Books published by Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Selima Hill is one of Britain's leading poets, the winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award (the forerunner of the Costa). "People Who Like Meatballs" is her 14th book of poetry - her 11th from Bloodaxe.

"The Blue Den" is a book of lyrical, sensuous poems which builds on the achievement of Stephanie Norgate's debut collection "Hidden River", which was shortlisted for both the Forward First Collection Prize and the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

A collection of poems that describe a struggle to come to terms with loss and grief and to find a basis for renewal. It features poems that take the form of conversations between a woman and a throng of invisible presences, or 'visitors', who counsel, challenge, cajole and comfort her.

A collection of poems that are inspired by an autumn sojourn in America where the author would sit by the edge of a reservoir, trying to cope with loneliness by contemplating black swans, blue waves, seagulls, trees and rocks.

Presents an exploration of the extremes of the human condition, tackling issues of civil strife and tyranny, reconciliation and the renewal of the spirit.

George Szirtes is a leading figure in contemporary poetry in England and in Hungary. A companion volume to George Szirtes' "New and Collected Poems", this book offers a sustained analysis of Szirtes' work, mapping his development chronologically and thematically, and paying close attention to form and technique in its analysis of each poem.

Brings together translations of Tomas Venclova's work and includes a selection of poems from his 1997 volume "Winter Dialogue".

Covers Selima Hill's books from "Saying Hello at the Station" (1984) to "Red Roses" (2006), and "The Hat" (2008). This book is a selection drawn from ten collections, each offering variations on her abiding themes: women's identities, love and loss, repression and abuse, family conflict and mental illness, men, animals and human civilisation.

Stephanie Norgate's compelling poems celebrate our sensuous contact with each other and with nature. Hidden River was her first collection, and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and for the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

A book of mystery and magic, retelling stories from the Bible, Celtic mythology, small-town rumours and urban mythologies. It then gradually moves beyond its borders to narratives of Central America, drawing on figures such as the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes, and the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.

Presents a series of public lectures given at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, in which contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university.

Addresses the question: What is 'now'? This book takes us on a journey through a dark night of the soul, through the thoughts and feelings of various kinds of people struggling to survive and find meaning in their lives. It focuses on women whose lives are torn apart by war, family conflict and despotic regimes.

Elizabeth Alexander is a leading American poet whose work has been inspired by history, literature, art and music to the 'rich infinity' of the African-American experience. This title covers subjects ranging from slave rebellions, the Civil Rights movement, Muhammed Ali and Toni Morrison, to the lives of jazz musicians and the 'Venus Hottentot'.

The zero at the heart of these poems is not nothing - not simply absence, forgetting or loss, though there are moving elegies among them. This is a not-quite-definable zero that gives surprising edge to life and language round it.

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, Polly Clark's second collection was a Poetry Book Society Choice.

Sarah Wardle was poet-in-residence with Tottenham Hotspur FC. Her Score is a winning commentary on contemporary culture, shooting at the heart of consciousness, family, sport, the female voice and Darwinian science.

Piotr Sommer is one of Poland's leading poets. Continued extends and enlarges the achievement of his earlier Bloodaxe selection, Things to Translate, and spans his whole career to date.

'Throw in the Vowels' is a new retrospective from Rita Ann Higgins including a free audio CD of poems read by the author.

In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both city and university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject.

From London's hospital wards to rural Italy and the Great Plains, Sally Read's first collection eulogises the emotional and physical borders we cross, whether in sexual surrender, the squeezing of a trigger, or the point at which skin is pierced by a needle. What results appeals to the thresholds at which we succumb to desire, love, or grief. Yet, ultimately, there is tenderness and acceptance as she considers what breaks us, and what binds.

Ken Smith was a major voice in world poetry, his work and example inspiring a whole generation of younger British poets. This collection includes his last poems as well as other uncollected work, along with tributes from other poets, photographs, a biographical portrait and interviews covering the whole range of his life and work.

Elizabeth Bartlett's powerfully evocative poems are remarkable for their painfully truthful insights into people's lives. She worked for many years in the Health Service, and Peter Forbes has called her poetry's chronicler of today's 'damaged Britain'...'She writes about people in extreme states, some of which she has experienced herself...' In her 80th birthday collection, Mrs Perkins and Oedipus, she mourns the loss of her husband and squares up to ill fortune, but recalls past loves and times with openness, honesty and stoically grouchy humour.

Eva Salzman is a thoroughly modern, urban poet who writes with equal wit and precision about the natural - and unnatural world. Irreverent muses and relentless twins take on sharply contemporary subjects - society, the unreliability of memory and, especially, identity, gender and love sexual or otherwise.

Cheryl Follon is a feisty Scottish writer. The poems of "All Your Talk" are spiced with down-to-earth humour and a lively, often wicked wit.

Tatiana Shcherbina has been described as 'one of the most significant figures in contemporary Russian poetry'. In her recent work, the elegant and ironic narrator meditates on love, disappointment and loss against the backdrop of Russia's social collapse. This is a selection of her poetry and prose.

Susan Wicks' poetry transforms the apparently ordinary into something precise, surprising, and revelatory. The new poems in Night Toad move outwards from the intimacy of personal loss to a wider landscape haunted by disappearance--a French Flanders still scarred by successive wars, the woman pen pal of a prisoner on Death Row, an old woman with dementia lost in the woods, the absent keeper of an unmanned Cornish lighthouse. As well as a whole new collection, this volume also includes a generous selection of work from her three previous collections: Singing Underwater. Open Diagnosis, and The Clever Daughter, which was short-listed for both the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes. She has also published two novels and a memoir.

This edition combines two previous separate editions of The Moscow Notebooks and The Voronezh Notebooks published by Bloodaxe. The Moscow Notebooks cover his years of persecution (1930-34), when he was arrested for writing an unflattering poem about Stalin. In Voronezh he broke a silence of 18 months, writing the 90 poems of the Voronezh Notebooks.

Wardle's first collection ranges from playful wit to gentle lyrics, exploring a personal geography from country to city. Every poem covers different territory, but in each is distinctly hers: 'sparky and feisty' (Sheenagh Pugh), with 'a hint of darkness and wicked wit' (Roddy Lumsden). Shortlisted for 2003 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.