bloodaxe books ltd united kingdom tyne and wear (101 results)

Paperback. Condition: Fair. Drawing on his extensive experience of poetry workshops and courses, Peter Sansom shows you not how to write but how to write better, how to write authentically, how to say genuinely what you genuinely mean to say. This practical guide is illustrated with many examples. Peter Sansom covers such areas as submitting to magazines; the small presses; analysing poems; writing techniques and procedures; and drafting. He includes brief resumes and discussions of literary history and literary fashions, the spirit of the age, and the creative process itself. Above all, his book helps you learn discrimination in your reading and writing - so that you can decide for yourself how you want your work to develop, whether that magazine was right in returning it or if they simply don't know their poetic arse from their elbow. Writing Poems includes sections on: Metre, rhyme, half-rhyme and free verse. Fixed forms and how to use them. Workshops and writing groups. Writing games and exercises. A detailed, annotated reading list. Where to go from here. Glossary of technical terms. Writing Poems has become an essential handbook for many poets and teachers: invaluable to writers just starting out, helpful to poets who need a nuts-and-bolts handbook, a godsend to anyone running poetry courses and workshops, and an inspiration to all readers and writers who want a book which re-examines the writing of poems. A readable copy of the book which may include some defects such as highlighting and notes. Cover and pages may be creased and show discolouration.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Jackie Kay tells the story of a black girl's adoption by a white Scottish couple, from three different viewpoints: the mother, the birth mother, and the daughter. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. In 2022 The Adoption Papers was selected as one of ten books representing the 1990s in The Big Jubilee Read, a celebration of great books from across the Commonwealth to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, one of only three poetry collections out of 70 books on the list. 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. Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are fictionalised portraits of The Kids, the students she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social class, gender and race and their fundamental intersection with education are investigated with an ever critical and introspective eye. These boisterous and musical poems explore the universal experience of what it is to be taught, to learn and to teach. The Kids a Poetry Book Society Choice won the 2021 Costa Poetry Award and went on to be named Costa Book of the Year, and was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize. 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. Drawing on his extensive experience of poetry workshops and courses, Peter Sansom shows you not how to write but how to write better, how to write authentically, how to say genuinely what you genuinely mean to say. This practical guide is illustrated with many examples. Peter Sansom covers such areas as submitting to magazines; the small presses; analysing poems; writing techniques and procedures; and drafting. He includes brief resumes and discussions of literary history and literary fashions, the spirit of the age, and the creative process itself. Above all, his book helps you learn discrimination in your reading and writing - so that you can decide for yourself how you want your work to develop, whether that magazine was right in returning it or if they simply don't know their poetic arse from their elbow. Writing Poems includes sections on: Metre, rhyme, half-rhyme and free verse. Fixed forms and how to use them. Workshops and writing groups. Writing games and exercises. A detailed, annotated reading list. Where to go from here. Glossary of technical terms. Writing Poems has become an essential handbook for many poets and teachers: invaluable to writers just starting out, helpful to poets who need a nuts-and-bolts handbook, a godsend to anyone running poetry courses and workshops, and an inspiration to all readers and writers who want a book which re-examines the writing of poems. 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 epoch-marking anthology presents a map of poetry from Britain and Ireland which readers can follow. You will not get lost here as in other anthologies with their vast lists of poets summoned up to serve a critics argument or to illustrate a journalistic overview. Instead, Edna Longley shows you the key poets of the century, and through interlinking commentary points up the connections between them as well as their relationship with the continuing poetic traditions of these islands. Edna Longley draws the poetic line of the century not through culture-defining groups but through the work of the most significant poets of our time. Because her guiding principle is aesthetic precision, the poems themselves answer to their circumstances. Readers will find this book exciting and risk-taking not because her selections are surprising but because of the intensity and critical rigour of her focus, and because the poems themselves are so good. This is a vital anthology because the selection is so pared down. Edna Longley has omitted showy, noisy, ephemeral writers who drown out their contemporaries but leave later or wiser readers unimpressed. Similarly there is no place here for the poet as entertainer, cultural spokesman, feminist mythmaker or political commentator. While anthologies survive, the idea of poetic tradition survives. An anthology as rich as Edna Longleys houses intricate conversations between poets and between poems, between the living and the dead, between the present and the future. It is a book which will enrich the readers experience and understanding of modern poetry. The anthology covers the work of 70 poets: Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, Edward Thomas, D.H. Lawrence, Siegfried Sassoon, Edwin Muir, T.S. Eliot, Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Hugh MacDiarmid, Wilfred Owen, Charles Hamilton Sorley, Robert Graves, Austin Clarke, Basil Bunting, Stevie Smith, Patrick Kavanagh, Norman Cameron, William Empson, W.H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, John Hewitt, Robert Garioch, Norman MacCaig, R.S. Thomas, Henry Reed, Dylan Thomas, Alun Lewis, W.S. Graham, Keith Douglas, Edwin Morgan, Philip Larkin, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Montague, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill, Sylvia Plath, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Derek Mahon, Douglas Dunn, Eilean Ni Chuilleanain, Paul Durcan, Tom Leonard, Carol Rumens, Selima Hill, Ciaran Carson, James Fenton, Medbh McGuckian, Paul Muldoon, Jo Shapcott, Ian Duhig, Carol Ann Duffy, Kathleen Jamie, Simon Armitage and Don Paterson. 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. Selected Poems draws on Jenny Joseph's first four collections of poetry, The Unlooked-for Season (1960), Rose in the Afternoon (1974), The Thinking Heart (1978) and Beyond Descartes (1983). The poems explore the duality of existence, a track that runs through all her work, whether for children or adults, in poetry or prose. Jenny Joseph's Selected Poems includes 'Warning', her much celebrated monologue in which a young woman talks of her fantasies of old age, voted Britain's favourite modern poem in a BBC poll in 2006. 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. 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 remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine.

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. 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: Good. Luljeta Lleshanaku belongs to the first "post-totalitarian" generation of Albanian poets. In Haywire she turns to the fallout of her country's past and its relation to herself and her family. Through intense, powerful lyrics, she explores how these histories intertwine and influence her childhood memories and the retelling of her family's stories. Sorrow, death, imprisonment, and desire are some of the themes that echo deeply in Lleshanaku's beautiful poems. Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. 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. A number of years back, our author went to seek out a book by some ancient Greek thinker - the name starting with an L, or perhaps a C - called On Delight of the Nature of Things, or maybe In Delight at the Nature of Things. Either way, it turned out the book didn't exist. Our author found lots of stuff on measuring the circumference and mass of the planet Earth, and lots of pages about salt, dirt and water, but not the book that she was looking for. So, in the end, she decided to write the book herself. And here it is, or at least a start on it: eighty-five everyday objects, concerns and states scrutinised, given a voice really, and which together make up On Delight of the Nature of Things, or In Delight at the Nature of Things, or, more simply, Santiago. 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. "Soul Food" is a feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit. Drawn from many traditions, ranging from Rumi, Kabir and Blake, to Rilke, Emily Dickinson and Paul Celan, this wide-ranging selection includes enormously varied work by celebrated contemporary poets such as Jane Hirshfield, Denise Levertov, Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver, as well as by many lesser-known writers from all periods and places. The anthology opens with a series of poems on human life and spiritual sustenance, starting with Rumi: 'This being human is a guest house./Each morning a new arrival.'. The poems which follow explore many ways of keeping body and soul together, offering food for thought on knowing yourself, living with nature, who or what is God.All are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to searchers and non-believers. "Soul Food" shows how poetry can help feed our hunger for meaning in times of spiritual starvation. 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 territory of Clare Shaw's third collection isn't one she chose herself, but one which chose her: the flooded valley and the ruined home. The 2015 floods in Britain left whole swathes of the country submerged, including her home town. Flood offers an eye-witness account of those events, from rainfall to rescue, but ripples out from there. Intimately interwoven with the breakdown of a relationship, flooding serves as a powerful metaphor for wider experiences of loss, destruction and recovery. Testifying equally to the forces that destroy us and save us, flood runs through the book in different forms - bereavement and trauma, the Savile scandal, life in an asylum. Yet ultimately, this is a story of one life as it is unravelled and rebuilt, written from the heart and from the North, in a language as dangerous and sustaining as water. 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. Inspired by a remark of Seamus Heaney, Lifesaving Poems began life as notebook, then a blog. How many poems, Heaney wondered, was it possible to recall responding to, over a lifetime? Was it ten, he asked, twenty, fifty, a hundred, or more? Lifesaving Poems is a way of trying to answer that question. Giving himself the constraint of choosing no more than one poem per poet, Anthony began copying poems out, one at a time, as it were for safekeeping. He asked himself: was the poem one he could recall being moved by the moment he first read it? And: could he live without it? Then he posted each poem on his blog and said why he liked it. Word spread and soon his blog had thousands of followers, everyone reading and responding to the poems he talked about - and sharing his posts. Now Lifesaving Poems has turned into an anthology, not one designed to be a perfect list of 'the great and the good', but a gathering of poems he happens to feel passionate about, according to his tastes. As Billy Collins says: 'Good poems are poems that I like'. Anthony's popular personal commentaries are included with the poems. There are Lifesaving Poems by John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Raymond Carver, Carol Ann Duffy, Thom Gunn, Seamus Heaney, Marie Howe, Jaan Kaplinski, Brendan Kennelly, Jane Kenyon, Galway Kinnell, Philip Levine, Norman MacCaig, Ian McMillan, Derek Mahon, Sharon Olds, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Jo Shapcott, Tomas Transtromer, Wislawa Szymborska, and many, many others. 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. Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2008, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The language of Jen Hadfield's poetry is one of incantation and secular praise. Her first book, "Almanacs", was a traveller's litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. "Nigh-No-Place" is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world. Hadfield began her new book on the hoof, travelling across Canada with a ravenous appetite for new landscapes. She took epic routes: the railway line from Halifax to Vancouver and the Dempster Highway's 740 km of gravel road, ending in the Arctic oiltowns of Inuvik and Tuktoyuktuk. But it is in Shetland that she becomes acutely aware of her own voice - her fluency and tongue-tiedness; repetition, hiatus and breath. "Nigh-No-Place" reflects the breadth of ground she's covered. 'Ten-minute Break Haiku' is her response to working in a fish factory. 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. 'Prenatal Polar Bear' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra. 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. Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books. Over the Moon is her fifth book from Bloodaxe. These are poems of joy and sadness, of mourning and celebration: poems about music and feet, church bells, beds, cafe tables, bad language and sudden silence. In contrast with her previous work written amidst the hubbub of India, these new poems are mostly set in London, where she has built a new life with - and since the death of - her husband Simon Powell. 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 gures, from Fleur Adcock to Carol Ann Duffy. It charts the irrepressible growth and owering of womens poetry, showing how the womens movement bestowed a permission and condence 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 womans 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 Randalls tooth and claw. Kathleen Jamie weaves a erce 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 McGuckians 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. R.S. Thomas (1913-2000) was one of the most important poets of our time. This was is his own selection taken from six collections first published in hardback by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Ltd in 1973 and reissued by Granada Publishing in 1979, and then first published in paperback under licence to Bloodaxe Books in 1986. 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. Too Black Too Strong is Benjamin Zephaniah's third collection from Bloodaxe. It addresses the struggles of black Britain more forcefully than all his previous books. With poems like 'Chant of a Homesick Nigga' and 'Kill Them Before Ramadan', he shows that he's a poet who won't stay silent, who doesn't pull any punches, writing out of a sense of urgency and a commitment to social justice. He opens this hard-hitting and blackly funny book of poems with an outspoken comment on where he's coming from, setting his poetry against the political landscape of Britain. The book includes poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case.

Paperback. Condition: Very Good. This wide-ranging selection combines popular choices of traditional poems read at funerals with powerful poems by contemporary writers more tuned to our present age of doubt and disbelief. There are poems here for churchgoers and believers, including classic verses of grief and consolation by John Donne, Christina Rossetti, Emily Bronte and Emily Dickinson, the anonymous Do not stand at my grave and weep, and the poems read at Princess Diana's funeral. But there are also poems for people of all faiths and religions, for agnostics and atheists, and most importantly for those who arent sure what they believe, whose grief over loss is the more intense for not knowing what happens to the soul after death. Grief isnt denied but experienced and made more bearable by being put into memorable words. Searing poems of lament are followed by moving elegies celebrating the lives of those we will always love. Whether and how the spirit survives is then explored in an extraordinary gathering of poems by writers as different and diverse as the Persian mystic Rumi, Zen Buddhist composers of Japanese haiku, and American poets Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon. Buttressed against their assertions of faith in an afterlife are modern sceptics, from Auden and Larkin to William Carlos Williams and C.K. Williams, whose wrestling with the meaning of death helps us make sense of no sense, mirroring our own anxieties and difficulties. But however various and contradictory these poems, their message chimes with Larkins famous words, proving 'Our almost-instinct almost true:/ What will survive of us is love.' Unlike other poetry anthologies of loss, mourning and remembrance, Do Not Go Gentle offers a selection of poems specifically for reading at funerals and memorial services. It can also be used for reading aloud to friends and family, or for reading while numbed and bewildered all times when the right poem can help us share and bear the burden of immediate grief. 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 New Poetry is the rst anthology of the new British and Irish poets of the 80s and 90s. It captures the excitement, energy, diversity and ambition of a new generation of writers. The book shows how the new poets have responded to times of great change and political upheaval by forging a radical new poetic, rethinking the techniques, language and processes of poetry. These writers believe that poets should take risks and not be afraid to take on any subject, from science to psychosis; that poetry and politics are inseparable; and that poetry can be both serious and playful. The New Poetry has generous selections of work by over 50 poets from Britain and Ireland, including John Ash, Ciaran Carson, Robert Crawford, Peter Didsbury, Michael Donaghy, Carol Ann Duffy, Paul Durcan, Selima Hill, Michael Hofmann, Liz Lochhead, Glyn Maxwell, Sean OBrien, Peter Reading and Pauline Stainer. Their work provides an exhilarating variety of responses to our times. Even personal or domestic poems take on broader political or historical meaning, as in the poetry of Simon Armitage and Eavan Boland; and language itself has a powerful cultural relevance in the work of new Black or Scots poets such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Fred DAguiar and W.N. Herbert. 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. Too Black Too Strong is Benjamin Zephaniah's third collection from Bloodaxe. It addresses the struggles of black Britain more forcefully than all his previous books. With poems like 'Chant of a Homesick Nigga' and 'Kill Them Before Ramadan', he shows that he's a poet who won't stay silent, who doesn't pull any punches, writing out of a sense of urgency and a commitment to social justice. He opens this hard-hitting and blackly funny book of poems with an outspoken comment on where he's coming from, setting his poetry against the political landscape of Britain. The book includes poems written while working with Michael Mansfield QC and other Tooks barristers on the Stephen Lawrence case. 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 these new poems, Tony Harrison confronts the unspeakable terrors of the twentieth century. The title poem is the text of his new BBC lm poem, The Gaze of the Gorgon, which takes the terrifying creature of legend who turns men to stone as a metaphor for the horrors unleashed in modern warfare. In other poems, such as The Mother of the Muses and the Sonnets for August 1945, Harrison forges his own response to these dark times through the element of re, seeking in the source of terror itself the heart of eloquence and celebratory love. The book includes his powerful Gulf War poems which the Sunday Times called mordant masterpieces and the Times Literary Supplement erce and sardonic. Winner of the Whitbread 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. Large selections with essays on their work by eleven poets: Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, Kathleen Raine, Fleur Adcock, Anne Stevenson, Elizabeth Jennings, Denise Levertov, Elaine Feinstein, Jenny Joseph, Ruth Fainlight and Jeni Couzyn. GCE set text. 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. Gillian Allnutts Lintel gives us poems of the threshold; poems that stand at the edge, looking back as well as forward; poems that arise out of known, imagined and imaginary places, such as the landscape of Tabitha and Lintel (somewhere between Haworth and the Holy Land). They show the spirit surviving amongst the tatters of Christianity in a modern wilderness in which the arational is decried as irrational. But Gillian Allnutts poems are also ambivalent in their approach to history, embracing change where the past needs to be broken with while at the same time holding on to what needs to be salvaged from the wreckage. As the wild girl Lintel, serving in the convent, says: Itll be as if Id brought the breakers in with me. Poetry Book Society Choice, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. 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. Deborah Garrison's "The Second Child" is a book of poems about family in a world both more exciting and more frightening than ever before. It explores many facets of motherhood - ambivalence, trepidation and joy - coming to terms with the seismic shift in her outlook and in the world around her. She confronts her post-9/11 fears as she commutes daily into New York City, continuing to seek passion in her marriage and wrestling with her feelings about faith and the mysterious gift of happiness. Her critically acclaimed first collection, "A Working Girl Can't Win" chronicled the progress and predicaments of a young career woman. This new book shows her moving into another stage of adulthood, starting a family and saying goodbye to a more carefree self. Sometimes sensual, sometimes succinct, always candid, "The Second Child" is a meditation on the extraordinariness resident in the everyday - nursing babies, missing the past, knowing when to lead a child and knowing when to let go. With a voice sound and wise, Deborah Garrison examines a life fully lived. 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. Benjamin Zephaniah: To Do Wid Me is both a Selected Poems by Benjamin Zephaniah and a film portrait of Benjamin Zephaniah by Pamela Robertson-Pearce drawing on both live performances and informal interviews. The film shows him performing his poetry for different audiences and talking about his work, life, beliefs and much else. You see him live on stage at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Newcastle's Live Theatre, Hexham's Queen's Hall and Brunel University, and engaging with school children at Keats House in London, where he was writer-in-residence. As well as the main film, the DVD also has a bonus feature: music videos made by Zephaniah with the Beta Brothers. This is a new concept in poetry publishing: not a book with a DVD but a DVD-book. The book supplements the film and includes the texts of all the poems and songs from the film and videos. (But because the DVD is a free giveaway inside the book, it is classed as a book not a DVD so you don't have to pay VAT, hence the great price.) The DVD is PAL format compatible with DVD players in most countries apart from Canada, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan and the United States but playable on laptops produced for those countries. 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. "Modern Women Poets" is the companion anthology to Deryn Rees-Jones's pioneering critical study, "Consorting with Angels: Essays on Modern Women Poets". While its selections illuminate and illustrate her essays, Deryn Rees-Jones's superb anthology works in its own right as the best possible introduction to a whole century of poetry by women. The anthology draws together the work of women poets from Britain, Ireland and America as one version of a history of women's poetic writing, while not isolating women's writing from its intersection with the work of male contemporaries. Tracing an arc from Charlotte Mew to Stevie Smith, from Sylvia Plath to the writing emerging from the Women's Movement, and to the more recent work of Medbh McGuckian, Jo Shapcott and Carol Ann Duffy, the anthology draws together the work of women poets from Britain, Ireland and America as one version of a history of women's poetic writing. It shows important connections between the work of women poets and shows how - throughout past 100 years - they have developed strategies for engaging with a male-dominated tradition. "Modern Women Poets" allows the reader to trace women's negotiations with one another's work, as well as to reflect more generally on the politics of women's engagement with history, nature, politics, motherhood, science, religion, the body, sexuality, identity, death, love, and poetry itself. 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. For nearly three hundred years Scotland and England were the Laurel and Hardy of nations. For nearly two hundred years The Prelude was a poem by Wordsworth. Something had to give. As Britain begins to resemble a cut-up by William Burroughs, and the heritage of Robert Burns is flushed down a lavvie in Leith, one verse-monger steps forward to do battle with (or possibly for) cultural chaos. Bill Herberts Laurelude is in three sections: The Laurelude is a blank verse myth about Ulverstons Idiot Boy, Stan Laurel. Othermoor depicts a cubist version of the North where the Wild Boy himself, the late Bill Burroughs, rewrites the rules. And The Madmen of Elgin squashes both Lost Boys and Solitary Reapers into Middle Scots verse forms for a pre-millennial song-and-dance. Like Oliver Hardy this volume refuses to be slim: it bursts all borders, literary and political, creating a zone where the Hollywood musical meets the Jolly Beggars, where lament bumps into love lyric, where the dictionaries go to die. 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.