Other books that might interest you

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  Backstroke

  Anna Mackmin

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  'Just let go. Let your body float. You'll still be here but it'll feel like flying in a dream.'
  Bo is busy – balancing the pressures of work and the needs of her struggling daughter. When her mother, the irrepressible force-of-nature Beth, is admitted to hospital following a stroke, the practical realities of the present collide with the complexities of their past.
  Backstroke is a kaleidoscopic and compassionate play, first performed at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2025. It was written and directed by Anna Mackmin, with Celia Imrie and Tamsin Greig playing mother and daughter.

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  Martyr!: Book Summary and Analysis

  Briefly Summaries

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  This is a concise summary and analysis of Martyr!, by Kaveh Akbar. It is not the original book and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Kaveh Akbar. Ideal for those seeking a quick and insightful overview.
   
  Martyr!  is a profound exploration of the complexities of faith, identity, and devotion. The poems delve into themes of sacrifice, religious ecstasy, and the paradoxes of martyrdom. Akbar's rich language and vivid imagery create a visceral experience that confronts the reader with questions about morality, spirituality, and human frailty. Through lyrical intensity, Akbar reflects on personal and collective histories, weaving together stories of devotion and resistance in the face of destruction.

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  Leaves of Grass The Original...

  Walt Whitman

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  Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892).The poems of Leaves of Grass are loosely connected, with each representing Whitman's celebration of his philosophy of life and humanity. This book is notable for its discussion of delight in sensual pleasures during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. Where much previous poetry, especially English, relied on symbolism, allegory, and meditation on the religious and spiritual, Leaves of Grass exalted the body and the material world.Influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, much like Emerson, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise.

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  Primordial - Poems

  Mai Der Vang

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  Mai Der Vang's poetry—lyrically insistent and visually compelling—constitutes a groundbreaking investigation into the collective trauma and resilience experienced by Hmong people and communities, the ongoing cultural and environmental repercussions of the war in Vietnam, the lives of refugees afterward, and the postmemory carried by their descendants. Primordial is a crucial turn to the ecological and generational impact of violence, a powerful and rousing meditation on climate, origin, and fate. 
   
   
   
  With profound and attentive care, Vang addresses the plight of the saola, an extremely rare and critically endangered animal native to the Annamite Mountains in Laos and Vietnam. Remarkably, the saola has only been known to the outside world since 1992, and sightings are so rare that it has now been more than a decade since the last known image of one was captured in a camera trap photo in 2013. 
   
   
   
  Primordial examines the saola's relationship to Hmong refugee identity and cosmology and a shared sense of exile, precarity, privacy, and survival. Can a war-torn landscape and memory provide sanctuary, and what are the consequences for our climate, our origins, our ability to belong to a homeland? Written during a difficult pregnancy and postpartum period, Vang's poems are urgent stays against extinction.

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  The Hurting Kind

  Ada Limón

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  An astonishing collection about interconnectedness—between the human and nonhuman, ancestors and ourselves—from National Book Critics Circle Award winner, National Book Award finalist and U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.“I have always been too sensitive, a weeper / from a long line of weepers,” writes Limón. “I am the hurting kind.” What does it mean to be the hurting kind? To be sensitive not only to the world’s pain and joys, but to the meanings that bend in the scrim between the natural world and the human world? To divine the relationships between us all? To perceive ourselves in other beings—and to know that those beings are resolutely their own, that they “do not / care to be seen as symbols”?With Limón’s remarkable ability to trace thought, The Hurting Kind explores those questions—incorporating others’ stories and ways of knowing, making surprising turns, and always reaching a place of startling insight. These poems slip through the seasons, teeming with horses and kingfishers and the gleaming eyes of fish. And they honor parents, stepparents, and grandparents: the sacrifices made, the separate lives lived, the tendernesses extended to a hurting child; the abundance, in retrospect, of having two families.Along the way, we glimpse loss. There are flashes of the pandemic, ghosts whose presence manifests in unexpected memories and the mysterious behavior of pets left behind. But The Hurting Kind is filled, above all, with connection and the delight of being in the world. “Slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still / green in the morning’s shade,” writes Limón of a groundhog in her garden, “she is doing what she can to survive.”

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  Through Old Eyes - Poems by...

  Uncle Wes Marne

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  Published to commemorate the author’s 100th birthday, this wide-ranging and thoughtful collection reflects on history, colonisation, family, childhood, Aboriginal Dreaming, traditions and storytelling, working lives and people. 
  Sometimes wistful, melancholic, poignant, at times the author’s wry sense of fun and humour shines through. 
  When he arrived in Sydney in the 1960s, Bigambul man, Uncle Wes, was not allowed to tell his stories at schools. He set up a fire bucket in his backyard and invited families and children from the local Aboriginal community to come to sit around the fire and share his stories. It did not take long for the police to arrive and arrest him for hosting an unlawful gathering – he spent two days in lock-up for sharing his stories. 
  Uncle Wes is a living treasure of Aboriginal storytelling wisdom. Through his poems Uncle Wes invites the reader to join him by the fire as he generously shares his reflections and reminiscences on one hundred years. 
  'It is my pleasure to honour Uncle Wes for his work in retaining the age-old storytelling tradition of our people. It is important to maintain this tradition of our Elders sharing their knowledge and insight through story and verse. Thank you Uncle Wes, for sharing your poems with us as you celebrate your 100th year.' - Dr Anne Pattel-Gray: Head of the Australia First Nations Program, World Vision Australia 
  'Uncle Wes Marne has a unique ability to allow the reader to see through his experienced eyes. The power and wisdom of his words is now more than ever important for the future generations to understand the time and place they exist in.' - Ben Bowen: CEO, Indigenous Literacy Foundation

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