In this latest collection of poems, David Morley, prize-winning poet and Professor of Creative Writing at Warwick University, puts his versatile lyrical toolkit on display. Sustaining his interest in the Romany gypsy community, its mythology and folklore—subjects of his previous Poetry Book Society Recommendation and Choice books, The Invisible Kings and The Gypsy and the Read More
‘I cannot live, just fucking let me die.’ Whether intentionally or not, James Womack’s translation, if we can call it that, of Maximian’s Elegies comes at a rather appropriate time. A global pandemic ravaging the world with seemingly no end in sight, ecological and societal collapse perhaps just a few decades around the corner, we Read More
Theophilus Kwek is a prolific writer with five collections to his credit. His latest, Moving House, articulates a preoccupation with the themes of migration, belonging, colonial history, and the turbulent politics of the present. Kwek is uniquely qualified to tackle these themes. He grew up in Singapore, graduated with a degree in history and politics, and Read More
Errant is a fascinating collection that delves into the poet’s past experiences, with influences from other writings and encounters with other creative minds. Gabriel Levin’s sixth collection doesn’t fail to uncover, intrigue and take the reader through a myriad of places journeying between the poet’s homelands in the West and the Middle East. Levin who Read More
Sextus Propertius (ca. 50 BCE – 15 BCE) may not be the most famous Roman poet of the Augustan age, but possibly unjustly so. Patrick Worsnip has now translated Propertius’ elegiac poems for the modern reader, reinterpreting the 2007 Oxford Classical Text as swift, easy-to-read verse poetry. No prior knowledge of Latin literature is Read More
Rachel Mann’s A Kingdom of Love is a collection of incantatory free verse that leaves a pattern of allusions for readers with religious inclinations to discover. The sensual and intellectual writing within demonstrates what language can do when tackling weighty issues such as the presence of God, the reality of death, suffering and love. In Read More
City of Departures represents departures from home, touching down in a number of European cities, but it also represents a departure from reality, diving deep into an uncanny, dream landscape. That landscape is urban, but it is not to be found in the busy carriageways and shopping centres, nor the packed pubs and restaurants and travel Read More
Isabel Galleymore’s first full collection begins with an epigraph from Donna Haraway drawing attention to a planetary ecology where different species share developmental trajectories and living spaces; these are ‘companion species’ that are nevertheless distinct and irreducible one to another. The challenge in Significant Other is to avow species strangeness without estrangement. Not to exoticize Read More
Arthur Rimbaud, eminent French poet of the late 19th Century, precocious in his genius and revolutionary in his poetic considerations, was a defining figure of Symbolist and early Surrealist movements. This volume is a reissue of the masterful translation by John Ashbery, considered one of the greatest American poets of the 20th Century, having Read More
The intriguing title of Vahni Capildeo’s exquisite collection, Venus as a Bear, promises a kind of transformational prose, a mish-mash of animal and myth, of the ordinary and the extraordinary – and it surely delivers. A winner of the 2016 Forward Poetry Prize, Capildeo is undoubtedly a worthy contender for this year’s prize. Capildeo’s verse Read More