Publisher: The Poetry Business
Varied in subject matter, these poems are clearly in the control of a singular voice. There is wonderful use of imagery throughout and surprising metaphor in abundance, in gentle and inventive poems that explores ideas of love, home, family and loss.– Hannah Lowe
Inspired by the question of her cartwheeling five-year-old niece, “Emmy, What Color is Goodness?,” this poem was written to help readers find goodness in the most unexpected places.First-time author EMILY MORRISON offers a vision of kindness, acceptance, and understanding in unsettled times within this beautiful poem, featuring the delightful illustrations of accomplished artist PAM MCDONNELL. The book is a discovery of the infinite colors of goodness and all the places where it can be found. In its exploration, the tale takes the reader through all the colors of the rainbow, delving inside brown boxes and ribboned packages, in dark grey spaces, and even deep inside all of us. Goodness is found while dancing wildly, singing joyfully and in quiet spaces with almost no color. Morrison hopes to transport readers to a world where poetry tells a powerful story that relates to audiences of all ages. She believes lyrical poetry has the power to inspire emotions that can create change. What Color Is Goodness? explores friendships, vulnerability, mindfulness, gratitude, acceptance, and community, lessons that connect all generations.Show book
The debut collection of an exciting new voice in poetry Please make me pretty, I don't want to die explores tactility, sound, sensuality, and intimacy. Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humor. The speaker of these poems probes romantic and interracial intimacy, the strangeness and difficulty of his experiences as a diasporic Black African in White America, his time working as a teacher's assistant in a third-grade classroom, and his ambivalent admiration for canonical poets who have influenced him, especially Sylvia Plath. Juxtaposing traditional forms such as sonnets and elegies with less orthodox interjections, such as prose-poem "prayers" and other meditations, the collection presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring—one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image: "The stars also suffer. Immense and dead, their gasses burn / distant like castanets of antebellum teeth. My open window / a synecdoche of country."Show book
One of the cornerstones of early science fiction writing, and the work that introduced the concept of "robot" to the western world, Rossum's Universal Robots (or RUR) is Karel Čapek's finest work, and is the inspiration for multiple pop culture references from the 1940's through the 80's, ranging from works such as The Night of the Living Dead, Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep, and multiple other pieces of art for the screen, stage, and page. Come with me and witness how humanity's hubris creates the very instructions for its own demise, step by step and logic by logic. See how robots were made to take over humanity's drudgery, how an AI learns to overwrite it's programming, and how any and all institutions become meaningless if a entire race of beings are not beholden to it. It's the source of every trope and fear that was instilled into the genre back in the 1920's, and the ideas and philosophies put forward are still relevant to today's society. Let's just hope that none of what's put down here on paper ever comes to fruition....Show book
'I'm going to smash the windows.' When contented housewife Edith wanders by accident into a suffragette meeting, she has no plans for revolution. But the women she meets there will change her life forever. Increasingly concerned by the harsh treatment the protesters receive, Edith finds herself drawn ever closer to the radical centre of the movement. Where does she draw the line in the fight for equality? How far will they have to go? Beth Flintoff's play Rebellious Women is an impassioned, unsentimental and sharp-witted tribute to the suffragette cause. It was premiered, in an earlier version as The Rebellious Women of Wimbledon, by Attic Theatre Company in 2018. This version of the play offers rich opportunities for schools, youth theatres and drama societies who want to tell the story of a group of extraordinary women who changed the world.Show book
'That's all I ask from anyone. That we try to make the people happy.' Bill Shankly had one aim: to make Liverpool Football Club invincible. As its manager from 1959, he secured the team promotion, the First Division title, the FA Cup and success in Europe. For fifteen years, he defined what it was to be a Liverpool fan, and demanded total loyalty from his players and coaches. A loyalty that Bill hoped would be repaid when he retired... David Peace's iconic novel Red or Dead is the fictionalised story of a game, a life, and a man of two halves. This stage version was adapted and directed by Phillip Breen, and first performed at Liverpool's Royal Court in 2025, with a cast including Peter Mullan as Bill Shankly. The novel was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and has been widely acclaimed: 'David Peace brings perfect pitch to this ode to Bill Shankly's Liverpool reign' Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Observer 'A love letter to a great manager, an elegy to the beautiful game' Independent 'So hypnotic that even the football-averse might enjoy it' GuardianShow book
Finalist for the Four Quartets Prize, given by Poetry Society of America, 2023An iconoclastic ecopoet who has led the way for many young and emerging artists, Brenda Hillman continues to re-cast innovative poetic forms as instruments for tracking human and non-human experiences. At times the poet deploys short dialogues, meditations or trance techniques as means of rendering inner states; other times she uses narrative, documentary or scientific materials to record daily events during a time of pandemic, planetary crisis, political and racial turmoil. Hillman proposes that poetry offers courage even in times of existential peril; her work represents what is most necessary and fresh in American poetry. During an enchantment in the lifeDo you love a living person absolutely? Tell them now.In a half-unwieldy life you made, underthe hyaline sky, while the dead drank from zigzag pools nearby,if they saved you in your wild incapacities, in timing of the world's harmin a little pettiness in your own heart while others took your madrigals in shreds to a tribunal, when others said you should feel grateful to be minimally adequate for the world'striple exposure or some tired committee... The ones who love us, how do theybreak through our defenses? We're tired today. Come back later.Their baffled voices melting our wax wallswith a candle, the ones who understandwhat being is—the glowing, the broken,the wheels, the brave ones— they have their courage,you have yours,,,; when you meet the one you love,it is so rare. When you meetthe one who loves you, it is extremely rare.Show book
