Mervyn Morris is one of the most distinctive West Indian poets, his work characterised by economy, wit and humane seriousness. He makes elegant use of Jamaica's linguistic range, with poems in international standard English, Jamaican Creole and mixtu...

"Extended Family" is a sensual celebration of the varied relationships that make up lives richly lived: from the subtle, intimate interactions of close family members and lovers, to the mutual rewards and stresses of relationships with friends, thera...

The poems in Mary O'Malley's new collection focus on legal separation: of Northern from Southern Ireland, of written Irish from its original script, of husband from wife. The book explores a season in hell when the verities vanish, the love we live b...

"The Day and Other Poems" develops and expands the explorations of Robert Wells's previous collections, demonstrating a mature poet at the height of his craft. Meditating upon erotic and rural themes, it culminates in a poetic affirmation of the unen...

"Murano", a recent work by the distinguished American poet Mark Doty, is a contemplative meditation on human mortality and the mystery of artistic creation. Addressed to his late friend, the poet Lynda Hull, the musings in "Murano" are set against th...

The sixth collection by China's foremost contemporary poet, Bei Dao, was greeted as perhaps his finest on its publication in America. The 49 poems were written in the USA, and have been translated into English by Eliot Weinberger (the distinguished e...

Ruth Silcock's third collection continues in cheerful vein about often less than cheerful subjects. She has the knack of combining jaunty traditional forms with sometimes startling or even grim subject matter. Her poems focus on the lives of ordinary...

"I have put this book together, not as a prose narrative is usually constructed, but as a poem might be: in turnings and returnings. In parts which find and repeat themselves and re-state the argument until it loses its reasonable edge and hopefully...

Po Chu-i lived from AD 772-846, rising from humble beginnings to high government office. Although some of his most famous poems are those of social and moral protest, many of his finest are private and meditative; he was a recluse at heart and spent...

Julian Turner's "Crossing the Outskirts" was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize best first collection. In his second book he explores his familiar themes of identity and loss, and new, more personal ones –...