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Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold (Stephen Fry’s Greek Myths #1)
by Stephen FrySTEP INTO ANOTHER WORLD - OF MAGIC, MAYHEM, MONSTERS AND MANIACAL GODS - IN STEPHEN FRY'S MOMENTOUS SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, MYTHOS'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' TimesDiscover Stephen Fry's magnificent retelling of the greatest myths and legends ever told . . .___________No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses.In Stephen Fry's vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver in fear when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds.Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age - in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance.If you're enthralled by the magic of Greek mythology you'll love Fry's latest book TROY, an exceptional retelling of our greatest story . . .___________NOW THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MYTHOS SUITE, STEPHEN FRY AND DEBBIE WISEMAN'S MUSICAL PRODUCTION OF FRY'S THRILLING RETELLINGS'A head-spinning marathon of legends' Guardian'An Olympian feat. The gods seem to be smiling on Fry - his myths are definitely a hit' Evening Standard'An odyssey through Greek mythology. Brilliant . . . all hail Stephen Fry' Daily Mail'A rollicking good read' IndependentSHORTLISTED FOR A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within
by Stephen FryStephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled provides us with a witty and entertaining guide to the mysteries of writing poetry..Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English you can write poetry. But it is no fun if you don't know where to start or have been led to believe that Anything Goes.Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms. Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, The Ode Less Travelled will give you the tools and the confidence to do so. Brimful of enjoyable exercises, witty insights and simple step-by-step advice, The Ode Less Travelled guides the reader towards mastery and confidence in the Mother of the Arts.
Troy: Our Greatest Story Retold (Stephen Fry’s Greek Myths #3)
by Stephen FryAN EPIC BATTLE THAT LASTED TEN YEARS. A LEGENDARY STORY THAT HAS SURVIVED THOUSANDS.'An inimitable retelling of the siege of Troy . . . Fry's narrative, artfully humorous and rich in detail, breathes life and contemporary relevance into these ancient tales' OBSERVER'Stephen Fry has done it again. Well written and super storytelling' 5***** READER REVIEW________'Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilion, the city that rose and fell not once but twice . . .'When Helen, the beautiful Greek queen, is kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, the most legendary war of all time begins.Watch in awe as a thousand ships are launched against the great city of Troy.Feel the fury of the battleground as the Trojans stand resolutely against Greek might for an entire decade.And witness the epic climax - the wooden horse, delivered to the city of Troy in a masterclass of deception by the Greeks . . .In Stephen Fry's exceptional retelling of our greatest story, TROY will transport you to the depths of ancient Greece and beyond.________'A fun romp through the world's greatest story. Fry's knowledge of the world - ancient and modern - bursts through' Daily Telegraph'An excellent retelling . . . told with compassion and wit' 5***** Reader Review'Hugely successful, graceful' The Times'If you want to read about TROY, this book is a must over any other' 5***** Reader Review'Fluent, crisp, nuanced, begins with a bang' The Times Literary Supplement'The characters . . . are brilliantly brought to life' 5***** Reader ReviewPRAISE FOR STEPHEN FRY'S GREEK SERIES:'A romp through the lives of ancient Greek gods. Fry is at his story-telling best . . . the gods will be pleased' Times'A head-spinning marathon of legends' Guardian'An Olympian feat. The gods seem to be smiling on Fry - his myths are definitely a hit' Evening Standard'An odyssey through Greek mythology. Brilliant . . . all hail Stephen Fry' Daily Mail'A rollicking good read' Independent
Part of a Story That Started Before Me: Poems about Black British History
by Christienna Fryar'It's time we told our story too. The melanin speaks for itself.' - George the PoetPart of a Story That Started Before Me is an extraordinary new collection of poems chosen by acclaimed spoken-word performer and social commentator George the Poet.Taking readers on a thought-provoking poetical journey through Black British history, the anthology brings together some of the most exciting wordsmiths from across the diaspora and fascinating era-by-era notes from historian Dr Christienna Fryar.From Africans in Roman Britannia to the first Black actor to play Othello on stage, from Malcolm X's visit to the West Midlands to highlighting an organizer of the UK's first Gay Pride, this important collection reveals unsun people and events from our past to recognize the intrinsic impact they've had on Britain today.Featuring: Abi Simms, Adesayo Talabi, AFLO. the poet, Amina Jama, Anu Balofin, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Becksy Becks, Benjamin Zephaniah, Bridget Minamore, Cara Thompson, Casey Bailey, Deanna Rodger, Derek Walcott, Dorothea Smartt, Dzifa Benson, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Eno Mfon, Evan the Poet, Fred D'Aguiar, FULAANI onda 3s, George The Poet, Grace Nichols, Henry Stone, Highwater Ell aka Elliott Henry, Ife Grillo, Inua Ellams, Irenosen Okojie, Isaiah Hull, Jade LB, Jeffrey Boakye, Jenny Mitchell, Jeremiah Brown, John Agard, Joseph Coelho, Jude Yawson, Kat Francois, Keith Jarrett, Kelechi Okafor, M. NourbeSe Philip, Malika Booker, Michael Groce, Miles Chambers, Muneera Pilgrim, Nick Makoha, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Nile Faure-Bryan, Olaudah Equiano, Olivette Otele, Patience Agbabi, Peter deGraft-Johnson aka The Repeat Beat Poet, Phillis Wheatley, Priss Nash, Rakaya Fetuga, Raymond Antrobus, Reece Williams, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasha, Samuel King, Sophia Thakur, Stretch the Top Boy, Thembe Mvula, Theresa Lola, Tré Ventour, Vanessa Kisuule, Wretch 32 and Zena Edwards.
PORTAL (Phoenix Poets)
by Tracy FuadA poetry collection exploring inheritance and reproduction through the lenses of parenthood, etymology, postcoloniality, and climate anxiety. Tracy Fuad’s second collection of poems, PORTAL, probes the fraught experience of bringing a new life into a world that is both lush and filled with gloom. A baby is born in a brutalist building; the planet shrinks under the new logic of contagion; roses washed up from a shipwreck centuries ago are blooming up and down the cape. PORTAL documents a life that is mediated, even at its most intimate moments, by flattening interfaces of technology and in which language—and even intelligence—is no longer produced only by humans. The voices here are stalked by eco-grief and loneliness, but they also brim with song and ecstasy, reveling in the strangeness of contemporary life while grieving losses that cannot be restored. Through Fuad’s frank, honest poetry, PORTAL vibrates with pleasure and dread. Peeling back the surfaces of words to reveal their etymologies, Fuad embraces playfulness through her formal range, engaging styles from the tersely lineated to the essayistic as she intertwines topics of replication, reproduction, technology, language, history, and biology.
PORTAL (Phoenix Poets)
by Tracy FuadA poetry collection exploring inheritance and reproduction through the lenses of parenthood, etymology, postcoloniality, and climate anxiety. Tracy Fuad’s second collection of poems, PORTAL, probes the fraught experience of bringing a new life into a world that is both lush and filled with gloom. A baby is born in a brutalist building; the planet shrinks under the new logic of contagion; roses washed up from a shipwreck centuries ago are blooming up and down the cape. PORTAL documents a life that is mediated, even at its most intimate moments, by flattening interfaces of technology and in which language—and even intelligence—is no longer produced only by humans. The voices here are stalked by eco-grief and loneliness, but they also brim with song and ecstasy, reveling in the strangeness of contemporary life while grieving losses that cannot be restored. Through Fuad’s frank, honest poetry, PORTAL vibrates with pleasure and dread. Peeling back the surfaces of words to reveal their etymologies, Fuad embraces playfulness through her formal range, engaging styles from the tersely lineated to the essayistic as she intertwines topics of replication, reproduction, technology, language, history, and biology.
Teach This Poem, Volume I: The Natural World
by Madeleine Fuchs Holzer The Academy of American PoetsInstill a love of poetry in your classroom with the illuminating and inviting lessons from Teach This Poem classroom activities. Co-published with the Academy of American Poets, the leading champion of poets and poetry in the US, this book is an accessible entry-point to teaching poetry and fostering a poetic sensibility in the classroom.Each lesson follows a consistent format, with a warm-up activity to introduce the chosen poem, pair-shares, whole class synthesis, related resources, oral readings, and extension activities. Curated by the AAP, the poems are chosen with an eye toward fostering compassion and representing diverse experiences. Understanding that poetry is a powerful way of seeing the world, the volumes are organized thematically: Volume I is centered on the natural world and Volume II on equality and justice.Aligned with current standards and pedagogy, the lessons in this poem will inspire English teachers and their students alike.
Teach This Poem, Volume I: The Natural World
by Madeleine Fuchs Holzer The Academy of American PoetsInstill a love of poetry in your classroom with the illuminating and inviting lessons from Teach This Poem classroom activities. Co-published with the Academy of American Poets, the leading champion of poets and poetry in the US, this book is an accessible entry-point to teaching poetry and fostering a poetic sensibility in the classroom.Each lesson follows a consistent format, with a warm-up activity to introduce the chosen poem, pair-shares, whole class synthesis, related resources, oral readings, and extension activities. Curated by the AAP, the poems are chosen with an eye toward fostering compassion and representing diverse experiences. Understanding that poetry is a powerful way of seeing the world, the volumes are organized thematically: Volume I is centered on the natural world and Volume II on equality and justice.Aligned with current standards and pedagogy, the lessons in this poem will inspire English teachers and their students alike.
Romanticism and Masculinity: Gender, Politics and Poetics in the Writing of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett, Wordsworth, De Quincey and Hazlitt (Romanticism in Perspective:Texts, Cultures, Histories)
by T. FulfordThis book examines the male Romantics' versions of poetic authority in theory and practice in the context of their involvement in the political debates of Regency Britain and argues that their response to Burke's gendered discourse about power effected radical changes in the definitions of masculinity and femininity. It portrays their influence on each other as a series of unstable struggles and alliances in which the formulation of an authoritative masculinity was a political as well as an aesthetic issue. The author investigates the writers' portrayals of women and their collaborations with women writers and throws new light on their nature poetry by relating it to their reactions to the sexual and political scandals of the Regency.
Romanticism and Millenarianism
by T. FulfordExpectation of the millennium was widespread in English society at the end of the eighteenth century. The essays in this volume explore how exactly, this expectation shaped, and was shaped by, the literature, art, and politics of the period we now call romantic. An expanded and rehistorized canon of writers and artists is assembled, a group united by a common tendency to use figurations of the millennium to interrogate and transform the worlds in which they lived and moved. Coleridge, Cowper, Blake, and Byron are placed in new contexts created by original research into the artistic and political subcultures of radical London, into the religious sects surrounding the Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott, and into the cultural and political contexts of orientalism and empire.
Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries: The Dialect of the Tribe (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters)
by Tim FulfordCombining historical poetics and book history, Romantic Poetry and Literary Coteries shows Romanticism as characterized by tropes and forms that were jointly produced by literary circles. To show these connections, Fulford pulls from a wealth of print material including political squibs, magazine essays, illustrated tour poems, and journals.
Ovid: A Poet on the Margins (Classical World)
by Laurel FulkersonThe Latin poet Ovid was famously exiled by the Emperor Augustus to the shores of the Black Sea for his self-confessed crimes of 'a poem and a mistake'. Throughout his poetry, he discusses his exile and embraces the themes of marginality and alterity. This core motif is explored throughout this overview of Ovid's life, the society he lived in and his innovative, perennially popular body of work. Presenting basic biographical information and the historical context of the newly Augustan Rome, the book details the contextual instabilities inherent in living at the border between republic and empire. Examining Ovid's poetic representations of 'otherness' from self-portraits to the mythological characters who populate his work, and his audacious experiments with genre, metre and poetic form, the book provides a coherent and original look at this much-studied author. An analysis of Ovid's parodic spirit alongside his more serious exposure of the workings of power reveals his focus on the powerless, the marginalized and the aberrant, as well as Ovid's treatment of the powerful and the abuses they perpetuate. Intelligible to readers with little or no experience of Ovid, all passages of Latin are translated and the work includes relevant maps, glossaries, a timeline and suggestions for further reading.
Ovid: A Poet on the Margins (Classical World)
by Laurel FulkersonThe Latin poet Ovid was famously exiled by the Emperor Augustus to the shores of the Black Sea for his self-confessed crimes of 'a poem and a mistake'. Throughout his poetry, he discusses his exile and embraces the themes of marginality and alterity. This core motif is explored throughout this overview of Ovid's life, the society he lived in and his innovative, perennially popular body of work. Presenting basic biographical information and the historical context of the newly Augustan Rome, the book details the contextual instabilities inherent in living at the border between republic and empire. Examining Ovid's poetic representations of 'otherness' from self-portraits to the mythological characters who populate his work, and his audacious experiments with genre, metre and poetic form, the book provides a coherent and original look at this much-studied author. An analysis of Ovid's parodic spirit alongside his more serious exposure of the workings of power reveals his focus on the powerless, the marginalized and the aberrant, as well as Ovid's treatment of the powerful and the abuses they perpetuate. Intelligible to readers with little or no experience of Ovid, all passages of Latin are translated and the work includes relevant maps, glossaries, a timeline and suggestions for further reading.
The Life in the Sonnets (Shakespeare Now!)
by David FullerA passionately argued account of the value of experience and emotion in reading Shakespeare's sonnets and of the importance of reading poetry aloud.
Asleep and Awake
by John FullerAn elegantly jubilant and personal new collection celebrating love, life and creativity from award-winning poet and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, John FullerIn this personal and characteristically brilliant new collection from John Fuller, an abundance of memories abound. From “those once endless years” of a childhood in wartime – tasting of Granny’s chicken soup, twizzers and cherry-go-rips – to the pattern of family and friendships, important milestones are brought to vivid life. In ‘Before We Met – and After’ a sequence of recollections cherish a wife on her eightieth birthday; ‘In Whose Head’ a piece by Schumann is revisited through advancing years; and in ‘Keeper of the Fire’ and ‘In Memory of John Bayley’ late poems of remembrance memorialise lost friends. These are poems of being and time, full of lyric feeling and Fuller’s distinctive wit and lightness of touch. Alive with the clang and sway of the “chosen colours of daily family life”, together they form a resonant gathering of poems that celebrate, with thoughtfulness and joy, “the feel and length of our lives”.
The Bone Flowers
by John Fuller‘When does a poem end?’ In this rambunctious romp of a narrative poem, John Fuller taps out the rhythms of life against the riddle of time: from his story of opportunistic art-dealer Old Billy Emerald and his fabled Shakespeare manuscript, to the ghosts of great poets and remembrances of old friends.The Bone Flowers is a resonant celebration of the things we leave behind – in art, music and poetry – as well as a stirring memento mori to gather our rosebuds while we may.
Collected Poems
by John FullerJohn Fuller is one of the most accomplished, prolific and popular of contemporary poets. His Collected Poems brings together most of his poems, from his first collection, Fairground Music (1961) to Stones and Fires (winner of the 1996 Forward Poetry Prize), and enables us to appreciate the full extent of his remarkable talents. From his strikingly assured early poems - dramatic monologues and playful rewritings of myth and fairytale - to his more complex, discursive later work, Fuller displays his virtuosity with a wide variety of subjects, moods and forms. Here are fantasies, poems about nature, riddles and nonsense poems; tender love poems and philosophical meditations; sombre, wistful sonnets and the lightest, most charming songs. But there are consistent themes: romantic love, a potent sense of the physical world, and a constant shifting between exuberant irreverence and the yearning for moral and metaphysical truths. Throughout, the poems are steeped in humour and learning, and display Fuller's easy command of the of the whole scope and richness of the English language.
The Dice Cup
by John Fuller‘In the dice cup, then, life becomes not a design but a wager; not an adventure but a game…’Brimming with brio and brilliance, John Fuller’s latest collection comprises exquisite philosophical arguments, dream visions, aphorisms, precise portraits, colourful fables and tableaux of life. But here too lie shadows: in departures and deteriorations, in a life balanced delicately between the known and the unknown. Taken together, The Dice Cup unfolds like a Chinese box of observations; wit, humour, pathos and playfulness entwine to thrilling and thought-provoking effect. It is a late, great work from one of our finest poets.
Ghosts: An Extraordinary True Story (The\ghost Of Flight 401 Ser.)
by John FullerLike the possible phantoms that stalk the dark passageways of its title poem, John Fuller's beautifully lucid collection explores the grey area between life and death. Full of self-deprecating wit and subtle insight, the poems contemplate the inevitability that, when one reaches a certain age, the moment of one's own passing will start to haunt one.In 'Flea Market' there is the pathos of once-loved objects laid out, meaningless, 'on the cobbles for scavengers'. In 'Positions in the Bed', the restless search for a comfortable way to sleep leads to thoughts of the morning when 'we find/ Ourselves absconded from the body's/ Weary roll-call'. And yet, out of this sense of mortality, grows a determination to take delight in the moment, to appreciate fully 'the business of living'.These poems are not only intimate, domestic and often funny, they are uncompromising in the way they confront the huge and unanswerable questions of life. The movement of thought is rendered beautifully concrete in the intricate music of their langauge, and melancholy co-exists with a lightness of touch that builds a moving and humane barricade against 'life's brevity/ And it's insignificance'.Shortlisted for the Whitbread Award for Poetry.
Gravel in my Shoe
by John Fuller'The only peace: to know my placeAnd what I now must do,Striding with the light full in my face,And gravel in my shoe.'Bright, elemental and as dexterously brilliant as ever, John Fuller's latest collection takes as its subject 'our ends and our origins'. Here are songs, serenades, literary cameos, an ode to a golden anniversary, a long letter to an old friend, and two majestic sequences: one dedicated to the Welsh woman of the woods, Mary Price; the other, sun-drenched sonnets that keenly observe the natural world against 'the flavour of our own mortality'. With wit, warmth and wisdom, Gravel in My Shoe playfully balances the light and shade of life, in full awareness of its passing but with a spring in its step nevertheless. It shows us, ultimately, that 'life is too short, but poetry's eternal'.
New Selected Poems: 1983-2008
by John FullerThis rich selection of John Fuller’s poems, made by the author himself, is taken from his last eight collections and spans over twenty-five years of work.'Everything goes back to earth,' writes Fuller, 'But first it must dance / Dance to exhaustion.' His poems, brilliant in their dexterity and virtuoso in their use of form, engage with a spectacular range of subjects, revealing a dark, haunted imagination leavened by moments of exuberant levity. Taken together, they form an elegant, enquiring and accomplished body of work, and one that confirms John Fuller as a significant and influential figure in British poetry.
Now and for a Time
by John FullerThroughout his long and prolific career, John Fuller has been admired for the way in which he melds levity with serious reflection. In this beautiful new collection of twenty-one poems he proves himself, once again, a true master of this art. They take us from birth to death: from a baby's first delightful babblings, to the dignified, measured words of a man surveying his life and marriage, and looking forward into the unknown. There are moments of great joie de vivre, of pleasure in the earthy things of life; and yet, beyond, there is always a sense of a vaster, more elusive universe. The snorting of the horses in a field in 'Dreams', the egret on the rock in 'Sentinel': these are nature's mysteries. To make sense of these, we have language and music. Celebratory, playful, reconciled to the questions that will not be answered, these poems exude a miraculous kind of peace and understanding: 'A point of closure that allows the next/Inevitable sentence to begin'.
Pebble & I
by John FullerFrom the posing of the very first question in the opening poem, 'Fragment of a Victorian Dialogue', John Fuller's enquiring and elegiac new collection arrives with a sharp sense of mortality, marked by the passing of time. Pebble & I responds to its own philosophical enquiries by looking to a world of vivid colour and substance. From the sun-baked pebbles and plastic ice-cream spines that bedeck the 'The Jetsam Garden', to the swallows that nest under the eaves of a farmhouse in the Cilento Hills in 'Stop', the poems take us from inky, restless seascapes to the warmth of the Mediterranean as they examine the connections between man and 'our material cousins' in nature.Seductive, yet sometimes playfully absurd, Fuller plumbs the depths with his trademark light touch and deft technical skill. The natural and social worlds can be as cruel as they are thrilling but ultimately the voices in this collection are here to celebrate 'elements of the eternal / In the ceremony of life.'
Song & Dance
by John FullerJealous curses and hate poems, love lyrics and erotic dances: John Fuller has always written light verse, and Song & Dance is a boisterous and engaging collection, fizzing with intelligence and wit. There are tributes, and there are celebrations. Jokes abound in 'The Spellchecker's Guide to Poetry' and the wine is poured for 'Florio Drinking Song'. Befitting Fuller's musical ear, a host of rhythms beat time. Fans will fall on pleasingly intricate riddles and admire the high-wire gymnastics of unusual verse forms, including the inverted rhopalics of 'The Trans-sexual Circus'.But behind the fun is some sharp criticism of literary attitudinising, and a climactic injunction, to dance while we can, preferably with each other.
The Space of Joy
by John FullerThe Space of Joy is a sequence of poems that recounts the endless desire for love (and the failures and compromises that accompany that desire) in a number of writers and musicians who fatally prioritise their art. It begins with Petrarch, who created great lyric poetry out of an impossible infatuation, and moves through Coleridge's self-induced guilt within domestic happiness, Matthew Arnold's disbelief in mutual love, Brahm's self-delusion and the complexities of Wallace Stevens's marriage. It so happens that both Brahms and Arnold found themselves contemplating their art and their lives in the small Swiss town of Thun, and it is Thun that provides the setting for the wonderful concluding poem of this collection in which Fuller thinks back to his own boyood and his parents' marriage. If there is any resolution in this sequence of magnificently playful and thought-provoking poems, it is the conviction that while 'poetry may be the only heaven we have', it is life itself that must create the 'space of joy' which art wishes to celebrate.Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.