Dikter

If a Mountain Lion Could Sing stands as the first major English translation of poems written by China’s greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji.Red Pine gathers and translates over 100 poems by China's greatest lyric poet, Xin Qiji, in his latest bilingual collection, If a Mountain Lion Could Sing. Visiting the very places where Xin composed his stanzas—the cassia trees of the Wu River, houseboats along the Yangzi, mountain monasteries—and paying respects at the poet’s grave, Red Pine makes a spiritual and physical exercise of translation. In his skilled hands, we see the unique, multifaceted nature of Xin unfold—rebel warrior, patriot, human. Political themes and ideas of intimacy cross paths, moving between the voices of statesman and lover. Written over 800 years ago, and to melodies since lost, Xin’s verses still leap across centuries to relay the universal concepts of solitude, duty, youth, aging, and nostalgia. Though “true mirrors are hard to come by,” Xin’s poems serve as haunting reflections of a man whose voice of “heroic abandon” still resonates today.

Jemima Foxtrot's Treasure is a shining work of alchemy and liberation which explores power dynamics, sex work, desire, and female friendship with a fresh, playful perspective. The poems of Treasure live up to its name: showing us where the gold is-the joy-how to feed it into the soil of our lives.

Country Music is a book about the stories the author listened to late at night around kitchen tables or campfires growing up in rural British Columbia. Mining these materials for a rural poetics--a country music--Koss begins to understand his working-class upbringing and academic surroundings through philosophical inquiries into what draws him continually back to these stories. The stories themselves, punctuated by the humour and violence of life in the mountains, offer a means of critiquing "extractiveness"--both the violence of settler-colonial capitalism and the systems of class privilege that devalue rural, working-class experience. It's a book that wants to find a way forward through the imperfect inheritance we're given.Shifting between the poetic inquiries of Lisa Robertson and the vernacular improvisations of Fred Wah, the book offers an investigation of identity, family, and place akin to Kaie Kellough's Magnetic Equator, Kate Siklosi's Selvage, D.M. Bradford's Dream of No One But Myself, or Jordan Abel's Nishga.

Cut Side Down is a textual collage, or a book feasting on books. The title is a metaphor for the sensuous paper cut received when diving face first into the bookcase, and it means to call up the pleasure and pain of contact with so many literary personalities. The poems are collapsing under the weight of influence and the result is a sumptuous, body-and-mind bending landscape. The book is written in three parts, but those parts refuse to remain discrete. In poems that blur the line behind autobiographical lyric and conceptual experiment, Virginia Woolf, Orlando, and their many husbands and wives attend the experimental salons hosted by Clark Coolidge and Renee Gladman. Lorine Niedecker is in the interactive classroom, scolding Charles Olson. The poet is sometimes perceptible too, as a lost boy in rural Prince Edward Island, as a young woman in Montréal la retentissante, as an inventor of worlds and words. Ultimately, through being immersed in the reading life of the poet and spying through the keyholes of fantasy, Cut Side Down is a false autobiographical engagement with desire and memory.

A visionary collection of poetry advocating for the excited, the rebellious, and the neuroqueer. In this momentous debut, Sid Ghosh invites the reader “to be so free that it scares you.” Leveraging gem-like koans, technicolor wordplay, and earth-shaking wit, he creates startling new worlds in only a handful of words. As a nonspeaking autistic writer with Down syndrome who must navigate immense sensorimotor complexity, his short poems are both muscular and agile, displaying a dexterity replete with vertiginous grace: “Spinning I harness / poetry of the Earth. // The Sufi dances / in me to dare me // to scare your loud / soul to ensnare // my fearful mind to / bare some misery / to bear some truth.”Ghosh writes beyond his years and from a perspective steeped in queer and fractaled sensibilities. As one who is “simply privy to a new road,” he renders neurodiverse thought patterns as truly divine. The poems that result bristle with wisdom, divergence, and the “generosity of deep rivers.” Unprecedented in its genius and composition, this collection of poems is sure to leave readers wide-eyed and breathless.

From award-winning poet Chris Santiago, a far-reaching collection of erasures and original poems examining the long shadow of American militarism and imperialism.Stemming in part from a disturbingly mundane military document of the same name, Small Wars Manual is a how-to for imperialism that critically dismantles itself with each passing line, “a pidgin // containing elements // of animus and // insubordination.” In its wake, the very boundaries of oppression and resistance, art and justice, and power and truth are exploded.Highly conceptual yet gut-wrenching, this meticulous and visionary masterpiece of erasure poetry and other forms sinks into the cold mechanics of American warfare in the Philippines and Vietnam to reveal a brutal rhetoric. In more autobiographical sections, Chris Santiago’s own Filipino immigrant background reveals hard-lived experiences, where “stars can guide // either bayonets // or refugees” and “even small wars waged // on the living room floor” cause trepidation and harm.This righteous collection redeems the vulnerable from the aggressors—empire, army, their systems and tools—and transforms everything in the process. In the hands of Santiago, the deconstructive becomes the eviscerating, condemning all wars that upend countries and mark generations. Here are shining poems that make shelter of chaos, by one of the most skillful and intrepid poets writing today.

A brilliant and lithe collection of poems making space for the resolve and hope of motherhood amid consumerist dreams and nightmares.Consumerism—its privations and raptures—seep into all aspects of contemporary life. “Who knows me / as the search bar does, which holds / sacred its grasp of me / as a creature of habit?” probes Rosalie Moffett, reckoning with algorithms, with marketing and capital. But Making a Living isn’t just about the trappings of materialism—it’s also about the fraught trials of trying to bring forth life in a double-dealing America where all sources are suspect.Shrewdly balancing the likes of Scrooge McDuck and HGTV, ancient Roman haruspicy and the latest pregnancy technologies, this collection arcs ultimately toward reinhabiting the present, refusing to look away—on seeing as a method of prayer and a power against capitalism’s threats to love, motherhood, reverence, and nature. Militant and profane, gentle and generous, full of desire and cunning, Moffett’s poetry is a singular entry in our conversations around enduring modern life and daring to make new life in the process.

A tender and provocative collection of poems interrogating the troubles and wonders of childhood and parentage against the backdrop of global violence.From the accomplished and tenacious poet Wayne Miller comes a collection examining how an individual’s story both hues to and defies larger socio-political narratives and the sweep of history. A cubist making World War I camouflage, a forlorn panel on the ethics of violence in literature, an obsessive litany of “late capitalism” routines, a military drone pilot driving home—here, the awkward, the sweet, and the disturbing often merge. And underlaying it all is Miller’s own domestic life and two children, who highlight the hopeful and ingenious aspects of childhood, which endures “not // as I had thought / the thicket of light back at the entrance // but the wind still blowing / invisibly toward me / through it.” Wayne Miller’s sixth collection of poems is his most intimate, juxtaposing his fraught youth with his children's cautiously safer one, against insurrection and pandemic, vacation and vocation, art and war. This piercing book spares nothing and no one in searching out a measure of personal truth and benevolence in today’s turbulent, brutalizing world, confronted by a singularly candid and lyrical voice.

New poetry collection and essays by the prize-winning author of Murmur

Poets who jolly us along with assurances that if winter comes, spring is on its heels, would put it quite differently if writing during the closing days of the Anthropocene. This is our 'summer' issue, but with the honourable exception of a few warmer days, Yorkshire has so far escaped much manifestation that we have emerged from the colder season. All the more reason to consume the writings of imaginative souls who create their own weather, or observe climactic changes of both personal and cosmic significance. Whatever our unease about how humans are behaving in the days of climate change, at least our creativity is keeping AI at bay (or is it ...?). It's rare that we fail to get poems about the natural world, stories about family relationships, discussions of global politics, and writing that is not necessary primarily about anything but simply putting language through a work out, testing its limits. But how often do you read an ode to a fly? Meet Kurt Cobain in Whitley Bay? Read a lesson plan for anger management? Find black holes in your pockets? Read on.Bob Beagrie is the first guest in a new feature for Dream Catcher, called 'In conversation with ....'. in which the Editor discusses with a fellow poet not only their current work, but their ideas about poetry, their influences and future plans. Having heard Bob perform his lushly hybrid work, accompanied by musicians using home-made instruments (provoking more questions that it would be polite to ask in just one evening), Bob was invited to the first subject.

A new collection from one of our most distinguished poets, painting a portrait in verse of two iconic female figures poised between history and legend, and unravelling the millennia of myth men have woven around them to explore the notion of girlhood itself.

Friendships are perhaps the most fundamental and fulfilling connections we can have as humans. This anthology showcases stories and poems that capture the unique beauty of friendship, in all its multitudes, in its highs and lows, in its most perfect moments and in its most enduring. Friendship is a gift, and this anthology, a gift to friends. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

Poet and illustrator Siôn Tomos Owen's book is full of colour and passion about life as a father and patriot from Rhondda Valley, and deals with family, community, brotherhood, politics and mental health issues. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru

This beautiful pocket-sized hardback gift book contains carefully curated prescriptions in verse from the Poetry Pharmacy. Life is lived with feeling - and these poems will bring you inspiration. For Insights & Bursts of Illumination; Stimulants for Creative Awakening; To Quicken the Heart and Mind; for Energising Body and SpiritIncludes poems by William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Edward Thomas, W. B. Yeats, William Shakespeare and many more. ¿ No bitter pills¿ No adverse reactionsThe Poetry Pharmacy series compiled by Deborah Alma is the perfect prescription for life's ailments. Inspired by the achingly cool Poetry Pharmacy shops in London and Shropshire - social media favourites with a clear focus on promoting wellbeing through the written and spoken word. Each of the 8 themed titles offers an array of poems to inspire, heal and comfort. Whether readers are looking to find solace for times of ill-health, loss and grief, cope with matters of the heart, need poetic inspiration for courage and confidence, or want to find peace and tranquility in wild spaces, there is a collection for everyone. Perfect for reading aloud or for quiet contemplation, these books are a much needed balm for our busy lives.

'We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone.'In Poetics of Relation, his most celebrated philosophical work, Édouard Glissant turns the Caribbean reality of his life into a complex, energetic vision of a world in transformation. We come to see that relation in all its senses - telling, listening, connecting, and the parallel consciousness of self and surroundings - is the key to revolutionising mentalities and reshaping societies. We are not rooted, but ever-changing; we have a right to opacity and to difference, wherever we are. Told in scintillating prose, this unique exploration of language, slavery, and poetic freedom narrates an Antillean identity, but also that of the whole world.

Ecstasy is the major new collection from Alex Dimitrov whose poems such as 'The Years' and 'Someone in Paris, France is Thinking of You' in the New Yorker have gone viral.In Ecstasy, Dimitrov explores the sensation of ecstasy in all its forms: romantic, sexual, drug-induced and spiritual. Beginning in Manhattan and finally taking us across America, London and Paris, Ecstasy is a revelatory exploration of sex, God, parties, New York, drug culture, and old school Americana.Dimitrov is an iconographer of contemporary life, able to pin profound and timeless meaning to exact time and place, much in the way that religious imagery in churches tell of universal and placeless experience. These are poems that steal attention from their reader and hold it, with fierce and hypnotic possession.

Gerald Bullett's life was marked by war. He served in the First World War for four years in his twenties, and then worked for the BBC in London during the Second World War, in middle life.Like many authors, the unique insights brought by such terrible exposure gave him a philosophical bent of mind, and a longing for peace, a liking for what came out at times of quiet. This was never far away in his works, either as a major theme, or at the very least consistently present in the background.Perhaps nowhere was this more the case than in this long poem, first published in 1943. Taking as its temporal locale the very middle of winter, with all the quiet and stillness this predicates, Bullett enters the mental space where the rush and hurry of the world are left behind, and the mind can seek fresh deeper understandings, expanding into a rarely approachable zone.Taking in creativity, desire, love, pain and the unnameable workings of the spirit, he essays a profound philosophical meditation. That we cannot ultimately say all that perhaps needs to be said, that we are stymied by feelings of powerlessness and of our unimportance when all is said and done - these are to him indicators of the mystery which we will never divine, and perhaps never should.But also Winter Solstice gives brief glimpses of beauty - of low light and warmth, of snow-covered fallow land and bare trees, of the survival of tiny birds in winter's harshness, but most of all of the value of quiet, and its gift of insight.

From the foreword by Quentin Tarantino:"One of the reasons Michael's work has such meaning for me is he's writing about feelings and emotions that it seems at times the last few generations have become blind to. Some of Michael's work is about family remembrances. A moment he saw his mother wrap her arms around his father's waist, or how his sister looked in one dress in particular. Some of them are thought jazz. Some are the best recordings of the gypsy life of a movie actor I've ever read. Michael stuck on some location, on some crappy movie, bored out of his mind with too much time on his hands and not enough per diem is Michael at his funniest. But for me, the real journey that Michael the writer is exploring is what it means to be a man in a world where the notions of manhood that some of us grew up with are barely remembered. But then if everybody embarked on the hero's journey, everybody would be a hero, wouldn't they?"Tears For My Father: Outlaw Thoughts & Poems explores not only Madsen's remarkable life and experiences in and out of Hollywood, but also his familial influences that have participated in crafting and shaping him, including thoughts on his father; his mother and the rumor that he was born without a left hand; ghosts, whiskey, and payback; Robert Mitchum, James Cagney, and "sensitive sons of bitches"; the mentality of actors and growing up to be a man; his first audition; drunken behavior; epic drinkers; and much, much more.

A brand new volume of previously unpublished writings from the archives reflecting Jack Kerouac’s Buddhist thinkingFrom a young age Kerouac was a spiritual thinker and questioner, and he always considered himself a spiritual writer. Buddhism gave more meaning to Jack’s work as a writer: he was working not for personal accomplishment and glory but for human betterment. And Buddhism justified his lifestyle: with its vision of the material world as empty and illusory, he was free to do what he wanted.This collection shows Jack at his earnest, soulful best. The writing is consistently and wonderfully Kerouacian: it is honest, reflective, heartfelt, and revealing, with great characterizations amid his self-exploration as he wrestles with his consciousness, desperate for belief.