Arc: 99 books

Thaw is a book length sequence of short (all 10 lines long) poems. Like haiku, at first glance these seem simple meditations on nature, that, when given time, open out into a larger reflections on human experience, emotions and how the three interact. A rich and peculiar sequence that is both shadowy and illuminating, tender and insistent, broad and deeply personal.

Michael O'Neill's Return of the Gift is a volume about what is given and what is lost. Writing unsentimentally and with insight about powerful subjects such as the death of his mother, caring for his father, and his own recent diagnosis of cancer, the poet speaks of and to his personal and historical...

History shows how Catalan culture has overcome critical situations far more adverse than the present. The Catalan language has not been replaced and this anthology contains four Catalans, one Valencian and one Mallorcan, who, although they lived through the tail end of the dictatorship, grew up under...

Confident in his use of Christian icons, nothing is ‘sacred’ to Paul Stubbs who is as prepared to write as God and Pope as he is Adam (and Eve). Using paintings by Francis Bacon as their starting points, these poems delve into baroque realms of psychological and philosophical thought, filling the unknown with urgent possibility.

Seizing: Places (Ravir: Les Lieux) was awarded the Prix Mallarmé in 2005, the first time that a Canadian had won this prestigious prize. It is arguably Hélène Dorion's most ambitious work to date, consisting of five sequences ('Seizing: Cities'; 'Seizing: Shadows'; 'Seizing: Mirrors; 'Seizing:...

Dubbed the 'European Walt Whitman' Emile Verhaeren is a proEuropean idealist, whose poetry explores his overriding notion of mankind advancing to a promised land where vital creative energies and new technology could combine to produce a more progressive human strain, a hope ignominiously swept away...

White Coins rewards the reader with a nomadic poetry for the 21st century; one that mingles personal, social and historical spaces whilst celebrating, at all times, linguistic versatility and innovation.

An anthology showcasing the generation of Latvian poets who started writing and publishing after the country gained independence following the disintegration of the Soviet Union. All six have been shortlisted for or received the top Latvian literary prizes yet have retained their ability to surprise and refuse to pander to any convention.

Half-Light & Other Poems brings together the most important and enduring poems by this neglected writer, one of Russia's great 19th century poets. In a new translation by Peter France, the philosophical, social and literary struggles of Russia under Tsar Nicholas I are brought to vivid life in dazzling, often fantastical fashion.

Set in the Stalinist era, when Lithuania's farmers lost everything to the process of collectivization, this book documents the life of the village idiot/trickster Kukutis. Unable to comprehend the strictures of the totalitarian regime, he says and does what he likes and is a potent symbol of freedom until the downfall of communism in Lithuania.

When Michael O'Neill senses "gangs / of shadow halfbeckoning from twilit water", the moment is eerily alluring as well as scary. Fusions of feeling recur throughout a book that has something of the 'dash' and 'darkness' praised in 'Louis MacNeice', along with a strong responsiveness to the...

A grounded yet playful collection from an assured poet, flexing his muscles into newer territory. As well as the deep lineage of rural landscapes that populated previous collections, here Johnstone treats us to an extended trip to the circus, where the glitz and thrill of the big top and its stunts...

In Christopher James' mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane, John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China, and King Midas is spotted somewhere in Herefordshire. Reaching from the Humber to the Thames, from Kashmir to Cromer, it's a dizzying and unpredictable world tour.

Twist is a slant look at the connections binding us together – familial, social, political – in poems which range from the curious and disturbing to memories and evocations of the ordinary magic at work in our lives. It meditates on growing into middle age and explores how, obliquely and unseen, grief and loss transform into grace and redemption.