Other books that might interest you

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  Born in England – Exploring...

  Geoffrey Chaucer, William Blake,...

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  Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another.  Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us. 
   
  Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy. 
   
  In the volumes of this series, we take a look at poetry through the prism of individual regions of England, or sometimes more quaintly known as ‘Albion’, or ‘Blighty’, through the centuries of its gloried history. 
   
  England, despite its perception of reserve and under-statement has, in reality, strode the global stage at various time in many things, both good and bad, from Empire to long distance running. Here our focus in on its literature.  Famed for its fiction and dramas, it is equally admired for its plethora of gifted poets and the dazzling verse which has added so much to its artistic legacy.  These classic poets are wonders of their age and of their art.  Genius is written in their names. 
   
  In this volume the instantly globally recognisable city of London has, for century after century, dominated the country.  Its rich history of art, culture and commerce interweave with generation after generation of poets to produce a supremely rich tapestry of undimmed brilliance.  Our poets include Alexander Pope, Amy Levy, Edmund Spenser, John Keats, G K Chesterton and a host of others.  Genius has many names.

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  The Flying Fish - Decadent poet...

  John Gray

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  Poetry unleashes talents and thoughts that can make us think very differently about our world

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  Favour

  Ambreen Razia

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  'I'm going to answer all your wishes, bubba! Big or small, it'll be me who makes them come true, no one else.'
  Leila is happy living at home with Noor, her loving but traditional grandmother. But when Aleena, her fiercely independent mother, returns home from prison determined to deliver a new world of fun and excitement, their calm lives are upended in a blur of nail varnish and sweet treats.
  Family secrets come tumbling into the light, and Leila finds the task of deciding on her future more difficult than she first thought.
  Ambreen Razia's play Favour is a touching and hopeful family drama about a working-class Muslim family, tackling duty, addiction and the challenge of pulling yourself back together after it all falls apart. It was a Bush Theatre and Clean Break co-production and premiered at the Bush, London, in 2022, directed by Róisín McBrinn and Sophie Dillon Moniram.

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  The Hound of Heaven - An ode...

  Francis Thompson

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  A gloriously talented poet who although now almost forgotten wrote verse that is still powerful and prescient

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  Red House Rising

  Chris Côté, Dayle Kerry

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  Imagine you’re listening to the acclaimed WWII melodrama, Casablanca. But instead of Rick’s café in Vichy-occupied North Africa, you’re in the South Pacific, trapped on Truk Lagoon – island stronghold of the Japanese. Well, that’s exactly where this romantic World War II audiobook, Red House Rising, begins its story. It’s July, 1941. War is already raging in Europe. Japan has swallowed up Korea, and now terrorizes China. Pearl Harbor is about to explode. And three women, an ace transport pilot, a Chinese Intelligence officer and a local Island leader, must join forces to rescue young girls sexually enslaved by the Japanese Navy and its ruthless secret police, the Tokkeitai. As World War Two roils the Pacific, the story continues in the islands, in Hawaii, in China and Japan. There’s flying and spying and action galore. And the story calls out the fascism, racism and misogyny of that dark time. But this audiobook is most definitely about lovers – star-crossed or otherwise – finding their way in a world at war.

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  A Gateway Has Opened

  Liam Blackford

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  A Gateway Has Opened is a poetry collection by Hong Kong-based poet, LIAM BLACKFORD, containing 36 missives on truth and reality, anger and rage, complexity and change, and power as manifested in people, corporations, governments, borders and cultures. The poems inhabit a chaotic and psychedelic world where water flows into the sky, nightclubs have hundreds of floors and where banks and malls publish theories on knowledge and personhood. Therein, human society is fraught with harm and violence but also euphoric with the widening horizons of possibility. The collection is notable for its strict adherence to a unique poetic form (each poem has six stanzas, each stanza with six lines, and each line with six syllables), which in its red-eyed absoluteness suggests that the poems are giving voice to an alien, an angel or a machine. Though avant-garde and philosophical, the collection is highly reflective of the poet’s place and time, in which Hong Kong is at the epicentre of epochal political and cultural change. 
  “The poems ... ‘quiver with tension’ as the speaker straddles the liminal space between dreams and the mundane.” —Ryan Fenton. “In Blackford’s verse, one is in our world, with its political and environmental anxieties, with its affluence and parallel unease.”―Andrew S. Guthrie, Proverse Prize Finalist 2013. “... what bubbles beneath the surface is the courage to find astounding beauty and inspiration amidst confounding and cruelty, and hold them both.” —Jack Mayer, Winner of the Proverse Prize 2019. “...unique explorations of poetic form.”—Philip Mead, Emeritus Professor, University of Western Australia.  “Blackford’s worlds are jarring and harsh; psychedelic yet pungent with our reality. His strict form is muscular and fascinating. Gateway seethes with energy – I loved it.”―David West, Western Australia.

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