Elisabeth Bletsoe Pharmacopoeia & Early Selected Works
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 116pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9781848610828
In 2008 Shearsman published Elisabeth Bletsoe's most recent collection, Landscape from a Dream. We now offer a companion volume containing all—or almost all—of her previously published work, which has been out of print for some time. The book contains a number of short pieces, but the collection revolves around three major sequences: 'The Regardians', 'Portraits of the Artist's Sister' and 'Pharmacopoeia'. The book confirms Elisabeth Bletsoe's place as one of the most fascinating poets of her generation.
Tsvetanka Elenkova The Seventh Gesture
Translated
from Bulgarianby Jonathan Dunne
Published January 2010. Paperback, 86pp, 8.5x5.5ins
ISBN 9781848610842 £8.95 / $15
The most striking image of extreme eros and extreme pain is that of Christ on the Cross. This book of 77 poems by the Bulgarian author Tsvetanka Elenkova navigates between these two extremes. The poems are like a pulsation, or a gesture, and don't take a breath. In this sense, there is no space or silence in them and yet a gesture, for example of pointing or stopping, when it is tired and the fingers relax, becomes one of blessing and so it is that the poet Iana Boukova writes of this book: "Gesture introduces silence, replacing words and their definitions. There are whole passages full of the underwater silence of one gesture." It is rare to have a book of Bulgarian literature published in English and the reader will find here many elements of Bulgarian culture and the Orthodox tradition.
Jennifer Clement Widow Basquiat
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 144pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9781848610989
New edition.
Widow Basquiat explores the love story between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Suzanne, his muse and lover. It is also a profound portrait of New York City during the early 1980s' art scene and the striking cast of characters from that time: Andy Warhol, Madonna, Keith Haring, Debbie Harry, Julian Schnabel and William Burroughs, among others.
John Muckle London Brakes— a novel
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 296pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £12.95 / $20
ISBN 9781848611016
Tony Guest is welcome wherever he goes—a motorcycle courier on a big bike, picking up and dropping all manner of urgent parcels, letters, and duly getting his dockets signed. In July he rides in a sweat bath, in February the rain is freezing needles, the roads of the West End are greasy with spilt diesel, glistening tracks of motorcyclists weaving through them like slug trails. But where is Tony going? What is contained in his ultimate mystery packet? What becomes of lost friendships? He chases his shadow-man through an illusory maze of skid pans, trick exits—the answer to every question he can frame seems to lie behind every locked door in London town. Set in the 1980s, London Brakes shows us an England of conflicting loyalties and low impostures—a city divided by inequality and opportunism: a place where forgetting is compulsory and paranoia is the outcome. Tony is determined to cut through it all to the truths of his life.
Brandi Homan Bobcat Country
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610859
"Brandi Homan's Bobcat Country is the unholy love child of Lynda Barry and Ween. Fabulously honest, surprising, and hilarious, these poems are a TGIFriday's extravaganza of retarded American enthusiasm, deftly rendered. Homan loves the "Fuck yeaaaah!"s our culture hoots just before it drives its rental car off a cliff. Her details are so spot on, their mere presence relieves us of the need for contrived, 'poetic' resolutions. That's what makes the poems true—there are no easy answers in them. They make me proud to be a woman ......" —Jennifer L. Knox
Sir Thomas Wyatt Selected Poems
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 110pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $16
ISBN 9781848611023 Shearsman Classics Vol. 6. Edited
by Michael Smith.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542) was born at Allington Castle in Kent. he studied at St John's College, Cambridge, and served King Henry VIII in various capacities both at home and abroad. he was knighted in 1535, but was imprisoned in the Tower a year alter following a quarrel with the Duke of Suffolk, but also perhaps because of suspicion that he had been the lover of Anne Boleyn—a woman he had known for many years and with whim he had been linked at one time. He was released the same year, then was to fall afoul of authority on at least two further occasions, but was again pardoned. He is remembered today as one of the most important poets in the English language, and as the man who brought the sonnet into English, with his spectacular imitations and re-creations of Petrarch. His work is broader than that, however, and he also showed himself to be a fine elegist and satirist, as well as a lyric poet of the very first order.
Tottel's Miscellany (1557)
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 300pp, 9x6ins, £12.95 / $21 / Can$22.95
ISBN 9781848611030 Shearsman Classics Vol. 7 (The Tudor
Miscellanies Vol. 1)
1557 saw the publication of this ground-breaking volume: the first printed anthology of contemporary poetry in English. The book is built on a foundation of two recently-deceased aristocratic poets, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had by their example given English poetry a new direction, above all with the introduction of the Petrarchan sonnet, but also with the invention of blank verse. The anthology was to have an enormous impact, giving witness to the latest developments in English verse for a far bigger public than would have been the norm in the mid-16th century, when manuscripts tended to circulate anonymously and in a small circle of gentlemen.
The Phoenix Nest (1593)
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 116pp, 9x6ins, £9.95 / $17 / Can$18.95
ISBN 9781848611047 Shearsman Classics Vol. 8(The
Tudor Miscellanies Vol. 2)
Following the publication of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557, a number of other such miscellanies appeared, none of them especially significant from an artistic point of view. In 1593, however, a still-unidentified gentleman known only by his initials (R.S.) published this relatively slim, well-printed and well-designed compilation, which included works by a number oif significant poets of the day—those identified are Sir Walter Raleigh, Thomas Lodge, Nicholas Breton, Robert Greene, George Peele, the Earl of Oxford, Sir Edward Dyer, and Thomas Watson. It is almost certain that the Phoenix of the title was Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), to whom the first three elegies in the book are dedicated.
David Jaffin Time shadows
Published
January 2010. Paperback, 370pp, A5 format, £12.50 / $20
ISBN 9781848611009
David Jaffin's annual collection for 2010, Time shadows presents another large selection of his trademark terse lyrics.
Camille Martin Sonnets
Published
February 2010. Paperback, 108pp, 9x6ins, £8.95 / $16 / Can$17.95
ISBN 9781848610705
In her second book of poetry, Camille Martin breathes fresh life into the sonnet in a collection that is at once edgy and lyrical. The word "sonnet" comes from "song," and the musicality of Sonnets is not surprising, given Martin's background as a classical musician. These poems demonstrate a virtuosic range of approaches and themes; some are inspired by texts as disparate as nursery rhymes, theories of cognitive science, a history of street names, and her own dream journals. The chorus of voices in this collection sing confidently and fluently, proving the sonnet to be an ideal vehicle for Martin's love affair with language.
Elaine Randell Faulty Mothering
Published
February 2010. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610897
Faulty Mothering is based on my work with families but focusing on mothers in particular who are experiencing problems in attachment to their children. A backdrop to such difficulties maybe poverty, mental-health problems, substance misuse, adoption, fostering, domestic violence or being poorly parented themselves. I am interested in the capacity of people to change and in the courage of children and young people who adapt and survive adversity. The poems explore those issues. The 'Song Cycles', which make up the rest of the book, come from a call and response, using sentences sometimes written by others in novels which have resonated for me. — Elaine Randell
Rosa Alcalá Undocumentaries
Published
February 2010. Paperback, 88pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610729
'Rosa Alcalá, originally from Paterson, N.J. is a true daughter of W.C. Williams with a distinct, gutsy, and penetrating identity twining a public poeisis with her own luminous particulars. I know of no one else writing such poems that cut into and reenact the "plebeian" with such personal force, eloquence, and skill. "The syntax of worry rewrites cellular codes" she writes and then proceeds to investigate and expose the Industrial Age and its "genetic drifts". A worker is "fighting like a girl for gloves", a kind of child's cognitive dissonance documents improperly stored chemicals, "the deep sleep of field hands" stirs memory as does the more current and common "paycheck clean of union dues." Undocumentariesis Archive made Poetry. "Factory is both fact and act and/mere letters away from face/and story . . ." Alcalá's imagination and language disarmingly penetrate and extend these powerful devices and activating signals. The face we see is hers and our culture's own. I celebrate this book.' —Anne Waldman
Steve Spence A Curious Shipwreck
Published
February 2010. Paperback, 88pp, 9x6ins
ISBN 9781848610972 £8.95 / $15
These are poems which are ostensibly about pirates yet the subtext has a satirical impulse which is fuelled by surrealism and a delight in upending the apple cart. The author revels in entertaining juxtapositions and in breathless passages of 'stream-of-consciousness' rant, which work wonderfully on the page or performed live. While there are playful references to traditional pirate mythology these poems also talk about the times we live in, from the joint catastrophes of global warming and the credit crunch to popular culture and media trivia. Wordplay is endemic. There's more than a hint of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear in this book, as the shadowy figure of Alice entices the pirates into further adventures, yet the ships run aground or never manage to leave the harbour. Absurdity is the keyword, as a sense of fun runs parallel to a skewed commentary on topical events.
Tom Clark Something in the Air
Published
March 2010. Paperback, 96pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848611085
A poet of original vision and gentle, careful word-shaping, Clark allows his images to merge and converge toward a resolution in which flow is not arrested but pauses to take thought; the images take over the controls and "do the talking," almost as if they had a mind of their own. What a relief when that happens, the poet confesses; he just follows along and tries to stay out of the way of whatever it is they seem to want to be saying.
And when the elements of image and sound and sense do then mysteriously come together in the moment, as Clark here proposes, "A point is fixed . . ."
Becka Mara McKay A Meteorologist in the Promised Land
Published March 2010. Paperback,
84pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610835
In these poems, the reader carries her "lone heartbeat" while sifting through the confusion of a psychically, physically rubbled world. There is loss, transcribed literally as spaces in the poems, because in truth there is no "word-/for-word translation." But in this stark landscape there is the "body's strange persistence"; there are meanings made and held close, words collected "in secret". Language equals transcendence and the bridge on which all other things are built: "tell me// your name."
Michael Heller Beckmann Variations & other poems
Published March 2010. Paperback,
80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610873
Ekphrasis, that ancient mode found in Homer's description of Achilles's shield or Keats' Grecian Urn, is here transformed in Michael Heller's meditations in poetry and prose on work by the painter Max Beckmann. Heller navigates, sometimes with Yeats as his Virgil, through a gallery of Beckmann's pictures, seeing them as uniquely bringing home contemporary civilization's catastrophic impulses ("as if days were not for sanity"), impulses at once horrific and unsettling yet strangely beautiful and restorative.
Jaime Robles Anime Animus Anima
Published
March 2010. Paperback, 80pp, 8.5x5.5ins, £8.95 / $15
ISBN 9781848610880
Anime, Animus, Anima is formed from a mass of influences but most prominently from three classic Japanese anime. Parts One and Three evolved from imagery in Ghost in the Shell (1995, Production I.G.), an adaptation of the manga of the same name by Masamune Shirow, directed by Mamoru Oshii and written by Kazunori Ito, and Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2 (2004, Production I.G. and Studio Ghibli), written and directed by Mamoru Oshii. Part Two evolved from imagery in Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995, Gainax), both the television series and the movies, written and directed by Hideaki Anno. Imagery from Cowboy Bebop (1998), the Japanese animated television series directed by Shinichiro Watanabe and written by Keiko Nobumoto, appears throughout all three sections.
Carrie Etter (ed.) Infinite Difference : Other Poetries by UK Women Poets
Published
March 2010. Paperback, 210pp, 9x6ins, £12.95 / $20
ISBN 9781848610996
An anthology of radical new women's poetry from the UK, featuring work by: Sascha Akhtar, Isobel Armstrong, Caroline Bergvall, Elisabeth Bletsoe, Anne Blonstein, Andrea Brady, Emily Critchley, Claire Crowther, Carrie Etter, Catherine Hales, Frances Kruk, Rachel Lehrman, Sophie Mayer, Marianne Morris, Wendy Mulford, Redell Olsen, Frances Presley, Anna Reckin, Carlyle Reedy, Denise Riley, Sophie Robinson, Lucy Sheerman, Zoë Skoulding, Harriet Tarlo, Carol Watts.