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  Poetry

  Matthew Arnold

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  Matthew Arnold was a cultural critic and inspector of schools in Victorian Britain. In his day he was famous for his critique of British society in Culture and Anarchy , but he was also well-known for his eclectic poetry. Some of his poems commemorate lost loved ones, like "Thyrsis" (for his friend, the poet Arthur Hugh Clough) and "Kaiser Dead" (for a deceased dog). Others speak to ubiquitous human struggles, such as old age (in "Growing Old") and the struggles against the natural world ("To an Independent Preacher"). Reflecting his concerns to "make the best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere," he also wrote poems that retell stories from world mythology like the Norse ("Balder Dead"), Iranian ("Sohrab and Rostam"), and Greek ("The Strayed Reveller," "Merope"). He also wrote poems that tell stories closer to home, like "The Scholar Gipsy," which is based on a 17th century story about a poor Oxford student who leaves the university to join a band of gypsies. Ever the observer of culture, Arnold also wrote poetry speaking to issues of his own day, the most famous of which is "Dover Beach," which compares the secularization of England with the nighttime ocean withdrawing from shore. This poem is sometimes held up as an early example of literary modernism, and also inspired the composer Samuel Barber to set the poem to music. Arnold is highly regarded among the pantheon of Victorian poets. As the English literary critic E. K. Chambers puts it: "It is no part of my object to attempt a comparison between the best work of Matthew Arnold and that of his six greatest contemporaries. Personal taste and emotional sympathy inevitably play too great a part in any such estimate. But one may fairly maintain that the proportion of work which endures is greater in the case of Matthew Arnold than in that of any one of them."

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  Boy Gets Girl - A Play

  Rebecca Gilman

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  What is a stalker? And what kind of life can a woman lead when she knows she is being followed, obsessively and perhaps dangerously, by one?This is the dilemma facing Theresa Bedell, a reporter in New York, in Rebecca Gilman's tensely fascinating new play. When Theresa goes on an awkward blind date with a friend of a friend, she sees no reason to continue the relationship--but the man, an attractive fellow named Tony, thinks otherwise. While Theresa is at first annoyed yet flattered by his continuing attention, her attitude gradually changes to one of fear and fury when he starts violently to menace her and those around her.In brilliantly delineating the kind of terror a woman in full control of her life feels when everything around her suddenly seems to be a threat, Gilman probes the dark side of relationships in the 1990s with the rich insight and compelling characterizations that have distinguished her earlier plays and made her one of the most exciting young playwrights working today.

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  Mustafa

  Naylah Ahmed

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  A vivid and compelling thriller about belief and retribution.
  Mustafa is in prison for the death of a teenage boy during an exorcism. Racked with guilt at the loss of an innocent life and isolated in a world where his beliefs are constantly challenged, he's trying to avoid trouble. But when prisoners who taunt him suffer mysterious injuries and prison officers start behaving strangely, Mustafa realises the spirit he tried to banish is still with him, and he must confront it once again.
  Naylah Ahmed's play Mustafa was first performed at Soho Theatre, London, in 2012 in a co-production by Kali Theatre and Birmingham Rep.

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  Top 10 Poets – The U S The -...

  Wallace Stevens, Edna St....

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  The language of Poetry is an art that most of us attempt at some point in our lives.  Although its commonplace exposure has been somewhat marginalised in today’s often fast-paced lives we all recognise good verse that can empathise with our thoughts or open us up to experience new things in new ways, to better understand and to enjoy the many strands of our lives. 
  But finding a starting point can be overwhelming, even off-putting, so in this series we offer up our Top 10 classic poets, who brim with talent and verse, on a range of subjects and themes that we can all enjoy. 
  The United States may be far younger than many nations on Earth, yet its tumultuous history has reaped a harvest of poets and poetry of very fine calibre.  In this volume we explore the verse of the Mid-Atlantic.

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  Perspective

  Etrec White

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  In Etrec White’s narrative poetry book, Perspective highlights the quest of two brothers. 
  After losing their parents at a young age, the brothers believe they’re finally living the good life when they discover a shocking truth surrounding their parents’ death. Motivated by a desire to avenge mom and dad, while having the support of their grandparents and godfathers, the boys set out to investigate what really happened. Looking for justice, they come face-to-face with secrets, lies, and cover-ups that will change them forever

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  Bunny Girls

  Angela Readman

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  Out of the doll's house and into the woods, Bunny Girls steps out of the shadows of girlhood and looks at the world with wide eyes. Surreal, spiky, wise and darkly funny, this new collection by Costa-winning author and poet Angela Readman expertly mixes shades of film noir, northern wit, and magic realism. Through the lens of childhood, these poems address autism, anxiety, and darker concerns buried by cultural ideals of femininity.
  Here in Readman's skilful words are odes to severed heads, angels and Disney villains, Marilyn Monroe's body double, squashed slugs, sexual awakenings, Wendy-houses and snow globes, nosebleeds and blackbirds. Women are both invisible and actively writing themselves into the visible. Where there is isolation and dislocation, its counterbalance is finding breathless, reckless joy in the acts of creation and imagination. At its heart, this enlivening, magnificent book is about darkness and light, the lovely and the frightening, the beautiful and the worrying.

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