Plays & Poetry International

Dublin, the 1960s. After Da's funeral, Charlie returns to his childhood home only to find his father's ghost stubbornly unwilling to leave. As the events of Charlie's youth and Da's troubled relationship with Mother are replayed, we discover the relationships that existed between father and son.

A chemist by training, the author became one of the witnesses to twentieth-century atrocity. In these haunting reflections inspired by the elements of the periodic table, he ranges from young love to political savagery; from the inert gas argon - and 'inert' relatives like the uncle who stayed in bed for twenty-two years - to life-giving carbon.

Written between 2019 and 2021, A Tower Built Downwards is rooted in Yang Lian's living experience of the historical retrogression of Hong Kong, the disaster of Covid-19, and the global spiritual crisis, with an extraordinary cover by Ai Weiwei as metaphor for the book's content.

The #1 bestselling new collection from National Book Award finalist Ada Limon are 'Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more' Roxane Gay

Published in 2010, Ada Limon's debut collection Sharks in the Rivers announced the arrival of a beloved poet - now the 24th US Poet Laureate, National Book Award winner, Time Magazine woman of the year 2024. An extraordinary collection - at once urbane and earthy - Sharks in the Rivers navigates the thoroughfares and tributaries of human nature.

An essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of our most celebrated living writers.

Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the world's leading theatre companies, this book collects six of its most impactful plays, together in one volume for the first time.

'I can't bear the thought of a world without Michael Longley, yet his poetry keeps hurtling towards that fact more and more urgently as it stretches in an unflinching way beyond comfort or certainty.' So wrote Maria Johnston, reviewing Longley's previous book Angel Hill.

"What happens when the man of your dreams turns out to be a nightmare with sharp teeth and claws?"

Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are 'The Kids', her students, the teenagers she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son's experience.