Lovereading Latest: Poetry

Jubilee Lines - Carol Ann Duffy

Jubilee Lines
Carol Ann Duffy

Format: Hardback - Released: 03/05/2012
Lovereading Price: £9.74 - Saving £3.25 (25%)

To mark the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne, Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy brings together a dazzling array of contemporary poets (sixty in fact) to write about each of the sixty years of 'Her Majesty's' reign. Celebrated writers as Simon Armitage, Gillian Clarke, Wendy Cope, Geoffrey Hill, Jackie Kay, Michael Longley, Andrew Motion, Don Paterson, and Jo Shapcott, alongside some of the newest young talent around - address a moment or event from their chosen year, be it of personal or political significance or both. Through a series of specially commissioned poems, Jubilee Lines offers a unique portrayal of the country and times in which we have lived since 1952, culminating in an essential portrait of today: the way we speak, the way we chronicle, the way we love and fight, and the way we honour and remember. Brilliantly introduced and edited by Carol Ann Duffy, Jubilee Lines is an unforgettable commemoration: not only a monarch's reign but of a way of living for generations of her people.

The Bees - Carol Ann Duffy

The Bees
Carol Ann Duffy

Format: Hardback - Released: 07/10/2011
Lovereading Price: £11.24 - Saving £3.75 (25%)

Winner of the Costa Poetry Award 2011. Shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry 2011. Shortlisted for the Galaxy UK Author of the Year Award 2011. Reviewed and selected by our poetry expert, Liam Parkin. Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s new collection is a diverse range of poetry in both technique and form. Her talent at capturing the essence of moments in time is on full show, and her explorations of war survivors, companions and historical figures are suitably surrounded by thematic investigations into the life of bees. The bees that pervade the anthology - both explicitly and implicitly – contain a variety of interesting and unique motifs; of nature, beauty and a profound awareness of our spiritual encounters in life. As is written, ‘Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds/ that keeps things living in a written line’ (Spell), and it is this sentiment that captures the tone of the collection. Duffy contains what is important within her lines, and it is a beautiful reminder of what life can, and should, be about. Click here to visit the Poetry Book Society page for Reading Groups and to download extracts from the T S Eliot Prize shortlist.

The Watch That Ends the Night : Voices from the Titanic - Allan Wolf

The Watch That Ends the Night : Voices from the Titanic
Allan Wolf

Format: Hardback - Released: 02/02/2012
Lovereading Price: £9.74 - Saving £3.25 (25%)

Arrogance and innocence, hubris and hope - twenty-four haunting voices of the Titanic tragedy, as well as the iceberg itself, are evoked in a stunning tour de force.

Black Cat Bone - John Burnside

Black Cat Bone
John Burnside

Format: Paperback - Released: 04/08/2011
Lovereading Price: £7.50 - Saving £2.50 (25%)

Winner of the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry 2011. John Burnside's remarkable new book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song. These are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth/and muzzle/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why/they fail to love us'; and, poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads, or of a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry. Drawing on sources as various as the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the lyrics of Delta blues, Black Cat Bone examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find - in the forest or in our own hearts - ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there. Full of risk and wonder, Black Cat Bone shows the range of Burnside's abilities, but also strikes out for new territories. He remains consistently, though, one of our finest living lyric poets and each of these astonishing poems is as clear and memorable as 'a silver bracelet/falling for days/through an inch and a half/of ice'.

The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin - Philip Larkin

The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin

Format: Hardback - Released: 19/01/2012
Lovereading Price: £30.00 - Saving £10.00 (25%)

The manuscript and printed sources have been scrutinized afresh; more detailed accounts than hitherto available of the sources of the text and of dates of composition are provided; and, previous accounts of composition dates have been corrected. Variant wordings from Larkin's typescripts and the early printings are recorded. For the first time, the poems are given a comprehensive commentary. This draws critically upon, and substantially extends, the accumulated scholarship on Larkin, and covers closely relevant historical contexts, persons and places, allusions and echoes, and linguistic usage. Due prominence is given to the poet's comments on his poems, which often outline the circumstances that gave rise to a poem, or state what he was trying to achieve. Larkin played down his literariness, but his poetry enrichingly alludes to and echoes the writings of many others; Archie Burnett's commentary establishes him as a more complex and more literary poet than many readers have suspected.

Lovereading Latest: Poetry

Jubilee Lines - Carol Ann Duffy

Jubilee Lines Carol Ann Duffy

The Bees - Carol Ann Duffy

The Bees Carol Ann Duffy