Other books that might interest you

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  Greekling

  Kostya Tsolakis

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  Greekling,the much-anticipated debut poetry collection by Kostya Tsolakis, celebrates and commemorates damaged and rejected Greek bodies, be they of flesh and blood, made of marble, or natural bodies. In intertwining Greek culture, history and poetic influences with the contemporary queer experience, this collection is perceptive, lyrical, and deeply evocative of time and place. From an Athenian childhood to a closeted adolescence in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic, towards sexual self-discovery, maturity and freedom – Tsolakis charts the pursuit of unconditional happiness.
  These poems explore queer joy on dance floors, darkrooms and bedsits, but also the risks of crossing strangers' thresholds or in encountering the violent machismo and hypermasculine expectations of the society you grow up in. And ever-present through the collection is Athens – the city the poet once turned his back on at eighteen but has come to love again. Moving between lament and celebration, Greekling reflects on a changing and often misrepresented country, the nature of motherlands and mother tongues; it is a voyage out – and a return.

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  Marcus Douglas Presents The...

  Marcus Douglas

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  New Jerusalem stands sealed away from a world destroyed by disease and war, but their Orator Nebuchadnezzar has led them astray from what built their utopia. In the wake of his pride, a new disease began ravaging the city until one of the seven Localities needed to be sealed off for the good of the others. 
  With the city foundering, critical systems grinding to a halt, and food stores dwindling, they find hope in young David Shakir, whose grandfather founded this great haven. But will that burden crush the young boy whose spent his life thought sickly and weak, confined to his wheelchair? 
  The city looks to David and his closeness to God for leadership and his armor bearer, Elijah Ruiz. Can they be able to lead them out of these dark times, or will the looming threat within the sealed off Locality Seven consume them all?

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  Why I Am Not a Bus Driver

  Ashley Hickson-Lovence

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  Why I Am Not a Bus Driver is a moving and musical debut collection exploring grief, love and the power of community, from the author of The 392, Your Show and Wild East. The heart of this book beats in sync with that of the poet's late grandfather, as, sonnet after unconventional sonnet, Hickson-Lovence uncovers the micro-histories woven into the streets and journeys that shape us. These poems speak with Frank O'Hara, in their stream-of-consciousness lyricism, in meditations that dance like winding roads, both immediate and nostalgic. Committed to honouring the authentic and everyday, the real and true, human connection is the destination in this stirring collection, and every reader has a priority seat.
  "Among the most natural, elegant sonnet sequences I've read: a memorial, moving in its radical honesty and grace. What both broke and strengthened my heart about this collection is the sheer humanity and authentic curiosity that make a life feel meaningful, transfiguring both the extraordinary and the everyday with dignity, love and imagination. Just gorgeous." Luke Kennard
  "A moving collection attuned to the knowledge that poetry of the family is both plain and complex, that the dead sometimes require elegy and sometimes celebration; and all of this held within the strength and uncertainty that is the human-made body of the poem." Andrew McMillan
  "A heartfelt elegy to a grandfather, skilfully weaving themes of legacy, promises, influences and dreams. While the grandfather takes centre stage, England itself emerges as a powerful backdrop to the story. Hickson-Lovence's unified themes lend the book the feel of a novel-in-verse, yet each poem resonates with its own emotional strength. An endearing and enlightening read—don't miss it." Roger Robinson
  "Ashley Hickson-Lovence's debut collection offers an intricate reminiscence, an insight into fierce familial bonds and how they shape a life indefinitely. These poems pulse with longing, vulnerability and doubt, highlighting the human need for connection, the resilience that grows from loss, the certainty that comes when the love unfolds." Rebecca Goss

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  A Gateway Has Opened

  Liam Blackford

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  A Gateway Has Opened is a poetry collection by Hong Kong-based poet, LIAM BLACKFORD, containing 36 missives on truth and reality, anger and rage, complexity and change, and power as manifested in people, corporations, governments, borders and cultures. The poems inhabit a chaotic and psychedelic world where water flows into the sky, nightclubs have hundreds of floors and where banks and malls publish theories on knowledge and personhood. Therein, human society is fraught with harm and violence but also euphoric with the widening horizons of possibility. The collection is notable for its strict adherence to a unique poetic form (each poem has six stanzas, each stanza with six lines, and each line with six syllables), which in its red-eyed absoluteness suggests that the poems are giving voice to an alien, an angel or a machine. Though avant-garde and philosophical, the collection is highly reflective of the poet’s place and time, in which Hong Kong is at the epicentre of epochal political and cultural change. 
  “The poems ... ‘quiver with tension’ as the speaker straddles the liminal space between dreams and the mundane.” —Ryan Fenton. “In Blackford’s verse, one is in our world, with its political and environmental anxieties, with its affluence and parallel unease.”―Andrew S. Guthrie, Proverse Prize Finalist 2013. “... what bubbles beneath the surface is the courage to find astounding beauty and inspiration amidst confounding and cruelty, and hold them both.” —Jack Mayer, Winner of the Proverse Prize 2019. “...unique explorations of poetic form.”—Philip Mead, Emeritus Professor, University of Western Australia.  “Blackford’s worlds are jarring and harsh; psychedelic yet pungent with our reality. His strict form is muscular and fascinating. Gateway seethes with energy – I loved it.”―David West, Western Australia.

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  Sky wri tei ngs

  Nasser Hussain

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  Poems written only from three-letter airport codes demand a new kind of passport. Every major airport has a three-letter code from the International Air Transport Association. In perhaps history's greatest-ever feat of armchair travel, Nasser Hussain has written a collection of poetry entirely from those codes. In a dazzling aeronautic feat of constraint-based writing, SKY WRI TEI NGS explores the relationship between language and place in a global context. Watch as words jet-set across the map, leaving a poetic flight path. See letters take flight (and leave their baggage behind).

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  Amounting to Nothing - Poems

  Paul Quenon

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  After 60 years at Gethsemani Abbey, Br. Paul follows up his recent memoir, In Praise of the Useless Life, with a poetic collection that shows how to do just that – by writing poetry. 
  
  
   
  
  Amounting to Nothing is both practical and metaphysical, a puzzling over the ultimate things of life, and a descending on the Benedictine ladder of humility to the earthly creatures surrounding a Kentucky monastery. This is less an exploration in self-knowledge than a forgetting of self in the wonders of everything. Quenon treads bare footed on the margins of mortality and immortality, with wit, thought, and hope.

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