Poems From The Mud Room

“Tantalizingly irreverent; Camner’s work smacks of the deliciously absurd with a point. He is a brilliantly bizarre poet and master of the surreal.” - Lenny DellaRocca The Poetry Museum “Camner defies the traditional aesthetic concepts of poetry. He targets a world of ideas in a rather active way as opposed to the more passive, meditative aspects found in most poetry. There is a linguistic simplicity to his poems, an almost transparent quality, over a rather complex web of experience and thought. His poetry is life... ‘All you have to do is look’ – The obvious and not so obvious.” - Marta Braunstein, editor Cambio Literary Journal “Camner writes in terse, stark, real verse that would make Hemingway raise his scotch glass in honor.” - New Times Newspaper “Camner’s poetic style is reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s detective writing; descriptive and terse with interesting plot lines. His characters are certainly the product of a vivid imagination.” - The Comstock Review “Camner’s ‘humour noir’ is apparent in his poetics, his spirited voice and unabashed freedom – so alive, even in his earliest poems.” - Peter Hargitai “A literary detour, and well worth the trip.” - Village Voice

Joanna Solfrian's second book, The Mud Room, is a masterpiece of the heart's inquiry as to what makes a person whole, what grants identity in a damaged, resilient world. The voice, authentic and persuasive, behind these poems loves the complexity of our struggle to survive long goodbyes, fugitive seductions, and loss.

Paul Muldoon and the Language of Poetry is the first book in years that attends to the entire oeuvre of the Irish-American poet, critic, lyricist, dramatist and Princeton professor from his debut with New Weather in 1973 up to his very recent publications. Ruben Moi’s book explores, in correspondence with language philosophy and critical debate, how Muldoon’s ingenious language and inventive form give shape and significance to his poetry, and how his linguistic panache and technical verve keep language forever surprising, new and alive.

Through discussion of the ways in which major Northern Irish poets (such as John Hewitt, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley, Louis MacNeice and Derek Mahon) have been influenced by America, this study shows how Northern Irish poetry overspills national borders, complicating and enriching itself through cross-cultural interaction and hybridity.

The authors of these essays see Muldoon from many different angles - biographical, formal, literary-historical, generic - but are also engaged in directing attention to complex moments of creativity in which an extraordinary amount of originality is concentrated, and on the clarity of which a lot depends.

Defying critical suggestions that the pastoral elegy is obsolete, Iain Twiddy reveals the popularity of the form in the work of major contemporary poets Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Paul Muldoon, Michael Longley, Douglas Dunn and Peter Reading. As Twiddy outlines the development of the form, he identifies its characteristics and functions. But more importantly his study accounts for the enduring appeal of the pastoral elegy, why poets look to its conventions during times of personal distress and social disharmony, and how it allows them to recover from grief, loss and destruction. Informed by current debates and contemporary theories of mourning, Twiddy discusses themes of war and peace, social pastoral and environmental change, draws on the enduring influence of both Classical and Romantic poetics and explores poets' changing relationships with pastoral elegy throughout their careers. The result is a study that demonstrates why the pastoral elegy is still a flourishing and dynamic form in contemporary British and Irish poetry.

Sarah Broom provides an engaging, challenging and lively introduction to contemporary British and Irish poetry. The book covers work by poets from a wide range of ethnic and regional backgrounds and covers a broad range of poetic styles, including mainstream names like Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy alongside more marginal and experimental poets like Tom Raworth and Geraldine Monk. Contemporary British and Irish Poetry tackles the most compelling and contentious issues facing poetry today.