Yes, the Earth has lapped the Sun once more and World Poetry Day is upon us!
Vienna-based coffee company Julius Meinl are championing their #PayWithAPoem initiative in participating locations around the globe, and if you're lucky enough to live somewhere in the vicinity of one it’s time to shower your barista with your very best verse! We here at Carcanet have always thought that poetry, much like coffee, has an almost magical way of making Mondays more bearable, so when given the opportunity to combine the two we say go for it!
But whether you take pen to paper today or recite one of your old favourites, why not tap even further into that global poetry vibe by exploring some of our international poets? We’ve charted a selection below that we think you’ll love, and are offering 25% off all of them today!
Offer ends Midnight 21st March 2016.
1. Poppies in Translation by Indian poet Sujata Bhatt (2015).
Indonesia, South Africa, Estonia, Lithuania, Shetland, Nicaragua – many worlds meet in these poems as nature dyes Sujata Bhatt’s many languages with its own hues.
'Sujata Bhatt leads the reader through the bright, familiar world and on into the dark until her words pierce that darkness, offering a light that will challenge and reward.' - John F. Deane
2. A Light Song of Light by Jamaican poet Kei Miller (2010).
A Light Song of Light sings in the rhythms of ritual and folktale, praise songs and anecdotes, blending lyricism with a cool wit, finding the languages in which poetry can sing in dark times. The book is in two parts: Day Time and Night Time, each exploring the inseparable elements that together make a whole.
Selected for Next Generation Poets 2014.
3. Bevel by Scottish poet William Letford (2012).
Letford makes poems from the rhythms of speech and the stuff of daily life: work and love, seasons and cities, and his writing is alive with the wonder and comedy of the mundane.
'William Letford is the future of Scottish poetry.' - Mark Buckland, Cargo Publishing
4. Herne the Hunter by Irish poet Peter McDonald (2016).
Herne the Hunter is the sixth collection from one of Ireland’s most accomplished lyric poets. In this new body of work, Peter McDonald deepens his interest in myth and storytelling through the legend of Herne, a phantom huntsman of English folklore.
'McDonald’s work ‘is entirely in keeping with Milton’s enjoinder that poetry be “simple, sensuous and passionate”. His musicality is not just rich but endlessly varied and subtle. [...] It embodies the values of accuracy, conscience, and restraint but with no skimping of intensity or ferocity.’
- David Wheatley, Irish Times
5. Measures of Expatriation by Trinidadian poet Vahni Capildeo (2016).
In Measures of Expatriation Vahni Capildeo’s poems and prose-poems speak of the complex alienation of the expatriate, and address wider issues around identity in contemporary Western society.
A 2016 Poetry Book Society Choice.
6. New Selected Poems by Japanese poet ShuntarÅ Tanikawa (2015).
ShuntarÅ Tanikawa has produced some 60 books of poetry (some of them best-sellers) and won every major Japanese award for his writing.
This new selection supplements his original Selected Poems published by Carcanet in 1998.
7. Steep Tea by Singaporean poet Jee Leong Koh (2015).
Koh’s first book to be published in Great Britain is rich in detail of the worlds he explores and invents as he follows his desire for an unknown other, moving tentatively, passionately, always uncertain of himself. His language is colloquial, musical, aware of the infusion of various traditions and histories.
‘Jee Leong Koh is a poet whose breadth of ambition is matched by an acute sensitivity to detail.’
- Gregory Woods
8. Gumiguru by Zimbabwean poet Togara Muzanenhamo (2014).
Gumiguru is the tenth month of the Shona calendar – a month of dryness and heat before the first rains fall and rejuvenate the land. Togara Muzanenhamo’s second collection is a cycle of poems distilling the experiences of a decade into one calendar year, framed through the natural and agricultural landscapes of Zimbabwe.
Finalist for the 2015 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry.
9. The Weather Wheel by Iranian poet Mimi Khalvati (2014).
In this, her boldest collection to date, Mimi Khalvati takes the weather, the seasons and the passage of night and day as the ground on which she draws her emblems of human life and love.
10. Several Deer by Adam Crothers (2016).
Several Deer is the debut collection of a young Northern Irish poet. As much indebted to Bob Dylan and Lana Del Rey as to Emily Dickinson and George Herbert, Crothers writes about destruction, consumption, misogyny, gods, sex, failure, and rock ’n’ roll. But he does so with rhythmic subtlety and verbal craftsmanship, with unmistakable technical acuity.
'There may be a little Tennyson in the lighting here, but there’s also Kanye and Austin Powers and an associative sequencing of phrases reminiscent of Frederick Seidel and Paul Muldoon.'
- The Irish Times
We hope you find something here to your liking. And finally, HAPPY WORLD POETRY DAY!