Warning: When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple by Jenny Joseph

$5.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Voted Britain’s best-loved poem by viewers of BBC TV’s Bookworm, this perennial favorite with its declaration of defiance against convention appeals to all those with a secret desire to throw off the strictures of propriety and set out deliberately to shock and be outrageous. It sums up this wish perfec tly with its pronouncement: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple/With a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me/I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired/And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells.” Reprinted here as a gift book with line drawings by Pythia Ashton-Jewell, this edition of the classic is ideal both for those who know and love the poem and for those who have yet to relish its gleeful anticipation. ...Show more

Eternal Enemies by Adam Zagajewski; Clare Cavanagh (Translator)

$15.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

The highway became the Red Sea.We moved through the storm like a sheer valley.You drove; I looked at you with love.--from "Storm"One of the most gifted and readable poets of his time, Adam Zagajewski is proving to be a contemporary classic. Few writers in either poetry or prose can be said to have attai ned the lucid intelligence and limpid economy of style that have become a matter of course with Zagajewski. It is these qualities, combined with his wry humor, gentle skepticism, and perpetual sense of history's dark possibilities, that have earned him a devoted international following. This collection, gracefully translated by Clare Cavanagh, finds the poet reflecting on place, language, and history. Especially moving here are his tributes to writers, friends known in person or in books--people such as Milosz and Sebald, Brodsky and Blake--which intermingle naturally with portraits of family members and loved ones. Eternal Enemies is a luminous meeting of art and everyday life. ...Show more

Strong Is Your Hold by Galway Kinnell

$14.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Galway Kinnell is one of America's most important poets. "Strong is Your Hold" is his first new collection since his "Bloodaxe Selected Poems" (2001), which updated his 1982 "Selected Poems", winner of Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In the citation for the 2003 National Book Award, the judg es called Kinnell 'America's preeminent visionary' whose work 'greets each new age with rapture and abundance and sets him at the table with his mentors: Rilke, Whitman, Frost.' The title of his eleventh collection comes from Walt Whitman's 'Last Invocation': 'Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold, O love.' A CD of Galway Kinnell reading all the poems is included with the book.In this striking and varied new book (which was to be the final collection he completed), he gives us poems of intermingling with the natural world, love poems and evocations of sexuality, poems about his father, his children, poet friends, poet heroes and mythic figures. There is also anger and sorrow at human destructiveness, and "Strong Is Your Hold" includes "When the Towers Fell", his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 in direct view of his New York apartment.Kinnell once said: "What troubles me is a sense that so many things lovely and precious in our world seem to be dying out. Perhaps poetry will be the canary in the mine-shaft warning us of what's to come" and "Maybe the best we can do is do what we love as best we can". "Strong Is Your Hold" is a powerful testament to Galway Kinnell's loving view of the world. ...Show more

Selected Poems by Robert Pinsky

$15.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Intense verbal music with a jazz feeling; invention against the grain of expectation; intelligence racing among materials with the variety of a busy street--these have been the qualities of Robert Pinsky's work since his first book, Sadness and Happiness (1975), celebrated for setting a new direction in American poetry. At that time, responding to a question about that book, Pinsky said: "I would like to write a poetry which could contain every kind of thing, while keeping all the excitement of poetry." That ambition was realized in a new way with each of his books, including the book-length personal monologue An Explanation of America; the transformed autobiography of History of My Heart; the bestselling translation The Inferno of Dante; and, most recently, the savage, inventive Gulf Music. That variety and renewal are represented in this brilliantly chosen volume. ...Show more

White Egrets - Poems by Derek Walcott

$15.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

A DAZZLING NEW COLLECTION FROM ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT POETS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In White Egrets, Derek Walcott treats the characteristic subjects of his career--the Caribbean's complex colonial legacy, his love of the Western literary tradition, the wisdom that comes through the passing of time, the always strange joys of new love, and the sometimes terrifying beauty of the natural world--with an intensity and drive that recall his greatest work. Through the mesmerizing repetition of theme and imagery, Walcott creates an almost surflike cadence, broadening the possibilities of rhyme and meter, poetic form and language. White Egrets is a moving new collection from one of the most important poets of the twentieth century--a celebration of the life and language of the West Indies. It is also a triumphant paean to beauty, love, art, and--perhaps most surprisingly--getting older. ...Show more

George Bernard Shaw by Frank Harris

$8.50 AUD

Category: Poetry | Series: Wordsworth Literary Lives

This work starts with an introduction by J.H. Stape, St Mary's University College, Strawberry Hill. Written in 1930, "Bernard Shaw: An Unauthorised Biography" (1930) appeared shortly after Frank Harris' death. Shaw read the revised proofs, also making a few corrections and adding a short postscript. Wit h the help of an American journalist and an anarchist of European reputation, Harris managed to finish his last completed work. Like much of his biographical writing, this work offers an impressionistic and unconventional portrait of a man of genius - or, rather, of qualified genius (as Harris sees Shaw) - and a man of talent, Harris himself.Eschewing conventional chronology, although Harris begins with Shaw's family background and ends with a chapter on the future, this kaleidoscopic attempt to pin Shaw down succeeds mainly by indirection, in its casual insights and off-the-cuff observations. A portrait with Shaw's warts unflinchingly in place, it is only partly an assessment of a social critic and playwright, with Harris on the loose, seeking to get his word out, one last time, on dramatic censorship, the First World War or on sex and religion. ...Show more

Life Is a Dance - Poetry, Thoughts and Words from a Peacemaker by Tom Stodulka

$25.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

Life, love and work intertwine with nature and a unique series of poems, in Tom's revised edition of his successful book of poetry. No matter what the day-to-day challenges are, as life unfolds, Tom shows us - through his poetry - that life is about enjoying what we can in every single moment.Journey wi th Tom through tales of Australian life, discover local flora and fauna and learn from his experiences in his work as a mediator. Tom shares his deep appreciation of nature, his passion for his work and shows the reader how to remember, that life is a dance, not a journey. ...Show more

Collected Poems of Ursula Vaughan Williams (Signed) by Ursula Vaughan Williams

$85.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

The Male as Evader by Anne French

$12.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

This new collection from one of New Zealand's finest poets is a stylish and acerbic commentary on the laughable and lamentable way in which men conduct their relations with women.

Study of Poetry by R. L. Blackwood; A. Osborn

$10.00 AUD

$15.00 (33% off)

Category: Poetry

Making Tracks: a Selected 50 Poems by Sam Hunt

$45.00 AUD

Category: Poetry

For most of his adult life Sam Hunt has followed a committment to writing, reading and performing poetry. A colourful concert performer, Hunt has worked extensively throughout New Zealand and Australia in hotels, theatres and schools. This volume, which is no exception to the rule, contains the best fro m all now out-of-print volumes. ...Show more

The Faber Book of Love Poems

$10.00 AUD

Category: Poetry