- Sale!Looking Good is Carole Coates second collection. Her first, The Goodbye Edition was published in 2005 and one of it's poems is featured in The Forward Book of Poetry, 2006. Carol Coates lives in Lancaster.Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Swallowing Stones is Carole Coates third collection of poetry. Her first, The Goodbye Edition was published in 2005 and one of it's poems is featured in The Forward Book of Poetry, 2006. Carol Coates lives in Lancaster.Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Catherine Smith's first acclaimed collection 'The Butcher's Hands' was a disturbing and exciting book. 'Lip' moves on from its grotesqueries and grand guignol to a fierce, often frantic eroticism through the language of the human body. - Google Books."A gripping collection of poems - some are moving and some are witty, but all are poems that make you think. The main theme is the relationship of women to the world and the people around them, and there's also a wonderful hint of the erotic about them too. Great stuff." ***** - Amazon"Exciting, surprising poetry - an inspiration." ***** - AmazonSpecial Offer: We are offering the title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
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In these confident and accomplished poems, Clare Proctor explores and gives voice to the experiences of women, particularly those constrained by their context, whether historical, or through art, myth or individual circumstance. They move from the particular to the more general in considering ideas around the body, death, motherhood and family.
“This is a compelling pamphlet that delves into the mythic and the personal, weaving together themes of womanhood, power and rebellion. There is a delicious and sly darkness to some of these poems as we meet witches who keep penises as pets, and women who insist on not behaving as expected. Clare Proctor’s poetry has real emotional depth and this pamphlet announces an important addition to the ongoing lyric conversation about the female body and what it means to be a woman.” Kim Moore
Lilith Speaks is one of three pamphlets selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet competition judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh
Buy all three Litfest/Wayleave publications for just £18 in this three book bundle!- ISBN: 9780571264919Genre: PoetryPublisher: Faber
- Queer, vegan poet Dominic Berry presents his favourite poems for performance from his collections Tomorrow, I Will Go Dancing, Wizard, No Tigers and Yes Life, along with new poetry designed to engage and inspire.An extraordinary and enthralling collection exploring life, personal development and wellbeing by the Glastonbury Festival poet in residence and two-times Saboteur Award-winning Best UK Spoken Word Performer.Dominic Berry is a Manchester-based performance poet renowned for his eloquent yet uncompromising stage shows and a desire to confront inequality. His work has taken him across the continents of Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australasia. He has been Glastonbury Festival's poet in residence, and has won Manchester Literature Festival's Superheroes of Slam and New York's Nuyorican Poets' Cafe Slam. He has also twice been publicly voted Sabotage Review's Best UK Spoken Word Performer.
- 'Williffe Cunliam' was the pen name of the Burnley blacksmith and poet, William Cunliffe (1833-94). During his brief but productive poetic career Cunliffe published fifty-four poems in his local newspaper, the Burnley Free Press and General Advertiser (which became the Burnley Gazette) between 1863 and 1866. The poems lay in the holdings of Burnley Central Library for 150 years, before they were recovered during research for the AHRC-funded Poetry of the Lancashire Cotton Famine project in 2015. The project, led by the University of Exeter's Professor Simon Rennie, published a few of these poems amongst 398 pieces relating to the Lancashire Cotton Famine on a publicly accessible database, but Cunliffe's wider work is remarkably varied in its topics and styles, with dialect and standard English works providing a unique insight into working-class northern English culture in the 1860s.'Rennie pointed to one poet in particular: the wool sorter Williffe Cunliam, who wrote six of the poems uncovered to date. “I think he was a very good poet – a great poet,” said Rennie. “We don’t have enough of his work to say he was a literary star, but he was fantastic; we’ve found very high-quality work"' Alison Flood, Guardian
- Sale!Edited by Jo Shapcott & Matthew Sweet"Everyone who inhabits our strange times will want to read it!" - The Guardian"An important... original anthology" - Ruth Padel, The IndependentSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!"Rough Music" is an old English custom of public scapegoating. In this book of disturbing musical echoes, brilliant renewals of carol, charm, folksong and ballad explore violence, loss and belonging.Fiona Sampson is the award-winning author of many books, including A Century of Poetry Review, Common Prayer, which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2007, and Writing Poetry: The Expert Guide."a very fine poet indeed" – Adam Thorpe in The GuardianSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Described by Anne Stevenson in Poetry Review as " a major contribution to post-war literature"Awards: Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2004"A Brilliantly virtuosic collection of deeply felt poems” - Douglas DunnSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- A Telegraph Poetry Book of the YearA Poetry Book Society ChoiceAn Arbitrary Light Bulb is Ian Duhig’s most personal collection of poems to date. It takes its title from the most common type of household bulb – yet one whose name is virtually unknown, like many people these poems celebrate.Duhig finds in the arbitrary an image for the randomness of inspiration and of life, haunted here by deaths of family and friends. He laments the lost but also responds to the glories of our existence, especially among the overlooked, with humour, technical variety and contagious pleasure.
- This eclectic gathering of Duhig’s best work draws on material from his acclaimed debut, The Bradford Count, to the present day: the book collects a number of fine new pieces, including an elegy for the late Ciaran Carson. Duhig is contemporary poetry’s social historian; he has wise and powerful things to say about the relationship between community and family, racism and justice, place and folklore, music and language.
- Sale!"Born with the gift of lyricism as natural speech" - Clive James"A virtuoso collection” – J.M. CoetzeeSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- These are poems on the move in the tapestry of London life – from the hospital ward to the back rows of the bus – where the desire for escape is also, paradoxically, a ‘Herculean search for home’. But & Though is a testament to the kinship ties that bind us together, however fraught they become, and a celebration of the working-class identity that defines the poet’s native south London. With a voice as spiky and irreverent as it is gentle, Jake Hawkey is a refreshing new talent in English poetry.
- This collection of poems springs from an awareness of how landscape and its history shape the way we live in it. The author's maps and charts release islands and seascapes, fells and fens, ancestors, boatbuilders, fruit growers and the odd saint. Her poems offer a different kind of mapmaking, making a different kind of sense.
- After lockdowns have swept calendars clear, leaf-fall, early sunrise and gales are Jane Routh’s measures of time, as she goes about her tasks in the hill pasture and woodlands where she has the luck to live.With sharp, lyrical description and down-to earth understanding, her poems consider the flora and fauna around her, formative moments and lifespans – as well as the dead who won’t be forgotten. Her elegant and informed writing conveys a sense of belonging in a particular place and the care for its future, carrying a universal resonance.
- Sale!A Poetry Book Society RecommendationWinner of the T.S. Eliot Prize"A zestful poet of the road... Jen Hadfield conjures poems of great spirit and imaginative daring. She is a remarkably original poet" - Andrew MotionSpecial Offer: We are offering this book at 25% off the publisher's RRP.
- Sale!Three full collections from the very best young poets"Between the leaves of this book lies the mad boundless energy of the globe cracking-up under our very noses; it is a world which is harnessed in images of jazz, sex, drugs, aliens, abuse; in effective colloquial language and manic syntax; but the themes are always treated with gravity, unsettling candor and humor." (Text taken from Amazon).Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- Now long out of print and hard to find. Lovely condition, as new.Texas-born, Californian reared, Joan Jobe Smith has a fast-growing reputation for her narratives about her childhood, her marriages and the sisterhood of women who sustain each other through difficult times.
- Sale!SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA POETRY AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION'A Blood Condition is one of the most arresting and beautiful set of poems of this or any year' Guardian, Books of the Year 2021
- Buy all three pamphlets for £18 (or £7 each). These pamphlets were selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet competition judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh.Lilith Speaks by Clare ProcterStill Life by Rebecca BilkauSubcutaneous by Maria Isakova-Bennett
- Shortlisted for the Poetry Prize for First Collection from the Seamus Heaney Centre for PoetryMalika Booker's Pepper Seed is map and compass to a world of distinct yet interconnected landscapes. At home in a number of locales (Brooklyn, Brixton, Trinidad, Guyana, and Grenada) Booker trains a brave eye on the unspeakable and the unspoken. By turns bearing witness, to the interior lives of the characters that people her poems, and laying herself bare, conjuring an immediate and complex vision of the miraculous ordinary.
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In spare and delicately-balanced language Maria Isakova-Bennett's poems about family, loss and the effects of being silenced address her grandfather's enforced migration to England, the secrecy he lived with and its effects on subsequent generations.
“Maria Isakova-Bennett is a truly remarkable poet — she understands how in discovering the past, we discover ourselves. No matter the subject, her poetry is always a celebration of the living world. This breathtaking sequence weaves history, memory and imagination with such skill and precision that the past is given presence.” John Glenday
Subcutaneous is one of three pamphlets selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet competition, judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh.Buy all three Litfest/Wayleave publications for just £18 in this three book bundle!- ISBN: 0701162511Genre: PoetryPublisher: Chatto and Windus
- A selection of poetry and free verse for teenagers and beyond, penned by Nathan Parker.Take a peak inside this vault of verse to find issue-based poetry ranging from mental health, identity, peer pressure, self-discovery, everyday angst and much more.An ideal place to explore poetry for children and teens, as well as a prompt for discussion and debate within PSHE lessons.
- A vault of poetry and verse for children and beyond. From the sublime to the ridiculous, heartfelt reflections to belly laughter, this book is the perfect introduction for children to explore the realms of poetry.Ideal for primary school age upwards, yet its a collection that will stir the child within us all.
Combining poems of historical depth, human fascination, and personal sensitivity with a willingness to explore the possibilities of poetic form and technique, this compilation produces diverse formal arrangements from Arabic, English, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, and Welsh poetry. As it aims to assimilate aspects of these traditions with the poet’s own voice, this collection pays homage to the lives and works of Primo Levi, Paul Celan, Keith Douglas, Alun Lewis, and Edward Thomas. Intimate and personal subjects are also gracefully explored, including a traumatic experience of spinal injury and disability. - Farley’s great poetic gift is his ability to switch between the local and the universal, the present and the historical past, with the most apparently effortless of gear changes; he brings to our immediate attention things previously hidden – whether out of sight, in the periphery of our vision, or right under our noses. The Dark Film is a profound meditation on time, on the untold stories of our history, and on the act of human beholding – as well as Farley’s most richly entertaining and rewarding collection to date.
- The Mizzy encapsulates one of poetry’s most capacious and eclectic imaginations. As usual Farley’s new collection is impossible to summarize in terms of theme, as his interests are too various: there’s an air of ‘the innocence of childhood’ being viewed through the corrective lens of worldly middle age, though, and also of mid-life, its creeping self-consciousness and decrepitude, and the distortions of perception that attend it; confusing encounters with tech, modernity and its accelerated rate of change; satirical excursions critiquing the way business and digital communications have debased language.
- Sale!"Witty, realistic and imaginative. Auden, Haydn and Uccello live in his pages as happily as snooker stars, Tesco and Extra Strong Mints" - Peter Porter, The ObserverSpecial Offer: We are offering this book at 25% off the publisher's RRP.
- Sale!A Poetry Book Society Special RecommendationA collection that brings together for the first time the whole range of Philip Gross's poetry... from prize-winning Ice Factory to the Whitbread shortlisted Wasting Game, but takes the reader also into previously unknown reaches of Philip Gross territory. Text taken from the book cover.Special Offer: We are offering this book at 25% off the publisher's RRP.
- Sale!Illustrated by Jonathan GrossPhilip Gross's poems speak to all ages, and sit confidently on the bookshelf next to Philip Gross's prize-winning work for adults" - Salt PublishingSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- Sale!"Philip Gross's meditations move with subtle steps between these shifting grounds and those of the man-made world, the ageing body and that ever-present mystery, the self." - BloodaxeSpecial Offer: We are offering this book at 25% off the publisher's RRP.
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With their idiomatic and conversational voice, Rebecca Bilkau's poems on mortality and grief look the inevitable in the eye and manage a celebration of life even as it accommodates death. Her language is lively and engaging as she considers loss, retrieval, survival and simple speculation with compassion, wit and a grounded wisdom.
'In this sharply-focused sequence of vignettes, Death is omnipresent, in all its guises, from respectful guest to startling intruder. Consequently, this is a collection that reaches out its hand to loss, sadness, anger, and acceptance. Ultimately, though, what it eloquently reminds us, is that the Dance of Death is also the Dance of Life' Oz HardwickStill Life is one of three pamphlets selected for publication from the 2024 Litfest/Wayleave Pamphlet Competition, judged by Ian Duhig and Jane Routh.Buy all three Litfest/Wayleave publications for just £18 in this three book bundle!- Sale!"Sensual and magical with the hard edges of realism” - Milner PlaceSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher's RRP
- Sale!"Groundbreaking""A great first collection with breadth and ambition. A book I return to time and time again.” – Amazon"A collection as strong as the gritstone of it's roots. Best poetry I've read for a long time" - Amazon Special Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Bryce's two previous prize-winning collections were widely admired for their marvellously seductive music and their speed of thought; Self-Portrait in the Dark widens and deepens the poet's scope, and is her most emotionally compelling collection to date. Bryce's new poems are "slant tellings" that reveal strange and true reflections. - Text from Goodreads
- Winner of the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize (2000)This is the first collection from Colette Bryce, a young poet from Northern Ireland. Subjects range from a woman who feels sick as she prepares a turkey for Christmas dinner, a set of boys who sit on a wall outside the Bolger trial, and lovers' telephone calls. Text from Goodreads
- ISBN: 9781902382784Genre: Childrens PoetryPublisher: Smith/ Doorstop Books
- "Superb first collection" - Sean O'BrienThe living and the dead are working side by side in John Challis's dramatic debut collection, The Resurrectionists. Whether in London's veg and meat markets, far below the Dartford Crossing, or on the edge of the Western world, these poems journey into a buried and sometimes violent landscape to locate traces of ourselves that remain.
- Affectionate reminiscences of Lancaster's The Storey building. Home of Lancaster Litfest.
- Sale!"An authentic adult voice, tender, ironic, relaxed and highly educated... a fine collection." - Al AlvarezSpecial Offer: We are offering this title at 25% off the publisher’s RRP
- Sale!Blake Morrison’s A Discoverie of Witches is a limited edition green clothbound hardcover book with just one hundred copies produced.First edition, first printing of the standard trade edition.
- Sale!Blake Morrison’s A Discoverie of Witches is a limited edition clothbound hardcover book with just one hundred copies produced. Each copy is signed and numbered by the author. The limited edition includes exclusive DVD content.Synopsis: Lancaster Assizes, 1612. Ten people from Pendle in Lancashire were hanged, pronounced guilty of the crime of witchcraft. The poems in this collection give voice to characters involved in the trials: from the accused to the accusers, from a child who bore witness against her own mother to the hangman who carried out his job loyally and efficiently, yet not without stirrings of compassion. Also included are several poems set in the Pennine countryside where Blake grew up, as well as the controversial tour-de-force ‘The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper’.Each book is stamped with silver foil onto a quality dark grey cloth and is wrapped with a striking transfilm half jacket and has been signed and numbered by the author.Blake Morrison’s A Discoverie of Witches is a limited edition clothbound hardcover book with just one hundred copies produced. This edition comes with a half hour interview with the author on a DVD filmed early in 2012 and presented in full exclusively with this edition.
- Presenting the best poems from the nationwide Places of Poetry project, selected from over 7,500 entriesPoetry lives in the veins of Britain, its farms and moors, its motorways and waterways, highlands and beaches.This anthology brings together time-honoured classics with some of the best new writing collected across the nation, from great monuments to forgotten byways.
Litfest strives to encourage the enjoyment of and participation in reading, writing, illustrating and the discussion of ideas by placing them at the heart of Lancashire’s culture.
Image credits: Johnny Bean and Ginny Koppenhol Photography
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