<p>Ward&rsquo;s poems have a bracing freshness. He is extremely aware of the basis of language, of the alphabet as an abstract, symbolic and sacred presence, and he is wary of pinning down experience with it. His poems are as carefully composed for sound as music; philosophically they are open and searching. Ward stands persona and...

<p>The tightrope walker in the cover painting by Macke is symbolic of the author&rsquo;s point of view in this collection of poems. It is a humorous acknowledgement of the precarious position of the artist in our times, and a hint at the poet&rsquo;s predilection for balancing both personal and public concerns. The former are...

<p>This &#39;Collected Public Poems and Gifts&#39; illustrates the way in which the Welsh language tradition of composition for specific occasions - weddings, funerals, births, historical public events - has influenced Tony Conran for forty years. An acclaimed translator from Welsh, Conran has adopted styles, forms and genres to...

<p>Twenty-five surreal collages by John Digby, set in an ornate arch from the Alhambra, suggest a multiplicity of narratives and provide provocative starting points for poet Tony Curtis.</p><p>Giraffes in slings, a toppling Statue of Liberty, woolly mammoths, an enthroned bull, a monster pear and giant apple, flying fishes, a...

<p>Twenty-five surreal collages by John Digby, set in an ornate arch from the Alhambra, suggest a multiplicity of narratives and provide provocative starting points for poet Tony Curtis.</p><p>Giraffes in slings, a toppling Statue of Liberty, woolly mammoths, an enthroned bull, a monster pear and giant apple, flying fishes, a...

<p>The Milk Thief is time - as it colours the lives of the characters and relatives who feature in Paul Henry&rsquo;s new collection of poems. The first two sections of the book are set primarily against the backdrop of the Ceredigion coast in Wales. A giant turtle washed up on the beach, an encounter with the British Boomerang Champion...

<p>From the threshold of his own fiftieth year, Duncan Bush returns to the &rsquo;Fifties of his youth as a springboard from which to explore the second half of the twentieth century in ways often more autobiographical than anything we&rsquo;ve seen from his prizewinning previous collections.</p><p>A vivid series of...

<p>A voice of considerable power and intensity emerges from the work of Sarah Corbett. She is less interested in the everyday aspects of reality than in &quot;what moves beneath the surface of my own, and others&rsquo; experience&quot;. This infuses her poems with mystery and with the intent of discovery. They resound with...

<p>Rusted mining towns in the American west connect along dirt roads with the slate country of North Wales, peopled, not empty, in John Davies&rsquo; new collection.</p><p>At its heart is the sonnet sequence &rsquo;Reading the Country.&rsquo; Here tensions such as those between Welsh and English, nature and the slate...

<p><br /><br /><em>Hen benillion</em> (literally &rsquo;old verses&rsquo;) are a unique form of folk poetry in Britain. Dating from the sixteenth century and earlier these short verses, or chains of verses, were composed to be spoken or sung to a harp accompaniment. They have been performed at social...

<p>This is a remarkable first collection of poems by Barbara Bentley. Her distinctively witty voice brings us the up-to-date versions of the females of mythology.</p><p>&#39;Noah&rsquo;s Wife&rsquo; is plagued by her DIY-mad, boat-building spouse, &rsquo;Waking Beauty&rsquo; wakes from a cryogenic sleep into a...