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£14.99
Gilgamesh originated in Ancient Mesopotamia nearly 4,000 years ago, yet its themes of power, loyalty, love and loss resound with contemporary relevance. The eponymous demigod tyrannically rules the kingdom of Uruk. To establish peace, the gods create his counterpart, the wild man Enkidu. The two rivals-turned-comrades embark on a series of extraordinary adventures including battles with Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Forest, and the Bull of Heaven. After tragedy strikes, Gilgamesh sets out alone on a desperate quest for immortality that leads him to the very edge of the world. Simon Armitage’s fresh and propulsive version brings Gilgamesh alive as poetry. He harnesses the rhythm of its orchestrated language and conjures a sense of poetic wholeness while honouring its inherent fragmentation. Enhanced by illuminating commentary, this accomplished translation transports us back to the very origins of civilisation and storytelling.
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£12.99
The conversion of a local natural-beauty spot into a municipal graveyard is the starting point for ‘New Cemetery’. From regular walks around the boundary near his moorland home in West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage chronicles the extraordinary transformation of landscape both outer and inner. These luminous and wry poems, composed in short- lined tercets, reflect the changing world: one of unstable weather patterns and unpredictable news events, all observed across a few acres of Pennine upland. As phases of lockdown come and go and the cemetery fills up with new ‘residents’, Armitage charts personal losses of his own, often retreating to his garden shed to navigate blank paper with pen and ink. Encompassing lyrical revelations and everyday vignettes alongside apocalyptic visions and imagined conversations with the deceased, these pages draw us into a parallel neighbourhood of remembrance and celebration.
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£14.99
An anthology of unforgettable poems by, for and about parents.
