Poetry from the UK & Ireland

James Byrne is a widely-travelled poet and editor, and in this, his 4th book from Arc, he reflects on the places, their histories and people that have made a lasting impression on him. He journeys to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’ Bazar; through Bangaladesh on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway; from Mexico City to the ancient city of Puebla and back again; from Quito to the Ecuadorian city of Esmeraldas and back to Peru; through Turkey, along the north coast of Germany, from Buenos Airies to Uruguay and back and finally to the Spanish city of Granada. So vivid are his descriptions of his travels that the reader is enveloped in colours, sounds, scents and surrounded by people.

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“Like a great photographer, MARA BERGMAN
celebrates the moment and detail at the core
of memory. Together, her poems show the great
changes families experience – the free and fearless
life of a young woman set alongside a dying mother
hanging on so she can hold a great-grandchild, the
one-sided conversations we have with the dead.

Her dynamism is infectious – you are drawn
into this family’s wonder, love, compassion, grief
and happiness. Bergman’s poems remind me of
Pablo Neruda’s belief in the driving force of love:
‘Hold on to that, don’t let it get away …’ and one
of the fi nal poems, ‘The Happiness’, delivers the
book’s message: ‘Before it leaves, I will bury it deep
enough to save.’

After reading these poems, you’ll feel braced and
ready, you’ll feel wiser and more generous, you’ll
want to hold on to moments that contain your own
astonishment.”

JACKIE WILLS

“A welcome and most welcoming varied new
collection of Mara Bergman’s richly textured
and sharply focused poems that explore and
celebrate what she memorably calls ‘the gloriously
ordinary’.”

MICHAEL LASKEY

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In Kevin Crossley-Holland’s first new collection of poems for six years, time and thought and memory – the breath of life – are the prevailing winds, while much of the ground it inhabits is the ‘heavenly squelch’ of his own north Norfolk where ‘the word on the tip of your tongue may be sacramental’.

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An unsentimental, forensic account of the breakup of a marriage, told without rancour and with a humanitarian resolution. An exceptional first book.

"The whole pamphlet is heartbreakingly beautiful." Ian McMillan

"... incredibly powerful, forensic and unwavering, and of course word-perfect. I'm very taken by how unexpected so many of your turns of phrase are, the way you move between powerful punches and graceful almost-analytical perspectives. A work of art..." Patrick Mc Guinness

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Jackie Wills brings a multitude of characters to these poems including a young man sleeping in his car, an amateur entomologist, bird catchers, her jilted aunt, Ray Dorset, the three Robins, the office cleaner, family, friends and several gardeners. Her poems move from the GP surgery to eye clinic, dance studio to allotment, back and forward in time and from Brighton's streets to the landscapes of South Africa. In this collection, a woman caught unawares by a changing body and attitudes as she ages strains to see the funny side of her last smear. But there are also many elegies and tributes to old friends in A Friable Earth, Wills' sixth collection of poems. Her work has been described as irreverent, bewitching, compassionate and surreal. She's written extensively about women's lives. She's also worked an allotment for 20 years.

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