Charles Dickens was regarded as a pillar of respectability in Victorian Britain, but in 1858 this image was nearly shattered. With the break-up of his marriage that year, rumours about a scandalous relationship he may have conducted with young actres...

With pinpoint accuracy, virtuosity and humour, Caoilinn Hughes aligns scientific and poetic venturing. In this striking debut collection she focuses on moments of discovery, from the first controlled nuclear reaction to the shape of an avalanche as w...

Andrew McNeillie's sixth collection returns to the sea and its immensity as a metaphor for fate. It also revisits the British and Irish archipelago ("For which read a figure for my heart. / For which too read a figure for time's hurt"), following a n...

The poems in this book form a series of small acts of attention, repeated attempts to step outside the circle of human concern and into a wider responsibility to the natural world. "To move among / crashing pines / is spacious / and exact". "Yellow &...

This spare, unforgettable novel is Pierre Michon's luminous exploration of the mysteries of desire. A young teacher takes his first job in a sleepy French town. Lost in a succession of rainy days and sleepless nights, he falls under the spell of a to...

Sarah Kirsch (1935-2013) is recognised as one of Germany's most powerful poets of the post-war era. She lived and worked first in East Germany, then (after political persecution) in the West, making her home finally in rural Schleswig-Holstein. Her p...

Surrender to a wild river and unexpected things can happen. Time on the water can produce moments of pristine clarity or hatch wild thoughts, foster a deep connection with the real world or summon the spiritual".River of Light: A Conversation with Ka...

In 1955, Maxine Kumin submitted a poem to the "Saturday Evening Post".Lines on a Half-Painted House" made it into the magazine – but not before Kumin was asked to produce, via her husband's employer, verification that the poem was her original work....

Turning to the potent idea of political theology to recover the strange mix of political and religious thinking during the Renaissance, this bracing study reveals in the works of Shakespeare and his sources the figure of the citizen-saint, who repres...

From the moment of our first steps, our lives revolve around finding our way through the world. The paths we choose and the guides we trust can forever change our course. Mariner Holly J. Hughes has spent much of her life on the open sea, experiencin...