The second in the ground-breaking mouthmark series, 13 Fairy Negro Tales is a vibrant pamphlet of contemporary poetry. In language scooped directly from a paintbrush, Inua Ellams announced his arrival on the poetry scene, with what has become a runaway bestseller. Written in language that has roots in Keats, hip hop rhymes and Shakespearean ......
** 15-YEAR EDITION ** Fizzing with the irreverence of ZZ Packer, the time-bending antics of Borges and the layered mystery of Alice Munro, the tales in 29 Ways to Drown grip by their absolute logic and the sheer absurdity of the inevitable truths they unravel.
The work in Chip's first full collection, A Class Act, reveals a poet very much engaged with the struggles of the working man. The poetry is characterised by an attitude of stern determination and a tender, underlying empathy that never forgets the human story behind every headline and statistic.
The poems in A Quickening Star are brought into increasingly vivid focus line-by-line, each line like a frame in a well-crafted film opening sequence. This loaded narrative quality of Sue Morgan's work is particularly evident in the short but harrowing 'Forced Entry', which begins with "The click-tick/ of a cockroach on a dark ceiling" and ......
A Suburb of Heaven is based on Stanley Spencer's work and the part-imagined life of Anna O, patient zero of psychoanalysis. Spencer's predilection for using Biblical scenes in a rural context carries a narrative impetus that Pnina Shinebourne builds on, and she deftly invents Anna O's history, complete with music notes and linguistic asides.
A Warning to the House That Holds Me builds on the milestones and mythology of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo to perform a deeply personal act of reclaiming power. Drawing on a long tradition of Somali storytelling, these poems achieve the complex balance of being as conversational as they are crafted.
Set in 1792, amongst the merchant princes and cut-throat backstreets of Liverpool, in the Palace of Westminster in London and aboard the Blackamoor Jenny - a guineaman making its sixth "African voyage" Abolition gives us the voices of people caught up in the original sin of slavery and fighting to survive it, profit from it, ignore it, or end it.
A follow up to the debut, "You Were For The Poem" that reveals the poet's perceptive eye tempered by experience. It portrays misfortune, but recognises the need to celebrate after rain.
