Soul Feast is a companion anthology to Soul Food, offering up a further feast of thoughtful poems to stir the mind and feed the spirit, bringing hope and light in dark, uncertain times. This book’s inspiration – Soul Food – achieved its wide popularity by word of mouth. For many thousands of readers feeling adrift in the early years of the 21st century, the poems in that book offered support and sustenance. What followed has been even more destructive and disorientating: wars, pandemic, oppression, persecution of peoples and minorities, mass migration, dishonest government, financial meltdown, and looming environmental catastrophe. Yet amidst all this there are voices of hope and healing, of love and tolerance, kindness and compassion, sanity and solace, to be heard and felt in the poems of Soul Feast. This new compilation shows how poetry can help sustain our search for meaning in times of spiritual starvation. All these poems are universal illuminations of the meaning of life, speaking to readers of all faiths as well as to seekers and non-believers. Drawn from many traditions, Soul Feast includes work by poets ranging from Lal Ded and Tukaram to Pessoa, Borges, Cummings and Langston Hughes, as well as poems by celebrated contemporary poets such as Ellen Bass, Imtiaz Dharker, Jane Hirshfield and Naomi Shihab Nye. This is a book to keep by the bedside or to keep with you when travelling.

"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.

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.

John Agard has been broadening the canvas of British poetry for the past 40 years with his mischievous, satirical fables which overturn all our expectations. "Alternative Anthem" is a live album of poems from books published over three decades, including "John Agard Live!", a DVD of filmed highlights from recent performances made by filmmaker Pamela Robertson-Pearce. It includes poetry from "We Brits" in which the Guyanese-born word magician gives an outsider-insider view of British life in poems which both challenge and cherish our peculiar culture and hallowed institutions; "Weblines" that contains three powerful Caribbean myths of transformation: the steeldrum, the limbo dancer, and Anansi, the spider trickster god; and, "From the Devil's Pulpit" that is a Devil's eye view of the world, sweeping from Genesis across time; and, other collections including "Mangoes and Bullets" and "Lovelines for a Goat-Born Lady", as well his children's books, featuring some of Agard's best-known poems - "Listen Mr Oxford don", "Palm Tree King", "Half-Caste", and "English Girl Eats Her First Mango".

In 2008, Bloodaxe published the world's first DVD-anthology, In Person: 30 Poets, a new concept in publishing: readings by 30 poets published by Bloodaxe in its first 30 years captured on film, with all the poems included in the footage printed in the book of the films. Its sequel, In Person: World Poets, is another international collaboration between Bloodaxe Books and award-winning film-maker Pamela Robertson-Pearce. Her style of filming combines directness and simplicity, sensitivity and warmth - the perfect combination for these intimate readings. It is as if the poet were sitting in the room with you, reading just to you, and sometimes saying a few things about the poems. This new compilation on DVD with accompanying anthology covers a wide range of poets from many parts of the world, including America, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Guyana, India, Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland and Sweden, as well as from Britain and Ireland. Most of the films present informal, one-to-one readings, with the poets reading to you in person. They enhance your appreciation of the poetry.You hear how the poems sound; you see how the poets read and present their work. Poets writing in other languages read in the original with the English translations read by themselves or by their translators. Some poets are also captured in live performance. T.S. Eliot once described poetry as 'one person talking to another', while W.H. Auden believed it was essential to hear poetry read aloud, for 'no poem, which when mastered, is not better heard than read is good poetry'. In Person: World Poets presents the oral art of poetry in that spirit. There are over 14 hours of readings on four DVDs packaged with the book, and all the poems included in the films are printed in the book, with poems written in other languages alongside the translations, enabling you to follow either language as they are read on the film. Like the original In Person: 30 Poets, this new compilation gives readers a personal festival of poetry in DVD and book form for viewing at home on laptop or TV. It is also a unique educational resource for the teaching and appreciation of poetry. In Person: World Poets includes: Robert Adamson, Moniza Alvi, Antonella Anedda, Simon Armitage, Ana Blandiana, Jean 'Binta' Breeze, Dan Chiasson, Polly Clark, Stewart Conn, Peter Didsbury, Katie Donovan, Tishani Doshi, Ruth Fainlight, Roy Fisher, Carolyn Forche, Tua Forsstroem, Tess Gallagher, Deborah Garrison, Jane Griffiths, Philip Gross, Choman Hardi, Robert Hass, John Hegley, Rita Ann Higgins, Tony Hoagland, Matthew Hollis, Esther Jansma, Jenny Joseph, Jaan Kaplinski, Ko Un, Luljeta Lleshanaku, Thomas Lux, Nikola Madzirov, Jennifer Maiden, Jack Mapanje, Samuel Menashe, Esther Morgan, Julie O'Callaghan, Leanne O'Sullivan, Clare Pollard, Adelia Prado, Sally Read, Lawrence Sail, Carole Satyamurti, Karen Solie, Piotr Sommer, Ruth Stone, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Matthew Sweeney, Pia Tafdrup, Tomas Transtroemer, Brian Turner, Chase Twichell, Priscila Uppal, Tomas Venclova, Mark Waldron, Susan Wicks and Robert Wrigley. None of these poets was included in In Person: 30 Poets.

Thirty poets from around the world read to you in person. This is a new concept in publishing: your own personal poetry festival brought into your home. Each poet reads to you for about ten minutes - up to half a dozen poems chosen from across the range of their work. "In Person" is a collaboration between Bloodaxe Books and award-winning film-maker Pamela Robertson-Pearce. Her style of filming combines directness and simplicity, sensitivity and warmth - the perfect combination for these intimate readings. It is as if the poet were sitting in the room with you, reading just to you, and sometimes saying a few things about the poems. Apart from one recording taken from a live public performance, all the films present informal, one-to-one readings. They enhance your appreciation of the poetry. You hear how the poems sound; you see how the poets read and present their work. T.S. Eliot once described poetry as 'one person talking to another', while W.H. Auden believed it was essential to hear poetry read aloud, for 'no poem, which when mastered, is not better heard than read is good poetry'. "In Person" presents the oral art of poetry in that spirit. There are four hours of readings on two DVDs pouched inside the back cover, and all the poems are printed in this book. "In Person" celebrates 30 years of poetry from a pioneering press. Founded in 1978, Bloodaxe has published nearly a thousand titles by three hundred writers. Until now you wouldn't be able to see or hear readings by many of Bloodaxe's international range of poets. "In Person" makes that possible for the first time, presenting readings by 30 essential voices from Britain, Ireland, America, Spain, Hungary, Palestine, Pakistan, China, New Zealand and the Caribbean. Four out of the 30 short films present the poets' work bilingually. Menna Elfyn's reading alternates between her Welsh poems and their English translations. Joan Margarit reads in Catalan in tandem with his translator Anna Crowe reading her English translations. Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali reads in Arabic and then re-inhabits each poem as it is read in English by his translator Peter Cole. Yang Lian introduces his work in English, and reads the poems in Chinese. This anthology presents all their poems in both languages in a parallel-text format, enabling you to follow either language as the poems are read on the film. All the other readings are in English only, and in many varieties of English which will add greatly to your enjoyment and appreciation of the poetry: not just poems read in Scottish, Welsh and Irish English by Jackie Kay, W.N. Herbert, Gwyneth Lewis, Brendan Kennelly and Micheal O'Siadhail, but also George Szirtes' Hungarian-inflected English, Benjamin Zephaniah's melding of Jamaican and Birmingham, and the Caribbean lilt of John Agard and James Berry. The musical range of American voices is just as diverse, ranging from urban Detroit (Philip Levine) to the Ozark Mountains (C.D. Wright). There's also a 'bonus track': a short film of Bloodaxe's first poet, Ken Smith, made by Ivor Bowen just before Ken's untimely death.

Jean 'Binta' Breeze was a popular Jamaican Dub poet and storyteller whose performances wee so powerful she was called a 'one-woman festival'. Her poems are Caribbean songs of innocence and experience, of love and conflict. They use personal stories and historical narratives to explore social injustice and the psychological dimensions of black women's experience. Striking evocations of childhood in the hills of Jamaica give way to explorations of the perils and delights of growth and change - through sex, emigration, motherhood and age. Introduced by renowned critic Colin MacCabe, the book brings together new poems with poetry and reggae chants from four previous collections: Riddym Ravings, Spring Cleaning, On the Edge of an Island and The Arrival of Brighteye. Many of the poems are included on the accompanying DVD featuring two Jean 'Binta' Breeze performances filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce at Leicester's Y Theatre, plus an interview with Jane Dowson.

Samuel Menashe's poetry has a mysterious simplicity, a spiritual intensity and a lingering emotional force. For over 50 years he practised his art of 'compression and crystallisation' (in Derek Mahon's phrase) in poems that are brief in form but profound in their engagement with ultimate questions. As Stephen Spender wrote, Menashe 'compresses thought into language intense and clear as diamonds'. Intensely musical and rigorously constructed, Menashe's work stands apart in its solitary meditative power, but it is equally a poetry of the everyday. The humblest of objects, the minutest of natural forms, here become powerfully suggestive, and even the shortest of the poems are spacious in the perspectives they open. Expanded from its original Library of America compilation, this edition covers the full range of his work, from the early collections to very recent work, and includes a DVD of Life Is Immense: Visiting Samuel Menashe, a film by Pamela Robertson-Pearce. This features a visit to Menashe in the tiny apartment in New York's Greenwich Village where he lived from the 1950s until 2009. Even in his 80s, Menashe still knew all his poems by heart, and between engaging digressions on poetry, life and death, recites numerous examples with engaging humour, warmth and zest.