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  Messiah The - A Sacred Ecologue...

  Alexander Pope

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  Alexander Pope was born on May 21st, 1688 in London into a Catholic family.   
  His education was affected by the recent Test Acts, upholding the status of the Church of England and banning Catholics from teaching.  In effect this meant his formal education was over by the age of 12 and Pope was to now immerse himself in classical literature and languages and to, in effect, educate himself.    
  From this age too he also suffered from numerous health problems including a type of tuberculosis (Pott’s disease) which resulted in a stunted, deformed body.  Only to grow to a height of 4’ 6”, with a severe hunchback and complicated further by respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain all of which served to further isolate him, initially, from society.  
  However his talent was evident to all. Best known for his satirical verse, his translations of Homer and the use of the heroic couplet, he is the second-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare.  
  With the publication of Pastorals in 1709 followed by An Essay on Criticism (1711) and his most famous work The Rape of the Lock (1712; revised and enlarged in 1714) Pope became not only famous but wealthy.  
  His translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey further enhanced both reputation and purse.  His engagement to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare met with a mixed reception.  Pope attempted to "regularise" Shakespeare's metre and rewrote some of his verse and cut 1500 lines, that Pope considered to be beneath the Bard’s standard, to mere footnotes.  
  Alexander Pope died on May 30th, 1744 at his villa at Twickenham (where he created his famous grotto and gardens) and was buried in the nave of the nearby Church of England Church of St Mary the Virgin.   
  Over the years and centuries since his death Pope’s work has been in and out of favour but with this distance he is now truly recognised as one of England’s greatest poets.

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  Catastrophic Molting

  Amy Shimshon-Santo

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  CATASTROPHIC MOLTING (FlowerSong Press) Amy Shimshon-Santo uses the tools of language to remind readers there is power in repudiation, comfort in collective mourning, and possibility in reimagining. The book title is inspired by the molting ritual of sea elephants (Mirounga Angustirostris) along the California coast. The mirounga rest together on the shore as social protection from violence when they are the most vulnerable. Only through these periods of dramatic change can they grow sleek new coats. The book’s journey begins with “Contagion,” revealing a world split in half like a calabash by a virus. “Beating, trembling,” a woman pleads for mercy while the poems confront the liminality of profound change. “A new cycle had begun / I would never be the same again.” The second section, Sangue, gives voice to mourning and rage. “when you murder the future of music / you are conjuring extinction.” Dysfunction on planet Earth reverberates from the street into the expansive galaxy. Refusing to normalize violence, the poet gathers war inside her own body to detonate it, then blows “tsunami-wind / to rattle clear the desks.” With the verve of Oya, the goddess of ancestral and radical change, the book claims ground for empathy and inter-being. The collection asks readers to imagine: “what if we were a part of a whole / that loved us without ceasing?” Catastrophic Molting breaks from inertia and seeks new ground. Our “foremothers greet the unborn” and are “betrothed to a story that doesn’t wish us dead.” Shimshon-Santo suggests that “stepping off might actually be, stepping in / turning away might actually be, turning toward.”

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  Born in the USA - Exploring...

  Alice Dunbar-Nelson, James...

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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 through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades. 
   
  The United States may be many things: the world’s policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy. 
   
  Little wonder that’s its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art.  Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up.   
   
  In this volume we have collected verse from poets born in one of the most diverse and wide-ranging areas of the United States; the South-East.  Within its borders are the states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.  Its huge expanse lets our world-class poets including James Weldon Johnson, Willa Cather, Alice Dunbar Nelson, and Georgia Douglas Johnson explore a wide range of topics and subjects as they share their poetic talents with us on the States of their birth.

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  Other People's Lives

  Dermot Bolger

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  Every night during a year spent in lockdown, Dermot Bolger set out on long walks through deserted streets, armed only with a pen and paper. Bolger follows in the footsteps of the great Portuguese poet, Fernando Pessoa, using walks through his native city to allow his imagination free rein to revisit pivotal moments in his own life and speculatively meditate on the lives of others in a series of remarkable poems.
  The book starts with his parents honeymooning in a wartime Wicklow orchard and ends, eight decades later, as the poet dances with his partner in a Wicklow field. In between we encounter Nuala O'Faolain on a bicycle on Brooklyn Bridge; Grace Gifford Plunkett, defiant in her lonely final years; Herbert Simms, Dublin's brilliant, tragically overworked housing architect; and Patricia Lynch, writing The Turf-Cutter's Donkey in one room while her husband wrote communist tracts in the next. Interlaced with such real lives are imagined ones – a hardened criminal detailing prison life in haikus, a doppelganger exploring alternative pasts for the author. Taken together, these poems chart a dazzling constellation of experiences.

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  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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  "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a classic narrative poem that follows the harrowing journey of a mariner who faces supernatural occurrences and the consequences of his actions.
  Each poem in this collection showcases Coleridge's mastery of language, imagery, and symbolism, inviting readers on a journey through landscapes both real and imagined. 
  From the eerie enchantment of "Kubla Khan" to the gothic suspense of "Christabel" and the tranquil introspection of "Frost at Midnight," this collection offers a diverse range of poetic experiences. Through themes of nature, imagination, and the human condition, Coleridge's poetry continues to resonate with readers across generations.
  "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a captivating compilation that showcases the timeless beauty and enduring appeal of Coleridge's poetry.

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  Shifters

  Benedict Lombe

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  'Something is shifting between you – again.
  Something terrifying
  and comforting.'
  Dre and Des. Young. Gifted. Black. He stayed. She left.
  Years later, Des and Dre come crashing back into each other's lives, carrying new secrets and old scars. With the clock counting down until Des has to leave again, memories of their past collide with their present and they're forced to question if destiny has brought them back together for a reason.
  Benedict Lombe's play Shifters is a fierce, funny and beautifully intoxicating celebration of the enduring power of memory and first love. It was performed at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2024, directed by Artistic Director Lynette Linton, before transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre in London's West End.
  Benedict Lombe's other plays include Lava, also for the Bush Theatre, which won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for Playwriting.

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