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  Wing

  Matthew Francis

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  Matthew Francis's latest collection celebrates the richness of nature and of our responses to it. The pleasures of summer are emblazoned in the colourful wings and evocative names of butterflies, while a nocturnal encounter with an earwig becomes a joyous incantation to the 'witchy-beetle, forkin-robin' of dialect. His love of history, embodied in his acclaimed Mandeville and The Mabinogi, gives rise to a sequence based on Robert Hooke's microscopic observations. There are tributes to the poets Basho, Dafydd ap Gwilym and W. S. Graham, to fireworks, apple varieties, and hot toddies. And, in a moving elegy for a friend killed in a parachute accident, Francis shows us a vertiginous vision of a world where even the dead 'sleep on the wing'.

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  The Merchant of Venice

  William Shakespeare

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  Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, agrees to lend Antonio, a Venetian merchant, three thousand ducats so that his friend Bassanio can afford to court his love, Portia. However, Shylock has one condition: should the loan go unpaid, he will be entitled to a pound of Antonio’s own flesh. Meanwhile in Belmont, according to the terms of her father’s will, Portia’s many suitors must choose correctly from three caskets. Bassanio arrives at Portia’s estate and they declare their love for one another before he picks the correct casket. Antonio falls into bad fortune and finds he cannot repay Shylock: a dramatic trial ensues to decide his fate.

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  Short Story Press Presents Meet...

  Short Story Press, Tara Mitchell

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  Ellen is a busy single mother with a daughter in eighth grade. She works as a nurse and because of that she misses out on some moments with her daughter Ashley. While in attendance at Ashley's track meet she meets a nice man whose daughter also runs track and happens to be part of a relay team that Ashley is on. As the girls become closer it put the parents in close proximity even away from the track. 
  Dean, the father of Ashley's friend, is a busy man that works from his home. He has designed a back yard paradise for his work and invites Ellen over as well as the kids. Dean and Ellen become friends and feel comfortable together but have no intentions of taking it any further. That is until their daughters get involved. 
  Both Ashley and Dean's daughter Sarah set them up for a meeting at the track in which Dean and Ellen are faced with the realization that they had not hidden their attraction to one another and even their kids see and respect it. 
  Short Story Press publishes short stories written by everyday writers.

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  Dixon and Daughters (NHB Modern...

  Deborah Bruce

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  Mary has just been released from prison. She wants to come home and forget all about it – but Briana has other ideas.
  Over two tumultuous days, a family is forced to confront not only their past, but everything about themselves. Because the truth doesn't go away, even if you refuse to hear it.
  A powerful story of family and forgiveness, Deborah Bruce's play Dixon and Daughters was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in April 2023, directed by Róisín McBrinn and co-produced with Clean Break.

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  The Poetry of Thomas Chatterton...

  Thomas Chatterton

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  Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on 20th November 1752 some 15 weeks after the death of his father. For a time he was admitted to Edward Colston's Bristol charity school, on a limited curriculum of reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism. 
    
  Although fascinated by the church of St Mary Redcliffe where his uncle was sexton, he was liable to fits of abstraction, sitting for hours in a trance or crying for no reason. When Chatterton was 8 he was so eager for books that he would read and write all day long and by 11 he had become a contributor to Felix Farley's Bristol Journal. He lived in thought with his 15th-century heroes and heroines. 
    
  The first of his literary mysteries, the dialogue of "Elinoure and Juga," was written before he was 12, and he showed it to the usher at the boarding school Colston's Hospital where he was a pupil, pretending it was the work of a 15th-century poet. Chatterton remained a boarder at Colston's Hospital for more than six years. His little pocket-money was spent borrowing books from a circulating library and always attempting to ingratiate himself with book collectors. 
    
  His holidays were mostly spent at his mother's house, and much of that in the attic study living for the most part in an ideal world of his own, centered on his mid-15th century imaginary world. 
    
  Chatterton soon conceived the romance of Thomas Rowley, an imaginary monk of the 15th century, and adopted for himself the pseudonym Thomas Rowley for poetry and history. He imagined he would become a famous poet who by his talents would be able to rescue his mother from poverty. 
    
  Chatterton needed a patron. Many were not interested. Horace Walpole was but discovering that the poems were most probably fake and Chatterton himself only 16 scornfully sent him away. 
    
    
    
  Badly hurt by Walpole's snub, Chatterton wrote very little for a summer. Then he turned his attention to periodical literature and politics, and the London periodicals. He was frequently published but received little reward for his startling efforts. 
    
  Chatterton wrote at Easter 1770, ‘‘Last Will and Testament,’’ a satirical mix in jest and seriousness. The will was possibly prepared so that John Lambert, the attorney to whom he was apprenticed, cancelled his indentures. His friends and acquaintances, having donated money, Chatterton proceeded to London. 
    
  He continued to write and publish in various styles and was paid little for his efforts. He wrote hopefully to his mother and sister, and spent his first earnings in buying gifts for them. 
    
  In June 1770, after nine weeks in London, he moved from a shared room in Shoreditch to an attic in Brook Street, Holborn. He now enjoyed uninterrupted solitude and now could write all night. The romance of his earlier years revived, and he transcribed from an imaginary parchment of the old priest Rowley his "Excelente Balade of Charitie." This poem, disguised in archaic language, he sent to the editor of the Town and Country Magazine, where it was rejected. 
    
  A neighbouring apothecary, repeatedly invited him to come for dinner or supper; but he refused. His landlady also, suspecting his necessity, pressed him to share her dinner, but in vain. "She knew," as she afterwards said, "that he had not eaten anything for two or three days." But he assured her that he was not hungry. 
    
  In August 1770, while walking in St Pancras Churchyard, Chatterton was much absorbed in thought, and did not notice a newly dug open grave in his path, and subsequently tumbled into it. His walking companion helped Chatterton out of the grave, and told him that he was happy in assisting at the resurrection of a genius. Chatterton replied, "My dear friend, I have been at war with the grave for some time now." 
   
  On 24th August 1770, Thomas Ch

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  I Am Not Trying to Hide My...

  Kendra DeColo

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  Punk-rock feminist poems exploring motherhood, pop culture, and resistance with a spirit of defiance, abundance, and irreverent joy 
  Kendra DeColo reaffirms the action of mothering as heroic, brutal, and hardcore. These poems interrogate patriarchal narratives about childbirth, postpartum healing, and motherhood through the lens of pop culture and the political zeitgeist. With references ranging from Courtney Love to Lana Del Rey to Richard Burton to Nicolas Cage, I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World revitalizes the way we look at mothering: pushing its boundaries and reclaiming one's spirit of defiance, abundance, and irreverent joy. 
  Narrated by the author.

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