This title presents the story of the poor boy who made his fortune.. .not just once but twice. Little Jeff Pearce grew up in a post-war Liverpool slum. His father lived the life of an affluent gentleman whilst his mother was forced to steal bread to feed her starving children. Life was tough & from the moment Jeff could walk he learned to go door to door begging rags from the rich which he sold down the markets. Leaving school at the age of fourteen he embarked on an extraordinary journey & found himself before the age of thirty a millionaire. Then after a cruel twist of fate left him penniless he his wife & children were forced out of their beautiful home. With nothing but holes in his pockets Jeff had no alternative but to go back down the markets & start all over again. Did he still have what it took? Could he really get back everything he had lost? A Pocketful of Holes & Dreams" is the heartwarming true story of a little boy who had nothing but gained everything & proof that sometimes rags can be turned into riches..." ...

Ruth Padel is an award-winning poet who has also become renowned as an energetic generous & thought-provoking guide to reading poetry. Her 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem" with its lively overview of contemporary writing & eye-opening readings of individual poems is indispensable for anyone who writes poetry teaches it or simply wants to enjoy it. In her new book she uses sixty poems by some of our finest poets to look at the idea of the journey through literature & through life. As Padel makes clear in her fascinating introduction todays debates about how accessible a poem should be are poetrys older tradition. To rhyme or not to rhyme? The Elizabethans fought over that one while the Greeks couldnt agree about whether poetry should be dumbed down or remain the preserve of the elite. Combining her training as a Classicist with her insights as a poet Padel highlights the ways in which the best poets now find a balance between rhymed formal verse & modernisms freer styles using a traditional formal craft to convey genuinely felt up-to-the-minute experience. In an increasingly unstable world she argues we need poetry more than ever to help us to see afresh & understand the journeys of our lives." ...

This book features 366 poems one for each day of the year (including leap years). Chosen for their narrative resonance & rhythm these are poems to learn by heart or treasure & enjoy. Poets included range from Yeats Shakespeare Housman & Kipling to contemporary poets such as Wendy Cope Carol Ann Duffy Maya Angelou & Thom Gunn. ...

A repeat of the formula which made Poem for the Day such a well-loved favourite whose popularity & sales just go on & on. Poem for the Day Two has one page for each day of the year. On each page is a poem with brief additional material about the poem or the poet giving added charm & interest
- sometimes biographical sometimes anecdotal sometimes explanatory sometimes historical. There are 366 poems (one for each day of the year & one for leap years) to delight & inspire
- & learn by heart chosen for their magic & memorability. The poems are varied: old & contemporary well-known & new & with a completely different selection from the first volume.

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18th March 1993 is the centenary of Wilfred Owens birth. To mark the Event Chatto is reissuing the definitive single-volume edition of Owens famous war poems complied by Jon Stallworthy from his scholarly 2-volume edition. It has sold over 40 000 copies first under the Hogarth imprint & then under Chatto. ...

Dazzling in its prosodic innovations such as the sprung rhythm he pioneered & wide-ranging in its complexity & metaphysical interest. The Penguin Classics" edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins " Poems & Prose" is selected & edited with an introduction by W.H. Gardner. Closer to Dylan Thomas than Matthew Arnold in his creative violence & insistence on the sound of poetry Gerard Manley Hopkins was no staid conventional Victorian. On entering the Jesuit order the age of twenty-four he burnt all his poetry & resolved to write no more as not belonging to my profession unless by the wishes of my superiors. The poems letters & journal entries selected for this edition were written in the following twenty years of his life & published posthumously in 1918. His verse is wrought from the creative tensions & paradoxes of a poet-priest who wanted to evoke the spiritual essence of nature sensuously & to communicate this revelation in natural language & speech-rhythms while using condensed innovative diction & all the skills of poetic artifice. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) was born in Essex the eldest son of a prosperous middle-class family. He was educated at Highgate School & Balliol College Oxford where he read Classics & began his lifelong friendship with Robert Bridges. In 1866 he entered the Roman Catholic Church & two years later he became a member of the Society of Jesus. In 1877 he was ordained & was priest in a number of parishes including a slum district in Liverpool. From 1882 to 1884 he taught at Stonyhurst College & in 1884 he became Classics Professor at University College Dublin. In his lifetime Hopkins was hardly known as a poet except to one or two friends; his poems were not published until 1918 in a volume edited by Robert Bridges. If you enjoyed Hopkins " Poems & Prose" you might like John Clares " Selected Poems" also available in " Penguin Classics"." ...

As more & more secular funerals are taking place there is a need for appropriate texts. The Poet Laureate spoke recently of the importance of epitaphs for people: poems or songs which commemorate their lives. Actress Julia Watson married to the poet David Harsent was confronted with the issue when her father died & the result is this inspiring collection of 70 poems & prose extracts suitable for reading at funerals & celebrations of a life. The selections range from Shakespeare to Chief Tecumseh of the Shawnee Nation from Christina Rossetti to St Francis of Assissi & included are some very short pieces which could be printed on an order of service. ...

Shakespeares sonnets have an intensity of both feeling & meaning unmatched in English sonnet form. They divide into two parts; the first 126 sonnets are addressed to a fair youth for whom the poet has an obsessive love & the second chronicles his love for the notorious Dark Lady. In addition to the sonnets this volume

Includes:: Shakespeares two lengthy narrative poems on classical themes The Rape of Lucrece which looks forward to the dark imagery of Macbeth & Venus & Adonis which mixes ribaldry & tragedy in unique Shakespearean manner. The Phoenix & the Turtle is a beautiful metaphysical & allegorical short elegy & takes its place with Shakespeares better-known poetry.

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Take Note for Exam Success! York Notes offer an exciting approach to English literature. This market leading series fully reflects student needs. They are packed with summaries commentaries exam advice margin & textual features to offer a wider context to the text & encourage a critical analysis. York Notes The Ultimate Literature Guides. ...

The book represent a genuine & important discovery in the canon of Betjemans poems often considered closed with the publication of the Complete Poems". Between 1953-57 John Betjeman read a series of poems on " The Faith in the West" program airing on the BBCs West of England Home Service. This series called " Poems in the Porch" was so popular that Betjeman received constant requests to publish the poems. Although he deprecatingly referred to the poems as mere verses Betjeman at last capitulated to the public. The result was a slim volume of six poems entitled Poems in the Porch. What few people now realize is that Betjeman read at least 20 original poems on the radio in this series perhaps even more although owing to the haphazard records of both the BBC & Betjeman himself it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy the history of this series. Kevin Gardner has been able to identify & collect 26 of these poems & has written a fascinating introductory essay recounting the story of Betjeman as a radio poet & discussing the artistry of these poems. Most have never been published & currently exist only in manuscript. Despite the gap between the BBC records on the one hand & the printed & manuscript texts on the other Gardner has been able to construct a relatively reliable edition of " Betjemans Poems in the Porch"." ...