Fleur Adcock is one of Britain`s most accomplished poets. Her poised, ironic poems are tense & tightly controlled as well as shrewdly laconic, & often chilling as she unmasks the deceptions of love or unravels family lives. Disarmingly conversational in style, they are remarkable for their psychological insight & their unsentimental, mischievously casual view of personal relationships. Born in New Zeal&, she has explored questions of identity & rootedness throughout her work, both in relation to her personal allegiances to her native & adopted countries as well as her family history, whose long-dead characters she brings to life. She has also written movingly of birth, death & bereavement, & has tackled political issues with honest indignation & caustic wit. This first Collected edition of her poetry replaces her Selected Poems, with the addition of work from her later Oxford collections The Incident Book, Time-Zones & Looking Back. All her most celebrated poems are here, from the highly entertaining ` Against Coupling`, ` Smokers For Celibacy` & ` The Prize-Winning Poem` to modern classics such as ` The Ex-Queen Amongst the Astronomers` & ` Things`
- as well as the notorious one about kissing John Prescott ` Adcock has a deceptively laid-back tone, through which the sharper edge of her talent is encountered like a razor blade in a peach` Carol Ann Duffy, Guardian ` Most of Fleur Adcock`s best poems have something to do with bed: she writes well about sex, very well about illness, & very well indeed about dreaming Her imagination thrives on what threatens her peace of mind, & only when she is unguarded can these threats have their full creative effect. Hence the importance of bed: it is the place where the elegant artful barriers that she builds from day to day are most easily over-thrown Throughout her writing life, she has made a fine art from holding on to principles of orderliness & good clear sense; but she has made an even finer one from loosening her grip on them` Andrew Motion, TLS ` Adcock`s reputation has been founded on her spare, conversational poems, in which the style is deceptively simple, apparently translucentthose who see in such poems only flatness are missing the power of a voice which teases both reader & subject` Jo Shapcott, TLS
...

National Poetry Day is a chance for everyone everywhere to read, share & enjoy poetry. This special anthology features poems by the National Poetry Day Ambassadors, a top team of fantastic poets who bring poetry alive all year round.
Includes: new poems by Deborah Alma, Joseph Coelho, Sally Crabtree, Jan Dean, Marjorie Lotfi Gill, Chrissie Gittins, Matt Goodfellow, Sophie Herxheimer, Michaela Morgan, Brian Moses, Abigail Parry, Rachel Piercey, Rachel Rooney, Joshua Siegal & Kate Wakeling (winner of the CLi PPA, 2017). And each poet has chosen a favourite poem to share, so look out for classics by Chistina Rossetti, WB Yeats, Shakespeare & Keats among others. Take a look, & be part of the celebration!
...

The Taliban are synonymous with the war in Afghanistan. Doughty, uncompromising fighters, they plant IEDs, deploy suicide bombers & wage guerrilla warfare. While much has been written about their military tactics, media strategy & harsh treatment of women, the cultural & sometimes less overtly political representation of their identity, the Taliban's other face, is often overlooked. Most Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, a people who cherish their vibrant poetic tradition, closely associated with that of song. The poems in this collection are meant to be recited & sung; & this is the manner in which they are enjoyed by the wider Pashtun public today. From audiotapes traded in secret in the bazaars of Kandahar, to mp 3s exchanged via bluetooth in Kabul, to video files downloaded in Dubai & London, Taliban poetry has an appeal that transcends the insurgency. For the Taliban today, these poems, or ghazals, have a resonance back to the 1980s war against the Soviets, when similar rhetorical styles, poetic formulae & tricks with metre inspired mujahideen combatants & non-combatants alike. The poetry presented here

Includes:: 'classics' of the genre from the 1980s & 1990s as well as a selection from the odes & ghazals of today's conflict. Veering from nationalist paeans to dirges replete with religious symbolism, the poems are organised under four headings -- War, Pastoral, Religious & Love -- & cover many themes & styles. The political is intertwined with the aesthetic, the celebratory cry is never far from the funeral dirge & praise of martyrs lost. Two prefatory essays introduce the cultural & historical context of the poetry. The editors discuss its importance to the Pashtuns & highlight how poetic themes correspond to the past thirty years of war in Afghanistan. Faisal Devji comments on what the poetry reveals of the Taliban's emotional & ethical hinterl&.

...

This new anthology of poems, favourites from the nation`s longest-running & best-loved request programme for verse, moves with the seasons, following the turning year from John Clare`s `pale splendour of the winter sun` to John Keats` ` Season of mists & mellow fruitfulness`, by way of Larkin`s `young-leafed June` & Gerard Manley Hopkins` `glassy peartree leaves & blooms` when ` Nothing is so beautiful as Spring`. As the year changes, so we change with it. Our daily lives have been shaped & directed by the seasons, & it is here that we find poems about harvest & hardship, growth & new life, the warmth of the life-giving sun, Christmas & the closing of the year. Poetry Please: Seasonal Poems is a vital & generous gathering to treasure. ...

Gilbert Highet was a legendary teacher at Columbia University, admired for his scholarship & his charisma as a lecturer. Poets in a Landscape is his delightful exploration of both Latin literature & the Italian landscape. As Highet writes in his introduction, ”I have endeavored to recall some of the greatest Roman poets by describing the places were they lived, recreating their characters & evoking the essence of their work.” The poets are Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, & Juvenal. Highet sketches the stories of the poets` lives & fills in the historical background, while offering crisp modern translations of their finest work & memorably vivid descriptions of the natural world. The result is an entirely sui generis amalgam of travel writing, biography, criticism, & pure poetry-altogether an unexcelled introduction to the world of the classics. ...

Map No. 2918, Pofadder, in South Africa’s official topographic survey at 1:250, 000 from the country’s national survey organization, the Chief Directorate of Surveys & Mapping. The maps have altitude colouring & contours at 50m or 100m intervals, depending on the map edition, plus spot heights. Deserts, marshes, dry pans, perennial & seasonal water features, etc, as well as protected areas are shown. The maps present the country’s road & rail networks & include the usual information expected on topographic mapping at this scale, although in more rapidly developing areas road information may not necessarily be up to date. Also indicated are magisterial district & provincial boundaries. Latitude & longitude values are shown in the margins at 5` intervals together with South African grid co-ordinates. Typically, each sheet covers an area of one degree of latitude & two degrees of longitude. The projection used is Gauss Conformal. The legend is in English & Afrikaans. ...

Pogórze Ciezkowickie in a series of detailed maps of Poland’s most popular recreational areas, showing waymarked hiking & cycling routes & various types of overnight accommodation, including local hotels, youth hostels, shelters & mountain huts, campsites, camping on local farms, etc. The maps also show various sport & recreational facilities: swimming pools, equestrian & watersport centres, etc. A wide range of other symbols highlight places of interest, local restaurants & bars, fuels supplies & other facilities. The base map is contoured (interval 5m, 10m, or 20m depending on the terrain), with, where appropriate, relief shading & graphic relief to enhance the presentation of the terrain. The maps also indicate various types of vegetation or land use. Road network

Includes:: unsurfaced country tracks & railway lines show local stations. The maps have 1km UTM grid. * Map legend

Includes:: English*.* In this title:* Pogórze Ciezkowickie, an interesting hiking area between Tarnów in the north-west & Jaslo in the south-east, bordered by the Biala & the Wisloka rivers.



...

Pogradeci Prefecture at 1:100, 000 in a series of handy size, waterproof & tear-resistant, contoured & GPS compatible road maps from the Tirana-based publishers Vektor. Landscape is presented by altitude colouring & contours lines at 100m intervals, with spot heights & a few more names of topographic features than found on Vektor’s 200K road maps of the country. National parks & nature reserves are prominently highlighted. The prefecture maps appear to show the same small local dirt roads as in the 200K series, but given the increase in scale do so with greater clarity & also provide more detailed GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude lines are drawn at 5’ intervals), useful when travelling across the more remote parts of the country. Railway lines are included & local airports are marked. Symbols highlight campsites, beaches, archaeological & historical sites, caves, etc. The maps also show subdivisions of prefectures & names of the communes, & indicate administrative status of towns. Map legend

Includes:: English. Please note: border crossings are prominently marked but beyond topographic colouring no road or other information is provided outside the country’s borders.

...

So shattering were the after-effects of Kishinev, the rampage that broke out in Russia in April 1903, that one historian remarked that it was ”nothing less than a prototype for the Holocaust itself”. In three days of violence, 49 Jews were killed & 600 raped or wounded, whilst more than 1, 000 Jewish-owned houses & stores were ransacked & destroyed. Recounted in lurid detail by newspapers throughout the Western world, the pre-Easter attacks seized the imagination of an international public, quickly becoming the prototype for what would become known as a ”pogrom” & providing the impetus for efforts as varied as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion & the NAACP. With new evidence from Russia, Israel & Europe, Steven J. Zipperstein brings historical insight & clarity to a much-misunderstood event. ...

The 1:50 000 topographic map gives a more general picture of the ground features than a basic map. It shows settlements, houses, roads, cultivated areas, waterways, cutting areas, mires, rock exposures, & relief. One map sheet covers an area of 30 x 40 km & one centimetre corresponds to 500 metres on the ground. The 1:50, 000 topographic map is also an ideal complement to nautical charts as it provides useful information about the land areas adjacent to waterways. For example, all Finnish sea areas are covered by 1:50 000 topographic map sheets. ...