The essential edition of one of modern poetry’s most distinctive voices: all Stevie Smith’s flabbergasting poems, now in paperback Stevie Smith is among the most popular British poets of the twentieth century. Her poem “Not Waving but Drowning” has been widely anthologized, and her life was celebrated in the classic movie Stevie. This new and updated edition includes hundreds of works from her thirty-five-year career. In addition to the poems and illustrations from all her published volumes, the Smith scholar Will May discovered never-before-published verses and provides fascinating details about their provenance. Satirical, mischievous, teasing, disarming, Stevie Smith’s poems take readers from comedy to tragedy and back again, while her line drawings are by turns unsettling and beguiling.
You know John Cuneo from his award-winning illustrations that have graced the pages of Esquire or the covers of The New Yorker, but less known are the over-the-top and hilariously perverse cartoons that fill the pages of Not Waving But Drawing. Assembling Cuneo's best privately drawn sketchbook pages, each page immediately introduces us to unique takes on sex and domestic life in his signature squiggly style. Not Waving But Drawing is full of dark thoughts, lightly rendered.
An exquisite collection of the very best writing on love. THE LOVE BOOK presents a new anthology of writing on all aspects of the most important emotion on earth. There’s true love, unrequited love, erotic love, platonic love, thwarted love, comic love, mourned love and just about every other type of love, explored here in poetry, prose, letters and lyrics from the greatest writers in the English language. In one fabulously comprehensive volume, Allie Esiri brings together texts ancient and modern, from William Shakespeare to Sharon Olds, Catullus to Carol Ann Duffy, the bible to Bob Dylan; she offers us sonnets for wooing, lamentations for loss and perfect passages for weddings. Full of classics and all-time favourites, THE LOVE BOOK also includes lesser-known marvels, such as Mozart’s love notes, Sappho’s lesbian odes and a letter from Napoleon. Forget corny greeting cards and chocolate box cliché, this is the literature of love at its finest. Beautifully presented and helpfully divided into themed sections, it’s an indispensable collection for anyone who’s ever had a heart.
Not Waving But Drowning tells the harrowing true story of one man's childhood struggle against poverty and his subsequent drive to become a policeman in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. From his earliest days, Edmund Gregory possessed an awareness beyond his years. During the course of his parents' turbulent and doomed marriage, he soaked up the horror of seeing his mother and father tearing each other apart. After they separated, he experienced a lonely boyhood, starved of affection, while living in welfare homes, dingy Belfast bedsits, and a sordid care home for young boys. However, Gregory later found solace in his marriage to Agnes, and in a concerted effort to drag himself and his new family out of poverty, he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary. After five trauma-filled years serving in Belfast's riot squads, Gregory transferred into the somewhat elitist VIP protection branch of the RUC, where he was involved in providing bodyguard protection to many high-threat members of Northern Ireland's establishment. While working within that unit, he was also involved in teams protecting several members of the Royal family and then US President Bill Clinton throughout the course of their visits to the Province. During his last four years in the force, Gregory was charged with protecting the Reverend Ian Paisley's deputy, Peter Robinson MP, an outspoken personality who was under constant and serious threat of assassination. After 21 years of service, however, Gregory was diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which resulted in his medical retirement. Not Waving But Drowning is an emotionally charged journey through Gregory’s impoverished childhood and the dark underbelly of his later life as a policeman in Northern Ireland performing what was, according to Interpol, the most dangerous policing role in the world.
Classical music fans looking for guidance on the mysteries of conducting will find answers, and laughs, in this book. Covering everything from baton technique to player psychology to shirt colours and pencil choices and much more besides, Waving, Not Drowning is the indispensable guide to the world of the orchestral conductor. With the tragic death of co-author and doyen of the podium Barrington Orwell in an as yet unexplained contrabassoon accident, it was left to his colleague and friend Lev Parikian to complete the story on his behalf. The result is part biography, part coaching manual, all wisdom.
It’s January 1st and Brian Bilston is convinced that this year his New Year’s resolution will change his life. Every day for a year, he will write a poem. It’s quite simple. Brian’s life certainly needs improving. His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, a motivational speaker and indefatigable charity fundraiser to boot; he seems to constantly disappoint his long-suffering son; and at work he is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and management jargon. So poetry will be his salvation. But there is an obstacle in the form of Toby Salt, his arch nemesis at Poetry Club and rival suitor to Liz, Brian’s new poetic inspiration. When Toby goes missing, just after the announcement of the publication of his first collection, This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, Brian becomes the number one suspect. If he is to regain his reputation and to have a chance of winning Liz, he must find out what has happened to Toby before it is too late. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is the most original novel you will read this or any year.
