2025 has been a wonderful year for poetry so far. This summer, I’ve been enjoying the latest collection from David Morley, Passion – there’s a short poem called ‘The Shyness of the Crown’ which I think is my favourite poem of the year – and Erica McAlpine’s deftly formal Small Pointed Things. Jay Wright’s backlist has for a long time been hard to get in this country, so good work Penguin for bringing out a massive collected poems, Transfigurations: he deserves a wide UK readership. When I go on my holiday, I’m planning to take with me the 850-year old Iranian romantic epic Khosrow and Shirin by Nezami Ganjavi, in a translation from the reliably readable Dick Davis. Last of all, to mark the 60th anniversary of Plath’s Ariel, Faber have reissued it in its original covers and newly typeset – a beautiful piece of kit, pick one up immediately.
From the publisher:
A poetry collection of epic scale and transformative vision from one of the most innovative American poets‘An astonishing New World epic…of human transfiguration and transformation, of nothing less than the great work of art…
From the publisher:
Translated by Dick DavisA tragic epic love story by one of the greatest medieval Persian romance poets, in a modern-verse English translationBased on historical characters of the seventh-century Iranian court and written 850 years ago, the…
From the publisher:
Punctuated by rhyme and shaped by traditional forms, the poems in Small Pointed Things turn encounters with the natural world and scenes from family life into acts of self-discovery. Poignant and funny in equal measure, many of these poems…
From the publisher:
Drawing on Romany language, storytelling and the speech of birds, award-winning poet David Morley offers a provocative and passionate invitation to reflect afresh on the ways in which the lives, stories and fate of humans – and the…
From the publisher:
‘I rise with my red hair / And I eat men like air.’It is sixty years since Ariel was first published. The poems were written in an extraordinary burst of creativity just before Sylvia Plath’s death in 1963, and…
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