Gill McEvoy is a poet who moves through the world with all her senses open. The quality of attention here is profound and pays off in an elegance of phrase and originality of image that makes these poems sing off the page. There is often a playfulness at work in the linguistic dexterity of these pieces, as the poet engages in a car chase with the moon or the flora, fauna and meteorology of October are presented as a weather forecast. There is a connection to land here that is lived and authentic, it is never sentimental, but it brims with hope and generosity even in those moments when we know 'the longed-for vision' might never appear.
Sue Lewis has won previous pamphlet awards and one of the many things that delights about her work is that each new collection pushes the boundaries of language and integrity further. The writing is lucid, precise, the metaphors are precise and fresh, but the effect is to take us within-to interior landscapes where there is not certainty but the constant liminality of life in process, the questions and doubts we contend with, the moments of compassion alongside the bittersweet ache for the lives that might have been, while tending to the life that is. There is not a false word in this exquisite collection as it makes its 'risky/tender pilgrimage.'
'There is no such thing/as refuge or retreat' ends one of the poems after layering vivid image on image, leaving us changed for the experience of reading. And it happens again and again-embodied, specific, clear images that deliver meaning that is integral to the experience yet surprising and new. And along the way the emotions build, not from being told or hammered home, but because we are allowed to sense them so deeply that we are able, also, to feel them: the loneliness and the tenderness, the sadness that is reflected back in the green eye of a piece of polished malachite, the loss that lurks in the corner of an office, the romance and the longing. This is a collection to savour, full of words that haunt, it pulls us back to find another layer of meaning, and another...
Grief runs through these poems, most beginning with an epigraph from a diary entry by Emily Brontë, whose first loss was her mother when she was just three years old. We are in an interior world in this sequence, thoughts and feelings pouring through these elegant poems, but always anchored in the body, in the physical. It's in the daily round of kneading the bread that anger is transferred from body to dough till both are transformed; it's in the 'intricate feathery leaflets/sweet chrysanthemum-like scent' of yarrow that refuge is experienced; it's in the imagination of an 'island's sun' that dark thoughts ('a crepe-winged crow') find respite. The poems move between the quiet daily life of a woman who loses those she loves over and over again and Emily Brontë as an extraordinary writer. And in that movement, emotions so earth-shattering, so veined with yearning, so unspeakable in their grief that they challenge death itself, find their form. Liliana Pasterska brings to life a soaring spirit in lucid images that leave us in awe.
In this exquisite, thoughtful and thought-provoking collection, Jenny Hamlett takes us into an interior world that is too often invisible and misunderstood. Deeply grounded in the natural world, communicated with linguistic dexterity and in images that are fresh and precise, Sorry, I forgot to pack my ears moves across registers, moving between moments of justified anger, bewilderment and humour, to create lasting impact. A mature, brave and insightful collection.
A gripping story of danger, intrigue, jealousy and love set in the uncertain world of Oliver Cromwell's post-civil war Republic. When army surgeon, John Lockyer attends the pregnant victim of a street stabbing, saving the child but not the mother, Lady Derryn Barlow, ward of the Earl of Pembroke, his life unravels. Hours later, a hospital laundry maid, Sally, is killed and, pressured to keep quiet by the Earl's henchman, Lockyer and his colleague, Madame O'Brien, search for Sally's sister, Finny, at the Whitecross Street brothel. But she has already fled. What is the link between the dead women? Who has taken the child? What are the brothel's secrets? And will the murderer be found?Infiltrating the exiled Royalists in France, will Lockyer uncover the answers? Will he find favour with Cromwell? And will he meet Madame O'Brien again?In this compelling debut, Tallis Clark deploys her medical expertise and meticulous historical research to deliver a pitch-perfect story of murder, forensic investigation, political high stakes and the search for truth.
What lengths will we go to for love? And in what forms could this love show up in?Strong-willed Lillibet, a Bolivian cholita wrestler, is enthralled by Emilio and Emiliano-twins in appearance only. They share success and acclaim in the wrestling world but their complex relationship sets them on a path towards tragedy. Against a backdrop of harsh economics, prejudice and societal changes across generations, Strength in Petticoats is a vibrant story in a carnivalesque world. A high-stakes tale of a search for love in which human flaws have dire consequences, as colourful as it is compassionate, Strength in Petticoats asks big questions in this inventive and compelling debut novel.
When Bard and linguist, Easten wins the right to bear Perori at an Eisteddfod, he little suspects how exceptional this lute really is. 'Perori' means music in Welsh, but her music does more than soothe and entertain. When Easten's liege lord, Caradoc, comes under attack from an aggressive neighbour, Easten sets off to plead for assistance from Caradoc's relative, High King Cormac of Tara.On his journey from Cymru to Ireland, Easten discovers more of Perori's healing powers and soon the instrument reveals that she can also help him understand even more languages, a skill that helps with his first task of negotiating safe passage from the small Viking colony in the place that will become Liverpool, still part of the Danegeld. There he also meets a young novitiate monk from Birkenhead Priory, who becomes Easten's travel companion.When the ship is attacked by pirates and a violent storm, Perori helps save lives on both occasions, and continues to rescue the party as they march across Eire to Cormac's court.Will Cormac be persuaded to send a fighting force to help his cousin? What dangers will Easten and Perori face on the treacherous journey home? Will they reach the harbour where their ship awaits? And what then...?An immersive adventure that resonates with myth and enchantment. Fast-paced and vivid, Perori is a compelling story that will leave you wanting the next instalment. After all, as the saying goes, 'If an Irishman dies while telling a story, you can be sure he'll be back to finish it."
Yvonne Baker has the ability to conjure a world that is at once recognisable and fresh. In this two-part collection we travel with those whose migration brings new worlds and loss in equal amounts. Who do we become in a different place separated from a land that still calls us? Who do we become if we remain behind? Baker interrogates these questions in sequences alive with vivid details, illuminated with affection and empathy. Here lives flutter down in fragments, a shelter is built of story, and unwritten rules for the poor are exposed. Here Irish aunts and other saints leap from the page, ready with an umbrella, making a holy show of themselves, or finding peace in the deep waters of the heart. Themes of belonging, memory and what haunts us run through all of Yvonne Baker's work, and her gift is to bring new perspectives to the questions we ask about what forms us, how we navigate a shifting world and how we remember those we love yet never fully know. At the heart of this collection that tends a sacred fire:'Time judders slowly slides forward accelerates'.
Alex Ingram is well-acquainted with sorrow. He's overcome childhood polio to become a successful singer whose lyric voice 'lays bare the joy and pain of being alive.' When tragedy strikes again, Alex finds hope through the healing power of music. And an epiphany awaits... an unforeseen encounter that changes everything. Standing alone but reconnecting with characters from Carole Strachan's acclaimed debut, The Truth in Masquerade, The Tenor Man's Story returns to the world of classical music. With a vivid and compelling story of love and loss, reminding us that life can be wonderful, often in the most unexpected of ways.
Lying on a lounger outside a flyblown café near Naples, Mike reflects on the last few months. He'd set off for the wedding of the charismatic Al, whose closed community is in the Calder Valley. Three months later, Mike's wearing a white robe, standing over an open grave. Alan Newcombe vividly immerses us in the life of Gritstone House. There's no electricity or running water - or contact with the outside world. And Al pulls the strings in a house where there's fraud, secret burials, and clandestine murder. Gothic, serious, yet brimming with wit and humour, Gritstone is an impressive debut.
Rooted in the land he dwells on, attuned to the ancestral lines of place and body and the resonances between the two, in Aubrac David Batten records our at-oneness with the nature that humanity too often attempts to fragment. Lucid, deeply effective and intelligent, these poems take us into a landscape where the past speaks loudly to the present and to the future, letting us know that we are not alone, not apart. In a year in which the poet himself moves through cycles of chemotherapy, along with the randomness of death, life and renewal re-assert themselves with the movement of the seasons. As he observes nature with a keenness of vision and attention that is present in every line, nature returns the gaze. A collection that bears witness to the human and more than human.
Journalist Simon, reporting on the Knights of Camelot theme park run by an eccentric Marquess, is drawn into a tangle of intrigue, witchcraft, alternative lifestyles, mythology and secret technology as he investigates mysterious disappearances in Glastonbury, including his new girlfriend, Jenny. On Jenny's trail, Simon joins Abballon, a female dominated community inspired by worship of the goddess Gaia, where the role of men is to serve obediently, modern technology is banned and all must obey the tyrannical ruler, Philomena. Cast out from Abballon, Simon uncovers a fiendish plot by a deranged scientist to transform abducted people into mythical creatures, from centaurs to satyrs, intended to populate the Marquess's new Mythological Magick theme park. Will Simon be able to rescue Jenny in time to prevent her metamorphosis into a mermaid?
From objects imbued with meaning and memory to the places that nurture and anchor us, Denise Bennett's poetry is grounded in a sense of the sacredness of the everyday. There is a deep sense of justice and relationships of integrity here that burn a bright light in dark places and an attention to the everyday that asserts the sacredness of all life. The poetry here is not only accomplished but deeply felt. It comes from a place of listening and seeing with the heart and is delivered in imagery that is lucid, precise and moving.
Jenny Morris has a gift for observation translated into fresh and lyrical imagery. In Eye Level she looks beneath the surface of memory with a wistful but never sentimental gaze. Here 'memory stains your bones' and we enter a landscape of yearning and mortality is never far away, yet there is also hope and resilience here, the ways in which we pass on hope to the generations below us because 'The story must go on and on.' Along the way, ancestors are honoured, the places and people who form us are witnessed to and new generations are celebrated. Eye Level is a compassionate and intelligent collection leavened with verbal dexterity and wry humour from a mature and accomplished voice. A delight to read and re-read.
Summer Solstice 2065.16 years after a devastating pandemic and societal collapse.Viola sets off into the forest to prepare for the gathering of her community, who bring their ghosts and fears, hopes and secrets, knowing that a single day can change everything.And theirs are not the only voices. The forest also has stories of grief and resurrection, trauma and forgiveness.Linguistically-inventive and deeply moving, this richly layered narrative asks what we mean by consciousness or a life well-lived, human or non-human.Beyond the end of the world, where is life to be found?"In her visually-inventive novel, Jan Fortune not only inhabits the minds of a community of engaging characters who are navigating a fragile future but also proves herself fluent in the language of birch and oak, to be acutely attuned to the song of moss and clover. ...a vital work that grapples with such momentous themes as individual and collective trauma, yet celebrates love, resilience and the intimate, reciprocal relationship between the human and more than human."- Susan Richardson, author of Words the Turtle Taught Me and Where the Seals Sing"Deeply rooted and grounded in a loving respect for our living earth and her healing medicines, this heartfelt story weaves magical rhythmic wordspells in a web of vibrant prose. A superb and nurturing work of love, hope and reconnection."- Uma Dinsmore-Tuli, author of Yoni Shakti and Yoga Nidra Made Easy"Jan's newest work invites you into an embodied journey through the colors of grief while reconnecting to the natural world. Reading this book is a healing act in its own right.''- Yoli Maya Yeh, Therapist, Educator & Activist"An intriguing exploration of our human connection to the earth and to each other... bleakly prophetic, the novel holds out the possibility of redemption... A book to savour for its wise heart."- Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered: My Years as a Nun
What does it take for us to put our lives on hold and begin to heal? In the midst of a sequence of traumatic events-recovering from crystal-meth addiction, facing infertility, battling chronic fatigue, surviving breast cancer, rebuilding a relationship with her narcissistic mother only for it to fall apart again before her mother's suicide-Clea realises she has to take a break from men.There had been too many disasters beginning with the Adonis-like Old Etonian, Luke, who can't stop cheating. What unites her with darkly handsome Tarquin, who follows Clea to the USA, only to rob her? Jordan, a dumpster-diving tweaker who deserts her for a porn star; Saint Peter who persuades her into rehab; sexually confused Brent; violent Conrad and self-obsessed Alfie? Why does she turn down decent Nate who is just too nice?As Clea digs through the evidence, she exposes learned behaviours that keep her dependent. Denial is a powerful drug and the endorphin rush of apologies, promises and make-up sex fix things over and over... until they don't.Rich, powerful and authentic, Some Boys I Knew takes us on a raw, insightful journey to becoming the person Clea most needs: Herself. A vivid memoir from the writer of Tweaking the Dream.
RIP is located in a world of loss.Waddah Faris was Omar Sabbagh's maternal uncle. He was an artist, a nomad, a man who 'embossed' himself on those he knew, a person who '...when he walked into a room / God switched-on his camera' ('Charisma'). Above all, Waddah Faris was loved: 'People loved you because they knew you, and knew, too, / that kindness for you was inevitable, a lit fuse. / You lived your life like a full-bodied wish, careless with your care,' ('Life With Style'). His loss is enormous and for the poet and his family that loss is deeply personal. Those dying in Gaza are so many that the particularity of death is too easily subsumed in overwhelm. We can hardly fathom the enormity of the daily horror. The loss of a whole people leaves us aghast and '...when it comes to a starless catastrophe / like this, and all your tools go numb,' ('Losing Vocab') we need to ask what kind of world we are living in, how we got here and how we lend our support to the suffering. Moving between these two losses-each personal, each urgent, Omar Sabbagh asks us to care. He asks us to dare to look into the face of a child who, limbless, 'smiles at this father', who in the worst of worlds, continues to find joy, hope and love, 'This child of sheer perfect music, blow after blow after blow.' ('This Child Of Utter Song'). He asks that we see, '...people / just like me-with needs and desires, with projects / and hopes and fears-dying.' and ask ourselves, 'Who will protect / them? Because only that is real.' ('The Delusion')
With her Yorkshire dad and Lancashire mum, life in their small terraced house on Minto Street with her five siblings was always going to be quirky for Miss Jean Kevitt. Chaotic and fun-loving, noisy, defined by games and music, they were proud of their dad, a clarinettist in a band. When he wasn't practising, the Third Programme was on and always loud. They had an assortment of instruments but it was their exotic zither that Jean and her sister Chris fought to play. Where it came from they never asked and Jean assumed every house had one. But their zither-a beautiful object sitting among the mundane mess in the pantry-mirrored the loveliness of their life amidst the clutter at 66 Minto Street.Not a typical memoir, A Zither in the Pantry is more a collection of short stories, written with humour by this 11-year-old child. It is also a social commentary on working class life in the 40s and early 50s.
In an embattled world can integrity trump corruption?Hungover and tired after a month doing business in Tirana, and needing to lie low following a threat to his life, Nicholas Wyndham assumes the identity on a placard held up in the arrivals hall at Heathrow.This chance-act, with its ensuing web of deceit, ensnares not only Nicholas, but also Natasha, the young activist who meets him at the airport, and all those around them-with life-changing consequences.Moving across England, Wales, Albania and Denmark, and set against the backdrop of the British General Election of 1997, and the public desire to replace a government beset by allegations of sleaze and incompetence with a fresh and optimistic administration, Deception is a timely exploration of what we mean by power, class, corruption, identity and truth. A compelling story of the potential of the human spirit.
At 44, New York divorcee, Mel, is not ready to give up on God or the possibility of motherhood. Between running an actors' agency in Hammersmith and rehearsing her role in a rock musical, she agrees to take care of her stepdaughter, Jess's challenging four-year-old son, Billy, two afternoons a week. Writing: Playing Billy's Mom on a strip of paper to place in her Gratitude jar, she prays that her good deed will have a pay off: her own fertility.Meanwhile, prepped with hormone tablets and injection at the ready, she awaits the return of charismatic Royce, who has been filming in Hollywood. But all is not well with Royce. A strange incident on Venice Beach after dark has shifted his world. Can he really be cursed? Desperate, Mel reaches out to her friend, Anto. He's gay but wants to be a parent. Thwarted again, will surrogacy be the answer? Will Mel be locked into taking on more responsibility for Billy as Jess spirals into depression following the loss of her father? Or can Mel make a life with the new man in her life, refugee Hassan, suffering from PTSD and raising his disabled eight-year-old son alone?Or will life take an unexpected turn? As Mel's faith moves towards Buddhism under Anto's influence and a friend steps in to help with a problem deeper than infertility that is gripping her life, will she be able to answer the call when an unlooked for opportunity presents itself?A deeply empathic, humane debut, Gratitude asks how we live now and how we make meaning in lives that rarely work to plan.
Lyrical prose, a vivid sense of place and compelling characters who remain with us combine in this outstanding debut novel from Slovenian writer, Brigita Orel.
Poems inspired by the life of Vitalie Rimbaud, mother of the radical poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Vital Signs draws on the inspiration of the medical vital signs in three parts-'Body', 'Pulse' and 'Breath'-each with nine poems that explore romantic love, death and the experiences of grief and loss in a poetry that is as embodied, pulsing with life and rhythmically breathing."Edward Ragg's Vital Signs is a book of mourning, devotion, and creaturely alertness ('Word turned flesh like a foot in dirt'). In delicate, precise rhythms, these poems vivify our sense of the body's pulses, the beating of the heart, the vibrations of the breath. Ragg offers poetry as 'the body's other dance'. Conjuring Celan's 'worldbeat', the poet evokes Beijing snows and Durham skies, a visitation from a bat, the stamping of a bull's foot. These are tender, capacious poems of vigil and remembrance and rededication: elegizing the poet's father; addressing the beloved; limning a northern English landscape of disused mines and small villages; dreaming of 'Venice in a Beijing light'; moving among languages and inheritances. Ragg is a poet of economy, freshness, and subtle musicality. His work is open to traveler's tales and contemporary sculpture and manifests a complex historical consciousness; it bespeaks both a homing instinct and a cosmopolitan scope. We encounter a poet sounding out his vocation, 'listening to whole / bodies of poems echoing across / land and sea'. In Vital Signs, Ragg takes up the oldest tasks of the poet: to listen, to commemorate, to sing. 'Conscious the world's breath / will one day scatter us,' this poet registers 'the end of being echoing'."-Maureen N. McLane"With a deft yet emphatic touch, and by probing the things of life at a molecular level, the poems in Vital Signs continue to seek answers to the unanswerable, to the mysteries which surround and inhabit us. Here, in the conscious company of poet and poem, Edward Ragg explores the palette of the human condition, both at home in the familiar landscapes of family and away at the more foreign destinations and starting points of adulthood, until a kind of alchemy occurs that enables us - in body, pulse and breath - to savour what really matters, and to understand the intricacies of language, love and legacy. Ragg speaks of 'The gamble we take every time / we try to say what we think'. In Vital Signs this gamble pays off as 'certainly as the incoming tide'."-Claire Dyer
In this prize-winning, lyrical debut full collection, we encounter poetry that is both delicate and powerful. Yvonne Baker writes in the liminal space between the interior and exterior world, illuminating both with grace and precision.What it means to belong, how memory constitutes us, how identity shifts and weaves, how we live in an uncertain world with authenticity and without giving up hope-these themes thread together lucid moments and small but vital epiphanies. And even at their most interior, these moments are embodied, we sense the person of another creature, we feel the weight of 'plastic babies', cup in our hands the porcelain of a pot that holds more than air, hear 'the clink of stone and shell' on a shingle beach, sit by a washing machine and weep and feel the 'roots / yellow as old bones, / shift in darkness, undeterred.'Haunted and haunting, Love Haunts in Shades of Blue, conjures the fragility of past and future, but like the 'Bristlecone Pine' offers the faith that '... the heartwood, linking root to trunk, / will be enough to sustain you.'
Formally distinctive and beautifully honed, Mother, (v) is a reflective, precise and poignant sequence exploring fertility and its absence. This is honest, exquisitely realised poetry written with a freshness and intelligence that draws the reader in deeply, confirming Anne Marie Wells as a unique and subtle voice.Following several US publications and awards, including being a Wyoming Woman of Influence nominee in the arts category for amplifying the voices of the LGBTQ and disabled communities, Mother, (v) is Anne Marie Wells' first UK publication, an award-winning chapbook that introduces her work to new audiences.
Emerging from the mid-October drizzle, Miles joins keen members of the Far and Fast Walkers Society in the Surrey Hills. An unnerving presence, he soon usurps the authority of the walk leader, enticing the party to Miteby, a mysterious village not on any map, where the walkers encounter long lost loved ones.Entranced, the group are compelled to return to this idyllic, nostalgic place, there re-living their past in better ways.But Miles has a nemesis, Lucifix, who intervenes, luring people to the Underside, where life's fears, regrets, guilty secrets, obsessions, hatred and betrayal haunt those there. A place of hellish eternal torment.Walking out of this World is an epic duel between two spirits, Miles and Lucifix, that will determine the fate of the walkers. Another original and engaging novel from Stephen Ford, following Destiny of a Free Spirit, about how we can heal our pasts or live trapped in our own shadows.
"A thought-provoking collection that delves into the depths of human emotions, relationships, and the power of language and art, often depicting a sense of longing, loss, and the search for meaning. The poems highlight the consequences of missed opportunities, the weight of regret, and the realisation of one's own limitations. And they explore the transformative power of love-the relationship between the poet and his daughter, Alia, being a recurring theme. Through rich imagery and introspective reflections, Omar Sabbagh invites readers to contemplate the complexities of existence."- Adam Wyeth, Associate Artist, Civic Theatre Dublin"It's always gripping when a writer turns the textual mirror on himself and starts to reflect on his own identity. For Echo is both a highly original poetry collection and a fascinating self-portrait. In it, Omar Sabbagh uses poetry and prose to challenge and dissect his own psyche: an examination more immediate and intimate than any scenes from a life. If Sabbagh's Echo is perhaps the ideal reader, in this book he allows us to see through an exceptional mind's eye. There we glimpse the poet as he turns towards, and away from, the mirror."- Fiona Sampson
Harry Whittaker is a world-famous, superstar actor, as revered as Laurence Olivier, as roguish as Jack Nicholson. When he dies suddenly of a heart attack he finds, to his astonishment, that he's still here among us, able to watch the effect of his mean-spirited will on those left behind. Meanwhile his unacknowledged son Richard is struggling to escape from his failing café in Worthing, his dotty, demanding mother and the wrong girlfriend..."I romped through this! A mad handful of compelling characters, a generous helping of humanity, and a perfect ending. A warm-hearted read that fizzes with life."- Ali Bacon, author of In the Blink of an Eye and A Kettle of Fish"Hugely enjoyable. I loved the idea behind this novel, so funny and original. Bobbie Darbyshire writes with wit, wisdom and warmth."- Sarah Rayner, author of One Moment, One Morning and Searching for Mr Yesterday
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