Poetry
Always subjective, we have tried to add here some of our local poets, and some collections which will appeal to a broad audience. Please contact us if you would like an emailed sample of any of the collections, like a virtual 'dip' into the book:)
Joy In Service on Rue Tagore, by Paul Muldoon ( hardback May 2024)
£14.99
Since his debut, New Weather (1973), Paul Muldoon has created some of the most original and memorable poetry of the past half-century. Joy in Service on Rue Tagore sees him writing with the same verve and distinction that have consistently won him the the highest accolades. Here, from artichokes to zinc, he navigates an alphabet of image and history, through barleymen and Irish slavers to the last running wolf in Ulster.
The search involves the accumulated bric-a-brac of a life, and a reckoning along the way of gains against loss. In the poet's skilful hands, ancient maps are unfurled and brought into focus - the aggregation of Imperial Rome and the dismantling of Standard Oil, the pogroms of a Ukrainian ravine and of a Belfast shipyard. Through modern medicine and warfare, disaster and repair, these poems are electric in their energy, while profoundly humane in their line of enquiry.
All the Good Things You Deserve, Elaine Feeney ( poetry April 2024)
£12.99
How do we love, trust and create in the aftermath of trauma? How do we name and speak that love?In this powerful new collection from acclaimed poet and novelist Elaine Feeney, images andmemory circle and recur, and the journey from pain towards a place of greater safety is far from linear. All the Good Things You Deserve juxtaposes violence, hurt and the tyranny of shame with love, beauty and the transformative possibilities of art.
Elaine has also written the novel ' How to Build a Boat' - also available via our website.
100 Happy Poems , ed Jane McMorland-Hunter ( hardback May 2024)
£12.99
A compact collection of 100 supremely jolly poems to cheer you up wherever you are. We can all benefit from a portable little nugget of happiness to soothe our weary souls in moments of stress, sadness and hardship. 100 Happy Poems gives you exactly that: 100 specially selected and sublimely happy poems to turn to in times of need, from cosy fireside idylls to exhilarating outdoor adventures, encounters with the beauty of nature, interactions with our fellow humans, and moments of quiet reflection. This little bit of happiness is always on hand, and it includes uplifting words from some of the greatest poets ever to put pen to paper, from Emily Brontë wandering on the moors and Paul Laurence Dunbar welcoming his beloved to Katherine Mansfield reliving a childhood moment, Wendy Cope sharing an orange, and Algernon Charles Swinburne chatting to his cat.
Quirkily and colourfully designed, this wonderful book is the perfect way to lift your spirits in times of turmoil. Keep it in your pocket, bag or desk drawer for an instant dose of joy when you are in need of a boost.
Rapture’s Road, by Seán Hewitt ( paperback Jan 2024)
£12.99
n this remarkable second collection, Seán Hewitt describes a journey haunted by love, loss and estrangement - from one of the Sunday Times 30 under 30 in Ireland 'Points to a bright future for Irish poetry' SUNDAY TIMES
As the mind wanders and becomes spectral, these poems forge their own unique path through the landscape. The road Hewitt takes us on is a sleepwalk into the nightwoods, a dream-state where nature is by turns regenerated and broken, and where the split self of the speaker is interrupted by a series of ghosts, memories and encounters. Following the reciprocal relationship between queer sexuality and the natural world that he explored in Tongues of Fire, the poet conjures us here into a trance: a deep delirium of hypnotic, hectic rapture where everything is called into question, until a union is finally achieved – a union in nature, with nature.
A threnody for what is lost, a dance of apocalypse and rebirth, Rapture’s Road draws us through what is hidden, secret, often forbidden, to a state of ecstasy. It leads into the humid night, through lethal love and grief, and glimpses, at the end of the journey, a place of tenderness and reawakening.
