Books published by Seagull Books London Ltd

"'Poâesie et photographie' was originally delivered as the Lezione Sapegno for 2009 at the University of Val d'Aoste, The text of that lecture was subsequently published by Nino Aragno of Turin, Italy. The present version is a greatly amended and developed version of the original lecture, which it supersedes."--Page [vi].

"Originally published in Arabic in 1995"--Title page verso.

Of the key figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets--Anne Perrier, Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Andre du Bouchet, Jacques Reda, and Pierre-Albert Jourdan--who have poetically scrutinized what might be called "the nature of Nature," Pierre Chappuis (b. 1930) has remained unjustly absent in English except for scattered translations in print magazines, online reviews, and two anthologies. This book rights this situation by making available a generous representative selection of his prolific output, ranging from his pioneering collections of short prose, Blind Distance (1974), and of short verse, Full Margins (1997), through his most recent book of poetry, Cuts (2014). Long celebrated in his native Switzerland, Chappuis delves into questions related to landscape, phenomenology, the essence of life, and the role of the perceiver. He writes with contagious passion, both in his poetic prose (with its sinuous style and parenthetical inserts) and in his--in contrast--succinct, skeletal, haiku-like verse whose titles, like invigorating afterthoughts, are often placed at the end. Two styles fascinate in Chappuis' oeuvre: his stream-like prose with its eddies and rapids and his poetry that captures "bits of wind."

Originally published in 1965, this volume was immediately judged to be one of the main contributions to the intellectual life of the Italian Sixties. Three years later, in 1968, it became clear that it had anticipated many of the themes of the New Left and the student revolt. Ex-partisan, poet, literary critic and teacher, Fortini had been immersed for more than twenty years in the cut and thrust of ideological debate. In these pages, besides discussing problems of cultural organization and the consciousness industry, he described the end of militant anti-fascism and the alliance between progressivism and literature, the end of the social mandate of writers and the beginning of a 'revolution of civilization'. In writing, Fortini did not intend to speak to the young but the young, perhaps in the spirit of contradiction, listened to him. Apart from some of the crucial interventions into the literary and critical debates of the Sixties, the volume includes essays on Kafka, Pasternak, Spitzer, Auerbach, Lukacs, Lu Xun, Proust and Brecht.

Toby Litt is best known for his hip-lit fiction, which, in its sharing of characters and themes across numerous stories and novels, has always taken an unusual, hybrid form. In Mutants, he applies his restless creativity to nonfiction. The book brings together twenty-six essays on a range of diverse topics, including writers and writing, and the technological world that informs and underpins it. Each essay is marked by Litts distinct voice, heedless of formal conventions and driven by a curiosity and a determination to give even the shortest piece enough conceptual heft to make it come alive. Taken as a whole, these pieces unexpectedly cohere into a manifesto of sorts, for a weirder, wilder, more willful fiction.

Jason stops to listen to yet another busker . . . He concludes that it is not for her voice--rather airy and desperate--that her open guitar case is bristling with greenbacks. It is for her strawberry blonde bangs peeping out from under her hat, and her deep blue eyes, and her willowy stature . . . and her bare feet with tan lines drawn by sandals . . . She is trying hard to make her voice sound full-bodied and round, but she was not born for singing. She loses a beat to say "thank you" after Jason deposits a single, and then she tries hard to catch up with the song before it goes out of control. At that moment Jason recognises her. Rachel. Rachel Boucher from Jensen Township . . . Athens County, Ohio, USA. When Rachel Boucher and Jason de Klerk meet again--five years after high school--they immediately renew their friendship. But for Jason their friendship is just a stepping stone to something more--a romantic union that seems to have the blessing of the whole community. That is until Rachel becomes involved with Skye Riley. As Skye and Rachel grow ever closer, Jason's anger at the relationship boils over into violence, violence that turns the community on its head, setting old friends and neighbours against one another. But this is just a taste of things to come as, it turns out, Rachel is pregnant . . .

Sebastian Dreaming comprises the second book in James Reidel's Our Trakl series. Published posthumously in the original German in 1915, this is the second and last collection prepared by Trakl himself. Indeed, the Austrian poet may have tied his own fate to it. During his last days in a military hospital, Trakl had politely requested proofs of Sebastian Dreaming from his publisher and waited a week before overdosing on cocaine. He had been told once before that the war, which drove him into madness, had indefinitely postponed his masterpiece. Now the wait is over for Trakl's book to appear separately and in English. Until now translations of the poems from this collection have appeared in selections and complete volumes. Reidel has chosen to present the book individually, as Trakl wanted his book experienced. To achieve this, a certain verisimilitude in these English renderings has been achieved--even omitting the German facing texts is at work here--for which the translator has gone to great lengths, with an eye for seeing Trakl in his time and place, not only as an early modern poet but one whose strange and intriguing language and setting came from another century and still haunt us in ours.

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Discusses Buddhism, love, Henry James, and the tango. In this title, the eighty-four-year-old blind man's wit is unending and results in lively and insightful discussions that configure a loose autobiography of a subtle, teasing mind.

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Georg Trakl is an Austrian-German expressionist. This translation marks the hundredth anniversary of Trakl's death during the first months of World War I. It introduces readers to the powerful verses of this wartime poet.

Offers a collection of poetry, which takes you to unexpected spaces-in exile, in the muezzin's call, and where morning dew is "sucked up by the eye of the sun-black often, pink from time to time." These poems strongly condemn the civil wars that have plagued East Africa and advocate tolerance and peace.