{"title":"Books by W. N. Herbert","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781739473402","title":"Unselected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor many poets there comes a point in their careers when a Selected Poems seems a logical step. Their style is now established, their subject-matter is their own, and their greatest hits lend themselves to a succinct introduction to their career. But for WN Herbert, that was never what it was all about. The idea that he has had a career, let alone that it was ‘about’ anything, strikes him as extremely unlikely. Instead, he has always enjoyed the opportunity to head off in as many directions as possible. Usually at the same time.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn addition to his main collections, WN Herbert has been involved in many collaborative side projects, arising from travel, dialogue, translation and the challenge of a new sequence or form. This book contains the best of his ‘unselected’ poems, including On Your Nerve: A Wake for Frank O’Hara, Don Juan’s Pilgrimage and his award-winning pamphlet, Murder Bear. Unselected Poems is an invitation to consider the less-travelled tracks we might have taken and could yet follow, whether as writers or readers. Set off, if you would – follow that bear!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303718924661,"sku":"9781739473402","price":7.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781739473402_9d305fef-c2e1-428c-9f20-e4f459ead243.jpg?v=1786024853"},{"product_id":"9781852246037","title":"The Big Bumper Book of Troy","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe northern word for hometown, 'toon', flickers in meaning between 'tune' and 'cartoon'. In Bill Herbert's big bumper book, the title toon is Troy: the first lost home. Exiled to a lighthouse on the River Tyne, the wily Scots maestro has written a book in love with lost and difficult things. Sometimes reflective, sometimes subversively mischievous, he registers or rails against displacement and resettlement, lamenting the passing of relatives, cities, furniture, and the odd lemur.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePlugged in to the poetry zeitgeist as ever, Herbert has revived a medieval publishing craze: the Troybook. Painstaking excavation of old comics establishes that the original site of Troytoon is Dundee. Or Madrid. Or possibly St Petersburg. The search for traces of Troy leads to Donegal, Crete, and, at the heart of his grand tour, a vivid verse journal set in post-perestroika Moscow. Dust off your highest brow and fasten your seatbelt, we're flying Economy to Byzantium.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Big Bumper Book of Troy\u003c\/em\u003e is driven by sudden shifts of register - English to Scots, free verse to antique stanza, page to performance, narrative to lyric. Everything has become a dialect, yet - cheekily borrowing the Russian composer Schnittke's term - Herbert aims at a disrespectful polystylist unity. It is his most unorthodox rebellion yet against the dictatorship of the slim volume. A riot of colourful humour, a revolution in poetic taste.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308597522805,"sku":"9781852246037","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781852246037_5ba5ada9-dffd-4ec4-869f-d0a8d1ae5de7.jpg?v=1786029626"},{"product_id":"9781852245153","title":"Strong Words","description":"Poetry has never been so rigorous and diverse, nor has its audience been so numerous and engaged. Strong words? Not if the poets are right. As Ezra Pound wrote: 'You would think anyone wanting to know about poetry would go to someone who knew something about it.' That's exactly what Bloodaxe has done with this judicious and comprehensive selection of British, Irish and American manifestos by some of modern poetry's finest practitioners. Opening the 20th century account with Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot, the book moves through key later figures including W.H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith and Dylan Thomas. America is richly represented too, from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams to the influential New England poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath. Strong Words then brings the issues fully up to date with over 30 specially commissioned statements from contemporary writers including Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Selima Hill, Paul Muldoon and Douglas Dunn, amounting to a new overview of the poetry being written at the start of the 21st century. For poets and readers, for critics, teachers and students of creative writing and contemporary poetry, this is essential reading. As well as representing many of the most important poets of the last hundred years, Strong Words also charts many different stances and movements, from Modernism to Postmodernism, from Futurism to the future theories of poetry. This landmark book champions the continuing dialogue of these voices, past and present, exploring the strongest form that words can take: the poem.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308758020469,"sku":"9781852245153","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781852245153_ed776cfd-45af-4050-ba2b-d43c886804e2.jpg?v=1786029619"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-w-n-herbert.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}