Important, so inspiring... Please read this book" -Sonny Moore, Recording Artist "There are very few ways to get inside the mind of a lyricist. One way is through reading their diaries, the other through sleeping with them. Eric's book is the more entertaining of the options. It's a raw look inside the heart and mind of a rock 'n' roll spiritualist whose struggles with love (Chaplin) and versus the world (Keaton) are laid out bare like an exhibitionist on a double-dare." -Mike Shea, Founder, AP Magazine "Coma Therapy" is the sound of a powerful new voice in contemporary American literature. Victorino's brand of punchy prose often draws comparisons to the likes of Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson. This debut collection of poems and short stories draws a dangerously thin line between the heartwarming and the horrifying... Eric Victorino then mischievously walks that line all the way to the last page. Defiant, triumphant, hopeful and wise.

    It is about the constant hunger for love. It is about feeding that hunger with another person and finding that sometimes it isn’t enough. Salgado creates a world in which the heart can live anywhere; her fat brown body, her parents home country, a lover, a toothbrush, a mango, or a song. It is a celebration of heartache, of how it can ruin us, but most importantly how we always survive it and return to ourselves whole.

    Each poet's work is illustrated by a different artist such as Emma Chichester Clark, Fritz Wegner and Korky Paul.Brian Patten came to public attention with the publication of THE MERSEY SOUND in 1967. He is a very popular performance poet, always in demand for conferences and school visits. Collections of his own poetry are published in Puffin and he is the editor of the PUFFIN BOOK OF TWENTIETH CENTURY VERSE. Brian lives in London.This collection features poems and illustrations from:Spike Milligan; Kit Wright; Michael Rosen; Charles Causley; Roger McGough; Benjamin Zephaniah; Brian Patten; Jackie Kay; John Agard; Allan Ahlberg; Emma Chichester Clark; Korky Paul; Alison Jay; Lydia Monks; Ali Chatterton; David Mostyn; Sue Williams; Sheila Moxley; Fritz Wegner

    The paintings are in brilliant color and each features the Japanese parasol.Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694) was born Matsuo Kinsaku during the early Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Basho was recognized for his work in a poetic form that was a precursor to the haiku. Over the course of time, Basho became recognized as an unparalleled master of the haiku. His work is internationally renowned, and his poems are reproduced at many historical sites in Japan.

    M. Ocean explores the depths of love deeply felt and violently lost. For those whose wounds are fresh and hearts still raw with ample emotion, Ocean portrays pain and suffering in apt and heart wrenching candour.

    each poem is incredibly impactful and beautifully written. stories of love, heartbreak, suffering, and healing come alive on the page in an incredible way. let this book of poetry touch your soul and help you feel free. join trevor capiro on this journey towards healing.

    Revisiting Magellan’s voyage around the world, these poems explore the speaker’s Filipino American identity by grappling with her relationship to her family and notions of diaspora, circumnavigation, and discovery. Whether rewriting the origin story of Eve (“I always imagined that the serpent had the legs of a seductive woman in black nylons”), or ruminating on what-should-have-been-said “when the man at the party said he wanted to own a Filipino,” Chan paints wry, witty renderings of anecdotal and folkloric histories, while both preserving and unveiling a self-identity that dares any other to try and claim it.

    Smith explores the cognitive dissonance that results from belonging to a community that unapologetically celebrates black humanity while living in a world that often renders blackness a caricature of fear. His poems move fluidly across personal and political histories, all the while reflecting on the social construction of our lived experiences. Smith brings the reader on a powerful journey forcing us to reflect on all that we learn growing up, and all that we seek to unlearn moving forward.

    S. Eliot Prize'Rich in form and reverent references, Us transports the reader from the hills of Pakistan to the schoolgrounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, from George Herbert to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' (Maria Crawford, Financial Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR)'Highlights of the year include the Heaney-esque lyricism of British-Indian poet Zaffar Kunial's accomplished debut Us.' (Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)'Zaffar Kunial possesses that rare quality of negative capability which Keats first identified in Shakespeare (a guiding spirit in this, Kunial’s first collection); the poems hold us among mysteries and doubts, without pronouncing or attempting to resolve. Their beauty lies in their indecisiveness – their quiet refusal to settle matters or hold to a single view.' (Rebecca Watts, Times Literary Supplement)'His first full book, which has come together slowly, patiently, over several years... He can do clear-eyed and tender inside a single poem, without any hint of glibness. Fun fact: he used to earn his living writing verse for Hallmark cards.'(The 20 best poetry books of 2018, The Spinoff, New Zealand)'Everyone in this book is honoured as complicated and contrary, while the writing of them is always subtle and deep, generous and empathetic.' (Tim Dee, Caught by the River)'Zaffar Kunial has been called “a guide for modern times”. His first collection Us travels from Pakistan to Stratford-upon-Avon to Orkney, as he explores his own cultural heritage through language. Kunial is interested in how two disparate elements can come together to create something new. He is more formal than many modern poets; he takes tradition seriously. His writing is subtle, thoughtful and precise, his view of the world utterly individual.' (FOLD magazine)'Zaffar Kunial is a poet whose work thrills me, who makes you return to the origins of things, places, language and people again and again. He's a poet who takes traditions seriously but makes of them something entirely new - a must.' (Jackie Kay)'Us by Zaffar Kunial abounds with poems which are witty, playful and heart-breaking by turns. Drawn to the place where things don't quite meet, which he describes as "a kind of abysmal underneathness/or usness/under the heights of language", his is a wondrous poetic of loopholes, portals and translations, and of the magic in-between.' (Sinead Morrissey, Chair of the T. S. Eliot Prize judges)'There's something about the precise, thoughtful, unhurried way in which he interrogates language that marks him out as a unique talent. A real find.' (Roger Cox, Scotsman)

    Documentary poems explore which human lives are valued, how editorial decisions are weighed, what role the aid industrial complex plays in crises, and how medical myths and rumor can travel faster than microbes.These poems also give voice to the virus. Eight percent of the human genome is inherited from viruses and the human placenta would not exist without a gene descended from a virus. If God Is A Virus reimagines viruses as givers of life and even authors of a viral-human self-help book.

    I referred them to Doctor Who's Tardis.'Frank Skinner wants you to read more poetry. Wait, wait - don't stop reading. Whether you're a frequent poetry reader or haven't read any since sixth form, Frank's infectious passion for language, rhythm and metre will win you over and provide you with the basic tools you need to tackle any poem.In this short, easy-to-digest and delightful book, Frank guides us through the twists and turns of 'Pad, pad' by Stevie Smith, a short, seemingly simple poem that contains multitudes of meaning and a deceptive depth of emotion. Revel in the mastery of Stevie Smith's choice of words, consider the eternal mystery of the speaker of the poem and be moved by rhyming couplets like you never have before.Give it a go. You never know, you might even enjoy it.

    From the sex shop to the farmers market, the family dinner table to the bookstore, trans people are everywhere, though often erased. Writing towards a trans future, H. Melt envisions a world where trans people are respected, loved and celebrated every day.

    These characterful, intelligent and darkly witty poems explore lives lived strangely in unusual worlds, through a series of deft and seductive soliloquies.In a collection with a taste for ventriloquy and wickedness, and a flair for vocal cross-dressing, the balance of power is always shifting in an unexpected direction - an ingénue masquerades as a femme fatale, a doctor appears more disturbed than his patient, and parents seem more unruly than their children. Eccentric, intimate, arch, anxious, decadent and sometimes mournful, the book's confiding, conversational voices tell stories recognisable and refracted, carried along by the undercurrent on which the collection ebbs and rides: the anguish and energy brought about by a long-distance love affair, which propels and terrorises and ultimately unites the work.Dear Boy is an irresistible and enlivening collection by a new poet of startling and various gifts.

    104 pages of gossiping, loving and pestering of the British upper class, accompanied by illustrations, will definitely not disappoint.

    Dropbear interrogates the complexities of colonial and personal history with an alternately playful, tender and mournful intertextual voice, deftly navigating the responsibilities that gather from sovereign country, the spectres of memory and the debris of settler-coloniality. This innovative mix of poetry and essay offers an eloquent witness to the entangled present, an uncompromising provocation of history, and an embattled but redemptive hope for a decolonial future.