Other books that might interest you

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  Unashamed - Sunday Times...

  Harry Baker

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  Unashamed follows the journey of the Sunday Times bestselling author and former World Poetry Slam Champion Harry Baker from graduating with a maths degree being unsure if this poetry thing was even possible, to becoming one of the nation's favourite poets and having his work viewed by millions all over the globe.
  A collection of poems taken from sold out shows combined with new work written at a time when that was no longer possible. From the joyful creativity of German compound words to having his prime number poetry shared on [TED.com][1], it took Harry far too long to realise that maths has been as much a part of his work as the poetry. That both are about figuring out the world around us, finding wonder in your surroundings, and searching for connection wherever you can.
  From school bullying through climate change, via a healthy obsession with falafels and a 10,000th birthday, Harry's love of language and logic has got him through marathons, a cancer diagnosis and potentially ruined his wife's chances of getting a job in an ice cream shop. Unashamed is a book of heart, humour and hope. It shows what happens when you're truly able to celebrate all the parts of yourself.
  [1]: http://ted.com/

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  After the Act

  Billy Barrett, Ellice Stevens

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  Abseiling lesbians! Queers in classrooms! Perverts panicking parents!
  Thatcher's Section 28, which banned the 'promotion' of homosexuality in schools, was the landmark legislation that silenced a generation, offered a global blueprint for LGBTQ+ oppression and galvanised a movement.
  Billy Barrett and Ellice Stevens's After the Act is a funny, camp and unapologetically queer musical about how a moral panic gripped a nation – and a community decided to fight back. Its inspiring, often heartbreaking, stories of teachers, students and activists impacted by the legislation are accompanied by a joyously exuberant score written by Frew and inspired by the music of the 1980s.
  It was first produced in 2023 by the award-winning theatre and film company Breach at New Diorama Theatre, London, before performances during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and a UK tour in 2024.

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  The Bounds

  Stewart Pringle

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  The year is 1553, the true Golden Age of English football. It's the Allen Valley Whitsun Game, and men will die today.
  This is the big game, and it's been raging for hours. Percy and Rowan are out in the middle of nowhere, miles from the action, when a stranger joins them. A stranger with tidings that will blow their world apart.
  Time passes. Night falls. The great chain of being collapses. And they're losing the bloody football...
  Stewart Pringle's play The Bounds is a darkly comedic tale of national divides, folk horror and the end of the world as we know it. It was first co-produced by Live Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Royal Court Theatre, London, and performed at both theatres in 2024, directed by Jack McNamara.

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  Human Resources - Poems

  Ryann Stevenson

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  Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry
  Prize, Ryann Stevenson’s Human Resources is a sobering and
  perceptive portrait of technology’s impact on connection and power.Human Resources follows
  a woman working in the male-dominated world of AI, designing women that don’t
  exist. In discerning verse, she workshops the
  facial characteristics of a floating head named “Nia,” who her boss calls “his
  type”; she loses hours researching “June,” an oddly sexualized artificially
  intelligent oven; and she spends a whole day “trying to break” a female
  self-improvement bot. The
  speaker of Stevenson’s poems grapples with uneasiness and isolation, even as
  she endeavors to solve for these problems in her daily work. She attempts to
  harness control by eating clean, doing yoga, and searching for age-defying skin
  care, though she dreams “about the department / that women get reassigned to
  after they file / harassment complaints.” With sharp, lyrical intelligence, she
  imagines alternative realities where women exist not for the whims of men but
  for their own—where they become literal skyscrapers, towering over a world that
  never appreciated them.Chilling and lucid, Human
  Resources challenges the minds programming our present and future to consider
  what serves the collective good. Something perhaps more thoughtful and human,
  Stevenson writes: “I want to say better.”

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  The Poetry of Alexander Pope -...

  Alexander Pope

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  Alexander Pope was born on May 21st, 1688 into a Catholic family in London.  
  His education was affected by the then recent Test Acts, which upheld the status of the Church of England and banned Catholics from teaching.  In effect this meant his formal education was over by the age of 12 but Pope was to immerse himself in classical literature and languages and too, in effect, educate himself.   
  From this age too he also suffered from numerous health problems including Pott’s disease, a type of tuberculosis, which resulted in a stunted, deformed body.  Only to grow to a height of 4’ 6”, with a severe hunchback and complicated further by respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain all of which served to further isolate him, initially, from society. 
  However his talent was evident to all. Best known for his satirical verse, his translations of Homer and the use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare. 
  With the publication of Pastorals in 1709 followed by An Essay on Criticism in 1711 and his most famous work The Rape of the Lock in 1712, Pope became not only famous but wealthy. 
  His translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey further enhanced both reputation and purse.  His engagement to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare met with a mixed reception. Pope attempted to "regularise" Shakespeare's metre and rewrote some of his verse and cut 1500 lines, that Pope considered to be beneath the Bard’s standard, to mere footnotes. 
  Alexander Pope died on May 30th, 1744 at his villa at Twickenham (where he created his famous grotto and gardens) and was buried in the nave of the nearby Church of England Church - St Mary the Virgin. 
  Over the years and centuries since his death Pope’s work has been in and out of favour but with this distance he is now truly recognised as one of England’s greatest poets. 
   This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

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  The Black Man's Lament or How to...

  Amelia Opie

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  Amelia Alderson, an only child, was born on the 12th November 1769 in Norwich, England. 
  After the death of her mother on New Year’s Eve 1784 she became her father's housekeeper and hostess. 
  The young Amelia was energetic, attractive, and an admirer of fashion.  She spent much of her youth writing poetry and plays and putting on local amateur theatricals.  At 18 she had published anonymously ‘The Dangers of Coquetry’. 
  Amelia married in the spring of 1798 to the artist John Opie at the Church of St Marylebone, in Westminster, and together they lived in Berners Street where Amelia was already living. 
  Her next novel in 1801 ‘Father and Daughter’, was very popular even though it dealt with such themes as illegitimacy, a socially difficult subject for its times.  From this point on published works were far more regular.  The following year her volume ‘Poems’ appeared and was again very popular.  Novels continued to flow and she never once abandoned her social activism and her call for better treatment of women and the dispossessed in her works.  She was also keenly involved in a love of society and its attendant frills. 
  Encouraged by her husband to write more she published Adeline Mowbray in 1804, an exploration of women's education, marriage, and the abolition of slavery.  
  Her husband died in 1807 and she paused from writing for a few years before resuming with further novels and poems.  Of particular interest was her short poem ‘The Black Man's Lament’ in 1826.  Her life now was in the main spent travelling and working for charities and against slavery.  She even helped create a Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Norwich which organised a parliamentary petition of 187,000 names of which hers was the first name. 
  After a visit to Cromer, a seaside resort on the North Norfolk coast, she caught a chill and retired to her bedroom.  
  Amelia Opie died on the 2nd December 1853 in Norwich.  She was 84.

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