Other books that might interest you

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  Planet Shaped Horse

  Luke Kennard

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  Luke Kennard's Planet Shaped Horse is an unhinged blackcomedy poemplay from one of contemporary poetry's most unique voices. When the (anti)hero of the piece is enduring a somewhat 'enforced' stay at Fouracres Halfway House, entanglements ensue. Both terrible and beautiful things happen.
  
  Hermits and doctors are not what they seem and neither Miranda nor Simon seem capable of reining in or reforming their unreliable narrator...

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  The Poetry of Anne Kingsmill...

  Anne Kingsmill Finch

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  Anne Kingsmill was born in April 1661 (an exact date is not known) in Sydmonton, Hampshire. 
   
  Throughout her life Anne was involved in several Court cases that dragged on for years. These involved both a share of her parent’s estate for her education and later her and her husband’s share of an inheritance.  
   
  In 1682, Anne became a maid of honour to Mary of Modena (wife of James, Duke of York, and later King James II) at St James’s Palace.  
   
  Anne's interest in poetry began at the palace, and she started writing her own verse. The Court however was no place for a woman to display any poetic efforts.  Women were not considered suitable for such literary pursuits.  
   
  At court, Anne met Colonel Heneage Finch. A courtier as well as a soldier. The couple married on 15th May 1684.  
   
  The couple's marriage was enduring and happy, in part due to the equality in their partnership. Her poetic skills blossomed as she expressed her love for her husband and the positive effects of his encouragement on her artistic development.  
   
  Being staunch Catholics in a changing and volatile Protestant world would bring them many problems to endure.  Her husband continued to support her poetry and in 1701 she published ‘The Spleen’ anonymously. This well-received reflection on depression would prove to be her most popular poem.  However, it also revealed the continuing and mounting problem of her own frequent depressions.  
   
  When ‘Miscellany Poems, on Several Occasions’ was published in 1713, the cover of the first edition stated that the works were "Written by a Lady." On subsequent printings, she received credit as Anne, Countess of Winchelsea.  
   
  Anne Kingsmill-Finch, Countess of Winchilsea died in Westminster on 5th August 1720.

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  Yen (NHB Modern Plays)

  Anna Jordan

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  Anna Jordan's Bruntwood Prize-winning play, Yen explores a childhood lived without boundaries and the consequences of being forced to grow up on your own.
  Hench is sixteen, Bobbie is thirteen. They're home alone in Feltham with their dog Taliban; playing PlayStation, streaming porn, watching the world go by. Sometimes their mum Maggie visits, usually with empty pockets and empty promises. Then Jenny shows up.
  Yen won the 2013 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting, and was first performed at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, in 2015.
  This new edition published alongside the Royal Court Theatre production in January 2016.
  '[a] brutal but tender study of brotherhood... the dynamic range of Jordan's writing is extraordinary... achieves the uncommon feat of being difficult to watch yet easy to love' - Guardian
  'very impressive... [Jordan] has a great ear for dialogue' - British Theatre Guide
  'bring[s] to mind Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur... [asks] lots of necessary and potent questions' - Exeunt Magazine

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  I Like to Wash My Face with...

  Saumitra Saxena, Dhiraj Singh

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  Introducing Saumitra’ s poetry to an English relishing readership is like reliving its flavor a few years ago in Hindi when these very poems caught the print eye of an eminent publisher, Bharatiya Gyanpith. Saumitra’s selection was not only published from there but also bestowed the ‘Navlekhan Award,’ and these poems have been expertly translated by Dhiraj Singh, who gives a Midas touch of his pen when moving from one language from another. 
  Saumitra is, by profession, an engineer and by passion, a poet. He has moved away from India, but his sensibility is filled with boyhood memories and tender moments of his youth. With an economy of words, he expresses himself in short verses that look like a map of his moods. 
  All aspects of nature find expression with Saumitra so much so that he emerges as a friend of live landscapes, changing skies and the smell of raw mangoes. He has a Wordsworthian involvement with nature and with the simple sweet voice of humanity. 
  The translation by Dhiraj Singh is equally sensitive and soulful, conveying the author’s creativity convincingly. To quote the very first poem- 
  ‘Every tree 
  Calls out to her 
  But she chooses 
  Her tree and sits on it 
  She chooses and sits 
  And that is all 
  There is to it.’ 
  At first sight, these may appear to be single –focus expressions, but page after page you come across sensitive lines like these, you are bound to feel involved. 
  ‘I am a bird 
  Let me laugh 
  In your skies 
  Have fun in the furrows of 
  Your fields 
  And your shimmering 
  Irrigation ponds’ 
  Poetry is not a sealed-off entity of nature alone. We live in an urban world, and our concerns are city-bred. Then what impacts our young poet to focus on greener landscapes. Actually, this appears to be Saumitra’s retort to the mechanized, mundane metro culture that leaves us myopic to personal pleasures and the bounty of nature. 
  Mamta Kalia

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  Frieze

  Olga Dermott-Bond

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  Frieze by Olga Dermott-Bond is an astonishing and spellbinding debut poetry collection. Goddesses, saints, dead girls, creatures, mothers, and muses all gather in this collection to confide their secret histories and desires. Voices are recovered from canvas, from behind museum glass, from the pages of literature and the tales of Irish folklore, to explore what can be recaptured and what remains still out of reach.
  'In these tender poems, Olga Dermott-Bond conjures a gallery in which we enter every painting, a museum where we slip inside glass cases and come out changed.' - Miriam Nash
  From a bold voice in women's poetry. Frieze is art obsessed and darkly magical, with a touch of gothic. Akin to poets like Victoria Kennefick, Helen Ivory and Pascale Petit.

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  The Swan Island Connection - A...

  Dorothy Johnston

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  "All children were a mixture of innocence and guile, Chris Blackie thought, but the innocence had been squashed out of Bobby McGilvrey unnaturally young." 
  A shocking murder rocks the quiet coastal Victorian town of Queenscliff, a place where police work usually entails minor traffic infringements and dealing with the occasional Saturday night drunk. Local senior constable Chris Blackie and his deputy Anthea Merritt fully expect a murder investigation to be handled by the Criminal Investigation Unit based in Geelong. But they’re blind-sided by the interest shadowy figures from the secret military training base on nearby Swan Island take in the case. Consigned to the edges of the investigation and fearing an imminent wrongful conviction, Chris and Anthea defy their superiors to follow their own lines of enquiry — at great personal risk. 
  A worthy addition to Dorothy Johnston’s sea-change mystery series, The Swan Island Connection follows on from Through a Camel’s Eye, once again bringing the Australian coastal town of Queenscliff to life.

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