'Ghosts' started out as two collections of poetry written between 2001 and about 2008, one called Heroes and the other Ghosts. Since then, I've pruned them both, losing several pieces that had meant a lot to me but didn't seem to work in the cold light of retrospect. I've also added in a few more recent pieces that seemed to fit the theme.What do I mean by 'Ghosts'?The best poetry sees through the surface of the world and looks beyond; 'Heaven in ordinarie' as George Herbert ...

This was the first collection I put together in the Autumn of 1998, drawing on things I'd written since about 1985. It's in two sections Muthos and Logos – muthos is 'anything delivered by word of mouth', hence it refers to narratives: 'myths' are narrative accounts that form the basic belief systems of cultures. They are 'what we believe' in story form. Logos is the expression of thought, design or purpose. From it we derive 'logic', logo', 'logistics', etc. In a manner of speaking, logos...

Adonibezek – the 'Lightning Master' – is a little known character who appears briefly in Judges, the seventh book of the Bible.Briefly – Adonibezek claimed to have maimed seventy other kings by cutting off their thumbs and big toes so that they begged for scraps 'under his table'. This imaginative form of imprisonment meant that the victims could neither run nor fight (though they were doubtless able to complain).God enabled the Tribe of Judah to defeat Adonibezek; they cut o...

"A faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right." —New York Times Book ReviewThe national bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Award. Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the classic Northern epic of a hero’s triumphs as a young warrior and his fated death as a defender of his people. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychicall...

The 1966 prize-winning debut poetry collection from the Irish Nobel laureate, "the best Irish poet since W. B. Yeats" (Robert Lowell)."His words give us the soil-reek of Ireland, the colourful violence of his childhood on a farm in Derry. The full-blooded energy of these poems makes Death of a Naturalist the best first book of poems I've read for some time." —C.B. Cox in the Spectator

Jenna Butler draws on her own experiences of her grandmother's disappearance into senile dementia to reassemble a sensual world in longpoem form that positively crackles with imagery and rhythm. Identities and memories flow and flicker as she strings together fragments of narrative into stories that comprise one woman's life. It entwines her disappearing life with that of the persona of the woman's granddaughter through a choreographed confusion of identities: of she's and I's. Few poets c...

This book contains several tables of HTML content to make reading easier. The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands and Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair. Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard i...

In "Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems," Samuel Taylor Coleridge captivates readers with his masterful use of vivid imagery and lyrical beauty, showcasing the complexities of human emotion and nature. The titular poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," explores themes of guilt, redemption, and the profound connection between humanity and the natural world through its haunting narrative and innovative structure. Coleridge's penchant for the supernatural and philosophical is evide...

Entertainment with the emphasis on "tert".Since running away from home at the age of 28, award winning writer Hovis Presley (the award wasn't for writing) has found fame as the inventor of the bra-less strap and the individually wrapped baked bean. His interests include postal kerplunk and choosing the eight sandwiches he'd take to a desert island - currently seven cheese and an egg mayonnaise. He has produced this book using only a pin and a dictionary."The other day I met...

The perfect gift for someone you love, an illustrated collection of love poems from the poet considered to be the greatest writer in the English language.Shakespeare's sonnets are revered the world over for perfectly capturing the torments and joys of love requited or otherwise in just fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. This treasure of a book collects twenty-nine of the bard's most romantic sonnets, each one lovingly illustrated by the talented Caitlin Keegan. P...

The title poem of this collection, set on an Irish island, tells of a pilgrim on an inner journey that leads him back into the world that formed him, and then forward to face the crises of the present. Writing in The Washington Post Book World, Hugh Kenner called the narrative sequence in Seamus Heaney's Station Island "as fine a long poem as we've had in fifty years."

'King Henry IV,' a compelling anthology edited by noted Shakespearian scholars, brings together critical essays and literary analyses from William Shakespeare and William Hazlitt, exploring one of Shakespeare's most complex histories. The collection spans a variety of literary styles—from dramatic excerpts to enlightening criticism—providing a rich contextual background that enhances the reader's understanding of the text. This anthology not only delves into the intricacies of character de...