In the food chain, language is the harrier. How it craves young breath. Yn y gadwyn fwyd iaith ydyw'r boda ac mae'n rhaid cael cnawd ac anadlu ifanc os yw'r heliwr am fyw. from Gwyneth Lewis, "Ewyllys yr Iaith" / "The Language's Will and Testament"...

Five booklets that Ovid first penned now are three; he preferred to emend. So if we don't please you, at least we can ease you presenting two less to offend. Ovid (c. 43 BC-AD17), a daring, original and passionate poet, has been an enduring influenc...

The themes of Donald Ward's poems are traditional – human relationships, religious meditation and, above all, the natural world. Yet their expression is entirely his own, combining a fine lyricism with striking imagery. At first glance familiar, Ward...

"Antigua, Penny, Puce" (1937), a barbed tale of sibling rivalry, gave its title to a never-issued one penny puce-and-white stamp from Antigua with George VI's portrait on it and three puce pigs eating at a puce trough. Jane and Oliver are the sibling...

"After the Hurricane" is the first book from this major Welsh poet since Selected Poems. It is a wonderful collection of vibrant poems that showcase his affinity with the human and natural calamities that influence our environmental and mental ecolog...

"Awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2002 Greta Stoddart's 'At Home in the Dark' is a powerful first collection that sheds light not only on the darkness of home but also reveals much that's unsettling about the further afield. With their clear...

Charles Tomlinson's "Some Americans" was an unusual book, combining memoir and the detailed and intimate critical reading of poets he admires. He writes as a poet reading poets and learns less by analysis than by empathy. Thus William Carlos Williams...

The Anvil New Poets series has built up a reputation for introducing ground-breaking work from the best new poets. The first two volumes featured the first work published in book form by poets such as Kate Clanchy, Colette Bryce, Alice Oswald, Richar...

Edwin Morgan, Scotland's best-loved poet, returns to the stage after his celebrated Phaedra with a powerful and shocking millennial examination of the life of Jesus Christ as a man among men. Jesus, a human figure in an inhuman time, experiences all...

"Augatora" is not a new word: it is a word lost from language a millennium ago. In Old High German it meant, more or less, "eye gate" ('window' with an inbuilt etymology). The windows in this book open on real and imagined land- and cityscapes. Indi...