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Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2020 and the RSL Ondaatje Prize!
These are finely crafted poems that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
Roger Robinson’s range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; the ubiquitous presence of racism, both subtle and unsubtle; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents or accounts of incidents encountered in daily life; reflections on the purposes and costs of making art, as in fine poems on a George Stubbs’ painting, John Coltrane’s Ascension and cocaine. Not least, in the sequence of poems that reflect on the meanings of the Grenfell Tower fire, Roger Robinson finds ways to move beyond a just indignation to uncover the undertones of experience that bring us nearer to the human reality of that event.
The collection’s title points to the underlying philosophy expressed in these poems: that earthly joy is, or ought to be, just within, but is often just beyond our reach, denied by racism, misogyny, physical cruelty and those with the class power to deny others their share of worldly goods and pleasures. A Portable Paradise is not the emptiness of material accumulation, but joy in an openness to people, places, the sensual pleasures of food and the rewards to be had from the arts of word, sound and visual enticement – in short an “insatiable hunger” for life. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity and generosity of spirit.
These are finely crafted poems, that reveal Roger Robinson’s capacity to tell involving stories and capture the essence of a character in a few words, to move the emotions with the force of verbal expression, and engage our thoughts, as in the sequence of poems that reflect on just what paradise might be. A Portable Paradise is a feast to be carried by lovers of poetry wherever they go.
• Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives between London and Trinidad. His first full poetry collection, The Butterfly Hotel, was shortlisted for The OCM Bocas Poetry Prize. He has toured extensively with the British Council and is a co-founder of both Spoke Lab and the international writing collective Malika’s Kitchen.
• Review by Bernardine Evaristo for the New Statesman on Wednesday, November 13, 2019: “A Portable Paradise (Peepal Tree Press) is the fourth poetry collection by Trinidadian-British poet Roger Robinson. It’s also his finest, ranging from the most breath-taking poems about the Grenfell Tower fire to the most exquisitely moving poems about the premature birth of his son, who had to fight for his life in an incubator. His poems are deep, mature, moving and inventive.”
A Portable Paradise
Roger Robinson (author)
Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
ISBN: 9781845234331
Number of pages: 144
Dimensions: 206 x 135 mm
Paperback
Published: 08/07/2019
£9.99
# new poetry
Roger Robinson:
A Portable Paradise
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Hard Damage works to relentlessly interrogate the self and its shortcomings. In lyric and documentary poems and essayistic fragments, Aria Aber explores the historical and personal implications of Afghan American relations.
Drawing on material dating back to the 1950s, she considers the consequences of these relations—in particular the funding of the Afghan mujahedeen, which led to the Taliban and modern-day Islamic terrorism—for her family and the world at large.
Invested in and suspicious of the pain of family and the shame of selfhood, the speakers of these richly evocative and musical poems mourn the magnitude of citizenship as a state of place and a state of mind. While Hard Damage is framed by free-verse poetry, the middle sections comprise a lyric essay in fragments and a long documentary poem. Aber explores Rilke in the original German, the urban melancholia of city life, inherited trauma, and displacement on both linguistic and environmental levels, while employing surrealist and eerily domestic imagery.
One hears everything here, where the landscape
is a clean knife, slicing the mute—just a cat
wiping its face, roofs with snow for weeks, ice
falling from fir trees like books pushed off a shelf.
“The book is an academic asset. It is fine literature, from beyond the borders of the English-speaking sensibilities. Students of literature, political science, sociology, foreign affairs, and many other disciplines can benefit from Hard Damage…” – NY Journal of Books
Aria Aber was raised in Germany, where she was born to Afghan refugees. Her debut book Hard Damage won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and will be published in September 2019. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker, New Republic, Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, Poem-A-Day, Narrative, Muzzle Magazine, Wasafiri and others. A graduate from the NYU MFA in Creative Writing, where she was the Writers in Public Schools Fellow, she holds awards and fellowships from Kundiman and Dickinson House and was the 2018-2019 Ron Wallace Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. She’s currently based in Berlin and is at work on her second book.
Aria Aber (Author)
Hard Damage
Poetry
Series: Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Paperback
126 pages
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
2019
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1496215702
ISBN-13: 978-1496215703
Product Dimensions:
6 x 0.3 x 9 inches
$17.95
# new books
Aria Aber:
Hard Damage
Poetry
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Don Paterson’s new collection of poetry starts from the premise that the crisis of mid-life may be a permanent state of mind.
Zonal is an experiment in science-fictional and fantastic autobiography, with all of its poems taking their imaginative cue from the first season of The Twilight Zone (1959-1960), playing fast and loose with both their source material and their author’s own life. Narrative and dramatic in approach, genre-hopping from horror to Black Mirror-style sci-fi, ‘weird tale’ to metaphysical fantasy, these poems change voices constantly in an attempt to get at the truth by alternate means. Occupying the shadowlands between confession and invention, Zonal takes us to places and spaces that feel endlessly surprising, uncanny and limitless.
Don Paterson has published seven poetry collections, three books of aphorisms, translations of Machado and Rilke, several works of literary criticism and an ambitious ars poetica, The Poem. His poetry has received many awards. He is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan; he also works as a jazz musician. He lives in Edinburgh.
Zonal
Don Paterson (author)
Poems
English language
Faber & Faber (publisher)
Hardback
Pages: 80
Publication Date: March 5, 2020
ISBN: 9780571338245
RRP: £14.99
# new books
Zonal
poems by Don Paterson
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En 2018 s’est produit un phénomène que personne n’avait vu venir et qui restera dans l’histoire de la poésie française : un recueil a rencontré à la fois un succès critique et public.
Cécile Coulon avait alors 27 ans, elle était connue comme romancière depuis déjà plusieurs années, et son premier recueil, Les Ronces, suscita un intérêt et un engouement dépassant de loin le cercle « habituel » des lecteurs de poésie.
Son second recueil, Noir volcan, est tout aussi éruptif, celui d’une poésie affranchie, libératrice, terrienne. Il fait partie d’un étonnant renouveau de la poésie constaté par les libraires dont Alexandre Bord : « Des poétesses comme Cécile Coulon et Rupi Kaur, dont les textes ont pu être lus au préalable sur les réseaux sociaux, attirent en librairie des lecteurs qui n’avaient jamais acheté un recueil de poésie. » Il est évident à la lire, que Cécile Coulon ne peut vivre sans poésie.
Cécile Coulon est née en 1990 à Clermont-Ferrand. En quelques années, elle a fait une ascension fulgurante. Elle a publié sept romans dont Trois saisons d’orage (Viviane Hamy), prix des Libraires, et Une bête au paradis (L’Iconoclaste), prix littéraire du Monde. Son premier recueil de poésie, Les Ronces (Le Castor Astral), a reçu le prestigieux prix Apollinaire.
Noir volcan
de Cécile Coulon (Auteur)
Alexandre Bord (Préface)
Broché : 160 pages
Editeur : Le castor astral
6 février 2020
Collection : Poésie
Langue : Français
ISBN-13 : 979-1027802449
ASIN : B07Z76LM7B
Dimensions du produit:
14,1 x 1,5 x 20,5 cm
15,00 EUR
# new books
Cécile Coulon:
Noir volcan
Poésie
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If two girls are two halves of a deep, lifelong friendship, what does one girl wholly become when the other is gone?
Amy Woolard‘s debut collection, Neck Of The Woods, sets this question as a hero-quest deep inside the mythos of the American South, wandering through childhood stories in which a girl alone must work to save herself.
These poems take on what happens when you wake up the morning after something happens, and find yourself in a different world, knowing there isn’t truly a way back home.
Part-elegy, part-survivor’s testimony, Neck Of The Woods maps a path divided into a before and an ever after.
Amy Woolard is a legal aid attorney working on civil rights policy and legislation in Virginia. Her first collection, Neck of the Woods, received the 2018 Alice James Award from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Boston Review, Ploughshares, and elsewhere, while her essays and reporting have been featured in publications such as Slate, The Guardian, and Virginia Quarterly Review. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Neck of the Woods (Poetry)
Amy Woolard (Author)
Publisher: Alice James Books
Publish Date: April 07, 2020
Pages 100
Dimensions: 5.9 X 0.4 X 8.9 inches
Language: English
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781948579070
Price: $16.95
# new poetry
Amy Woolard:
Neck of the Woods
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Sonnet L
In every breast Affection fires, there dwells
A secret consciousness to what degree
They are themselves belov’d. – We hourly see
Th’ involuntary proof, that either quells,
Or ought to quell false hopes, – or sets us free
From pain’d distrust; – but, O, the misery!
Weak Self-Delusion timidly repels
The lights obtrusive – shrinks from all that tells
Unwelcome truths, and vainly seeks repose
For startled Fondness, in the opiate balm,
Of kind profession, tho’, perchance, it flows
To hush Complaint – O! in Belief’s clear calm,
Or ‘mid the lurid clouds of Doubt, we find
LOVE rise the Sun, or Comet of the Mind.
Anna Seward
(1742-1809)
Sonnet L.
(In every breast Affection fires)
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Does a poet’s heart beat under Donald Trump’s brash exterior? This bestseller rearranges his quotes and tweets into hilarious poetry. It’s a new word order and a perfect stocking filler.
What if there’s a hidden dimension to Donald Trump; a sensitive, poetic side? Driven by this question, Rob Sears began combing Trump’s words for signs of poetry.
What he found was a revelation. By simply taking the 45th President of the United States’ tweets and transcripts, cutting them up and reordering them, Sears unearthed a trove of beautiful verse that was just waiting to be discovered.
This groundbreaking collection gives readers a glimpse of Trump’s innermost thoughts and feelings on everything from the nature of truth, to what he hates about Lord Sugar. And it will reveal a hitherto hidden Donald, who may surprise and delight both students and critics alike.
Now with seventeen all-new poems! As we lurch deeper into the Trump presidency, this timely publication also includes Sears’ scholarly footnotes and introduction, in which he excavates new critical angles and insights into the President’s poetry which the casual reader might initially overlook.
“I’m very highly educated.
I know words,
I know the best words”
– Donald Trump,
Campaign Rally, 30 Dec 2015
Rob Sears is a creative director at McCann Erickson advertising agency, has written comedy and fiction for McSweeney’s and (with his brother) wrote a sitcom for Audible starring Kevin Eldon, Felicity Montagu and Mitch Benn. He lives in Finsbury Park with his wife.
The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump
by Robert Sears (Author)
Subtitel: Newly Updated Edition
Including 12 Recently Discovered Poems
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd; Main edition
August 31, 2017
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781786892270
ISBN-13: 978-1786892270
ASIN: 1786892278
Product Dimensions: 14.4 x 1.8 x 22 cm
NUR code 754
$12.99
# new books
The Beautiful Poetry
of Donald Trump
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Selected by Carol Ann Duffy for Laureate’s Choice Love, death, Bruce Willis, public urination, being a woman, love, The Nanny, love. This pamphlet of poetry by Hera Lindsay Bird is a startling departure from her bestselling debut Hera Lindsay Bird by defying convention and remaining exactly the same, only worse.
This collection, which focusing on love, childish behaviours, 90’s celebrity references and being a woman is sure to confirm all your worst suspicions and prejudices. In a recent comments section on the Guardian, her work has been described as “This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs,” and “This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.”
“Keats is dead so fuck me from behind
Slowly and with carnal purpose
Some black midwinter afternoon
While all the children are walking home from school
Peel my stockings down with your teeth
Coleridge is dead and Auden too”
Hera Lindsay Bird has a MA in poetry from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2011 Adam Prize. Her work has been published by The Toast, The Hairpin, Sport, Hue & Cry, The Spinoff, The New Zealand Listener and Best New Zealand Poems. In 2017, she won the Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry and the Sarah Broom Poetry Prize. She is currently living in Wellington.
Hera Lindsay Bird
Pamper Me to Hell and Back
English Poetry
Publisher: Smith/Doorstop Books/
Penguin Books Ltd
112 pages
ISBN-10: 1910367842
ISBN-13: 978-1910367841
NUR code 306
Paperback
$11.69
# new poetry
Hera Lindsay Bird
Pamper Me to Hell and Back
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De E. du Perronprijs 2019 is toegekend aan Ellen Deckwitz voor haar bundel Hogere Natuurkunde (Uitgeverij Pluim).
De jury bekroont een fascinerende en onheilspellende dichtbundel, waarin verschillende genres, stemmen en stemmingen met elkaar worden verweven. De andere genomineerden waren Stephan Enter (Pastorale) en Asha Karami (Godface).
Aan het woord is een kleindochter die de stem van haar grootmoeder laat klinken en haar oorlogservaringen in Nederlands-Indië onder woorden probeert te brengen.
Het levensverhaal wordt alleen in flarden verteld. Deckwitz’ verhalende poëzie laat zien hoe families getekend worden door een land van herkomst dat werd verwoest. Het leed en de veerkracht, ingewikkeld met elkaar verbonden, blijven bestaan in elkaar opvolgende generaties. Dit is een bundel die in een tijd van mondiale crisis troost en relativering biedt.
De prijs bestaat uit een geldbedrag van 2500 euro en een textielobject, ontworpen door studio ‘by aaaa’ (Moyra Besjes en Natasja Lauwers) en vervaardigd bij het TextielMuseum in Tilburg.
De uitreiking is uitgesteld naar het najaar en vindt plaats op 15 oktober 2020, aanvang 20.00 uur in de LocHal aan de Burgemeester Brokxlaan 1000 in Tilburg. Voorafgaand aan de uitreiking houdt Maxim Februari, winnaar van de P.C. Hooft-prijs 2020, de negende E. du Perronlezing met als titel ‘E. du Perron en de pseudo-identiteiten’.
De E. du Perronprijs is een initiatief van de Gemeente Tilburg, de Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences van Tilburg University en Kunstloc Brabant. Vorig jaar won Jan Leyers de prijs voor zijn boek Allah in Europa. Eerdere laureaten waren onder meer Margot Vanderstraeten (2017), Stefan Hertmans (2016) en Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (2015).
Voor tijden, programma en aanmelding, zie www.kunstlocbrabant.nl/eduperron2019
Hogere natuurkunde
Auteur: Ellen Deckwitz
Uitgever: Uitgeverij Pluim
Taal: Nederlands
Hedendaagse poezie
Bindwijze: Paperback
Druk 1
September 2019
Aantal pagina’s: 80
EAN 9789492928054
NUR code 301
EUR 21,99
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Lilas
Ce n’est pas seulement l’annonce printanière
en cette terre où l’arbre a toujours sa verdure
et dédie à l’amour fleuri de la lumière
sa cime qui résiste à la grande froidure,
ni l’union au bleu rose des crépuscules
du mauve parfumé qui jaillit de ta sève,
que m’apportent, ce soir, tes primes panicules,
ô lilas où la nuit fait retentir son rêve !
Plus encor, la saison ranime en ma mémoire
les plaisirs que j’avais sous ta frondaison noire
à deviser avec mes amis en-allés !
Et suscitée, hélas ! par ta seule venue,
ma jeunesse surgit, découronnée et nue,
de ton ombre où j’entends quels appels désolés !
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
(1901? 1903? – 1937)
Lilas (poème)
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In Vrolijke verwoesting gaat Delphine Lecompte door waar ze gebleven was en tilt ze haar poëzie naar een volgend niveau.
Andermaal is haar verbeelding grenzeloos, kijkt ze de waanzin recht in de ogen en worden haar gedichten bevolkt door talloze wonderlijke figuren, zoals de bedeesde zeepzieder, de mystieke chrysantenkweker en de analfabetische jongenshoer. En ook dit keer bezit haar droomachtige poëzie een expressieve taalkracht die zo groot is dat het effect betoverend is: wie één zin leest, zal zich niet meer kunnen losmaken uit dit fantastische universum.
Delphine Lecompte (1978) debuteerde in 2004 in het Engels met de roman Kittens in the Boiler, daarna schakelde ze over naar gedichten in haar moedertaal. Voor haar debuutbundel De dieren in mij (2009) ontving ze de C. Buddingh’-prijs en de Prijs voor Letterkunde van de Provincie West-Vlaanderen. In 2015 verscheen Dichter, bokser, koningsdochter, dat genomineerd werd voor de VSB Poëzieprijs. Voor The Best of Delphine Lecompte (2018) selecteerde ze zelf de greatest hits uit haar rijke oeuvre, dat met Vrolijke verwoesting (2019) negen dichtbundels omvat.
‘Wie Lecompte leest weet waarom poëzie een wonder is.’ Menno Wigman
Delphine Lecompte
Vrolijke verwoesting
Gedichten
Nederlands
Paperback
Druk 1
September 2019
168 pagina’s
NUR code 306
EAN 9789403167107
Uitgever De Bezige Bij
€ 21,99
# new poetry
Delphine Lecompte
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Zwaal is een dichter die met een grandioos taalvermogen de wereld toont in al haar facetten, niet alleen als natuurverschijnsel maar ook als erotische verschijning, als de zee, het water, de vrouw, de kleuren en geuren van alles wat tastbaar is.
Zijn werk, dat hij sinds 1984 in een rustige regelmaat heeft gepubliceerd, is nu verzameld in zeesnede, waarin ook is opgenomen de nog niet eerder gepubliceerde bundel averij grosse. Gedichten van enkele woorden, gedichten van niet meer dan twee regels, gedichten met lange regels die van overvloed van de pagina lijken te vallen. Gedichten waarin de hele wereld als nieuw wordt getoond.
B. Zwaal (Vlaardingen, 1944) was theatermaker en regisseur. In 1984 debuteerde hij met de dichtbundel fiere miniature. Daarna verschenen nog tien bundels, waarvan een drifter werd genomineerd voor de Ida Gerhardt Poëzieprijs en zouttong voor de VSB poëzieprijs.
B. Zwaal:
zeesnede
gedichten 1984 – 2019
paperback met flappen
15×22 cm.
536 pagina’s
ISBN 9789028427655
prijs € 39,99
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