one sitting, but rather to dip into and cherish when everyone else has seemingly forgotten. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Language pervades our world, the media, our relationships, minds and hearts. We learn it and we pass it on. In Tongues, Micheal O'Siadhail delights in language and shares its wonder and fascination. Like a genetic code, language brings human life over thousands of years into the present. It unites the personal and the social, allows for continuity and novelty and can arouse the strongest passions. O'Siadhail explores individual words, plays with grammar, and meditates on pictograms and the distilled meaning of proverbs across cultures. The variety of forms, from sonnets to complex rhyming and syllabic patterns, matches the thematic richness. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Tony Harrison's v. was written during the Miners' Strike of 1984-85 when he visited his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery and found it vandalised by obscene graffiti. In the book-length poem, he confronts the foul-mouthed skinhead thug responsible, who becomes a foil for his own anger and alienation. The political and media reaction to v. would make a book in itself. This is that book. As well as Tony Harrison's poem and Graham Sykes's photographs, this new edition of v. includes press articles, letters, reviews, a defence of the poem and film by director Richard Eyre, and a transcript of the phone calls logged by Channel Four on the night of the broadcast. Channel Fours film of v. won the Royal Television Societys Best Original Programme Award. The Star: 'A plan to televise a poem packed with obscenities caused outrage last night. ITV chiefs intend to screen a reading of Tony Harrison's verse v. which is full of four-letter words.' Daily Mail: A torrent of four-letter filth the most explicitly sexual language yet beamed into the nation's living rooms the crudest, most offensive word is used 17 times.' Gerald Howarth, MP: 'It is full of expletives and I can't see that it serves any artistic purpose whatsoever.' Mary Whitehouse: 'This work of singular nastiness.' Sir Harold Pinter: 'The criticism against the poem has been offensive, juvenile and, of course, philistine. It should certainly be broadcast.' Sir Richard Eyre: 'If I had the slightest influence over educational policy in this country, I'd see that v. was a set text in every school in the country, but of course if we lived in that sort of country, the poem wouldn't have needed to be written.'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Written during the Gulf War, the title poem of this pamphlet is Tony Harrison's response to Ken Jarecke's potent photo of a charred Iraqi soldier on the road to Basra. It also includes another poem written in response to the Gulf War, 'Initial Illumination'. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. 'Hanzlik's poetry, more particularly his early poetry, is characterised by controlled savagery, by a smouldering anger, though balanced and held in check by a note of lyricism and often indeed of tenderness. He is a master of the medium-long poem: in his earlier collections were often evocations of classical or Biblical subjects (though with an entirely modern and often topical subtext), while some of the more recent ones are meditations on casual topics, such as his stamp collection, a news item about a scientist's Nobel Prize, or a flight of fighter aircraft overflying his home on Air Day. At a time when so much Czech poetry is either politically declarative or traditionally escapist, Hanzlik's unmistakable individual voice, bruising though it may be, is refreshingly new.' - Ewald Osers 'The fluency and energy are unmistakable, and at the centre of the poems there is a real and difficult subject: political violence. Killings, mutilations, stiflings, beheadings occur in poem after poem, and are connected in some way with people in authority. Hanzlik uses dramatic monologues by invented or legendary or historical personae.' - Graham Martin, from his preface. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Good. Red Letter Day is the latest collection from one of Scotland's leading poets: 'With a swashbuckling relish for language, and an intense lyricism allied to delicacy of phrase, Tom Pow's new poems daringly set events of global significance against moments of startling intimacy, and the vulnerability of childbirth. Masterly evocations of landscape, from Scotland to South America and the Arctic, retain a sense of mystery, a still centre; triumphantly confirming his advocacy of harmony and humanity, and the symmetry of love, in the face of the howling world surrounding us. ' - Stewart Conn. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

Paperback. Condition: Good. C.K. Williams (1936-2015) was the most challenging American poet of his generation, a 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. His new collection, "Wait", finds Williams by turns ruminative, stalked by 'the conscience-beast, who harries me', and 'riven by idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was for whom everything was going too slowly, too slowly'. Poems about animals and rural life are set hard by poems about shrapnel in Iraq and sudden desire on the Paris Metro; grateful invocations of Herbert and Hopkins give way to fierce negotiations with the shades of Coleridge, Dostoevsky and Celan. What the poems share is their setting in the cool, spacious, spotlit, book-lined place that is Williams's consciousness, a place whose workings he has rendered for fifty years with inimitable candour and style. Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. From London's hospital wards to rural Italy and the Great Plains, Sally Read's first collection eulogises the emotional and physical borders we cross, whether in sexual surrender, the squeezing of a trigger, or the point at which skin is pierced by a needle. What results appeals to the thresholds at which we succumb to desire, love, or grief. Yet, ultimately, there is tenderness and acceptance as she considers what breaks us, and what binds. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. In his latest collection, Globe, Micheal O'Siadhail explores how a world is shaped. How do the past and our memories bear on the present? What kind of people help to alter the dynamics of history? How do we face the open wounds of irreversible tragedies and loss? The book's climactic sequence, Angel of Change, catches the mood of immense changes in our times: cyberspace and non-stop trading, mixing of peoples and blurred boundaries, vulnerable and shifting values and in all of this a strange new jazz of possibility - 'Born in a land, I wake in a globe.' This publication marks Micheal O'Siadhail's 60th birthday. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astleys Staying Alive, which became Britains most popular poetry book because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers whove wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Staying Alive didnt just reach a broader readership, it introduced thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry, giving them an international gathering of poems of great personal force, poems with emotional power, intellectual edge and playful wit. It also brought many readers back to poetry, people who hadnt read poetry for years because it hadnt held their interest. Being Alive gives readers an even wider selection of vivid, brilliantly diverse contemporary poetry from around the world. Being Alive was followed by a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), and by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020). These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Hot Earth Cold Earth is a large selection of new poems by James Berry, one of Britain's leading poets and cultural activists. The book celebrates the divided world of a lifelong outsider, a poet of two tongues, 'Hot Earth' Creole and 'Cold Earth' English. Growing up in Jamaica, Berry felt as much disturbed by his African background as by the European slave-trade and its aftermath in his childhood. The book shows how 'root-agonies' make him view Africa as a thoughtless and neglectful mother, how his years in Britain leave him worried by past, present and future. Yet Hot Earth Cold Earth grapples with a destructiveness in basic instincts. And, in spite of what Berry calls 'the vices and howlings of a cultural-crossing', a defiant spirit of celebration has clearly been 'neither wiped away nor drowned', for these vividly imaginative poems show him - now 70 - writing at the height of his powers. As a bonus, Hot Earth Cold Earth also includes the best work from his last collection, Chain of Days, which has been unavailable for many years. The poems of Hot Earth Cold Earth are now reprinted in James Berry's A Story I Am In: Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2011). The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Staying Alive is an international anthology of 500 life-affirming poems fired by belief in the human and the spiritual at a time when much in the world feels unreal, inhuman and hollow. These are poems of great personal force connecting our aspirations with our humanity, helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves. Many people turn to poetry only at unreal times, whether for consolation in loss or affirmation in love, or when facing other extremes and anxieties. Staying Alive includes many of the great modern love poems and elegies, but it also shows the power of poetry in celebrating the ordinary miracle, taking you on a journey around many of the different aspects of everyday life explored in poems. A strong poem is not just for crisis. Such a poem is there for all times, helping us face or embrace daily change and disruption. It will also speak to us when nothing seems to be happening, when the poem's importance is in helping us stay alive to the world and stay true to ourselves. Staying Alive has reached a wider readership than any other anthology of contemporary poetry. It is a landmark in the history of literary publishing. The first in a series, Staying Alive was followed by a sequel, Being Alive (2004), a companion anthology, Being Human (2011), and by a fourth volume, Staying Human: new poems for Staying Alive (2020). These anthologies have been welcomed not only by poets but by a wide range of well-known people respected for their work in fields other than poetry all avid readers of poetry. They want to recommend these books above all other anthologies of contemporary poetry. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Lawrence Sail's new collection encompasses a striking variety of subjects. He reflects on detail in the natural world, both in micro- and macrocosm, looking for example at flowers, birds, the sea, the earth seen from space; he explores the intricacies and balances of love and family relationships; he finds new resonances in the paintings of David Bomberg, Howard Hodgkin and Paul Klee, and affinities in his translations of Mallarme, Rilke and Trakl. His imaginative scope extends into a sequence of prose poems responding powerfully to Gabriel Faure's nine Preludes for piano. Throughout the collection, close attention to the physical world is paired with the perceptions such careful consideration provokes. Often this embodies a duality - instances of love carry the shadow of grief; a beached boat evokes the horizon; a book is both an object and an emblem of lost authority; the fragment of a Roman carving suggests wholeness restored. Above all, there is in Sail's writing a celebration of the world, its preciousness magnified by the ways in which he takes the measure of what appears in the title poem as 'all that lasts, / all that is gone', the juxtaposition of the transient and the enduring. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This selection presents for the first time the thirty year trajectory of an acclaimed Irish poet who has lived and worked between the secular and the religious, Eros and history, Ireland and elsewhere, be it west Africa after civil war, south-east Asia after the Khmer Rouge or Europe at the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and whose extraordinary body of work has re-defined what it means to be Irish in the twenty-first century. Harry Clifton has published six other books of poetry, most recently The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass (2012) from Bloodaxe, and Secular Eden: Paris Notebooks 1994-2004 (2007), winner of the Irish Times / Poetry Now Award, from Wake Forest University Press in the US. His other books include On the Spine of Italy (1999), his prose study of an Abruzzese mountain community, and Berkeley's Telephone (2007), a collection of short fiction. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Sarah Wardle was poet-in-residence with Tottenham Hotspur FC when many of these poems were written. Her Score! is a winning commentary on contemporary culture, shooting at the heart of consciousness, family, sport, the female voice and Darwinian science. Her second collection kicks off with her Spurs poems, tackling the common ground between goals of competition and community. Then X: A Poetry Political Broadcast presents poetry as a beacon of imagination, choice and responsibility: the still, small voice that guides us through lifes terrain. Score! is completed by Sheet Music, a medley of poems ranging from London to Stone Age man, Schrodinger's Cat to Nelsons Column. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. "Bad Shaman Blues" are what we sing in middle age, when our visions and our virtues seem far away. They also lament the role of contemporary poetry: reached for in trauma, otherwise ignored. The poet as shaman cuts a reduced and comic figure - which immediately suggests W.N. Herbert. Packing his medicine pouch with classical lyric and barbarian spell, the Scot explores his border territories. Hadrian's Wall becomes a mirror through which to embark on an absurd shamanic flight to - naturally - Siberia. "Bad Shaman Blues" is a Through the Looking Glass book, in which the familiar and the foreign confront one another. Sofia and Novosibirsk, Crete and Kolkatta, are all distorted in its hall of mirrors. In the textual underworld of the Scots tradition, literary ghosts are stalked by critical machines. Herbert's "Bad Shaman Blues" presents the conventional poetry volume with its doppelganger dark, destabilising, daft and was was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize as well as being a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This international anthology has been assembled in a matter of days as an immediate if inadequate response to the suffering in Bosnia. What else is there to say about Bosnia? What more can anyone do? KLAONICA is the poets' attempt to do or say something. It includes poems by many leading writers, some already published in The Independent's series Bosnia Poems. The poems are baffled, helpless, heartfelt, heartbreaking, angry, tender, grieving. Useless too: except that readers should find some comfort, some hope, in this book. And the book is published to raise funds for Bosnian relief. The writers come from Britain, Ireland, Europe, North America and Bosnia. They include Annemarie Austin, Joseph Brodsky, Gillian Clarke, David Constantine, Ivor Cutler, Maura Dooley, Ian Duhig, Gavin Ewart, Roy Fisher, Linda France, Rebecca Hayes, Adrian Henri, Ted Hughes, Nicki Jackowska, Kathleen Jamie, Medbh McGuckian, Ian McMillan, Glyn Maxwell, Christopher Middleton, Czeslaw Milosz, Adrian Mitchell, Andrew Motion, Josip Osti, Ruth Padel, Brian Patten, Patricia Pogson, Peter Porter, Simon Rae, Peter Reading, Tadeusz Rozewicz, Carole Satyamurti, Jo Shapcott, Abdulah Sidran, Ken Smith, Heather Spears, Mario Susko, R.S. Thomas, Stevan Tontic and John Hartley Williams. KLAONICA is the Serbo-Croat word for slaughterhouse, abattoir, butchery, shambles, and describes conditions in that doomed country after over a year of vicious warfare that includes massacre, rape, pillage, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, the destruction of towns and villages, churches and mosques, and ultimately of a state and a whole society. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this conflict - and there are more wrongs than rights to it - it amounts to genocide, in Europe, here at the end of the twentieth century. The Bosnians are starving. They have planted no crops, they have used up all their stores and savings, they have no fat left, and winter is coming. Over and above the depredations of a three-sided war, they need food and medicines. All proceeds from the sale of this book will be given to Feed the Children and other organisations seeking to alleviate the suffering in Bosnia. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The twin obsessions of D.M. Thomas's poetry and novels are love and death. This selection shows how his treatment of those themes over 30 years has flowered and grown more various, from his early erotic lyrics, through his celebrated science fiction pieces, to more recent poems about sexuality, relationships, family deaths and his search for lost Cornish roots. D.M. Thomas's first book appeared in 1968, when his poetry was also published in the Penguin Modern Poets series. Five more collections followed, including Dreaming in Bronze (1981), winner of a Cholmondeley Award, and a Selected Poems from Secker and Penguin. This book includes work from all his previous collections and from News from the Front, his collaboration with Sylvia Kantaris, as well as many new poems. His fiction and poetry have been profoundly influenced by Russian literature, and he has published translations of Akhmatova and Pushkin. While his poetry has been widely acclaimed, he has become better known for his controversial novels, especially for The White Hotel (1981), an international bestseller, and for his quintet of novels, Russian Nights. His most recent novel is Flying in to Love (Bloomsbury), an exploration of John F. Kennedy's assassination. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged.