Other books that might interest you

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  Dixon and Daughters

  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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  SWANSEA AUTOMATIC (Second Edition)

  Rhys Trimble

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  "This book has shaped this piece of text [ITSELF] already—by neighbouring it (& in my mind) co-opted it, made it something other than an essay—part of SWANSEA culture—We obey these local rules slavishly—and fail to exploit them—[NOT SURE WHAT I'M ON ABOUT HERE]"Authorial violence: Swansea Automatic was published 10 years ago, around the last year of the snake to 0 acclaim except for by those who read it of course. I even did a little residency, which was more like squatting ina little shop on the High Street, Swansea but as time has passed, I came to consider this one of my few, if not only book that can boast the synthesis of my extreme late modernist tendencies and some attempt to fit into the aesthetic of popular fiction. nonetheless it doesn't pull too many punches, it's comedy, it's poetry, it's deconstructed pros,e even philosophy, textual analysis, cynghanedd, and more.Spinning Around the dirty first person narrative is the self-referential Vonegut and recycled psychogeographic of the Fiery Elephant of Johnson, Brooke-Rose, and Sinclair. An attempt to exercise the Demon of Swansea from my formative years. But actually set in North Wales just as much. Swansea is a dream city that could just as easily be London, Glasgow, Belfast, Lublin or Cairo...A second bite the cherry: a second edition is occurring, along with the audiobook and kindle edition and the album (movie!), hopefully generatinga hammer blow on the collective unconscious of our post-media universe. Swansea Automatic justifies itself to me because 2015 was also the very last gasp of the fin de siècle of the apocalyptic contemporary, where the post beats, post flaneur metanarratives where still just about alive. It's rare for me to look back, but I had an idea this one could be a cult book somehow. Help it become so and consume as such, cultishly. 
    
  RT

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  The Sad Shepherd

  Ben Jonson

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  The Sad Shepherd by Ben Jonson is a pastoral drama that blends romance, folklore, enchantment, and poetic reflection in a lyrical exploration of love and loss. Left unfinished at the time of Jonson's death, the play remains one of his most atmospheric works, offering a rich depiction of rural life intertwined with mythic and magical elements.
  
  Set in a woodland landscape inhabited by shepherds, nymphs, and forest spirits, the story follows the emotional struggles of characters navigating love, jealousy, and longing. At the center is the "sad shepherd," a figure marked by emotional sorrow, whose experiences reflect both personal heartbreak and the broader tensions of romantic relationships.
  
  The play unfolds in a world where nature is alive with enchantment. The forest is not merely a backdrop but an active presence filled with symbolic meaning, magical encounters, and poetic imagery. Shepherds and shepherdesses engage in conversations that reveal their desires, fears, and moral dilemmas, while supernatural beings influence the course of events.
  
  Ben Jonson draws on classical pastoral traditions while also incorporating English folklore and Renaissance poetic sensibilities. The result is a work that combines elegance of language with emotional depth, creating a richly textured vision of rural existence idealized yet complex.
  
  Themes of love, betrayal, innocence, and the healing power of nature run throughout the play. Characters are often caught between idealized notions of romance and the painful realities of human emotion, highlighting the tension between imagination and experience.
  
  Although incomplete, The Sad Shepherd demonstrates Jonson's mastery of lyrical dialogue and his ability to evoke mood and atmosphere through poetic expression. The unfinished nature of the work adds a sense of mystery, inviting interpretation and reflection.
  
  The play also explores the contrast between harmony and disruption in both nature and human relationships, suggesting that emotional imbalance can ripple through the world like a disturbance in the natural order.
  
  Ideal for readers of classic drama, pastoral literature, and poetic theater, this work offers a haunting and beautiful glimpse into a world where love, nature, and imagination intertwine.

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  Lacunae - New Poems

  Scott Cairns

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  This is a book to savor slowly and return to often." —Malcolm Guite, author of Sounding the Seasons and other collections
  New poetry from Scott Cairns on containing the uncontainable
  
  Often, when speaking of what he has called the poetic operation of language, Scott Cairns has characterized that event as our "glimpsing an indeterminate, inexhaustible enormity within a discrete space." This is the poet's continuing fascination with lacunae, those spaces, those openings that offer more within than appearances can register from outside the ostensible covert of their terms. Cairns is here focused upon how an image, a word, or—in the case of the Theotokos—a womb can contain the uncontainable. As Orthodox hymnography avers, she is more spacious than the heavens. So, too, the poet suggests, in its own, modest way, the poem might give birth to more, and more, and yet more than even the poet supposes.

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  Bitter Punch

  Loh Guan Liang

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  Shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize 
   
   
  Bitter Punch is Loh Guan Liang’s second collection of poetry. With a wry eye for the everyday and its often forgotten characters, Loh explores what it means to live and love in the city. Even as it depicts the tension between ourselves and the spaces we inhabit, Bitter Punch still seeks sweetness in life’s hard, bitter moments. 
   
  "At the heart of Bitter Punch is the passing of love. Loh Guan Liang has constructed a personal map of elegiac half-escapes although his book is also a love letter to the enigmatic city that has been sustaining him. These poems will haunt you with its cool detachment, its overthinking, and its sombre rhythm in search of connection through words." 
  -Gwee Li Sui, poet and critic

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  Hope Beauty and Friendship

  John Angus Walker-Smith

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  This selection of poems by a new author was triggered by the tragic death of his 28-year-old daughter. So the collection begins with loss and the aftermath of loss: the hope of the author that his daughter and he may be reunited in the life to come. This hope underlies many of the poems. This is clearly articulated in ‘Osler and Son’, where a father grieves for loss of his son in World War I but in a stoical, unexpressed manner. 
  The author records his childhood experience of emotions being held back in ‘Boys Don’t Cry John’. While some poems look back, most are contemporary, such as those inspired by the lockdown and the Ukraine War. 
  The author advocates expression of feelings. This is powerfully expressed in relation to his experience of Friendship, both past and present. Transcendental beauty is a theme in the metaphysical poems ‘The Colour Blue’ and ‘Roman Glass’. 
  However, each poem is unique. Many of them speak from the heart and have an emotional impact. The author hopes that these will resonate with readers.

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