{"title":"National Poetry Day","description":"Here are our favourite poetry books from the last year, use the code NPD2016 for 30% off!","products":[{"product_id":"what-i-learned-from-johnny-bevan","title":"What I Learned From Johnny Bevan","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWhat I Learned From Johnny Bevan \u003c\/em\u003eis a politically charged modern epic by celebrated poet Luke Wright. Written in electrifying verse, this is a story of friendship, class ceilings and the battle for the soul of the Left.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt university the mercurial Johnny Bevan saves Nick, smashing his comfortable middle class bubble and firing him up about politics, music and books. Twenty years later, as their youthful dreams disintegrate alongside the social justice they hoped for, can Nick, now a jaded music journalist, save Johnny from himself?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWinner of a prestigious Fringe First Award, \u003cem\u003eWhat I Learned from Johnny \u003c\/em\u003estrikes at the heart of a divided Britain with wit, compassion and laser precision.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9460497285,"sku":"9781908058331","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Penned_in_the_Margins_-_Johnny_Bevan.png?v=1752240381"},{"product_id":"asteronymes","title":"Astéronymes","description":"\u003cp\u003eastéronyme,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003en. (French).\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eA sequence of asterisks used to hide a name or password\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this follow-up to her acclaimed debut,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Shipwrecked House\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e(Guardian First Book Award longlisted), Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien takes us to a place where ancient stone circles collide with the language of the internet.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTrévien becomes curator of imaginary museums, indexing objects and histories with a quixotic energy. The stunning central sequence recounts a journey across the Scottish island of Arran, where myths are carved into remote caves and a mountain hides behind a 'froufrou of gas'.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFormally inventive and intricately composed,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eAstéronymes\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a book of redactions - and an elegy for places and people that have been ruined by time, erosion or neglect.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9491280005,"sku":"9781908058348","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Penned_in_the_Margins_-_Asteronymes_new.jpg?v=1752240379"},{"product_id":"reward-for-winter","title":"Reward for Winter","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"Those who admire Di Slaney’s sophisticated and dextrous poems will be deeply grateful for this first full collection. Swinging to the rhythms of farm life, the book takes in a wide range of tones, from the humour of ‘How to knit a sheep’ to the transcendent lyricism of the collection’s title poem ... [it also] includes a highly original sequence about chickens and egg-laying. Beautifully-crafted and very moving.\" -Jonathan Edwards, poet\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2005, Di Slaney abandoned her urban existence to become the custodian of an ancient farmhouse in Nottinghamshire, populating it with – at the last count – 150 animals, most of them rescued. \u003cem\u003eReward for Winter\u003c\/em\u003e tells that story on three levels: the earthy triumphs and tribulations of a novice smallholder; the history of Bilsthorpe from Viking settlement through Civil War to coal mining in the 1920s; and the quirky and affecting biography of one of the farm’s chickens.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The land, the generations who have tended it and Di’s animals are given voice, from the humorous ‘How to knit a sheep’ to the intimate, illuminating cycle focusing on a single chicken – learn, among other fascinating details, what dictates the colour of your breakfast egg. \u003cem\u003eReward for Winter\u003c\/em\u003e also explores Bilsthorpe’s hidden histories: lost landmarks Ingar’s Holt and Labour-in-Vain; an Elizabethan witch trial; a concealed Cavalier king and seventeenth-century adultery. This book stands as both a fascinating work of non-fiction and an elegant and accomplished volume of poems, offering the reader an escape hatch to the country and a lungful of bracing air.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Valley Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9493923461,"sku":"9781908853639","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Valley_Press_-_Reward_for_Winter.jpg?v=1752239741"},{"product_id":"the-way-the-crocodile-taught-me","title":"The Way the Crocodile Taught Me","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eKatrina Naomi\u003c\/strong\u003e’s \u003cem\u003eThe Way the Crocodile Taught Me\u003c\/em\u003e is the eagerly-awaited second collection by this lively and popular poet. With warmth, flair and a certain ferocious wit, Naomi tears into her subject matter: a childhood fraught with dislocation and violence but also redeemed by more tender memories of a sister and a kindly, although at times comically obtuse, grandmother.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the first half we meet the family which also includes: an often glamorous mother, a truly scary stepfather and the sort of relatives where one can expect fistfights to erupt at family weddings. The second half of the book is informed by the tragi-comic events of the first and includes: a bleak hotel, an attempted rape and a description of the sadistic relish with which the Kray twins dispatched their victims. \u003cem\u003eThe Way the Crocodile Taught Me\u003c\/em\u003e will delight people who know Naomi’s work and undoubtedly win new fans for her courageous and unabashedly entertaining poems.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9574733509,"sku":"9781781723319","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Seren_-_The_Way_the_Crocodile.jpg?v=1752240374"},{"product_id":"nothing-out-of-this-world","title":"Nothing Out of this World","description":"\u003cp\u003eCuba has always attracted the passionate sympathies of poets and revolutionaries. “Cuba, my love, they put you on the rack,” wrote Pablo Neruda in Canto General, “cut your face, pried open your legs of pale gold, crushed your pomegranate sex, stabbed you with knives, dismembered you, burned you.” Ernesto Che Guevara was a poet. The country’s national poets, Jose Martí and Nicolás Guillén were also revolutionaries. After the fall of Batista, poets like Ginsberg, Hikmet, Yevtushenko and Enzensberger visited Cuba to write about the Revolution. But Cuban poetry was revolutionary long before the popular triumph of 1959, and it has remained so despite – and because of – the profound changes on the island since.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis collection is an extraordinary and heady mix, combining African and Spanish influences, realism and surrealism, colloquialism and baroque, experiment and commitment, a lucid and moving introduction to a collective poetic subject that defies all kinds of social oppression.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smokestack Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":9950003333,"sku":"9780993454738","price":9.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Smokestack_Books_-_Nothing_Out_of_this_World.jpg?v=1752239829"},{"product_id":"spacecraft","title":"Spacecraft","description":"\u003cp\u003eMargins, edges and coastlines abound in John McCullough’s tender, humorous explorations of contemporary life and love.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpacecraft\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003enavigates the white space of the page and the distance between people, encompassing everything from lichen to lava lamps, and from the etymology of words to Brighton’s gay scene. Its powerful central sequence concerns the death of the author's first partner from an AIDS-related illness.\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpacecraft\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a humane, spellbinding collection from the winner of the 2012 Polari First Book Prize.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e 'Alive to the pathos in a punctuation mark, walking through dark places with a spring in its step,\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem\u003eSpacecraft\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eis a marvellous book.'\u003cbr\u003e Sarah Howe\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":39907954851918,"sku":"9781908058362","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/9781908058362.jpg?v=1752240363"},{"product_id":"bearings","title":"Bearings","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn her fourth collection Isobel Dixon takes readers on a journey to far-flung and sometimes dark places. From Mumbai to Hiroshima, Egypt to Edinburgh, the West Bank and beyond, these poems are forays of discovery and resistance, of arrival and loss.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBearings\u003c\/em\u003e sings of love too, and pays homage to lost friends and poets – the voices of John Berryman, Michael Donaghy, Robert Louis Stevenson and others echo here. And there is respite for the weary traveller – jazz in the shadows, an exuberant play of words between the fire and tremors.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this wide-ranging collection Dixon explores form and subject, keeping a weather eye out for telling detail, with a sharp sense of the threat that these journeys, our wars and stories, and our very existence pose to the planet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nine Arches Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":39906900475982,"sku":"9781911027027","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Nine_Arches_Press_-_Bearings.jpg?v=1752240362"},{"product_id":"crossings","title":"Crossings","description":"\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"265.8037541463669\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"84.0154242400981\"\u003eTopically, \u003cem\u003eCrossings\u003c\/em\u003e is a book about borders. Divided into two parts, it reflects on the many borders that Nicholas Murray has either crossed or confronted – geographic, cultural, linguistic, social, class, religious, sexual – and on the influence which borders have on how we think of ourselves and others.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"347.5602229687906\"\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"347.5602229687906\"\u003eIn the longer section Murray the traveller takes the reader to Spain and North Africa, Britain and Spain, on a trip along the Danube, and to Turkey. He also writes about Voltaire, exile, translation, the North\/South divide and Eton school.\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"335.76050290470255\"\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv data-canvas-width=\"335.76050290470255\"\u003eThe second section is less fragmented, drawing on Murray’s experiences as a long term – but part-time –resident in the English (or are they the Welsh?) Marches, in contrast to his many journeys around Europe.\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":18405442053,"sku":"9781781723470","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Crossings.jpg?v=1752240356"},{"product_id":"massacre-of-hummingbirds","title":"A Massacre of Hummingbirds","description":"\u003cp\u003e“People say it can’t be trusted – language, that silvery disease…” In this startling debut, \u003cstrong\u003ePaul Blake\u003c\/strong\u003e leads us on a virtuosic journey through language and landscapes – urban, exotic, historical, imagined, erotic, rural – and on the way invites us to find our own destinations, our own cures for the silvery disease, our own ‘rough breathing’ and ‘quietly moving on’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Massacre of Hummingbirds \u003c\/em\u003eis an impressive debut collection\u003cem\u003e. \u003c\/em\u003eThe bravado of the poem ‘For I Shall Consider the City Pigeon’, sits unusually comfortably beside the ragged beauty of ‘Buddlejas’ growing out of bomb-sites. The poet’s humble meditation on the white currant fruit in ‘Cuttings’ and the allegorical ‘Fall’, the poem that gives the collection its title, speak of both the breadth of Blake’s erudition and his use of simple, but beautiful, language.” – \u003cstrong\u003eJacqueline Gabbitas\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"\u003cem\u003eA Massacre of Hummingbirds\u003c\/em\u003e is a lyrical mediation on all aspects of nature; the sigh – exhalation of breath, birds, bees, and the body. The poems are beautiful, gritty and harsh. Blake demonstrates a mastery of the lyric in these subtle, rich poems that always yields surprises with an inevitable sonnet like turn.  The stresses in some of Blake’s lines strum like the pluck of a harp. There is a musicality that hypnotises the reader, stunning imagery and illuminating observances of the ordinary everyday make this a remarkably addictive collection of poems.\" –\u003cstrong\u003e Malika Booker\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Stonewood Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":19145834565,"sku":"9781910413135","price":4.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Stonewood_Press_-_A_Massacre_of_Hummingbirds.jpg?v=1752239001"},{"product_id":"brandon-pithouse","title":"Brandon Pithouse","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere were once more than a thousand men and boys worked at Brandon Pithouse in County Durham. Today the site of the colliery is a green wilderness. John Seed has set out to recover the lost and silent world of Durham pitmen – in the company of Walter Benjamin, Sid Chaplin and Charles Reznikoff.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eComposed of fragments of recorded speech, parliamentary reports and newspapers, Brandon Pithouse is a book about the experience of labour – about the pain and danger of working underground, about the damage to the human body and about the human relationships created in such conditions. It is a study in the attachments and distances which shape our relationships to place and time, the negotiations required to reconnect ourselves to a world that ceased to exist in the 1990s.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smokestack Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":19429376645,"sku":"9780993454707","price":7.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Smokestack_Books_-_Brandon_Pithouse.jpg?v=1752239315"},{"product_id":"missing","title":"Missing","description":"\u003cp\u003eMalcolm Povey began writing these poems when Jackie, his wife of forty years, a teacher, painter and print-maker, was diagnosed with cancer. After her death in 2008 he found himself stranded on ‘grief’s glacier’, adrift ‘on loss and loneliness’ and talking to his dead wife. Missing is part of that continuing conversation. Refusing the consolations of religion, or comforting ideas about an afterlife or an immortal soul, he forces himself to contemplate the unbearable facts of death. Learning to live with the ‘ever-present absence’ of his wife, Malcolm Povey insists that people are worth loving, that love does not die with the flesh, that poetry can sometimes help us cut through the well-meaning drivel the bereaved must often suffer, and that we survive in the memories and practices of those left behind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e‘The spectrum of feelings – sentiment, strong emotion, passion – is brought unflinchingly to bear upon the subject of loss. Malcolm Povey chronicles and anatomises mourning with wit, intelligence and unabashed integrity. You will be moved in ways you could hardly expect.’\u003c\/em\u003e \u003cstrong\u003ePaul Hyland\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Smokestack Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":19429558725,"sku":"9780993149092","price":7.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Smokestack_Books_-_Missing.jpg?v=1752239315"},{"product_id":"sunshine","title":"Sunshine","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eSunshine\u003c\/em\u003e is the powerful new collection from Next Generation Poet Melissa Lee-Houghton. A writer of startling confession, her poems ooze confidence and shine a light on human ecstasy and sadness with blinding precision.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e“Melissa Lee-Houghton is a bold, observant and daringly honest poet who intuitively knows what she is doing, even when she ventures into the scariest places.”\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e - Poetry Book Society\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penned in the Margins","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":39907951771726,"sku":"9781908058386","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Penned_in_the_Margins_-_Sunshine.png?v=1752240353"},{"product_id":"what-its-like-to-be-alive-selected-poems","title":"What it's Like to Be Alive: Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eDeryn Rees-Jones’s new book, \u003cem\u003eWhat It’s Like to Be Alive: Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e, marks a mid-career milestone in the life of this highly-acclaimed writer. From the poems written in her teens and early twenties included in her exciting debut \u003cem\u003eThe Memory Tray\u003c\/em\u003e to her most recent exploration of time and grief, we see the arc of development in her writing over twenty-five years as she visits and revisits the concerns that are the mainstay of her writing: memory, love, desire, and heartbreak in all its manifestations.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn her second collection \u003cem\u003eSigns Round A Dead Body\u003c\/em\u003e she continues to explore love and loss with praise poems and elegies that draw as much on Walt Whitman and Neruda as they do on a tradition of Welsh writing. The long-poem turned murder-mystery ‘Quiver’ is represented by a number of poems in the sequence, that see her playing with genre to explore the nature of female creativity, motherhood, and belief.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe author’s T.S. Eliot prize-nominated, \u003cem\u003eBurying the Wren\u003c\/em\u003e, features largely in the second half of the book. Rees-Jones here consolidates and concentrates her powers with poems that confront personal tragedy: the loss of a husband to cancer. Continuing to develop her use of the poetic sequence, \u003cem\u003eDogwoman\u003c\/em\u003e, inspired by the pictures of the Portuguese artist Paula Rego, explores how we can be fully alive in language even in the depths of sorrow.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith this knowledge of grief, Rees-Jones assays the life of Helen Thomas, the young widow of the poet Edward Thomas, exploring the complexities of marriage and the relationship between the body, perception and memory in \u003cem\u003eAnd You, Helen.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book concludes with a brand new long poem, ‘ i.m.’ an elegy which explores the power of memorialisation while testifying to the power of hope. This substantial volume is a tribute to the maturing voice of an essential poet.  \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Seren","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":19675995845,"sku":"9781781723388","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0441\/7369\/products\/Seren_-_What_s_It_Like_to_Be_Alive.jpg?v=1752241287"}],"url":"https:\/\/inpressbooks.co.uk\/collections\/national-poetry-day\/heberto-padilla.oembed","provider":"Inpress Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}