The first Thursday of October is Forward Arts Foundation’s #NationalPoetryDay! NPD was founded to foster a love of language and acknowledge the value of verse in our society, whether it be for self-expression, cultivating understanding and connection, or simply for the sake of lavish lyricism. Since we’re not full-time rhymers, we’ve decided to mark the day by sharing some poetical publications from poetry professionals instead. Read on to journey through the stanzaic scenery of a trailblazing lesbian writer, Shakespeare (as you’ve never seen him before), and a prisoner-of-war turned prominent poet, amongst many others.
Sincerely, the Casemate UK Team | 3 min read | Find out more about National Poetry Day
*Links will be directed to the Pen & Sword Books online bookshop.
A Painter & A Poet
Conversations in Colour
Alice Mumford & Sue Leigh
This exquisite volume, of paintings by Alice Mumford and poems by Sue Leigh, presents a unique dialogue between sight and language. Mumford’s paintbrush finds poetic resonance in Leigh’s verse and vice versa, revealing the shared threads that bind their creative experiences.
9781915670069 | Paperback | September 2023 | Find out more
Her Birth and Later Years
New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021
Irena Klepfisz
A trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values, Irena Klepfisz is a vital and individual American voice. This book is the first complete collection of her work.
9780819500168 | Hardback • Paperback | December 2022 | Find out more
In Springtime
Sarah Blake
In Sarah Blake’s epic poem of survival, we follow a nameless main character lost in the woods. In a stunning setting and with ominous dreams, In Springtime will take you into a magical world without using any magic at all—just the strangeness of the woods.
9780819500304 | Hardback • Paperback | March 2023 | Find out more
Suddenly We
Evie Shockley
In her new poetry collection, Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious “we.” How do we navigate between the urgency of our own becoming and the imperative insight that whoever we are, we are in relation to each other?
9780819500458 | Hardback • Paperback | March 2023 | Find out more
The Wild Hunt Divinations
A Grimoire
Trevor Ketner
The Wild Hunt Divinations: A Grimoire is a stunning second collection from National Poetry Series winner, Trevor Ketner. Comprised of 154 sonnets, each anagrammed line-by-line from Shakespeare’s sonnets, the book refracts these lines through the thematic lens of transness, queer desire, kink, and British paganism.
9780819500397 | Hardback • Paperback | March 2023 | Find out more
Egon Altdorf
Poems + Images
Egon Altdorf, edited by Michael Trevor
Altdorf’s earliest poems, written during military service and as a prisoner of war, reflected on nature, poetry and art. Presenting Altdorf’s poetry alongside his art, this is the first book to make Egon Altdorf’s poetry accessible to an English readership, revealing a powerfully interconnected vision shaped but not defined by war: a humanitarian outlook informed by a profound spiritual belief.
9781915670120 | Paperback | August 2023 | Find out more
Endurable Infinity
Tony Kitt
In Endurable Infinity, Tony Kitt creates his own tangential surrealism through wonder, intuition, and surprising connections. If the original surrealists of the 1930s sought to unleash the unconscious mind by bringing elements of dreams to the waking world with jarring juxtapositions, Kitt’s poetry is more about transmutation, or leaps, from word to word and phrase to phrase.
9780822966951 | Paperback | November 2022 | Find out more
I Want to Tell You
Jesse Lee Kercheval
In Jesse Lee Kercheval’s sixth collection, I Want to Tell You, her searching, incantatory poems speak directly and forcefully to the reader in a voice that is by turns angry, elegiac, wry, or witty but always sharply alive. Crossing through the bewildering territory of grief, Kercheval argues with god and the universe about the deaths of people she loves.
9780822967071 | Paperback | January 2023 | Find out more
Territorial
Mira Rosenthal
Territorial explores the bargains that women make to stay safe from violence. Set in a landscape of looming ecological ruin, the poems bear witness to the effects of drought on the California chaparral region and delve into difficult personal terrain to reveal patterns of abuse we inflict on the earth and each other.
9780822966968 | Paperback | November 2022 | Find out more
Blessing the Exoskeleton
Poems
Andrew Hemnert
Blessing the Exoskeleton is a southerner’s book about Michigan. Written over a two-year period in Kalamazoo, Andrew Hemmert’s poems address climate change, labor, love, and his attempts to live joyfully in a deteriorating world.
9780822966975 | Paperback | November 2022 | Find out more
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