Books

The English Funerals – Chris McCully

The English Funerals is a collection of ten-line prose poems which embody an exploration of ‘epic’ verse. Each poem is a tile, itself representing an epic fragment, juxtaposed with other tiles which themselves yield another story – another fragment of the epic whole – a disconcerting geography, whose voices and histories are present only briefly on the rim of extinction.

[Happenstance:] – Duncan MacKay

What happens happens, whether it’s the political madness of 2016 when most of these poems were written, or the way the words fall (or fail to fall) on to the page. If anything, [Happenstance:] is a journal; if anything else, it’s a random mix of action and reflection. As Charles Bernstein puts it: “the poem said in any other way is not the poem.” So it is with [Happenstance:] in which, in the words of ‘Sit Crooked Think Straight’: “writing follows its own bloodied nose.

A Belfast Childhood – Philip Terry

A Belfast Childhood explores the form invented by Joe Brainard in his book I Remember, and taken up by Georges Perec in France. Here the form is subject to an additional constraint, which emerges from the title: the first 26 memories are arranged alphabetically; subsequently, the alphabetical entries are permutated according to a sestina of order 26.

Bettbehandlung – Dorothy Lehane

Bettbehandlung is a feminist re-visioning of historical and medical treatments of ‘hysterical’ female subjects and performative spaces of illness. It focuses on historical acts of diagnosis and the shifting of bodily propriety, alongside issues of dependency and witnessing.

Some Municipal Love Poems – Simon Smith

After the Paris attacks, the migration crisis, the Brexit vote, the election of Trump and installation of May, and war in Syria, one question might be how have these events changed what is meant by public and private space. Perhaps something as ‘useless’ as poetry could open a space from where answers might appear. Some Municipal Love Poems comprises two sequences, ‘General Purpose Love Poems’ and ‘Song Book: Series of Songs’, the former a sequence of long essay-like poems and the latter, shorter song-like poems, which form new spaces, public and private, as call and response, as spaces to think in and with.

Shelley Drowns – John Worthen

Shelley Drowns is an account of the last three weeks of the life of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Through a day- by-day recovery and detailed examination of the surviving evidence, John Worthen reaches an extraordinary conclusion: that the most likely cause of the poet’s death was suicide. The probability that ‘Shelley drowns Shelley’ not only offers to correct all previous biographies (including his own, recently published major work) but to change perceptions of Shelley for ever.

Four Places – Chris McCully

Four Places consists of four essays that explore place, culture and history; they consider how time past and its words and cultures survive into time present. The localities in question are peripheral spaces—two very different islands, an isthmus and a causeway. How does cultural change either colonise such liminal spaces or spread from them? And for the observer, what and whom is it that one sees—and who is doing the seeing?

Poems – Paul Valéry

Translated by Ian Brinton & Michael Grant; Comment by Michael Heller

A rich selection of Paul Valéry’s poetry from translators Brinton and Grant. From the bountiful imagery of ‘Palm Tree’ to the meditations of ‘The Mariners’ Graveyard’, the breadth of Valéry’s poetic talent is shown anew with precision and zeal. This companion edition to Stéphane Mallarmé is an unmissable contribution from his poetic successor.

Poems – Stéphane Mallarmé

Translated by Ian Brinton & Michael Grant; Comment by J. H. Prynne

Translators Ian Brinton and Michael Grant revisit fourteen poems by the 19th century French poet, Stéphane Mallarmé, in this freshly produced, resonant translation. This collection features a new, full, typeset translation of ‘Un coup de dés’ (‘A Roll of the Dice’), one of Mallarmé’s most famous and striking experimental poems.

Army of Lovers – David Flusfeder & Mark Springer

Army of Lovers is the first opera collaboration between the novelist David Flusfeder and the pianist/composer Mark Springer. It draws from the legend of the Sacred Band of Thebes, as documented by Plutarch: 150 pairs of male lovers who were the crack fighting troops of the Theban army. Army of Lovers is a drama of love and patriotism, eros and identity, belonging and faith.

Included here is an extract of Plutarch’s original text; the libretto of the opera along with selections from the score; an essay on the Sacred Band’s place in queer history by Professor David Leitao; and afterwords from the writer and composer of its first UK production at The Playground Theatre, London.

Creel 5: An Anthology of Creative Writing