CATALOGUES - Literature - Poetry

All 64 sonnets of one of the greatest English poets, John Keats, are collected here, from the first, which he wrote at age 18, to the last, written just five years later. Presented with an introduction and explanatory notes, the sonnets combine sensuous imagery with an eager voice full of passionate yearning. Keats's strongest feelings and his refined appreciation of nature and the rich world of his imagination find words and fulfillment in the abiding form of the sonnet. Some of the sonnets are written in play, some in seriousness... read more

Garrison Keillor reads (or sings) all the poems in the book on two CDs inside, with music by Rich Dworsky ‘When I was 16, Helen Fleischman assigned me to memorise Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state” for English class, and fifty years later, that poem is still in my head. Algebra got washed away, and geometry and most of biology, but those lines about the redemptive power of love in the face of shame are still here behind my eyeballs, more permanent th... read more

Poems new & old Apirana Taylor is a popular and acclaimed poet, short-story writer, novlist, playwright, actor, musician and painter. This, his fifth volume of poetry, includes much new work, together with many old favourites (the ones most requested at readings). First published May 2009, Christchurch Softcover 172pages

Levertov's subjects range from paintings, music and landscape to terror in El Salvador, but there is no separation between political poems and spiritual poems. A work of religious contemplation becomes an act of protest, and an attack on political terror is transformed into a prayer for peace and hope.

"A Hospital Odyssey" is an outrageously imaginative voyage through illness and healing. Drawing on the most recent biomedical research into stem cells and cancer, the poem is a journey through the body's inner space and the strange habitats created by disease, including the chimeras people see when they're unwell. Maris, whose husband, Hardy, has been diagnosed with cancer, is separated from him. Her mythical journey leads though a surreal landscape, peopled by true and false physicians, god-celebrities, rabid statues, diseases hu... read more

'True stars in poetry like Gwyneth Lewis always match brilliance with warmth. She is the one to bet on' - Les Murray 'Felicitous, urbane, heartbreaking, the poems of Gwyneth Lewis form a universe whose planets use language for oxygen and thus are inhabitable' - Joseph Brodsky 'Gwyneth Lewis has so many of the gifts required for good poetry: command of form, with improvisation enlivening tradition; supple rhythm; originality of subject-matter and the right eye to pin down detail; humour, both sardonic and direct; and, above all, commitment to human feeling' - Peter Porter 'Her descrip..read more

In this innovative series of public lectures at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject. David Constantine's three lectures have to do with the chief end and means of poetry: a lively and effective language. In the first, Translation Is Good F... read more

"A Republic of Linen" is Patrick Brandon's first collection. Whether they tell of rising late and reluctantly from a warm bed, or revisit the deceptive simplicity of childhood, or take us wandering around a cold dissecting lab, these poems are about watching and waiting. With an eye for the detail and tilt of daily life, Brandon guides us from bedroom to studio, through the distorted terrain that lies between what we covet and what we get. Mostly his poems are about love.

Jane Hirshfield is a visionary American writer whose poems ask nothing less than what it is to be human. Both sensual meditations and passionate investigations, they reveal complex truths in language luminous and precise. Rooted in the living world, her poems celebrate and elucidate a hard-won affirmation of our human fate. Born of a rigorous questioning of heart, spirit and mind, they have become indispensable to many American readers in navigating their own lives. Bloodaxe published her retrospective "Each Happiness Ringed by Lio... read more

'Jane Hirshfield is a poet very close to my heart' - wislawa szymborska 'A profound empathy for the suffering of all living beings... It is precisely this that I praise in the poetry of Jane Hirshfield...In its highly sensuous detail, her poetry illuminates the Buddhist virtue of mindfulness' - czeslaw milosz, Prze Kroj (Poland) 'Her poetry is a rich and assured gift...an extraordinary intertwining of cherished detail and passionate abstraction...The poems' realised ambition is wisdom' - alison brackenbury, Agenda 'Poems of quiet wisdom, steeped in a profound understanding of what it it to be human' - The Scotsman

Elizabeth Alexander is a leading American poet whose work has been inspired by a wide range of influence, from history, literature, art and music to the 'rich infinity' of the African-American experience. Her's is a vital and vivid poetic voice on race, gender, politics and motherhood. "American Blue" is her first British publication. Many of her poems bring history alive and singing into the present in highly musical, sharply contemporary narratives, which use many different forms and voices to cover subjects ranging from slave re... read more

George Szirtes' The Budapest File (2000) brought together his poems about his Hungarian roots and experiences. This new collection presents the poetry he has written from the other side, as an English Hungarian writer who grew up with ambiguous feelings towards his adopted home. His England possesses his imagination as powerfully as his almost unreachable, native city -- disturbingly real yet also phantasmagoric, a spectral country living out its past, its people haunted by failure and disappointment. Over half the poems in this co... read more

Jane Griffiths writes mysteriously resonant poems about home, exile and shifting frontiers in classically precise language. Another Country presents a selection from her first two collections, A Grip on Thin Air and Icarus on Earth, as well as a whole collection of new work, Eclogue Over Merlin Street.

'Griffiths is an altogether unusual and original kind of contemporary poet. Icarus on Earth is a very rich and rewarding book, one densely packed with intricate and beautiful networks of image and syntax. The sheer ambition of this poetry is worth praising...truly groundbreaking contemporary poetry. Icarus on Earth is the work of a true and valuable artist.' - Peter McDonald, PN Review

'A major achievement...outstanding...complex and subtle in thought, supple of tone and piercing in its observation.' - Sarah Broom, Times Literary Supplement

Geronimo is probably the second-best-known Native American name, after Pocahontas. But the great Apache warrior's ultimate fate is little remembered. Feared for his once-great prowess long after any power he'd had was gone, Geronimo and his dwindling family were pointlessly herded from one detention centre to another in the American mid-west. The one-time warrior and horseman was eventually reduced to wearing a top hat and riding in an early Model T Ford, a grim caricature of assimilation into the dominant culture. The bitter irony... read more

Tom Pickard’s Ballad of Jamie Allan recounts the true adventures of an eighteenth-century gypsy musician who lived on the English–Scottish Borders and died in Durham jail, serving a life sentence for stealing a horse. Though once patronized by dukes and earls, Allan lost their support as his wayward behavior began to exceed their own. Drawing on newspaper accounts and court depositions, Pickard brings the ballad tradition of stark reportage to life with his own genius for the form. Through the words of his cohorts and... read more

In this powerful book of poetry, First Nations Cree writer Louise Bernice Halfe sets out to heal the past. Employing Native spiritualism, black comedy and the memories of her own childhood as healing arts, she finds an irrepressible source of strength and dignity in her people. Bear Bones and Feathers is rooted in Louise Bernice Halfe's own life. She offers moving portraits of her grandmother (a medicine woman whose life straddled old and new worlds), her parents (both trapped in a cycle of jealousy and abuse), and the people whose... read more

Being Alive is about being human: about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. Being Alive is the sequel to Neil Astley’s Staying Alive,which became Britain’s most popular poetry book, because it gave readers hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world. Now he has assembled this equally lively companion anthology for all those readers who’ve wanted more poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit. Staying Alive didn’t just reach a broader re... read more

Being Human is the third book in the Staying Alive poetry trilogy. Staying Alive and its sequel Being Alive have introduced many thousands of new readers to contemporary poetry. Being Human is a companion volume to those two books - a world poetry anthology offering poetry lovers an even broader, international selection of 'real poems for unreal times'. The range of poetry here complements that of the first two anthologies: hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world; poems that touch the heart... read more

Elena Shvarts is one of Russia's greatest living poets. "Birdsong on the Seabed" presents a selection of her most recent poetry. Shvarts has brought out four new collections in Russian since the publication by Bloodaxe in 1993 of "'Paradise': Selected Poems", the first English edition of her poetry and a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. This new bilingual Russian-English selection also includes some poems not yet been published in Russia. Elena Shvarts stands outside all schools and movements in contemporary Russian poe... read more

'Elena Shvarts is a miracle, believe me. Her poetry is the purest of creations' - Bella Akhmadulina'An explosive book by a dark, free, northern spirit... Bulgakov and Tsvetayeva (and Angela Carter) would feel at home in her violently imagined townscapes and landscapes' - Edwin Morgan, PBS Bulletin

"Bloodaxe Poetry Introductions" are a new kind of anthology aimed at the general reader as well as the poetry lover. Compiled by Staying Alive editor Neil Astley, each book in the series covers four leading contemporary poets in depth, with substantial selections covering the whole range of each writer's poetry, as well as intriguing and illuminating background material, including profiles, interviews, essays and commentary by the poets. This introduction brings together four of America's major modern poets whose visionary poetry i... read more

A visionary new book including On Earth, a extraordinary long poem, a meditation on human existence and life on earth.