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Poetry & Drama
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New Cemetery
The conversion of a local natural-beauty spot into a municipal graveyard is the starting point for New Cemetery. From regular walks around the boundary near his moorland home in West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage chronicles the extraordinary transformation of landscape both outer and inner. These luminous and wry poems - composed in short-lined tercets - reflect the changing world: one of unstable weather patterns and unpredictable news events, all observed across a few acres of Pennine upland.As phases of lockdown come and go and the cemetery fills up with new 'residents', Armitage charts personal losses of his own, often retreating to his garden shed to navigate blank paper with pen and ink. Encompassing lyrical revelations and everyday vignettes alongside apocalyptic visions and imagined conversations with the deceased, these pages draw us into a parallel neighbourhood of remembrance and celebration.
£12.99
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Witches, Sorcerers & Spellcasters
Step into the enchanting world of Witches, Sorcerers & Spellcasters, where the serene darkness and treacherous allure of the magical realm come to life through classic poetry and stories.This captivating collection immerses you in the paranormal world of witchcraft and sorcery, where dark lyrics and the melancholic longings of otherworldly lovers are bewitched in verses that shimmer with invocations, hexes and mystery. Each poem and story is a spell, cast in words that evoke the haunting perfume of desire and the dark allure of magical mischief.Within these pages, you'll find timeless works such as Mary Coleridge's 'The Witch' and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 'Lady of Shalott'. These poems, along with excerpts from William Shakespeare and Arthur Machen, blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, drawing you into a landscape where the chilling whispers beckon you into their macabre spell.Witches, Sorcerers & Spellcasters is a must-have for those entranced by the mystical, the magical, and the malevolent forces that dwell in the shadows of unseen lands.Highlights include:- The Temptress, the Crone & the Shrew: 'Morgan Le Fay' by Madison Julius Cawein, 'The Witch' by Anton Chekhov, 'The Witch of Atlas' by Percy Bysshe Shelley- Cunning Folk & Healers: 'Tam o' Shanter' by Robert Burns, 'A Lowland Witch Ballad' by William Bell Scott, 'Baba Yaga' by Verra De Blumenthal- Sorcerers, Spellcasters & Enchanters: 'The Sorcerers' by W B Yeats, Macbeth by William Shakespeare, 'The Sorceress!' by Vachel Lindsay- Invocations, Incantations & the Dark Arts: 'A Witch Shall be Born' by Robert E Howard, 'A Witch's Chant' by James Hogg, 'The Wizard Way' by Aleister Crowley
£10.00
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Rhyme and Reason
'Enchanting' Stephen Fry 'Unconventional, surprising and provocative from the first page' Times Literary Supplement Did you know: - Lord Byron sold more books in a day than Jane Austen did in her lifetime - During the First World War there were more women poets published than soldier poets - A kitchen-maid became one of the most popular poets of the 18th century Some people worry that they don't appreciate poetry; but English poetry wasn't written to be appreciated, it was written to be enjoyed. For six centuries people have been reading poetry for enjoyment - for fun, romance, religion and entertainment - and this is a book about those people. Rhyme & Reason takes you from a medieval accountant (called Chaucer) trying to entertain his lord, past a doomed love affair in the Tower of London, through adoring sonnets and notebooks filled with dirty poems, and into the heart of Byromania and the Victorian hearth, to help you understand why poetry has had such an enduring hold on the British psyche. From the poems of housemaids to the rhymes of kings, it's the history of Britain through the poems that people read, recited and loved.
£10.99
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£6.95
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The Taming of the Shrew
'I pity the man who cannot enjoy Shakespeare' George Bernard ShawThe beautiful and witty Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. As he meets her caustic words with capricious cruelty, Katherina is forced to reconsider her position, in one of the greatest and most contentious of all comic battles of the sexes.Used and Recommended by the National TheatreGeneral Editor Stanley WellsEdited by G. R. HibbardIntroduction by M. J. Kidnie
£8.99
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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog
One afternoon, in a particularly bright and glowing August, some years before I knew I was happy...'The best entry to Dylan's prose writing' GUARDIAN'Powerful and profoundly beautiful' SIR ANTHONY HOPKINS (on 'A Visit to Grandpa's')Shot through with the exuberance of youth and the melancholy of nostalgia, Dylan Thomas's beloved collection of loosely autobiographical short fiction reveals the poet in an entirely new light. From the young schoolboy gloriously immersed in make-believe to the penniless journalist who 'hoped, in a vague way, to live on women', the Thomas of these stories explores love, death, religion, adolescent sexuality and fragile male friendships in one of the twentieth century's most memorable collections of short fiction.Collected here in the most comprehensive edition available, the stories are presented with an introduction by Thomas's daughter, Aeronwy, and a detailed chronology of the author's life.
£10.99
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The Best of Dylan Thomas
Then all the matter of the living airRaised up a voice, and, climbing on the words,I spelt my vision with a hand and hair . . .Lyrical, mercurial and perhaps more influential than any other poet of his era, Dylan Thomas is one of the twentieth century's most iconic literary figures. This authoritative collection brings together Thomas's best-loved poems, short stories, broadcasts and plays (including Under Milk Wood) to reveal the idiosyncratic genius of this tempestuous, meticulous, virtuosic artist.Perfect for existing Thomas aficionados and students new to his work alike, this definitive edition includes notes, selected criticism and a chronology of the poet's life and times.Originally published as DYLAN THOMAS OMNIBUS
£12.99
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I Think of You Always All the Time
'I wanted this to be a letter full of news, but there isn't any yet. It's just a letter full of what I think about you and me...' Dylan Thomas's letters to the women in his life are among the most emotive, lyrical and beautiful ever to have been written. At various times cajoling, apologetic, tactical, affectionate and loving, the voice that leaps from these letters reveals Thomas at his most intimate and vulnerable.This revealing collection includes letters to Pamela, Thomas's first love; Caitlin, his partner in a tempestuous yet enduring marriage; and the women of his well-documented affairs, like Elizabeth Reitell, the woman with him on the night he died. Full of humour, longing, heartbreak and uninhibited honesty, these letters were crafted, like so much of Thomas's poetry, to secure a place in his lover's heart and memory - as all true love letters should.Originally published as THE LOVE LETTERS OF DYLAN THOMAS
£10.99
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Under Milk Wood
It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea...'A tour de force of oral poetry' GUARDIAN'I could get drunk just on the sound of the words' SYLVIA PLATHUnder Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas's best-known and best-loved work. A 'play for voices', it tells the story of the seaside village of Llareggub over one spring day. We meet curious characters such as Captain Cat, who dreams of his drowned seafellows, and Nogood Boyo, who dreams of nothing at all. Lyrical, funny and moving, Under Milk Wood has captured the imaginations of generations of readers. This definitive edition of a modern classic includes notes, selected criticism and a chronology of Thomas's life and times alongside an authoritative introduction from Walford Davies.
£10.99
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Stepmother
'Euripides said 'better a serpent than a stepmother.' For a moment, you like the idea of being a single line, winding around everything you touch. A vine.''Brave, graceful and absolutely vital - Mort shoulders away the old trope of the stepmother and replaces her with a host of humane women' SARAH HALL, author of HelmWhen a new relationship casts poet Helen Mort in the role of stepmother, she embarks on a personal quest for understanding; moving across verse and personal essay, from fairytale to modern blended family.Turning a bold and inventive gaze on this neglected dimension of female experience, these are candid dispatches from the shifting terrain of the modern family. As playful as it is moving, STEPMOTHER radiates Mort's signature empathetic warmth, but with the bite of truth.Mort interleaves ravishing fragments of lyric essay with gothic flights into verse that draw us deep into the woods of upon-a-time, and back, changed, into the now. Groundbreaking and transformative, tender and uncompromising, STEPMOTHER has much to teach us about female power and the fear it still provokes, our openness to change, and the surprising shapes love can take.'I was enchanted by her blend of generous lyric and furious cultural critique. A spell for seeing differently' CLARE POLLARD, author of THE MODERN FAIRIES
£12.99
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On Friendship
'A witty, heartfelt but intelligent celebration of what it means to have great friends.' The Times 'Delightful.' Guardian 'The overwhelming tone of the book is joy, along with an optimism about friendship's enduring essence.' Sunday Times A Times Literary Supplement Book of the YearFrom the bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road, a heart-enriching celebration of what makes us great: our friends.If we are lucky in our lives, our friendships will be rich and varied. They will be shared with those with two legs, with four legs, with whiskers or clean faces; they will come dressed in the simplicity of childhood or the professional attire of adult life; some will span decades, and some will be only fleeting. But the thing they will all have in common is that life is not only unimaginable - but unimagined - without them.In these gorgeous personal reflections, Andrew O'Hagan explores friendship through music and poetry, memory and history, illuminating the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do.Andrew O'Hagan's novel Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 31/03/2024
£9.99
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Talking in Bed and Other Poems
The essential pocket edition of this most beloved and quoted of poets.Our almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.In lines perfectly constructed and as beautiful as they are plain-spoken, Philip Larkin found a way of delineating our most difficult emotions - giving them back to us in images and formulations that help us both comprehend and contain ourselves. His is a fine-tuning that turns 'true and kind' more truthfully into 'not untrue and not unkind.' These are poems to live with and through, from the trenchant assertion of 'They fuck you up. . .', to the transcendent image-making of 'High Windows':Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
£10.00
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksLuminous and intensely lyrical, Dylan Thomas' works have captivated generations of readers, inspiring artists like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Igor Stravinsky, and Phoebe Bridgers. This selection includes some of his best poetry, celebrating both inner and outer landscapes in the face of mortality, decay, human weakness, and beckoning readers to 'rage, rage against the dying of the light.' Together, they exemplify his legacy as the greatest Welsh poet of the twentieth century.
£5.99
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£6.95
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Wordsworth
William Wordsworth is chiefly remembered as one of the 'Lake Poets'. Yet he was also one of the founders of English Romanticism, a writer whose early revolutionary fervor imbued his verse and his ideals.Much of Wordsworth's work was inspired by nature, but to a style rich in lyrical imagery he brought a deep interest in liberal humanitarianism and a profound concern for the lives, habits and speech of ordinary people, especially country people.This pocket-sized collection includes: 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' ('Daffodils'), 'Ode. Intimations of Immortality', 'Character of the Happy Warrior', 'The Solitary Reaper', 'To a Sky-Lark', 'Tintern Abbey', and extracts from 'The Prelude'.Also available in the 'Pocket Poets' series:9781782437116 Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems9781782437109 Kipling: 'If-' and Other Poems 9781782437093 Burns: 'A Red, Red Rose' and Other Poems
£4.99
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Loss
THE COMPLETELY UPDATED COLLECTION FEATURING NEW POEMS AND MUCH-LOVED FAVOURITES.** 100s of 5* Reader Reviews **OFFERING WORDS OF COMFORT TO BRING SOLACE TO THE DARKEST DAYS OF GRIEF, FROM THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER OF TO THE WOMEN and WILD HOPE.'Donna's words speak to my heart' Davina McCall'We all need more Donna Ashworth - her words change your perspective on life and offer hope in this crazy world' Chris Evans'Powerful and comforting' Dawn FrenchLosing someone casts us adrift in a lonely sea of grief, one that can be hard to navigate and is frequently overwhelming. Donna's wise words help us feel less alone on even the hardest of days, and bring comfort and understanding. She also gently reminds us that love and grief are two sides of the same coin, and that great grief is born only of great love.In this beautiful new package, Loss: The New Collection, is the perfect gift for friends and family when you're struggling to find the words. These poems offer solace and hope in times of need - and an opportunity to reflect on the lives of those we've loved and lost.Loss: The New Collection, features nearly 150 poems, over double that of the original edition of Loss. It includes previously unpublished works, and brings together all of Donna's beautiful and poignant words for the bereaved from across her bestselling collections.PRAISE FOR DONNA ASHWORTH'Absolutely beautiful ... whenever I'm feeling lost, I reach for Donna Ashworth's words and feel found.' BRYONY GORDON'Some people have the Bible by their bed. Others a self-help manual. I have Donna Ashworth.' SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE'Donna's writing calms me down, lifts me up, inspires and enlightens. She makes women feel good about themselves and that's my type of girl!' DENISE WELCH
£12.99
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The Poems of Sylvia Plath
'When I think of Sylvia Plath, I am in awe of her intelligence, her language, her wit, her consonantal music - her sheer gift, and what must have been her drive, as its guardian, possessor, possessee, to realise it.' Sharon OldsThe Poems of Sylvia Plath is a landmark publication: the definitive edition of the poet's work for scholars, students and general readers.Sylvia Plath's first Collected Poems was published in 1981. This new volume draws on decades of research and almost doubles the content of that edition. The book is in two parts: the first contains the poems Plath composed in the last ten years of her life and upon which her reputation is founded, and the second includes those poems written in childhood and through her student years. In both sections, the editors have dated, corrected and arranged each poem chronologically, drawing on manuscripts, typescripts and related archival material. Critical notes document and cast new light on Plath's extraordinary evolution as a poet, from her childhood compositions, through the early blossoming of her talent and ambition, and into the molten core that was to shape the poems of her last few years, securing her place in literary history.
£40.00
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Milk Wood Memoir
Milk Wood Memoir, the fourth collection by Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, opens with a handful of family recollections of Dylan Thomas, including Samantha's grandfather's presence in the poet's house on the night he was shot at in March 1945. Thomas's wartime sojourn in New Quay in West Wales from 1944 to 1945 was one of the most important creative periods in his life. Many scholars have linked the small coastal town to the imagined Llareggub (buggerall) in which Thomas set his most famous work, Under Milk Wood.New Quay's present-day poet-resident, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch, takes up the baton of the guide who never made it into the final version of Thomas's play, showing us around her hometown through the eyes of its inhabitants past and present. In a series of eco-elegies, she explores how the wood of Under Milk Wood is turning into a floating forest due to coastal erosion. The paths once walked by Dylan Thomas between his bungalow and the pubs of New Quay are slowly collapsing into the sea, taking with them both trees and houses.As the guide takes us along the path she points out moments and monuments, all the while relating various 'hanes' (pronounced ha-ness, a Welsh word for stories, gossip) relating to local characters, a sort of family lore handed down the generations. Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch takes us by the hand and shows us the joys and sadnesses, excitements and fears behind the doors of the town she believes is key to Under Milk Wood.'Wynne-Rhydderch's poetry masters a variety of styles, is intelligent, sincere, and deeply human. How lucky we are to have a guide like her' - Matthew Dickman
£12.99
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£6.95
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Vorest
We were born into the no more The no more warm smell of a cattle shed my grandfather's hands, worn and beaten became withered and pale, his buckets empty fields aching with emptiness A stag runs into the forest, along the hedge and into the shadow of branches, carrying with it the trace of a memory. Time and nature have shaped the Forest of Dean - and the people who call it home. Always changing, this landscape carries the marks of every generation. Steeped in the scent of moss, Rose Day's debut collection is both a mourning and a celebration of the land, culture and history of the Vorest
£12.99
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Poems for Gardeners
The poetry in Poems for Gardeners is inspired by the ever popular pastime of gardening and being in nature. Whether it's a gift for a keen gardener in your life, or a source of inspiration for your own garden, there is something for everyone in this lovely anthology.The book follows the pattern of the gardening year and is divided into sections: spring, when green shoots start to appear; summer, when plants grow in earnest, followed by high summer with its sultry days and warm nights. Then comes autumn and winter, when the year ends with frost and bare branches.Filled to the brim with classic poetry, this collection contains poems about birds, plants, trees, flowers, weeds, bugs and butterflies, weather and wildlife, from poets such as William Wordsworth, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson.Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library poetry series of stunning, quarter-clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is compiled by publisher and anthologist Gaby Morgan, with an introduction by Alice Vincent.
£11.99
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Bird School
'A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes' Isabella Tree, author of WildingStep into the hide for a glorious new encounter with the British wildClose to Adam Nicolson's home in Sussex, there is a forgotten field overrun by bracken and thicketed by brambles. It is the haunt of deer and many birds - nightingales, the occasional cuckoo, ravens, robins, owls and in summer the sweet-singing warblers that come north from Africa to breed in English woods.This gorgeous book charts his attempt to encounter birds, to engage with a marvellous layer of life he had previously almost ignored. He wanted to look and listen, to return to 'bird school' and see what it might teach him.He built a small shed amongst the trees with nesting boxes and bird feeders. Cocooned inside, season after season, he got to know the birds: where they nest, how they sing, how they mate and fight, what preys on them, what they are like as living things.Beautifully written and woven through with philosophy, literature, science and a sense of wonder, always conscious that that this is an age in which the natural world is under siege, Bird School pulls back the curtain on seemingly ordinary birds, taking a long, careful and concerned look at our relationship with the wild.'Golden threads of literary, philosophical and scientific insight run through Nicolson's book, along with a sense that we are embarking on an adventure with him into a realm that we cannot hope to fully understand' THE TIMES'A worthy addition to a literary lineage that stretches back to the 18th-century writer and naturalist Gilbert White…Bird School, then, is a fitting title: we should learn to rekindle our enduring love affair with birds, before they vanish from our sight' DAILY TELEGRAPH
£10.99
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How to Lay an Egg With a Horse Inside
Why do we write poetry? Who should write it? And where do you even start?Well, Brian Bilston, one of the UK's most hilarious and best-loved poets, is here to take us through the hows, whys and whats of reading, writing and enjoying poetry every day.With his characteristic wit and charm, Bilston accompanies us through the jungle of imagination to the source of inspiration, takes us under the bonnet of a sonnet and over the fear of literary devices. He gives us a whirlwind tour through the history of verse, and shows us why human poetry will always triumph over any attempts by AI.Showcasing over a hundred brand new poems, and including practical critiques of some of his greatest hits, every page is an immensely pleasurable deep-dive into the life-affirming craft of poetry and a passionate argument for why we should all pick up a pen.How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside is for anyone who loves words and all the things they can do.
£16.99
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