In 1878, in London, a woman served a prison sentence for deserting two of her children, a charge she denied. Almost nothing else is known of her life or that of her husband, a dealer in 'foreign birds and curiosities,' who was himself a migrant. The two children vanished from the record. This is where Fleet begins, with elusive histories and lost voices. The title suggests imperial power, conquest, traffic in commodities (which in the nineteenth century included vast numbers of ex...

Crossing the Mirror Line, the stunning debut from Judith Willson, explores doubleness; the unsettling symmetries of mirrored reflections, the magician's disorientating art that 'makes nothing appear'. Artists' mannequins and watchful children stand at an angle to the familiar world; an estuary elides distinctions between land and sea. Like the eighteenth-century artists' landscape mirror that reconfigured the relationship between the viewer and what is viewed, these poems are conc...

This book presents an ideal introduction to the full range of the works of Charlotte Smith, whose Romantic sensibility is an expression of a specifically female experience, from her influential sonnets and poems for children to extracts from her French Revolution poem.

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICEThe Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, Alice Oswald's first collection of poems, announced the arrival of a distinctive new voice. Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the book introduced readers to her meditative, intensely musical style, and her breath-taking gift for visionary writing.'The poetry of Alice Oswald arrives like a zephyr . . . a fresh and exciting first collection.' Kathleen Jamie, Times Literary Supplement'an...

Originally published in 1969, Seamus Heaney's Door into the Dark continues a furrow so startlingly opened in his first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966). With the sensuosness and physicality of language that would become the hallmark of his early writing, these poems graphically depict the author's rural upbringing, from the local forge to the banks of Lough Neagh, concluding in the preserving waters of the bogland and a look ahead to his next book,...

Like his acclaimed Mandeville (2008), Matthew Francis's fourth Faber collection explores a world of marvels, real and fantastic. A man takes off for the moon in an engine drawn by geese, a poltergeist moves into a remote Welsh village, and a party of seventeenth-century Englishmen encounter the wonders of Russia - sledges, vodka, skating and Easter eggs. The scientist Robert Boyle basks in the newly discovered radiance of phosphorus (the noctiluca of the title) and the theme of light in da...

The European winters of 2009 and 2010 serve as inspiration for the evocative poems in this collection that anxiously yet joyfully unite the seasons and creatures of the planet. The extremity of those record-setting winters in the UK redefined all seasons for the poet, and her notion that nature asserted itself and renewed the environment for the imagination is conveyed in poems such as "Polar," in which a polar bear rug transforms personal and ecological longing into a creative act. The co...

A breakthrough book of poetry by one of the most exciting young poets in Britain. Dealing with issues of childhood, betrayal and domestic and sexual violence, SWIMMING IN THE FLOOD is Burnside's darkest and most powerful collection yet.

A Guardian / Herald Scotland Book of the YearWinner of the 2017 PEN Pinter prizeShortlisted for the 2017 Forward PrizeA remote townland in County Mayo, Carrigskeewaun has been for nearly fifty years Michael Longley’s home-from-home, his soul-landscape. Its lakes and mountains, wild animals and flowers, its moody seas and skies have for decades lit up his poetry. Now they overflow into Angel Hill...

In 2013, Seamus Heaney met with Faber poetry editor Matthew Hollis in Dublin. He said that one project he would very much like to complete would be to prepare a personal selection from across the entire arc of his poetry, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. He never managed to make the selection in his lifetime, and after his passing, the project was initially set aside. But now, at last, it has been returned to once more, and the result is an intimat...

'Evocatively written and charming' - Countryfile'The January Man is a book that makes you want to pull on your boots, grab a map and get out there' - Country LifeThe January Man is the story of a year of walks that was inspired by a song, Dave Goulder's 'The January Man'. Month by month, season by season and region by region, Christopher Somerville walks the British Isles, following routes that con...

Winner of the 2016 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. Shortlisted for the 2017 Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize. Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Award. In the informal rituals of the tide remaking its tideline, of a painter absorbed in the act of painting, or of an old couple greeting the night, the English poet Kate Miller sees and charts the creative process at work. As its title suggests, Miller's striking début collection explores perception, the...