Carcanet Twelve Days of Christmas Sale

Carcanet Twelve Days of Christmas Sale:

Illustration by
Carry Akroyd,
from John Clare's
The Shepherd's Calendar

The Carcanet Twelve Days of Christmas Sale is still on! To celebrate the festive season Carcanet are offering a 25% discount on chosen books, including poetry, fiction, photography and essays. This is a varied selection of a dozen highlights from 2010 as well as some older favourites. We will also be giving away a free copy of Five American Poets, an anthology edited by Michael Schmidt (RRP £14.95), to anyone who spends over £30 on their order from www.carcanet.co.uk. Delivery within the UK is free as usual. Click here for more information.

Our Twelve Books of Christmas are:

Likenesses by Judith AronsonCollected Poems 1956- 1987 by John Ashbery
A Field of Large Desires by Anthony AstburySelected Poems by James K. BaxterSome Do Not. . . Parade's End Volume I by Ford Madox FordHeart's Wings and other stories by Gabriel Josipovici
Collected Poems by Edwin MorganTaller When Prone by Les Murray
Close to the Next Moment by Jody Allen RandolphMornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader edited by David ParkinsonModern Canadian Poets: An Anthology edited by Todd Swift and Evan Jones
A Human Pattern by Judith Wright

This offer is available exclusively from www.carcanet.co.uk.

Click here to order 12 Days of Christmas Special Offer books with 25% discount and free UK p&p.

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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