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Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to do this himself, and no other edition exists which has such a broad range, drawing from first to last of his prize-winning collections. But now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family. In 100 Poems, readers will enjoy the most loved and celebrated poems, as well as discovering new favourites. It is a singular and welcoming anthology, reaching out far and wide, now and for years to come. ISBN 9780571347155 -
A glorious and ambitious sequel to 'I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree' this lavishly illustrated gift book treasury of 366 animal poems - one for every day of the year - ranges from unforgettable classics to contemporary works from around the world, including poetry in translation. The spectacular range of poems for children includes work by Roger McGough, William Blake, Dick King-Smith, Ted Hughes, Grace Nichols, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson. Britta Teckentrup's breathtaking illustrations bring together all the richness and wonder of the animal kingdom, making this poetry anthology a perfect gift that will be treasured by generations. With sumptuous finishes including cloth binding, full colour illustrations throughout, textured paper jacket, ribbon marker, and head and tail bands. The perfect gift for any child or adult to treasure. Great for Ages 5-99. ISBN 9781788005678 -
Kathleen Watkins returns to charm us all once again with a wonderful selection of poetry. These are the verses that have comforted and consoled her over the past year, that she has reached for again and again. The poems offer solace in a difficult time, bringing the reader away from our own world and into a place filled with beautiful words and images. Featuring poems by Eavan Boland, Derek Walcott, Carole Ann Duffy and W.B. Yeats, this is the perfect collection for anyone with an appreciation of the written word. ISBN 9780717190232 -
At home and in government, contemporary America finds itself riven by a culture war in which aggression and defensiveness alike are on the rise. It is not alone. In such partisan conditions, how can humans best approach one another across our differences?Taking the study of whiteness and white supremacy as a guiding light, Claudia Rankine explores a series of real encounters with friends and strangers - each disrupting the false comfort of spaces where our public and private lives intersect, like the airport, the theatre, the dinner party and the voting booth - and urges us to enter into the conversations which could offer the only humane pathways through this moment of division. Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, and to breach the silence, guilt and violence that surround whiteness. Brilliantly arranging essays, images and poems along with the voices and rebuttals of others, it counterpoints Rankine's own text with facing-page notes and commentary, and closes with a bravura study of women confronting the political and cultural implications of dyeing their hair blonde. Wry, vulnerable and prescient, this is Rankine's most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, and being together. ISBN 9780241467107 -
An immersive collection of poetry to open your world, curated by the host of Poetry UnboundThis inspiring collection, edited by Padraig O Tuama, presents fifty poems about what it means to be alive in the world today. Each poem is paired with Padraig's illuminating commentary that offers personal anecdotes and generous insights into the content of the poem. Engaging, accessible and inviting, Poetry Unbound is the perfect companion for everyone who loves poetry and for anyone who wants to go deeper into poetry but doesn't necessarily know how to do so. Poetry Unbound contains expanded reflections on poems as heard on the podcast, as well as exclusive new selections. Contributors include Hanif Abdurraqib, Patience Agbabi, Raymond Antrobus, Margaret Atwood, Ada Limon, Kei Miller, Roger Robinson, Lemn Sissay, Layli Long Soldier and more. ISBN 9781838856328 -
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually. Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us. In this stunning collection, Mary Oliver returns to the imagery that has defined her life's work. Herons, sparrows, owls and kingfishers flit across the page in meditations on love, artistry and impermanence. Whether considering a bird's nest, the seeming patience of oak trees or the paintings of Franz Marc, Mary Oliver reminds us of the transformative power of attention and how much can be contained within the smallest moments. Blue Horses asks what it truly means to belong to this world and to live in it attuned to all its changes. 'To be human,' she shows us, 'is to sing your own song'. ISBN 9781472153746 -
A beautifully illustrated collection of lyrics and never-before-seen poetry and sketches from Florence Welch. "Songs can be incredibly prophetic, like subconscious warnings or messages to myself, but I often don't know what I'm trying to say till years later. Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic." Pop's high priestess bares her soul in this candid collection of poems and lyrics. 'Generous in its honesty, by the end you feel as though you have climbed into the colourful, and sometimes tortured, world of a passionate artist' i. 'Makes the reader feel as though they're peeking into a private journal' Refinery29. ISBN 9780241983829 -
Compiled around 1235, the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, or Ogura’s 100 Poems by 100 Poets, is one of the most important collections of poetry in Japan. Though the poets include emperors and empresses, courtiers and high priests, ladies-in- waiting and soldier-calligraphers, the collection is far more than a fascinating historical document. This new translation, entitled A Gap in the Clouds, is the first to be published in Ireland. As the translators note in their Introduction, “these beautiful poems have endured because their themes are universal and readily understood by contemporary readers”. Published on 11 February, 2021, to mark Japan’s National Foundation Day. ISBN 9781910251829 -
The present volume gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio. 'He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader's attention. In the modern history of literature he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose-gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the waste land, who can make us see the exhilarating design that thorns and yucca share with whatever will grow anywhere.' - Hugh Kenner ISBN 9780571229154 -
An extraordinary debut from a young Vietnamese American, Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a book of poetry unlike any other. Steeped in war and cultural upheaval and wielding a fresh new language, Vuong writes about the most profound subjects - love and loss, conflict, grief, memory and desire - and attends to them all with lines that feel newly-minted, graceful in their cadences, passionate and hungry in their tender, close attention. This is an unusual, important book: both gentle and visceral, vulnerable and assured, and its blend of humanity and power make it one of the best first collections of poetry to come out of America in years. ISBN 9781911214519 -
Roger Robinson's range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; the ubiquitous presence of racism; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents encountered in daily life; and reflections on the purposes and costs of making art. Not least, in the sequence of poems that reflect on the meanings of the Grenfell Tower fire, Roger Robinson finds ways to move beyond a just indignation to uncover the undertones of experience that bring us nearer to the human reality of that event. The collection's title points to the underlying philosophy expressed in these poems: that earthly joy is, or ought to be, just within, but is often just beyond our reach, denied by racism, misogyny, physical cruelty, and those with the class power to deny others their share of worldly goods and pleasures. A Portable Paradise is not the emptiness of material accumulation, but joy in an openness to people, places, the sensual pleasures of food, and the rewards to be had from the arts of word, sound, and visual enticement--in short an "insatiable hunger" for life. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity, and generosity of spirit. These finely crafted poems reveal Roger Robinson's capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and to engage our thoughts. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go. ISBN9781845234331 -
*WINNER OF PULITZER PRIZE 2020* Jericho Brown's daring poetry collection The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Poems of fatherhood, legacy, blackness, queerness, worship, and trauma are propelled into stunning clarity by Brown's mastery, and his invention of the duplex - a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues - testament to his formal skill. The Tradition is a cutting and necessary collection, relentless in its quest for survival while revelling in a celebration of contradiction. ISBN 9781529020472 -
When Stephen Sexton was young, video games were a way to slip through the looking glass; to be in two places at once; to be two people at once. In these poems about the death of his mother, this moving, otherworldly narrative takes us through the levels of Super Mario World, whose flowered landscapes bleed into our world, and ours, strange with loss, bleed into it. His remarkable debut is a daring exploration of memory, grief and the necessity of the unreal. Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First CollectionA New Statesman and Telegraph Book of the Year 2019 -'Every poem in this book is a marvel. Taken all together they make up a work of almost miraculous depth and beauty' Sally Rooney. ISBN 9780141990026 -
A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend. 'When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands / Little by little, mountains are climbed.' So ends Kate Baer's remarkable poem 'Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.' In 'Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels' she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother's cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem 'Deliverance' about her son's birth she writes 'What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?'Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Baer proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends. ISBN 9781398706828 -
These intimate, visceral and often wickedly funny poems journey through the darker days of new parenthood, teasing out the anxieties which plague us when night falls. Violence against women, the destruction of our environment, the poisons and pitfalls of 21st-century living are explored here in poems by turns lyrical and earthy, yearning and angry. They mine gold from the darkness and seek luminescence in the deepest oceans. Pit Lullabies is Jessica Traynor’s third collection, following Liffey Swim (2014) and The Quick (2019) from Ireland’s Dedalus Press. ‘Visionary, luminous and haunted, Jessica Traynor’s poems are home to a host of compelling characters: witches, changelings, the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen. In The Quick, even the grotesque is rendered with subtle delicacy – a woman whose “lungs fold like an origami bird”. These poems will give you goose-bumps.’ – Helen Mort ISBN 9781780376066 -
"A beautiful and wise book which offers comfort in the face of life's challenges and provides guidance. You'll find quotes that will stay with you forever. My favourite is 'try to love the questions themselves.'" Sinead ISBN 9780141192321 -
'A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go'. For Charles Bukowski there was something majestic and elemental about cats. He considered them to be sentient beings, whose searing gaze could penetrate deep into our being. Cats see into us; they are on to something. An illuminating portrait of one very special writer and a lifelong relationship with the animals he considered his most profound teachers, On Cats brings together Bukowski's reflections on the ruthless, resilient, indigent and endearing creatures he so admired. ISBN 9781782117278 -
30% OFF SALE - WAS €12.90, NOW €9.00. Jane Clarke's lyrically eloquent poems bear witness to the rhythms of birth and death, celebration and mourning, endurance and regrowth. An elegiac sequence, inspired by the loss of her father, moves gracefully through this second collection. Rooted in the everyday and backlit by mystery, here are poems to savour and return to, for the pleasure of finely honed lines that powerfully evoke the depth of our connections to people, place and nature. ISBN 9781780374802
