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Latest acquisitions November 2019

What has been added to our collection this month? Here are a few highlights:

Kites / text by Simon Mole; illustrations by Oamul Lu
London : Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2019

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Simon Mole is well known on the performance circuit and earlier this year he wowed the Imagine Festival crowd at our day of children’s poetry here in the library, so we’re thrilled to have added his first picture book to the collection. It’s a poetic story about a boy called David who has moved to a new home and feels out of place. All the local children fly kites so David makes himself a kite and tries to make friends but his kite won’t fly. As one of his new neighbours tells him, “A kite has to feel right for it to fly..” This is a lovely rhythmical story about loss and change and giving yourself time for things to feel right. And the kites created by exciting young illustrator Oamul Lu make you want to find a hill and fly a kite of your own.

The Music of Time : Poetry in the Twentieth Century / John Burnside
London : Profile Books, 2019

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John Burnside's The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century is a goldmine of a book: a mammoth overview of 100 years of poetry, where readers may encounter new favourite poets, or discover insightful new perspectives on poets they're already familiar with. More of a personal response to a lifetime of passionate reading than an academic survey, these pages come alive with Burnside's poetic sensibility, and chapters are organised neatly into themes - meaning that readers aren't obliged to read from cover to cover, but can dip in and out for illuminating insights into a rich and tumultuous period, both for poetry and for the world at large.

Madvent calendar / Geraldine Monk
London ; Santiago : Crater Press, 2019

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Atkinson,Jessica

The third Advent calendar from small-but-mighty poetry press Crater divides a smörgåsbord of bite-size festive language amongst twenty-five cardboard doors. It’s issue 59 of their quirky ‘journal’ series (in the shape of hand-sewn pamphlets, posters, a ‘non-Advent’ calendar and a paper plane...). Tidbits offered by distinguished poet Geraldine Monk include ‘saffron buns’, ‘glossolalia cake’ and ‘macaronic tray bake’ whilst her husband (artist-poet Alan Halsey) supplies a visual backdrop of ‘sunless tundra’. Saturnalia starts here!

Click here to see all the adult collections and anthologies added to the National Poetry Library in September and October on our catalogue. Use the Sort function to list alphabetically by author or title.

And click here to see children collections and anthologies added in September and October.