Other books that might interest you

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  The Huntress and Her Muse

  Abby O'Keefe

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  This first collection of poems is a celebration of the human experience and the complex relationship between the body and mind. With themes of anxiety, gratitude, womanhood, motherhood, outer expectations, and internal dialogue, I hope you find words that make you feel less alone.

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  The Garden of Eros - Poem...

  Oscar Wilde

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  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was born on the 16th October 1854 in Dublin Ireland.  The son of Dublin intellectuals Oscar proved himself an outstanding classicist at Dublin, then at Oxford. With his education complete Wilde moved to London and its fashionable cultural and social circles.  With his biting wit, flamboyant dress, and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the most well-known personalities of his day.  
  His only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray was published in 1890 and he then moved on to writing for the stage with Salome in 1891.  His society comedies produced enormous hits and turned him into one of the most successful writers of late Victorian London.  
  Whilst his masterpiece, ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, was on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel.  The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency. He was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour.  It was to break him.  
  On release he left for France. There he wrote his last work, ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in 1898.  He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six sipping champagne a friend had brought with the line ‘Alas I am dying beyond my means’.

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  The Rose - Poems

  Ariana Reines

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  In The Rose, award-winning poet Ariana Reines navigates the intersection of power and surrender. Drawing on the history of "romance" as the troubadours knew it and the titular flower's ancient allegories for sexuality and mystery, Reines plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain: "I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind." In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker's understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul. 
   
   
   
  The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humor. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the "secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love," and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.

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  Leave Taking

  Winsome Pinnock

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  'What doctor know about our illness? Just give you pills to sick you stomach and a doctor certificate. What they know about a black woman soul?'
  In North London, Del and Viv are soul-sick. Del doesn't want to be at home; staying out late – 3 p.m.-the-next-day late – is more her thing. Viv scours her schoolbooks trying to find a trace of herself between their lines.
  When Enid takes her daughters to the local obeah woman for some traditional Caribbean soul-healing, secrets are spilled. There's no turning back for Del, Viv and Enid as they negotiate the frictions between their countries and cultures.
  Two generations. Three incredible women. Winsome Pinnock's play Leave Taking is an epic story of what we leave behind in order to find home. It premiered in 1987, and was revived at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2018, in a production directed by the Bush's Artistic Director, Madani Younis.
  Winsome Pinnock has written numerous plays, including Talking in Tongues, for which she won the George Devine and Pearson Best New Play Awards.
  'The godmother of Black British playwrights' Guardian

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  The Top 10 Poets – Died Under 30...

  John Keats, Percy Bysshe...

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  The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives.  Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives. 
  But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poets, who brim with talent and verse, on a range of subjects and themes that we can all enjoy. 
  In this volume we gather some of those poets who perished before they reached the age of 30.  Whether by war, their own hand, accident or other cause their legacies are a bright reminder of just how talented their short lives were.

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  Catching Stars - Read and...

  Rachel Lawson

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  Poet's short tome read by the author

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