Emergency Kit. Poems for Strange Times

Shapcott, Jo and Sweeney, Matthew ( editors )

ISBN 10: 0571223001 / ISBN 13: 9780571223008

Published by Faber, London, 2004

About this Item

Card covers, pp.xviii, 306. Anthology covering poetry reflecting the unpredictable era we now live in, with contributions from UK and international poets. Fine.

Seller Inventory # 010718

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Emergency Kit. Poems for Strange Times
• Publisher: Faber, London
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571223001
• ISBN 13: 9780571223008
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Emergency Kit is an anthology with many differences. It is, to begin with, a book which gives prominence to poems rather than to the poets who wrote them. It is truly international, bringing together poems not just from these islands but from many parts of the English-speaking world. It is the first book to identify a strain in the poetry of the last half-century which is characteristic of the 'strange times' we live in - an age when, as the editors note, scientific discovery itself has encouraged us to 'make free with the boundaries of realism'. It values imagination, surprise, vivid expression, the outlandish and the playful above ideology and sententiousness. It is, in short, living proof that poetry in the English language continues to thrive and to matter.

About the Authors

Jo Shapcott was born in London. Poems from her three award-winning collections, Electroplating the Baby (1988), Phrase Book (1992) and My Life Asleep (1998) are gathered in a selected poems collection, Her Book (2000). She has won a number of literary prizes including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Collection, the Forward Prize for Best Collection and the National Poetry Competition (twice). Tender Taxes, her versions of Rilke, was published in 2001. Her collection Of Mutability was published in 2010 and won the Costa Prize for Book of the Year. In 2011 Jo Shapcott was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Matthew Sweeney is an Irish poet and editor of The New Faber Book of Children's Poems and Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (with Jo Shapcott).