If it’s a spot of reminiscing you enjoy in your down-time, this set of books is exactly the one for you. Stories of comings and goings in Denmark, of half-remembered lives in Lancashire and of poets beyond the grave in South London, these will be some new favourite literary places you’ll want to visit again […]
If it’s a spot of reminiscing you enjoy in your down-time, this set of books is exactly the one for you. Stories of comings and goings in Denmark, of half-remembered lives in Lancashire and of poets beyond the grave in South London, these will be some new favourite literary places you’ll want to visit again and again.
As Poet in Residence for Age Concern Lancashire, Sarah Hesketh set about documenting the stories of dementia sufferers over the course of 20 weeks in a care home. The result is a book of poems and verbatim interviews that takes the reader on a surprising and enriching journey through language, memory and imagination. The tenderness, suffering and humour on display throughout this stunning book makes for a heartbreaking and life-affirming read.
“I went into the cemetery because I wanted to find a great lost poet. I wanted to find an original voice: unknown and overlooked for centuries. I wanted to give my ear to their music, to listen for its hiss and cadence in the still-smouldering remains of their white ashes.” So begins Chris McCabe’s wander into literary detection in the West Norwood Cemetery. A startlingly original work, In the Catacombs – part literary criticism, part Gothic fiction – is a book to “to buy, to read and re-read, and to keep”.
This vigorous, contemporary work by American poet Meghan Purvis was a PBS Recommended Translation and won The Times Stephen Spender Award in 2011. Combining faithful translation with innovative versions and poems from alternative viewpoints, Purvis has created an exciting new interpretation of Beowulf – full of verve and the bristle of language.
