Caroline Bird first appears to be a traditional storyteller. But the stories she tells (or conceals) are suspended in a language charged with metaphor, and most of them are built upon foundations which are strangely familiar: fairy tale, fantasy and...

Jeremy Over's poetry creates a world of delight and amazement; in the face of language, love and an elusive reality which seems eternally beyond the realm of rational control. His cornucopia spills out pineapples, watermelons, unstitched shoes and fl...

Derek Walcott celebrates Les Murray in these terms: "There is no poetry in the English language so rooted in its sacred-ness, so broad-leafed in its pleasures, and yet so intimate and conversational". Fifteen years ago Carcanet published Les Murray...

There have been many dictionaries explaining to laymen the technical terms of sailing. None of them, until now, has systematically set out to explore their etymology and evolution. "The Language of Sailing" demonstrates how many of the English and Am...

"Those who care for poetry should besiege the publisher for Sophie Hannah's first book", the "Spectator" declared. In the "Telegraph" P. J. Kavanagh wrote, "Sophie Hannah is a real star". Her broadcasts and public readings have proven extremely popul...

Lusus is the Latin word for "diversions", an appropriate title for this volume of classical poems, rooted in physical experience and in the occluded tradition of neo-Latin verse-writing, with its erotic and rural themes. The humanist allegiance in th...

Often reported to be on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and recently elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bei Dao is China's pre-eminent contemporary poet. The poems in "Landscape Over Zero" reach...

Eavan Boland's new book, her first since the "Collected Poems", is in two parts. The opening sequence entitled "Colony" explores the theme of Irish language and culture. This is followed by a collection of individual poems which open out from autobio...

"The Language of the Field" is an extensive, witty and authoritative dictionary. It provides etymology, definition and examples of words associated with the fauna (chased and chasers), the country lore and the implements of Field Sports – words which...

"Late" is both an elegy for and a celebration of life in our century as we approach the end of the millennium. In the spirit and style of Michael Hamburger's much-admired sequences "Variations", "Travelling" and "In Suffolk", it is a narrative medita...