Publisher: Ethos Books
Spomenik is a collection of poems and photographs from the Balkans. These impressions of people and places bookmark a glimpse of life across a multitude of cities, crossing terrains of history, war, culture and faith.
'Every one of us will be here for a different particular reason. I am here because I am passionate about history.' It is 2019, the Year of Return, marking four hundred years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in America. We are at a slave castle in Ghana. Samuel is our tour guide. It's his job to give tourists a really, really authentic experience of the castle's dark history, and to do it all with a smile. Thank you, Samuel! The tourists are Samuel's guests, and they're on a journey of self-discovery. But they're here, standing on soil, blood and bones, asking for a selfie. They want to buy trinkets from the gift shop. Samuel would never want to hurt the tourists. And they would never want to hurt him. Rhianna Ilube's Samuel Takes a Break… in Male Dungeon No. 5 After a Long but Generally Successful Day of Tours is a genre-blending play about colonialism, identity and the attempt to preserve the past. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Playwriting and the Verity Bargate Award, and was a finalist for the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. It premiered at The Yard Theatre, London, in 2024, directed by Anthony Simpson-Pike.Show book
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST SINGLE POEM* From the mercurial mind of award-winning poet John McCullough comes his darkest and most experimental book to date. Panic Response puts personal and cultural anxiety under the microscope. It is full of things that shimmer, quiver and fizz: plankton glowing at low tide; brain tissue turning to glass; a basketball emerging from the waves, covered in barnacles. These are poems of uncertainty but also of hope, which move beyond the breathlessness of panic towards luminescence and solidarity.Show book
In the early 1960s, the Hungry Generation revitalized Bengali poetry in Calcutta, liberating it from the fetters of scholarship and the fog of punditry and freeing it to explore new forms, language, and subjects. Shakti Chattopadhyay was a cofounder of the movement, and his poems remain vibrant and surprising more than a half century later. In his 'urban pastoral' lines, we encounter street colloquialisms alongside high diction, a combination that at the time was unprecedented. Loneliness, anxiety, and dislocation trouble this verse, but they are balanced by a compelling belief in the redemptive power of beauty. This book presents more than one hundred of Chattopadhyay's poems, introducing an international audience to one of the most prominent and important Bengali poets of the twentieth century.Show book
With kitchen-table candour and empathy, Charlie Petch’s debut collection of poems offers witness to a decades-long trans/personal coming of age, finding heroes in unexpected places. Why I Was Late fuses text with performance, bringing a transmasculine wisdom, humour, and experience to bear upon tailgates, spaceships, and wrestling rings. Fierce, tender, convention re-inventing—Petch works hard. And whether it’s as a film union lighting technician, a hospital bed allocator, a Toronto hot dog vendor, or a performer/player of the musical saw, the work is survival. Heroes are found in unexpected places, elevated by both large and small gestures of kindness, accountability and acceptance. No subject—grief, disability, kink, sexuality, gender politics, violence—is off limits. A poet so good at drag they had everyone convinced that they were a woman for the first forty years of their life, Petch has somehow brought the stage and its attendant thrills into the book. Better late than. And better.Show book
'One can't help where one is born. Or one's station, of course. The trick to happiness is to be content where one is. Or so I am told.' 1979. Clarence House, London. The Queen Mother's receptions are in full swing and the champagne is flowing. Guiding the proceedings is William 'Billy' Tallon, page of the backstairs, keeper of the keys, holder of the royal corgis – and the royal secrets. Outside the palace walls, unemployment, inflation and industrial action are bringing Britain to its knees, and the country is on the verge of changing seismically under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. These two worlds are about to collide, with dizzying consequences for everyone... Backstairs Billy examines the fifty-year relationship between the Queen Mother and her most loyal, most outrageous servant, who joined her household at the age of fifteen. Marcelo Dos Santos's irreverent comedy was first produced by the Michael Grandage Company at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, in 2023, directed by Grandage and starring Penelope Wilton and Luke Evans. Marcelo Dos Santos was named Most Promising Playwright at the 2024 Critics' Circle Theatre Awards for Backstairs Billy (he was the joint winner of the award with Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini).Show book
James Russell Lowell was born on 22nd February 1819 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lowell graduated from Harvard in 1838, and thence on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. His literary life began in 1841 with his first published collection of poetry. Three years later he married Maria White and they had several children although, sadly, only one was to survive childhood. A consuming issue at the time was the abolition of slavery. Lowell was a staunch supporter even going so far as to move to Philadelphia to edit an abolitionist newspaper. His poems were fully in support of Emancipation and the ending of this terrible abomination. His later views were milder and came in for some criticism. His publication in 1848 of the long poem ‘A Fable for Critics’, satirising the poets and critics of the then current poetry scene caused an uproar. That same year came ‘The Biglow Papers’, which increased his fame and his finances. His use of the Yankee accent in his character’s dialogue was an inspiration for many. Maria died in 1853 and Lowell decided to travel to Europe for some time before returning to Harvard to take up a professorship of languages. In 1857 he re-married and also took on the editorship of that key periodical ‘The Atlantic Monthly’ whilst continuing to teach at Harvard. Lowell wrote and published poetry and essay collections throughout his literary career and is acknowledged as one of the ‘Fireside Poets’, a group of New England poets that rivalled the popularity of British poets. Their work was not controversial and suitable for whole families to enjoy hence their name and appeal. Whilst Lowell’s own work does not now attract the same praise as his then contemporaries, he was their equal. Towards the end of his life Lowell was appointed as ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain and later to the Court of St. James's. His last years were a return home to his estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the summer of 1891 doctors had diagnosed cancer in his kidneys, liver and lungs. There was nothing that they could do except prescribe opium for the pain. James Russell Lowell died on the 12th of August 1891 on the Cambridge estate where he was also born. He was 72.Show book
