The Thing In The Gap Stone Stile

POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, Alice Oswald's first collection of poems, announced the arrival of a distinctive new voice. Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the book introduced readers to her meditative, intensely musical style, and her breath-taking gift for visionary writing. 'The poetry of Alice Oswald arrives like a zephyr . . . a fresh and exciting first collection.' Kathleen Jamie, Times Literary Supplement 'an inspired debut of lightly-worn wisdom and verbal panache.' John Fuller 'Alice Oswald throws the windows of the imagination open; she places a fingertip on the pulse of tradition, and proves it is still very much alive.' The Times

Whether you love poetry or haven't read it since school, The Splash of Words will help you rediscover poetry's power to startle, challenge and reframe your vision. It includes a selection of poems, each accompanied by a reflection exploring why poetry is vital to faith.

'This is not a play. This is a poem in several registers, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead, all based on real people from the Severn catchment, talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. The poem, which was written for the 2009 festival of the Severn, aims to record what happens when the moon moves over us - its effect on water and its effect on voices.' Alice Oswald A Sleepwalk on the Severn is a poem for several voices, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead - all based on real people from the Severn catchment - talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. Commissioned for the 2009 festival of the Severn, Alice Oswald's breathtakingly original new work aims to record what happens when the moon moves over the sublunary world: its effect on water and its effect on language.

Modern Ecopoetry: Reading the Palimpsest of the More-Than-Human World explores the fruitful dialogue between poetry and the more-than-human world from various critical standpoints in modern English-writing poets from diverse backgrounds such as the USA, the UK, Canada, India, and Pakistan.

The fourteen contributors to this new collection of essays begin with Ted Hughes’s proposition that ‘every child is nature’s chance to correct culture’s error.’ Established Hughes scholars alongside new voices draw on a range of approaches to explore the intricate relationships between the natural world and cultural environments — political, as well as geographical — which his work unsettles. Combining close readings of his encounters with animals and places, and explorations of the poets who influenced him, these essays reveal Ted Hughes as a writer we still urgently need. Hughes helps us manage, in his words, ‘the powers of the inner world and the stubborn conditions of the other world, under which ordinary men and women have to live’.

The Sonnet provides a comprehensive study of one of the oldest and most popular forms of poetry, widely used by Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, and still used centuries later by poets such as Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison, and Carol Ann Duffy. This book traces the development of the sonnet from its origins in medieval Italy to its widespread acceptance in modern Britain, Ireland, and America. It shows how the sonnet emerges from the aristocratic courtly centres of Renaissance Europe and gradually becomes the chosen form of radical political poets such as Milton. The book draws on detailed critical analysis of some of the best-known sonnets written in English to explain how the sonnet functions as a poetic form, and it argues that the flexibility and versatility of the sonnet have given it a special place in literary history and tradition.

Positioned within current ecocritical scholarship, this volume is the first book-length study of the representations of plants in contemporary American, English, and Australian poetry. Through readings of botanically-minded writers including Les Murray, Louise Glück, and Alice Oswald, it addresses the relationship between language and the subjectivity, agency, sentience, consciousness, and intelligence of vegetal life. Scientific, philosophical, and literary frameworks enable the author to develop an interdisciplinary approach to examining the role of plants in poetry. Drawing from recent plant science and contributing to the exciting new field of critical plant studies, the author develops a methodology he calls "botanical criticism" that aims to redress the lack of emphasis on plant life in studies of poetry. As a subset of ecocriticism, botanical criticism investigates how poets engage with plants literally and figuratively, materially and symbolically, in their works. Key themes covered in this volume include plants as invasives and weeds in human settings; as sources of physical and spiritual nourishment; as signifiers of region, home, and identity; as objects of aesthetics and objectivism; and, crucially, as beings with their own perspectives, voices, and modes of dialogue. Ryan demonstrates that poetic imagination is as essential as scientific rationality to elucidating and appreciating the mysteries of plant-being. This book will appeal to a multidisciplinary readership in the fields of ecocriticism, ecopoetry, environmental humanities, and ecocultural studies, and will be of interest to researchers in the emerging area of critical plant studies.

This Companion is aimed at students and poetry enthusiasts wanting to deepen their knowledge of some of the finest modern poets. It provides new approaches to a wide range of influential women's poetry, a chronology and guide to further reading.