Poetry & Plays

'The Prophet', by Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931) is a book composed of twenty-six poetic essays. Continually in print since its publication in 1923, its ongoing popularity is a continuation...

"Banjo" Paterson may be regarded as Australia's national poet. The apparent simplicity of the ballad form is balanced by many syllabic irregularities and ingenuity of stress and internal rhyme. His...

With an Introduction and Notes by Owen Knowles, University of Hull. In his draft Preface, Wilfred Owen includes his well-known statement 'My subject is War, and the pity of War....

Shelley's short, prolific life produced some of the most memorable and well-known lyrics of the Romantic period. But he was also the most radical writer in the English literary tradition...

'I mean to show things really as they are, not as they ought to be'. wrote Byron (1788-1824) in his comic masterpiece 'Don Juan', which follows the adventures of the...

'The Taming of the Shrew' is one of the most famous and controversial of Shakespeare's comedies. The central relationship, in which Petruchio boisterously 'tames' a rebellious Kate, has often appeared...

'As You Like It' is one of Shakespeare's finest romantic comedies, variously lyrical, melancholy, satiric, comic and absurd. Its boldly implausible plot generates a profusion of love-lorn men, a resourceful...

'Julius Caesar' is among the best of Shakespeare's historical and political plays. Dealing with events surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C., the drama vividly illustrates the ways...

'Othello' has long been recognised as one of the most powerful of Shakespeare's tragedies. This is an intense drama of love, deception, jealousy and destruction. Desdemona's love for Othello, the...

'Hamlet' is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest plays, but also the most fascinatingly problematical tragedy in world literature. First performed around 1600, this a gripping and exuberant drama of...

An anguished god surveys a world stricken by fundamentalism in these powerful poems by a writer whose cultural experience spans three countries: Pakistan, the country of her birth, and Britain...

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their selection of verses and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their...

Having sorted out the cat world in Cat with Piano Tuna, investigated the pig universe in Pig's Ear and upset the birds in Bird Dropping, Simon Drew now chooses to...

Playing "Hamlet" is considered the greatest challenge for any actor, interpreting verses which are concerned with ideas of theatricality and performance, along with the struggle to discover one's real self....

The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Romeo and...

'The Merchant of Venice' is one of Shakespeare's most popular comedies, but it remains deeply controversial. The text may seem anti-Semitic; yet repeatedly, in performance, it has revealed a contrasting...

'Henry V' is the most famous and influential of Shakespeare's history plays. Its powerful patriotic rhetoric has resounded down the ages, gaining eloquent expression in Laurence Olivier's renowned film. Henry...

A long awaited addition to Flame Tree's stunning hardcover collector's series, one of three stunning volumes of Shakespeare's Complete Works. Based also on the new proofread and copy edited text...

'Superb... Beautifully written and thoroughly researched' - Guardian A beautifully illustrated travelogue, chronicling the life and work of one of the world greatest poets. Du Fu (712-70) is one of...

Neil Murray was born in Ararat in 1956 and grew up on a farm near Lake Bolac in the western district of Victoria. He studied Art in Ballarat and Melbourne...

The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out...

In the sixteenth century, Japanese monks developed the haiku, a poem consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables. Now, in "The Loose Canon", David Bader applies...

John wrote, refined and combined the essays and poems in this collection over several years, crafting into them his thoughts on consciousness, life, history, the universe, everything. They reflect his...

Horace (65-8 BC) is one of the most important and brilliant poets of the Augustan Age of Latin literature whose influence on European literature is unparalleled. Horace's Odes and Epodes...

Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn...

r.h. Sin's This Day Is Dark is a blistering case study of when red flags are mistaken for passion and love falls in the hands of the wrong people, as...

Samantha King Holmes brings forth a raw, original perspective. A collection of poetry that breathes hope into the idea of love while mourning the human condition of seeking out connections,...

A selection of Shakespeare's work focusing on the theme of love. From the passion of the sonnets, the poignant balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet to the bewitched love scene...

Seamus Heaney's new collection starts 'in an age of bare hands and cast iron' and ends 'as the automatic lock / clanks shut' in the eerie new conditions of a...

It's been more than thirty years since the appearance of a collection from America's laureate of light verse. Ogden Nash first gathered together an anthology of thirty years of his...

The incredible success of quantum theory as a mathematical model makes it especially frustrating that we cannot agree on a plausible philosophical or metaphysical description of it. Some philosophers of...

Jimmy Tohill has been capturing wondrous moments of Alaska's endless beauty with his camera and poetry since he first came to Alaska as a river guide and photographer in the...

Drawn from classical, medieval and modern sources - including the imperial collections of the Manyoshu and Kokinshu - the poems in this collection are some of the greatest love poems...

Storytellers and bards have always been with us from the mists of deepest antiquity to the present. Alistair Brooks is one of the more recent in this long line of...

With their tidal imagination, the poems in this debut collection sweep between old worlds and new, seeking the lost and recovering the found among shipwrecks, underwater zoos and discovered lands....

Andrew Motion's new collection (his first since Public Property in 2002) offers a ground-breaking variety of lyrics, love poems and elegies, in which private domains of feeling infer other lives...

Born on the Orkney island of Wyre in 1887, Edwin Muir settled in various parts of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century - from Glasgow, to Austria...

A companion to The Rattle Bag, The School Bag is every bit its equal in terms of liveliness and scope. The new anthology is designed to present a great range...

The most quoted writer in English literary history, Shakespeares work continues to grip audiences and delight readers. His plays fill our theatres and have inspired countless films, most recently the...

From Shakespeare to W.H Auden and Michael Rosen, poets have written moving and inspiring poems to honour and remember loved ones, while in response to war, the poetry of Siegfried...

A wonderful collection of popular love poetry From the first flush of love, through courtship and vows of eternal fidelity, to serving the writs and drowning your sorrows, 'The Nation's...

For decades readers and critics have acclaimed Yves Bonnefoy as France's greatest living poet. His most recent book of verse, The Curved Planks , crowns an oeuvre that has won...