Books published by Two Rivers Press

'A la lumiere d'hiver' is a central work in the writing of the Swiss French poet Philippe Jaccottet (1925-2021). Tim Dooley's translation, 'In Winter Light', is the product of a long relationship with the original, which he first read in 1977. His English version mirrors the tentative, scrupulous exploration of being he finds in Jaccottet's French.

A new edition and reissue of Christina the Astonishing, a sensual and exhilarating poetic collaboration between Jane Draycott and Lesley Saunders, retelling - through their own poems as well as brief extracts from medieval religious writers - Christina's story as a woman's search for selfhood.

A short history of Reading Gaol from its 19th-century origins to the present day.

This second collection by the prize-winning poet Sue Leigh considers how we might respond to our stay on earth. In poems of deceptive simplicity, often looking at the world with the eye of a painter, she celebrates the brief beauty of our lives.

In the title poem to Sicilian Elephants, his most wide-ranging and ambitious collection to date, David Cooke imagines the short-lived paradise achieved by those miniature elephants whose bones have been found on the island. In poems gathered here he explores notions of home and the way humans aspire to define their space and achieve a life of ease.

A new edition of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince, beautifully illustrated and hand-lettered by artist Sally Castle. With an introduction by Oscar Wilde expert Michael Seeney.

Gill Learner's third poetry collection, Change, refers to both personal experience and what's been happening in our third-millennium world. At its core are poems reflecting on the sudden death in July 2018 of her husband. With recognisable images and emotional resonances, she guides us through both internal and external landscapes.

Imaginative and haunting new translations by Ian Brinton of the 18 poems in the 'Tableaux Parisiens' section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, with evocative illustrations by Sally Castle. Includes the poems in their original French side by side with Ian Brinton's English translation.

Through memories, photographs, maps and archives, Coley Talking tells the story of 19th and 20th-century life in one of Reading's poorest communities. Through the microcosm of Coley, we see the transformative improvements brought about by slum clearance, the NHS, state education, and trade unions.

James Harpur entered a boy's boarding school in the 1970s and survived to tell the tale. Powerful, poignant and humorous, the poems in The Examined Life re-create a 'vale of soul-making' that, with its tragedy and comedy, heroes and villains, is like a microcosm of life itself.

Two Girls and a Beehive offers a minutely observed exploration in poetry of the life and work of Stanley Spencer and his two wives, Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece, engaging readers with the particular unease that must trouble any follower of Spencer's paintings, with their human dramas and contradictory beatitudes.

A new collection of poems from Ian House, probing the transformations wrought by aging and by creation but ranging from Wallace Stevens's guitar to a child drawing, from a medieval monk cataloguing saints' bones to Ovid's violent and sexual Metamorphoses. A central sequence explores the nature of art through the paintings of Paul Nash.

Hadil Tamim's art beautifully combines the formal structure and discipline of Islamic floral pattern-making with British flowers and architectural forms. Alongside the artwork, the book includes commentary from Adrian Lawson on the flowers depicted.

A reproduction of the copy of the Bayeux Tapestry held by Reading Museum, with an account of the story it tells and details of its making and subsequent history.

Inspired by a visit to the painter's studio, Bonjour Mr Inshaw is a homage by the poet Peter Robinson to David Inshaw. The book presents paintings and poems on facing pages, celebrating the centuries-old ekphrastic tradition of dialogue between the arts of poetry and painting.

This collection of poetry from William Bedford explores his own early years among the market towns and seacoasts of Lincolnshire. The decline of rural ways of life is shown against the arrival of American forces in the 1960s, their nuclear weapons dominating the landscapes where medieval dancers once celebrated pagan rites in midnight graveyards.

Nine short stories by poet and translator Peter Robinson

Presents the local history of Berkshire, from 1800-1900.

Over 25 years Adrian Lawson chronicled the wildlife he encountered in the parks, woods and town of Reading. This book takes us through the calendar year with a selection of articles from his long-running newspaper column, Rural Reading, plus some new and previously unpublished pieces, accompanied by perceptive illustrations from Geoff Sawers.

The narrator wanders around Reading, the town where he has settled, musing on the town and the issues facing us all.