Smith/Doorstop – serie

Shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and twice a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, Michael Laskey is widely regarded as one of Britain’s most intelligent, insightful and sympathetic poets. This new book brings together over 20 years of his brilliant work.

Michael founded the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1998, and since 1991 has been co-editor of Smiths Knoll magazine. He lives in Suffolk, where he is a freelance writer and tutor.

After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin was named Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation (Winter 2011)Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (1911-2003) is now recognised as a leading literary figure in Russia, though he is still relatively unknown in the west. In his own country, he was for many years known primarily as a translator, with only close friends able to read his poems. These friends included the great poet Anna Akhmatova, who acknowledged and supported his genius. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that the general reading public was allowed to become fully aware of the scope and depth of Semyon Lipkin’s own poetry.His work is concerned with history and philosophical exploration, but above all shows a keen sense of people’s diverse destinies. His poems are rich with references to his Jewish heritage and to the Bible, and they draw on a first-hand awareness of the tragedies of World War II.Yvonne Green has worked for eight years, making and working from literal translations to create ‘versions’ – poems ‘after Lipkin’ that bring to English some of this fascinating writer’s most characteristic verse.

Shortlisted for the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. This first full collection sees Paula Cunningham reflecting on her upbringing in Northern Ireland, while casting a clear eye on family history and friendships. Its memorable short sequences include ‘Fathom’, which centres on her father, alongside many varied shorter pieces, humorous, erotic and always surprising. “She has formal gifts in abundance…when her eye is on her native Ulster, magic and frightening things happen.” Paula Meehan Paula Cunningham was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Her pamphlet A Dog Called Chance was a winner in the Poetry Business Competition (1999). In 2011 she won the Hippocrates Poetry Prize (NHS section) and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Prize. She has also written drama and short fiction; a short story appeared in the Faber Book of the Best New Irish Short Stories in 2005. She now lives in Belfast, where she works as a dentist.

Part self-portrait, part love affair, the poems in Self-Portrait with The Happiness are obsessed with moments elsewhere. Rural England contends with immense Chinese cities via Thailand and Japan. The effect is a collection which craves the exotic in the everyday: puppeteers communicating through their puppets, sonnets sketched on the snowy rooftops of cars and Chinese dragons flying above the Lakeland fells.David Tait is one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary poetry, and this eagerly awaited collection confirms the promise of his pamphlet, Love's Loose Ends, which won the Poetry Business Competition, judged by Simon Armitage.

Best known as a writer of crime fiction – notably the 12 volume Charlie Resnick series – and as the mainstay, for two decades, of Slow Dancer Press, John Harvey’s own poetry has perhaps stayed too long below the radar.

This, his first collection in sixteen years, brings together the best of his two earlier books, Ghosts of a Chance and Bluer Than This, along with a number of new poems which show a greater depth and maturity and variety of form, further fusing together the intimate and personal with a passionate understanding of music and painting and the ways in which they can affect and illuminate our lives.

Skipper introduces an intriguing and readable new voice. Christy Ducker plays between light and dark, music and texture to take us into the swim of life. Warm, but never sentimental, the poems teem with people and everyday wonders: St Cuthbert appears at a laser clinic; breasts talk; a horse dentist perseveres; and Grace Darling learns to count. Ducker extends her vision from the deeply personal to the historical, engaging us in questions of self and place. This is a bold first collection, from a poet of energy and verve.

Analogue/Digital brings together poems first published in Faber's Poetry Introduction 7, and other anthologies and magazines mainly from the 1990s, with recent poems relating to travels - particularly in Australia. In between, there has been a switch from analogue to digital technologies, and this informs the selection, in which themes of loss, survival and changing horizons are reflected in the radical shift. Old and new worlds speak to each other, with their various means of recording the world - past and present - vying for attention.

'In poetry she had an enviable talent for beginning a piece without ceremony and ending it without strain: not every poet can do both.'

Carole Bromley’s second collection of poems, The Stonegate Devil, centres on her hometown of York, exploring its personal stories and history in a way that is both playful and moving, addressing childhood, relationships and coming-of-age. A number of poems also explore the poet’s experiences of bereavement and loss.

A unique and illuminating poetry collection from Cliff Yates. He discusses themes of childhood, of love, and of his perspective on the world which the poet Ian McMillan calls ‘ultimately Yatesian’.

Yates’ past collections include Henry’s Clock, winner of the Aldeburgh prize, and Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop ebook). He wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence. He is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation and is currently Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Aston University.

“These poems draw you in, gently but firmly, with telling detail and great emotional power. You share what Yvonne Green observes -- very beautifully -- about day-to-day experience; appreciate what she has personally learnt about suffering; and reflect with her on the contribution poetry can make to understanding (perhaps even resolving) the world’s problems. Honoured, as well as being the title of a harrowing individual poem about female martyrdom, is well-chosen as the title of the book honouring the reader with its intelligence and compassion -- and with the occasional agreeable surprise.” Alan Brownjohn

“These are vital, fiercely moving poems, alive with the danger, fear, violence and loss of a diaspora. Yvonne Green invites us to “....know about coming from a country that doesn’t exist” and takes us beyond borders and language in her expansive, profoundly relevant exploration of identity and the meaning of ‘home’.” Josephine Corcoran

“Poetry for Ann was a currency, like conversation, its nature being to capture and clarify elusive ideas that might otherwise remain unformed: so her characteristic style was natural and conversational, often with a crackle of verbal play, and an alertness to the possibilities of language that enabled her to achieve an effect of sensuous exuberance without becoming incoherent or merely fancy.

She was a pianist and a skilled listener to music, with a background in dance and an openness to visual art and design. In poetry she had an enviable talent for beginning a piece without ceremony and ending it without strain: not every poet can do both.”

– from the Foreword by Roy Fisher

Even though you’ve left homeand probably don’t remember,I can’t take the two steps downto the back door—the stone stepsI set in concrete one summerand called you to leave your handprint—without seeing you sprintingin your dress, white shoes,blonde hair full of speed,me thinking the steps and your legswould miss each other and you falling,falling through the years to smackyour forehead again on the bluntnessof the doorstep and always, too late,me running towards you.

This second collection of poetry from Stuart Pickford is a tremendous follow-up to The Basics (Redbeck Press, 2001) which was shortlisted for the Forward Best First Collection Prize. His earnest poetic voice echoes throughout his work, highlighting the deeper meanings behind his direct and concise language style. He has twice been commended in the National Poetry Competition, the last time in 2012 for his poem ‘Swimming with Jellyfish’ which gives its name to the title of this collection.