Douglas Dunn

Archipelago is one of the most important and influential literary magazines of the last twenty years. Running to twelve editions, it was edited by Andrew McNeillie, with the assistance later of James McDonald Lockhart, and began as an attempt to reimagine the relationships between the islands of Ireland and Britain. Archipelago has brought together established and emerging artists in creative conversations that have transformed the study of islands, coasts and waterways. It journeys from the Shetlands to Cornwall, from the Aran Islands to the coast of Yorkshire, tracing the cultures of diverse zones through some of the best in contemporary writing about place and people. This collection gathers poetry, prose and visual art in clusters grouped around the Irish and British archipelago, with contributions from an array of significant artists. It includes newly commissioned work as well as an interview between Andrew McNeillie and Robert Macfarlane on the development of Archipelago across the years.

A generous selection of poems from 'one of the most talented and interesting poets writing in English today' (Robert Nye).In a distinguished poetic career, Douglas Dunn has won the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year. New Selected Poems 1964-2000 draws substantially upon the entire range of Dunn's poetry, from Terry Street (1969) to The Year's Afternoon (2000), and confirms his place 'among the finest of our poets' (Melvin Bragg).

Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry The Noise of a Fly is the first collection from Douglas Dunn in sixteen years, and the first since he was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2013. It is a book brimming with warmth, mischief and a self-deprecating humour, as well as with a charming, 'Larkinesque' crankiness: a quarrel with ageing, an impatience with youth, the grievousness of losing friends and colleagues. But for all its intimate, hearthside rumination, this is a volume of poems that looks outward in equal measure: at Scottish independence, British politics and an international refugee crisis, and reflects unflinchingly on what it is to consider oneself a contributor to society. Penned with a dexterous wit and a steady nerve, The Noise of a Fly is a mesmeric imagining of our later years by one of this country's most senior and celebrated writers.'It is hard to think of many poets who can equal his combination of imaginative ambition, formal resource and range of tone . . . Written on these terms, poetry is a matter of permanent urgency.' Sean O'Brien'The most respected Scottish poet of his generation.' Nicholas Wroe

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year in 1985, these poems were written after the death of Douglas Dunn's first wife in March 1981.

A wonderfully sustained narrative poem, full of the resonances and repercussions attendant on the end of an era, The Donkey's Ears depicts life aboard a Russian flagship just before the battle of Tsushima, 1905. It purports to be written by E.S. Politovsky, a ship's engineer addressing his wife in letters back home. Known as 'The Trafalgar of the East', Tsushima (which, translated from the Japanese, means 'The Donkey's Ears' - a description of the twin peaks of the islands) was the biggest naval gun-battle in history. The action of the poem takes place before the battle. A vividly realized claustrophobia prevails. Life below and on deck is brilliantly detailed as is the sense of incipient doom; one man's voice (domestic, particular, yearning for wife and home comforts) pitched against the inexorable onslaught of events.

The writings of six choreographers are assembled in this book and the leap they have taken to go from the medium of choreography into written text constitutes a form of translation. Some of the texts investigate the possibilities of written language as invention, others use it as a means to illustrate specific tenets or describe choreographic projects. All yield insight into the process of coaxing language from the body.

The writings of six choreographers are assembled in this book and the leap they have taken to go from the medium of choreography into written text constitutes a form of translation. Some of the texts investigate the possibilities of written language as invention, others use it as a means to illustrate specific tenets or describe choreographic projects. All yield insight into the process of coaxing language from the body.