Maura Dooley’s poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in Poetry Review) admired her ‘sharp and forceful’ intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability ‘to enact and find images for complex feelings…Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness…she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ’ (Literary Review). Five Fifty-Five is Maura Dooley’s first new collection since The Silvering (2016). These are quizzical poems concerned with time and mortality which ask fundamental questions about our lives, such as Where have you gone? and Who were you anyway? She tries to find out through conversations with, among others, Louisa M. Alcott, Hokusai, Jane Austen, Buzz Aldrin, Anne Tyler and the Great Uncle and Grandfather she never knew. There are poems, too, about the difficulties and responsibilities of translation, both from the written word and in interpreting what is left unspoken in different kinds of absence; empty streams, bare trees, the loss of friends. Yet these are poems that find and try to offer consolation: 'What have you learned exactly? / To love, to speak up, to hold steady.'

Maura Dooley's poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in Poetry Review) admired her 'sharp and forceful' intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability 'to enact and find images for complex feelings...Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness...she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ' (Literary Review). The Silvering is her first new collection since Life Under Water, which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2008. Looking in, looking out, looking through are the recurring perspectives offered by these poems. These are poems interested in shifting light and what it reveals, reflects or conceals and especially, perhaps, in what remains 'caught in the silvering'. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

The Honey Gatherers takes its title from a phrase in Michael Ondaatje's The Cinnamon Peeler, a poem which describes the need to be marked, and marked out, by love. The search, the sweetness, the sting and the death of love, are all to be found in this anthology. Wide-ranging in its inclusiveness, The Honey Gatherers celebrates the great passions of John Donne, Christina Rossetti, Shakespeare, Keats, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the beloved Anon, whilst confirming the extraordinary gift to this headlong debate of 20th century poets. Pablo Neruda, Lorna Goodison, Brian Patten, Adrienne Rich, Tess Gallagher, W.H. Auden, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker, John Montague, Thom Gunn, Carol Ann Duffy and Sharon Olds are just some of those who meet in these pages. Here are poems about romantic love, the ideal of love, the hurt of love, lost or unrequited love and parting - all you might expect to find in such a gathering - but here too are poems of friendship, surprise, celebration and consolation. This is a book which explores Raymond Carver's big question 'And what did you want?' and offers some answers: 'To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.' - Raymond Carver: 'Late Fragment' Most love poetry anthologies only cover the classics. This one includes modern poets and erotic poetry as well.

Negative of a Group Photograph brings together three decades of poems by the leading Iranian poet Azita Ghahreman. Born in Mashhad in 1962 and based in Sweden since 2006, Ghahreman is the author of five highly acclaimed collections. Her poems are lyrical and intimate, addressing themes of loss, exile and female desire, as well as the changing face of her country. Negative of a Group Photograph runs the gamut of Ghahreman's experience: from her childhood in the Khorasan region of south-eastern Iran to her exile to Sweden, from Iran's book-burning years and the war in Iraq to her unexpected encounters with love. The poems in this illuminating collection are brought to life in English by the poet Maura Dooley, working in collaboration with Elhum Shakerifar. Farsi-English dual language edition co-published with the Poetry Translation Centre.

Maura Dooley's poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in "Poetry Review") admired her 'sharp and forceful' intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability 'to enact images for complex feelings...Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness...she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ' - "Literary Review". These new poems take in the physical landscape, family and friendship, as well as the transience of both folklore and politics. In part, an attempt to speak of what is submerged, they welcome that 'splash of cold water to the face' that tells us we're alive.

Maura Dooley's poetry is remarkable for embracing both lyricism and political consciousness, for its fusion of head and heart. These qualities have won her wide acclaim. Helen Dunmore (in Poetry Review) admired her 'sharp and forceful' intelligence. Adam Thorpe praised her ability 'to enact and find images for complex feelings... Her poems have both great delicacy and an undeniable toughness...she manages to combine detailed domesticity with lyrical beauty, most perfectly in the metaphor of memory ' (Literary Review). Sound Barrier presents a selection from earlier collections of work written over a twenty-year period.