All books

The Parley Tree does not pretend to be an all-encompassing portrait of the work of French-speaking poets of Africa and the Arab World. Rather, it is a glimpse of some of the most representative voices of the poetic movements and generations in the Francophone countries of the whole continent of Africa, and as such, seeks to do away with the divisions that traditionally separate North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa, and the African world from the Arab world.

Poetry is one of the major forms of literary expression in these two regions, and the French-language poetry of the countries included in this anthology is clearly only one dimension of an overall poetic landscape shared with other national languages such as Arabic, Fula, Bambara, Berber, Wolof, among others. But it is a dimension that is recognized as being of great literary merit and worthy of the international acclaim it has attracted. The poets anthologized here — from North Africa, Sub Saharan Africa and the Arab World — have long wished to escape from artificial pigeon-holing and rather to be associated with common threads. The past half-century has confirmed their work as poetry of great literary quality, full of a unique vitality and presence, and The Parley Tree offers an insight into a whole world that might otherwise have remained closed off to English-language readers.

• Paperback £13.99 £12.59 available

» More details...

These poems are written from across the poet's life, contemplating his native land of Russia from both a literal and a figurative distance, while at the same time casting a sometimes jaundiced eye on the alien culture of America in which he spent the final years of his life. Loseff's poetry excels in complex imagery, rich literary allusion, and is abundant in formal experiment. Whether absorbed by the world of literature (particularly his fellow poets) or relating real-life experiences, Loseff conjures up a restless and frequently disturbing universe.

• Paperback £10.99 £9.89 available
• Hardback £13.99 £12.59 available

» More details...

In the author's own words:
"She loves a laid-back allusiveness. She loves the unusual. The 'shifting voices'. She thinks the poems might be musical in structure. She loves Debussy. A happiness addict he (from a letter to Poniatoski). The left foot keeps rhythm with the right. It's more about forlorn than about form: the raw desire and an exploration of un-belonging. The eel in surreal. This means they have a deceptively improvised feel. A particular groove. This makes it what is known as authentic. It's all gorgeously erotic. With the lightness of touch that she loves. The moments of original comedy she loves, a rare ability to maintain and withhold tension she loves. She loves."

• Paperback out of stock
• Hardback £12.99 £11.69 available

» More details...

In Christopher James' mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane; John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China while an archaeologist is exhumed sometime in the distant future. This is where the living and the dead intermingle like passengers waiting nervously for a flight.

Reaching from the Humber to the Thames; Cromer to Kathmandu, it's a dizzying and unpredictable world tour that veers in and out of reality like a plane passing through a cloud. In the shadow of environmental disaster and the possibility of dragons, there are more mundane dramas to face too: house moves, family secrets, marriage proposals that do not go to plan, and children woken in the night by rain.

• Hardback £12.99 £11.69 available
• Paperback £10.99 £9.89 available

» More details...

Set in the Stalinist era, when Lithuania's farmers lost everything to the process of collectivization, this book documents the life of the village idiot/trickster Kukutis. Unable to comprehend the strictures of the totalitarian regime, he says and does what he likes and is a potent symbol of freedom until the downfall of communism in Lithuania.

• Hardback out of stock
• Paperback £10.99 £9.89 available

» More details...