Poetry Book Review: 'Brand New Ancients' By Kate Tempest

'Brand New Ancients'
By Kate Tempest
Published by Picador Poetry
RRP £9.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9781447257684
Reviewed by Lynsey Evans
Brand New Ancients won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for Innovation in Poetry and has been published by Picador Poetry.

Rather than a poetry collection, with lots of individual poems, Brand New Ancients is an epic poem, that was written to be read aloud – as a spoken word piece. It’s really interesting to read something that is a performance piece as the way you read it, isn’t always the way the poet would deliver it, yet reading the piece makes you really appreciate the story-telling element. (Check out this YouTube Clip: http://youtu.be/1a8iFSXCHLw!)

Brand New Ancients tells the story of two families and their lives that Kate originally told over an orchestra’s score. The tales is set in the city but has myths woven into it – gods are in the betting shops and cafes! It cleverly shows how myths live on in modern society, in every day acts whether that be bravery, love or violence. It’s dramatic, thought-provoking, enchanting and quite marvellous.

Highly recommended for readers of all ages.

Visit Picador Poetry's website for further information or to buy the book.

Recommended Read - 'Pluto' (poetry collection) by Glyn Maxwell

‘Pluto’

By Glyn Maxwell
Published by Picador Poetry, April 2013
RRP £9.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9781447231585
Pluto – the non-planet, the ex-planet – is the dominant celestial influence in Glyn Maxwells new collection: Pluto is a book about change, the before-and-after of love, the aftermath of loss: change of status and station, home and place, of tense and pronoun. It also marks a radical departure for one of our most celebrated English poets: his formidable skills as a rhetorician and dramatist are suddenly directed inwardly, to produce poems of brutal self-examination, raw elegy, and strange songs of the kind those bruising encounters often leave us singing to ourselves. In Pluto, Maxwell has set out something like a metaphysic of the affair; the result is a lean and concentrated poetry of great emotional power, and far and away his most directly personal work to date.

‘Nefertiti in the Flak Tower’ By Clive James - new poetry collection

Published by Picador Poetry
RRP £14.99 (hardback)
ISBN 9781447207009

Clive James’ power as a poet has increased year by year, and there has been no stronger evidence for this than Nefertiti in the Flak Tower.

Here, his polymathic learning and technical virtuosity are worn more lightly than ever; the effect is merely to produce a deep sense of trust into which the reader gratefully sinks, knowing they are in the presence of a master. The most obvious token of that mastery is the book’s breathtaking range of theme: there are moving elegies, a meditation on the later Yeats, a Hollywood Iliad, odes to rare orchids, wartime typewriters and sharks – as well as a poem on the fate of Queen Nefertiti in Nazi Germany. But despite the dizzying variety, James’ poetic intention becomes increasingly clear: what marks this new collection out is his intensified concentration on the individual poem as self-contained universe. Poetry is a practice he compares (in ‘Numismatics’) to striking new coin; and Nefertiti in the Flak Tower is a treasure-chest of one-off marvels, with each poem a twin-sided, perfect human balance of the unashamedly joyous and the deadly serious, ‘whose play of light pays tribute to the dark’.

‘James is a highly literary poet, even when he is at his most straightforward and direct’ – John Goss, Sunday Telegraph

‘A poet of powerful argument and emotional force’ – Rachel Campbell-Johnson, The Times

‘Banjo’
By Samantha Wynne-Rydderch
Published by Picador Poetry on the 7th June 2012
RRP £9.99 (paperback)
ISBN 9780330544665

While Banjo opens with a clutch of fine lyrics, elegies and set-pieces, at the heart of Samantha Wynne-Rydderch’s new book is a remarkable tale of darkness and light, music and silence. Celebrating the centenary of Captain Scott’s arrival at the South Pole in 1912, Banjo gives us new psychological insight into the lives of the early Antarctic pioneers, as well as an extraoridinary account of the role played by music in surviving the long Antarctic winters. Banjo is Samantha Wynne-Rydderch’s most accomplished collection to date, and further evidence of a writer of great imaginative versatility.

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Recommended Reads for March 2012

Check out the reviews section of our website for the latest recommended reads - from children's fiction to poetry and classic reads we're sure there is something for everyone. We also welcome your reviews too - email them to 'Reviews' at info@bookapoet.co.uk and we'll let you know when we use it!

Below are the titles we recommended during March 2012:

'The Dark Film' by Paul Farley, Picador Poetry

'Wereworld: Shadow of the Hawk' (Book 3) by Curtis Jobling, Puffin

'After the Snow' by Sophie Crockett, MacMillan's Children's Books

'Jack and the Baked Beanstalk' by Colin Stimpson, Templar Publishing

'‘Star Wars The Phantom Menace – The Expanded Visual Dictionary’ published by Dorling Kindersley

'Sword of Light' (Book 1) by Katherine Roberts, Templar Publishing

 April's recommended reads will start to appear on the website from next week. A selection of reviews will be published here too.

Recommended Reads - 'The Dark Film' by Paul Farley

‘The Dark Film’
By Paul Farley
Published by Picador Poetry
£12.99 hardback format
ISBN 9781447212553

‘The Dark Film’ is the Poetry Book Society Choice and Paul Farley’s first collection since the highly acclaimed ‘Tramp in Flames’ was published in 2006.

‘The Dark Film’, his fourth collection, expands Paul Farley’s research into the ‘art of seeing’, and all that humans project of themselves into the world. Farley’s great poetic gift is his ability to switch between the local and the universal, the present and the historical past, with the most apparently effortless of gear changes; he brings to our immediate attention things previously hidden – whether out of sight, in the periphery of our vision, or right under our noses. ‘The Dark Film’ is a profound meditation on time, on the untold stories of our history, and on the act of human beholding – as well as Farley’s most richly entertaining and reward collection to date.

‘One of the most disarmingly original poets now writing’ – Alan Brownjohn.

‘Resonant without being flashy … lines that will stick with you for a really, really long time’ – Mark Haddon, Guardian.

‘Farley is one of our most vital and engaging voices, He has the knack of both establishing and undermining the securities of memory purely through turn of phrase’ – Scotland on Sunday.

 Read all our reviews and recommendations at www.bookapoet.co.uk!