Here are some books arriving this spring which I’m particularly excited about. Imogen Cassells has been one of the most exciting young poets for a long time now, and her debut collection from Prototype is going to be a real event. Then there are two new versions of Dante on the horizon: Lorna Goodison has reworked the Inferno into Jamaican vernacular and setting, while poet and psychiatrist D.M. Black follows on from his masterful Purgatorio with Paradiso. Plus a new collection from Gillian Allnutt, a new Selected (including plenty of unpublished material) from Jen Hadfield, and a laugh-out-loud dystopian farce of university admin from Julian Stannard.
From the publisher:
Exploring translations, folksongs and geographies of longing.In Silk Work, Imogen Cassels’ debut collection, desire and grief are a double-edged subject, elucidated through a kind of lyric diffidence. Forms, translations,…
From the publisher:
'Halfway tree. The journey of our life found me / there at midnight in a ramshackle state.' So begins Lorna Goodison's astonishing new translation of The Inferno by Dante, a poet she once described as 'uncompromising as an Old…
From the publisher:
Translated by D. M. BlackParadiso is the most stylistically virtuosic book of the Divine Comedy—yet it is also the most underappreciated, due to readers’ fears that it is boring and about “nothing but…
From the publisher:
The lode in Gillian Allnutt’s title picks up on two of the many meanings of the word. A lode can be a course, a way, a journey; also a road, a lane. Her collection traces a journey through time, the time of her own life and…
From the publisher:
A career retrospective from one of Britain's finest poets of the natural world.Recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry 2024Jen Hadfield is increasingly recognized as one of the singular poetic voices of our time, admired for the…
Recommended by John
‘Stannard’s satire/farce/dystopia – whatever you prefer – is an extremely funny skewering of the absurdities and venalities of the current UK university system.’
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