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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Poetry texts & anthologies
When Roy Fisher told Gael Turnbull in 1960 that he had 'started
writing like mad' and produced 'a sententious prose book, about the
length of a short novel, called the Citizen' he was registering a
sea change in his work, finding a mode to express his almost
visceral connection with Birmingham in a way that drew on his
sensibility and a wealth of materials that could last a lifetime.
Much later in his career he would say that 'Birmingham is what I
think with.' This 'melange of evocation, maundering, imagining,
fiction and autobiography,' as he called it, was written 'so as to
be able to have a look at myself & see what I think.' All that
was known of this work before Fisher's death in 2017 is that
fragments from it had been used as the prose sections in City and
that - never otherwise published - it was thought not to have
survived. This proved not to be the case, and in The Citizen and
the Making of City, Peter Robinson, the poet's literary executor,
has edited the breakthrough fragment and placed it in conjunction
with the first 1961 published version of Fisher's signature collage
of poetry and prose, along with a never published longer manuscript
of it found among the poet's archive at the University of
Sheffield, and some previously unpublished poems that were
considered for inclusion during the complex evolution of the work
that Robinson tracks in his introduction. By offering in a single
publication the definitive 1969 text, two variant versions of City,
its prose origins in The Citizen and continuation in Then
Hallucinations, as well as some of the poetry left behind, this
landmark publication offers a unique insight into Roy Fisher's most
emblematic work. It is supplemented with an anthology of Fisher's
own comments on City and a secondary bibliography of criticism on
his profound response to changes wrought upon England's industrial
cities in the middle of the 20th century.
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The Sonnets
(Paperback)
William Shakespeare
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R95
R76
Discovery Miles 760
Save R19 (20%)
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Ships in 5 - 10 working days
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HarperCollins is proud to present its incredible range of
best-loved, essential classics. 'In black ink my love may still
shine bright...' Universally admired and quoted, Shakespeare's
Sonnets have love, beauty and the passing of time at their heart.
Featuring some of the best-known and best-loved lines in the
history of poetry ('Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?', 'Love
is not love which alters when it alteration finds'), these
evocative sonnets explore passion, the fleeting nature of beauty
and the essence of true and everlasting love. Enticing lovers and
scholars alike, these 154 beautiful and sensual sonnets are as
relevant and important today as when they were written 400 years
ago.
The Libro de Alexandre is an epic poem about the life of Alexander
the Great, written by an anonymous Spanish cleric in the thirteenth
century. It is the most substantial poem (and almost certainly the
first) composed in the learned cuaderna via verse form and provides
a unique insight into the intellectual world from which it sprang.
The poem conveys the grim message of Alexander's life, the sense of
hubris and the horror of his fall from greatness and domination of
the world to the bleak obscurity of the grave. As well as relaying
the story of a great ancient figure, the poet also comments on the
society and political situation of early thirteenth-century Spain.
The combination of eras makes this poem strikingly representative
of its time. Peter Such and Richard Rabone's edition in the
Hispanic Classics series will greatly illuminate this substantial
and important text, with a wide-ranging introduction, Spanish text
with facing-page English translation and notes.
Jeremy Naydler has worked as a gardener for many years, serving his
apprenticeship in York in the 1970s and subsequently working in
various gardens in the leafy Victorian suburbs of north Oxford. The
poems gathered together in this volume stem from his experience of
gardening as a labour that 'seems ever to bend itself back toward
soul'. For him, all gardening is soul work, and these poems live at
the interface of soul and garden, where inner experience finds
itself reflected in outer reality, and where outer reality speaks
of deep, often deeply challenging, inner experience. Ultimately,
the work of the gardener involves not only ensouling the garden but
also gardening the soul.
This book brings together a number of John Schad's very best
uncollected essays, interleaved with a selection of
autobiographical poems and a striking new work that brings together
both critical and creative modes of writing. Turns thus plots the
intriguing trajectory of Schad's very distinctive work over the
last twenty years -- a trajectory that moves from a series of
essays that juggle Christian, Marxist and Derridean intuitions,
through a radically literary engagement with Deconstruction, to a
daringly critical-creative mode of writing. In this exciting new
field, as in the more established world of literature and religion,
Schad is an idiosyncratic and sometimes audacious pioneer. The book
is to be published simultaneously in hardback and paperback to
accommodate adoption on critical-creative courses at both
undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
What really counts in this life? For the writer, Alexander McCall
Smith, it is friendship and love - themes that crop up time and
again in his novels. And it is these themes that he explores in
this collection of poems. In this book, divided into nine sections,
the author takes you on a journey across the globe from Africa to
Greece, London to Mumbai, and back home to Edinburgh. In a Time of
Distance is a captivating celebration of place and people, but also
of animals and books. Looking at the world through the lens of this
writer it is a better, more humane place. Throughout these poems
there are moments of swoop and soar, descriptions that will make
you laugh and realign your view. In this collection, Alexander
McCall Smith reminds us to look at the world differently, to stop
once in while and look up at the sky.
"These new poems . . . deliver the typical Tate-esque trope de
grace to all sanctimonious poses and stodgy cogitation, all
verdigris-encrusted mental statuary".--Carolyne Wright, Harvard
Review. Winner of the 1994 National Book Award.
Rachel Long's much-anticipated debut collection of poems, My
Darling from the Lions, explores shame, love and healing through
her intimate poetic voice. Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio
Prize Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award Shortlisted for the
Forward Prize for Best First Collection Shortlisted for the Jhalak
Prize 'An enchanting and heartwarming new voice in poetry.' -
Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other Each poem has a
vivid story to tell - of family quirks, the perils of dating, the
grip of religion or sexual awakening - stories that are, by turn,
emotionally insightful, politically conscious, wise, funny and
outrageous. Long reveals herself as a razor-sharp and original
voice on the issues of sexual politics and cultural inheritance
that polarize our current moment. But it's her refreshing
commitment to the power of the individual poem that will leave the
reader turning each page in eager anticipation: here is an
immediate, wide-awake poetry that entertains royally, without
sacrificing a note of its urgency or remarkable skill. 'This debut
collection is the modern poetry we need to read right now' -
Stylist 'Beautiful. I'm so glad it was written.' - Hollie McNish,
author of Nobody Told Me
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Felicity
(Paperback)
Mary Oliver
1
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R290
R232
Discovery Miles 2 320
Save R58 (20%)
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'And just like that, like a simple neighbourhood event, a miracle
is taking place.' 'If I have any secret stash of poems, anywhere,
it might be about love, not anger,' Mary Oliver once said in an
interview. Finally, in Felicity, we can immerse ourselves in
Oliver's love poems. Here, great happiness abounds. Our most
delicate chronicler of physical landscape, Oliver has described her
work as loving the world. With Felicity she examines what it means
to love another person. She opens our eyes again to the territory
within our own hearts; to the wild and to the quiet. In these
poems, she describes - with joy - the strangeness and wonder of
human connection.
Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was a pioneering filmmaker for whom words
and images made the world real. In 'documentary', she wrote, real
things 'lose their reality ...and there's no poetry in that. In
poetry, something else happens.' If film, for Tait, was a poetic
medium, her poems are works of craft and observation that are
generous and independent in their vision of the world, poems that
make seeing happen. Sarah Neely, Lecturer in Film at the University
of Stirling, draws on Tait's three poetry collections, her book of
short stories,her magazine articles and unpublished notebooks to
make available for the first time a collection of the full range of
Tait's writing. Her introduction discusses Tait as filmmaker and
writer in the context of mid-twentieth-century Scottish culture,
and a comprehensive list of bibliographic and film resources
provides an indispensible guide for further exploration.
New Selected Poems contains Les Murray's gathering from the full
range of his poetry, from poems of the 1960s to work from Taller
When Prone (2004) and new poems yet to appear in a collection. Les
Murray is one of the finest poets writing today; endlessly
inventive, his work celebrates the world and the power of the
imagination. New Selected Poems is the poet's choice of his
essential works: an indispensable collection for readers who
already love his poetry, and an ideal introduction for those new to
it.
Kevin Jackson's versions (rather than literal translations) of the
sonnet sequence written in exile between 1824 and 1829 by Poland's
greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, are both urgent and memorable. The
originals are poems of intense patriotism and nostalgia; Jackson's
versions capture this and much more, including what he terms in his
new companion essay, 'Mickiewicz's aching sense of loneliness and
loss'. Jackson wrote in his introduction to Anthony Burgess's
'Revolutionary Sonnets' that 'pleasures both demotic and recondite
abound in the pages': the same might be applied to this striking
sequence. In the spirit of Robert Lowell's 'Imitations' he
deliberately plays fast and loose with the literal sense of the
poems, memorably revivifying diction and tone. In so doing, he
shows himself to be an unassuming and masterful guide and host to
Mickiewicz's original works.
Layamon's Brut is a landmark in English literature, the first major
work in English after the Norman Conquest, and the precursor of a
rich Arthurian literature, from Malory to Tennyson and on to our
own time. This edition combines a fully-edited version of the
original text with a close parallel prose translation, together
with a lengthy Introduction, textual notes and a full and
up-to-date bibliography. Written c.1200-1220, the Brut develops the
themes of its principal source, Robert Wace's Roman de Brut, itself
a version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's bestseller, the Historia Regum
Britanniae, in a metre and idiom reminiscent of Old English. It
demonstrates the fundamental strength of a native culture which
survived two centuries of French dominance to re-emerge as a fusion
of a national tradition and continental influences.
In this collection, winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, Charles
Simic puns, pulls pranks. He can be jazzy and streetwise. Or cloak
himself in antiquity. Simic has new eyes, and in these wonderful
poems and poems-in-prose he lets the reader see through them.
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