A sister often knows us better than anyone. This selection of poems (a companion to Ten Poems about Brothers) explores that special relationship – from the games and secrets of early childhood that we remember so vividly to the separate journeys of later life. For Dorothea Smartt, two sisters form a pair of carefree ‘toe-tapping feet’ while Jean Tepperman’s depiction of sisterhood celebrates the thrill of defying convention. In Galway Kinnell’s moving poem a childhood shared with a sibling creates a reassuring lifelong bond: “…we will walk hand in hand a little while, taking the laughter of childhood as far as we can into the days to come,” from ‘Two Set Out On Their Journey’ by Galway Kinnell. Most of all, these poems remind us of that life is enlivened and enriched by having a sister. Never coy or timid, they are sure to provoke discussion – and hopefully many lively family conversations! Poems by Julia Bird, Wendy Cope, Michael Donaghy, Galway Kinnell, Esther Morgan, PK Page, Dorothea Smartt, Jean Tepperman, Jack Underwood and Julia Webb.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-10-2017

"Physick is a book of poetry that sears and coaxes and it could have been written by no one apart from the scholar, poet and elder that is Pete Hay. No one else takes the temperature of this island like him and no one else uses Tasmania as such an effective prism through which to consider human nature. Physick is a book of transcendent poetry which helps us understand not only place but the vagaries and passions of the human condition. It should be prescribed reading for all of us." – Rachel Edwards, The Australian

Bind: paperback

Pages: 156

Dimensions: 135 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 10-10-2023

This mini anthology is a celebration of the rich variety of ways in which we get ourselves from A to B. A long distance walk, a bike ride, a boat trip – all are here in language that captures the thrill of being en route. We meet cyclists pedalling with panniers around eastern France. Then there’s a rowdy train journey from Barrow to Sheffield; the passengers may be raucous but what is relished is the train’s “relentless pressing on”. Sheenagh Pugh’s poem wonders what might happen if a road had a mind of its own. Then again: “Who wants to know a story’s end, or where a road will go?” from ‘What if this road’ by Sheenagh Pugh Whether you’re a seasoned explorer or an armchair traveller, these poems offer the delight and excitement of being on the way to somewhere else. Poems by Jean Atkin, Jo Bell, Geoffrey Chaucer, David Constantine, John Foggin, Norman MacCaig, Michael McCarthy, Kim Moore, Sheenagh Pugh and Rabindranath Tagore.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 24

Dimensions: 163 x 217 mm

Publication Date: 01-08-2022

From African Wild Dog through to Zebra, there's a poem for all the alphabet animals! Tough toothed fluffy fringed hay muncher crunching on sunshine strands. Carrot wisher, lip curler begging for treats. Curious explorer dust roller tickling the sky with hooves. Children carrier tail swisher fuss seeker hoping for human hands to rub behind ears... Donkey ;)

Bind: paperback

Pages: 96

Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2024

During the Covid-19 pandemic, eighteen thousand uncrossable kilometres lay between poet Majella Cullinane in Aotearoa New Zealand and her mother in Ireland, a distance unbridgeable even by phone as Cullinane’s mother’s language was lost to dementia. Meantime calls and keens across this terrible distance. With attentiveness, tenderness and extraordinary vulnerability, these poems speak directly to personal experience while also addressing a wider world shadowed and altered by illness, where everything once familiar and coherent is disintegrating, in flux, uncertain and strange. These poems are works of vigil and devotion, breathed into existence by a daughter who could not be at the bedside of her beloved, dying parent. Personal and universal in its themes, the poems in Meantime possess a gravitas born of sorrow, steeped in love. A warm and loving conversation about memory and forgetting, and a celebration of the power of voice to connect and heal, this is a collection for our times.

Bind: paperback

Dimensions: 150 x 230 mm

Publication Date: 23-05-2024

INCLUDES POSTCARDS Kindness can be an underestimated virtue in our increasingly hectic and impersonal world. It is a word that we use most often in our conversations with young children when we tell them to be kind to a fellow creature or a new friend. These generous poems remind us that kindness can take many forms and that a kind gesture doesn’t have to be either time-consuming or complicated. On the contrary: “Sometimes a sober voice is enough to calm the waters & drive away the false witnesses,” from ‘Kindness’ by Yusef Komunyakaa. Edited by Jackie Kay and containing two new poems she has written specially for the anthology, this moving selection is allied to a compelling cause. ‘Felix’s Campaign of Kindness’ was instigated by the mother of Felix Alexander, a 17-year-old boy who took his own life after years of online bullying. The pamphlet is dedicated to the memory of Felix and contains the inspirational open letter written by his mother after his death. Jackie Kay is one of the foremost poets writing in Britain today. She has published numerous poetry collections and a memoir, Red Dust Road, about her quest to find her birth parents. She was the third modern Makar, the Scottish Poet Laureate. Included are two special edition postcards featuring poems by Olga Dermott-Bond and Zoë Green, who were the winners in our Kindness Poem Competition. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ian Duhig, Sarah Howe, Jackie Kay, Yusef Komunyakaa, Norman MacCaig, Sylvia Plath, Rabindranath Tagore and Kae Tempest.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 28

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-09-2023

We couldn’t survive without hope – that light at the end of the tunnel which seems to promise ‘this will pass’ when times are hard. These poems offer hope in a whole range of guises – from the uplift of the first signs of spring to the infectious optimism of a child who believes he will live for ever if he eats his greens. There’s also a poem in which a grandmother’s words become a precious talisman: “…empty your paradise onto a desk: your white sands, green hills and fresh fish. Shine the lamp on it like the fresh hope of morning, and keep staring at it till you sleep.” from ‘A Portable Paradise’ by Roger Robinson. Each of these poems is a little chink of light – a reminder that a moment of joy and consolation is always just around the corner. Poems by Fleur Adcock, Sujata Bhatt, Arthur Hugh Clough, Katie Dunstan, Kerry Hardie, Winifred Holtby, Roy Marshall, Paula Meehan, Roger Robinson, Laura Theis and Walt Whitman.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-12-2022

Happiness: the mid-point, perhaps, between contentment and joy. We all hope for it, but we all also have times when it seems far away. Sometimes, we even fail to notice when it’s there. These poems don’t celebrate rapture or feverish delight. Mostly they capture moments of what Emily Dickinson calls “casual simplicity” – giggling irreverently during a yoga class or seeing a dragonfly land on a lake. Happiness, they seem to say, is far less complicated than we sometimes imagine: “It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker, and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots in the night.” from ‘Happiness’ by Jane Kenyon. Deborah Alma is a poet and poetry tutor, also known as the Emergency Poet offering the world’s first mobile poetry first aid service. Her delightful and thoughtful selection is sure to lift the spirits and gladden the heart. Poems by Deborah Alma, Meg Cox, Emily Dickinson, Jonathan Davidson, Tony Hoagland, Jane Kenyon, Bryony Littlefair, Naomi Shihab Nye, RS Thomas and James Wright.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-07-2019

Many of us have a favourite tree. It may be one we remember from childhood – a tree we loved to climb in or swing from or hide behind. Or perhaps it’s one of the ancient and majestic yews or oaks that stand sentinel in churchyards and on village greens, hardly seeming to change as the human years hurry by. This beautiful selection celebrates the glory and mystery of all manner of trees – from David Constantine’s apple tree clothed in frost to Alistair Elliot’s birch waving its ‘delicate hair’ in the breeze. “I’m thankful to the trees outside my window” says Moniza Alvi at the beginning of her quietly rhapsodic poem of the same name. This is tree-love of the everyday kind – the simple pleasure of looking out on a garden from which familiar trees look back. We can almost imagine they’re keeping us company. Poems by Moniza Alvi, Paul Batchelor, David Constantine, Alistair Elliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, DH Lawrence, Kim Moore, Louisa Rhodes, Ruby Robinson and Edward Thomas.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2019

Sunshine and showers, cuckoos, frogs, daffodils and cherry blossom…. Poets writing about spring certainly have no shortage of material. Our selection of poems takes in many of these yearly delights. There are contemporary voices – a poem in which a dog sniffs around a city park and enjoys the new smells, and another where an “immortal frog” seems to promise the speaker fresh hope and a return to good health. In a poem from the nineteenth century, spring is a time of renewal when the world is restored to its original beauty: “What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning…” from ‘Spring’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This delightful mini-anthology provides a taste of the countless ways in which this most uplifting of seasons has been celebrated in verse over the centuries. Poems by Thomas Carew, John Clare, Nichola Deane, Emily Dickinson, Valerie Gillies, Gerard Manley Hopkins, AE Housman, Edna St Vincent Millay, Jessica Mookherjee and Alicia Ostriker.

Bind: paperback

Pages: 20

Dimensions: 137 x 210 mm

Publication Date: 01-03-2020