Showing titles in Themes & Styles

Vis and Ramin is one of the world's great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. This remarkable work has now been superbly translated into heroic couplets (the closest metrical equivalent of the Persian) by the poet and scholar Dick Davis. Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later.

Chemistry and Other Sad Boy Stuff is a short-form poetry and sketches collection that I hope distills and universalizes what I've learned, during the course of collecting, is my high-masking depressive autistic experience.

These four poems, which deal with ethical issues, were collated and published in 1751 by William Warburton, seven years after Pope's death.

Read by the author, Raymond Antrobus. ‘I became fatherless at 26 and a father at 35 and whenever I look out the living room window I feel myself become the child left alone in the house’ Centred around two lyric poems on imminent fatherhood and the birth of a child, Signs, Music is a book...

A narrative poem of 14 stanzas, written by Lord Byron following a visit to the Château of Chillon on Lake Geneva in 1816. It was inspired by the story of 16th-century Swiss monk and patriot François Bonivard, held captive in the dungeons of Chillon between 1532 and 1536.

TikTok poet Shelby Leigh presents a moving and inspirational collection of poetry about growing up and embracing all the beauty life has to offer. The perfect gift for fans of Rupi Kaur, Connor Franta, and Cleo Wade. Shelby Leigh breaks up her poignant and reflective poetry collection into two...

'Carol Ann Duffy is considered a top poet. But she deserves better. She deserves to outsell most of the novelists on your shelf ' Observer The effortless virtuosity, directness, drama and humanity of Carol Ann Duffy’s verse have made her our most admired and best-loved contemporary poet...

Echoes of Love is a companion for those hardest days and quietest nights. It is a collection of 100 short reflections for the grieving heart: honest, raw, and quietly real. Each reflection offers a soft moment of recognition, something to hold onto when you're not sure what you feel or how to move through it. Some parts may comfort you. Others may bring tears. All were written to meet you where you are.

"I didn't have much time for poetry when I was young," Robert Holden writes in the introduction to this elegant and inspiring book. "Maybe I was in too much of a hurry. . . . Fortunately for me, one poem after another found their way through my defenses and came to my rescue. Slowly, but surely...

Step into My Flow is a deeply personal collection that explores themes of self-discovery, healing, and the beauty of everyday moments. Through intimate, unfiltered language, Michelle Heighway reflects on the divine feminine, creativity, and the interplay between the self and the universe. With a minimalist, unpunctuated style, this collection embraces vulnerability and imperfection — inviting listeners to pause, reflect, and embrace their true selves. It celebrates transformation and the quiet energy that shapes our inner landscapes.

It is clear that the author is madly in love, not only with her partner for whom she writes both idiosyncratic and sultry poems, but in love with language, in love with queerness, in love with the therapeutic process of bankrupting the politics of shame. These poems tackle gun violence, toxic masculinity, LGBTQ* struggles, suicidality, and the oppression of women’s bodies, while maintaining a vivid wildness that the tongue aches to speak aloud.

Including 'The Hill We Climb', the stirring poem read at the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, this collection of the same name reveals an energising and unforgettable new voice in poetry.

An enlightening and entertaining collection of the most esteemed love poems in the English canon, retold in contemporary language everyone can understand James Anthony has long enjoyed poetry with a strict adherence to beat, rhythm, and rhyming patterns, which he likens to the very best pop...

The Bhagavadgita is part of the great Indian epic the Mahabharata, and it is one of the major religious documents of the world, occupying in Hinduism a position not unlike the Sermon on the Mount in Christianity. One of the most celebrated treasures of world literature as well, it is in the form of a poetic dialogue between the epic's hero, Arjuna, and his friend Krishna, believed to be an incarnation of God.

“[A] vulnerable collection about facing the good, the bad and the ugly of our humanity with grace and curiosity.”—USA Today (New Must-Read Poetry) “This is a book that will make you feel simultaneously alive and less alone.”—Hanif Abdurraqib, New York Times bestselling author of...

I want you to know that I see you. I want you to know that even if no one else does, even if you are a ghost in this bookshop, or just the static floating across the screen of your computer, wherever you’re reading this, I see you. I see you in the dark and I see you in the grey. I see you as a story, as words I have spoken or may yet speak. Maybe only in a memory or a dream. I see your hands and your arms and your body and your legs and your face and I see what you have been and what you will be.

Three decades ago, renowned literary expert Robert Alter radically expanded the horizons of biblical scholarship by recasting the Bible as not only a human creation but a work of literary art deserving studied criticism. In The Art of Biblical Poetry, his companion to the seminal The Art of Biblical Narrative, Alter takes his analysis beyond narrative craft to investigate the use of Hebrew poetry in the Bible.

As an aspiring novelist in his early twenties, Cory Leadbeater was presented with an opportunity to work for a well-known writer whose identity was kept confidential. Since the tumultuous days of childhood, Cory had sought refuge from the rougher parts of life in the pages of books. Suddenly, he found himself the personal assistant to a titan of literature: Joan Didion. In hypnotic prose that pulses with life and longing, The Uptown Local explores the fault lines of class, family, loss, and creativity.

Perspectives is a book of contemplative art… poetic reflections on topics surrounding Self, Love, and God that humans have wrestled with for all time. It doesn’t offer answers or any solutions, just presence. In being with this book, you will find yourself experiencing FREEDOM and a reinvigorated spirit. Not in a striving way, but your soul will find more peace and permission to naturally express its truest truth.

Waterstones Non fiction Book of the Month November 2021 ‘A delightful compendium that brings together language, culture and adventure through frozen landscapes as it shares the meanings behind 50 words for snow, gathered from around the globe.’ The Herald Snow. Every language has its own...