Other books that might interest you

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  The Last Noël (NHB Modern Plays)

  Chris Bush

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  'We'll tell the same old stories, all over again. And we won't complain. Because it's Christmas.'
  It's Christmas Day, sort of, and Alice, Mike and Tess – three generations of the one family – are busy preparing a feast, singing songs, spinning yarns and squabbling about snacks… like only a close family can. But someone is missing from the table.
  Telling their stories in turns, and breaking off for the odd musical interlude, the family pass the time waiting for Tess's mum to arrive. As they do, we see a picture of how one family forms its traditions – and how those traditions matter most when there are problems on the horizon.
  The Last Noël by Chris Bush is a funny, moving, uplifting play with original songs. An innovative festive drama, it captures the unique bonds of family and how coming together to share stories and a meal can be a modern Christmas miracle.
  It was first produced in 2019 by Attic Theatre Company and Arts at the Old Fire Station on a tour of venues around London, before a Christmas run at the Old Fire Station in Oxford.

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  Under Milk Wood

  Dylan Thomas

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  Matthew Rhys and Kate Burton headline a Welsh and Welsh-American cast celebrating the centenary of Dylan Thomas’ birth in a performance of his timeless “play for voices.” With characters such as Captain Cat, Polly Garter, and Nogood Boyo, Thomas brings to life the inhabitants of the fictional town of Llareggub in funny, poignant, and poetic detail. Includes a conversation with Andrew Lycett, author of  Dylan Thomas: A New Life.An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast production, starring Matthew Rhys, Kate Burton, Laura Evans, John Francis, Jason Hughes, Christopher Monger, Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Jo Osmond, and Morgan Ritchie. Directed by Sara Sugarman. Recorded before a live audience by L.A. Theatre Works.

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  Scorpions

  Dane Zajc

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  Dane Zajc belongs to the first post-war generation of poets who brought modernism to Slovene poetry. Sharing sentiments of a tense, sceptical and disillusioned worldview, they relinquished intimate testimony in lieu of an impersonal portrayal of reality on the charred ruins of the Second World War. On a formal level, their poetic expression broke grammatical rules, coalescing within free verse. This poet generation is remembered by the Slovene literary lore as the surrealists or neo-expressionists.
  The lyrical world of Zajc is one of inescapable, constant duality and arising ever-incompletion, even antagonistic ambivalence – "a twofold void”, a twofold loneliness, a twofold language (one uttering, one mute). Though Dane, who was considered the most influential of Slovene modernists, is frequently portrayed as the "poet of existential dread, of despair and grim obsession with the suffering of man”, his verses sparkle with refined irony and bestial dark humour.
  "Dane Zajc understands the paradoxes between the physical and the metaphysical the same way he understands the balance between pathos and the quotidian, between magic incantation and ironic, cold alienation. Zajc's poetry does not entirely forego personal elements – a fallen partisan-brother, the mother figure – what remains central, though, is the natural landscape of things and his own "inability of expression”, making Zajc's verse neither intimate confession nor propaganda. He consistently rejects political tendencies, any ideological engagement whatsoever, in fact, which – in the Communist era – won him the fame of a rebel poet”, writes Ilma Rakusa in her afterword to the Scorpions collection.

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  Sea The - An Element in Verse...

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, John...

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  The Sea – An Element In Verse. Who does not remember the immortal lines from childhood – ‘Break Break Break On Thy Cold Grey Stones’.  The seas and oceans have a mystical power over us; from a playful day at the beach to the hysterical waves of the storm, this always changing element evokes both beauty and fear.  Its great mass, its shimmering beauty, its raging howl and all in colours from blue to grey to green and crystal clear.   In these collections of verse our poets – including Tennyson, Swinburne, Keats and Shelley and many others explore the relationship between ourselves and the great mystical waters.  Among our readers are Gideon Wagner and Ghizela Rowe.

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  How Love is Spelt (NHB Modern...

  Chloë Moss

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  Peta is new in town and ready for whatever London has to throw at her. She's looking for romance, for friendship, for exciting people to lead her on big adventures. But being an independent woman in the new millennium isn't easy, especially when there's a constant reminder of the life you're trying to escape.
  With each new encounter, Peta flirts with what might have been, but has the journey to London put enough distance between her and her past?
  Chloë Moss's play How Love Is Spelt is a fascinating and funny play, which premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2004. It was revived by Brickdust and Project One at Southwark Playhouse in 2019.
  'She wanted spontaneity, adventure… I said I can be spontaneous… I just need a little bit of time to plan.'
  'The finest and most assured writing to be found outside the National Theatre this year... a moving and mature study of love, loneliness and the need to define one's identity... One of the year's undoubted highlights' - Evening Standard
  'Moss's writing evokes these nocturnal collisions beautifully, using silence as powerfully as words, and brittle comedy as deftly as tremendous sadness' - Guardian
  'A remarkably assured new talent. I can't remember a play in recent years that so adroitly captured the difficulty of being young and alone in the capital or did so with such refreshing humour...There's nothing loud or brash about this drama of youthful disillusion, but it's well worth shouting about' - Daily Telegraph

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  Saved to Cloud

  Kate Foley

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  The algorithm
  of my own life, faded
  and spidery,
  is written,
  not keyed in.
  From bombsites used as childhood playgrounds to lockdown FaceTime calls, Kate Foley looks back on almost nine decades of life – a life characterised by curiosity, resistance and a strong connection with the natural world.
  Appreciation and concern for the planet runs through this frank and moving collection, which muses on the notions of faith and belief, ultimately rejecting both Whitehall politics and traditional religion as inadequate to deal with environmental crisis.
  Simultaneously nostalgic and highly concerned with the future, Kate Foley's candid reminiscence and simple use of language draw us softly into consideration of life's big questions: What's it all for? How will we be remembered?
  Will it build again, our earth?

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