John James

A collection that combines fixed poetic forms with long-form meditative lyrics to explore questions of agency in the Anthropocene. Extinction Song begins with a tender depiction of early parenthood, as the speaker cradles his newborn son while imagining a dystopian climate future. The poems open into a broader consideration of overlapping and interrelated systems, from the confines of received knowledge to the closed circuit of ideology to the circularity of pollutive environmental cycles. Attentive to the levels of sound and of visual architecture, these poems highlight both destruction and unseen possibilities. By turns meditative and probing, and sometimes slyly funny, Extinction Song unwinds the perils and the joys of our precarious climate future.

The church of Notre-Dame is a forgotten masterpiece, its past glory ruthlessly suppressed. The crusaders had brought back eastern techniques to transform Notre-Dame into a beacon of mystical exploration. They longed to join the angels in passionate union with the divine and built this church to make that possible. Notre-Dame was provided with vast sums of money to turn the promise of transcendence into a daily reality. Yet today we sense the contradiction between the magnificence of the architecture and its present role as the local parish church. We know it must have been more. What it was has been taken. After only 70 years, Notre-Dame's mission was brutally suppressed, its unique beauty silenced, the Glory window sealed, sightlines erased until it became a shell of its former self. Yet the secrets in the architecture whisper still. They describe the clash between a very personal search for mystical union and the hierarchic policies of the Church that insisted only the clergy knew how to guide the soul. What one king had cherished his successor deemed heretical and ruthlessly suppressed. Why the brutal reversal? Why the violent resistance from the congregation? Why suppress its mystical ambitions and why hide the facts? Was it a heresy that was too dangerous to tolerate? The clash between faith and power remains etched in the silence of the masonry, so we may still unravel the distant echoes of their quest for spiritual union, a quest that still resonates in the shadows of this remarkable church. "Glory and Tragedy in Notre-Dame d'Etampes" unravels the forgotten saga of a silenced masterpiece, where religious intrigue and architectural brilliance collided. It remains a poignant reminder of the persistent struggle between institutional power and individual enlightenment. It is a tale of breathtaking triumph with devastating consequences.

In poems as tautly constructed as they are trenchantly observed, Winter, Glossolalia probes the nature of language to depict the world from which it springs. Paired with humorous, often satirical images, this collection explores human ingenuity and creativity against the material resources of the given world, highlighting the possibilities and the limits of artistic making. In that sense, it is both a timely and enduring book, one that recalls Virgil’s Georgics as readily as it evokes the crisis of anthropogenic climate change.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1861.

In the summer of 1940 Britain faced one of its sternest tests; the Battle of Britain pitted the might of the German Luftwaffe against the determination of the British Royal Air Force. How was the air force of this small island nation able to repel wave after wave of Nazi planes? How had the RAF developed during the interwar years? And who exactly were 'the few' to whom we owe so much? An engrossing history of the origins and development of the RAF from before the First World War to the lead up of the Second. This book is ideal for fans of John Nichol, James Bradley and Alasdair Cross. John James provides fascinating insight into the RAF as it encountered its greatest ever challenge. Drawing upon a wealth of new evidence about its organisation, strategy and preparedness, James presents a startingly new approach that reassesses many of the myths and legends that surround the history of the RAF in the years before World War Two. The Paladins charts the progression of British military aviation from its very earliest years emerging from lessons learned from observation balloons moving on to biplanes with handguns and grenades as weapons through to the emergence of the legendary Spitfires and Hurricanes. 'A quite fascinating book' Liverpool Daily Post 'Satisfyingly complete' Eastern Daily Press 'A highly readable and fascinating account' Guernsey Evening Press

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Milk Hours is an elegant debut that searches widely to ask what it means to exist in a state of loss.“We lived overlooking the walls overlooking the cemetery.” So begins the title poem of this collection, whose recursive temporality is filled with living, grieving things, punctuated by an unseen world of roots, bodies, and concealed histories. Like a cemetery, too, The Milk Hours sets unlikely neighbors alongside each other: Hegel and Murakami, Melville and the Persian astronomer al-Sufi, enacting a transhistorical poetics even as it brims with intimacy. These are poems of frequent swerves and transformations, which never stray far from an engagement with science, geography, art, and aesthetics, nor from the dream logic that motivates their incessant investigations.Indeed, while John James begins with the biographical—the haunting loss of a father in childhood, the exhausted hours of early fatherhood—the questions that emerge from his poetic synthesis are both timely and universal: what is it to be human in an era where nature and culture have fused? To live in a time of political and environmental upheaval, of both personal and public loss? How do we make meaning, and to whom—or what—do we turn, when such boundaries so radically collapse?

This book brings together three interconnected works from the 1970s, showcasing how three of the most significant figures in radical British poetry of the late 20th century responded to one another's work.

We need a bigger vision for the city. It's not enough to plant individual churches in isolation from each other. The spiritual need and opportunity of our cities is too big for any one church to meet alone. Pastors Neil Powell and John James contend that to truly transform a city, the gospel compels us to create localized, collaborative church planting movements. They share lessons learned and principles discovered from their experiences leading a successful citywide movement. The more willing we are to collaborate across denominations and networks, the more effectively we will reach our communities—whatever their size—for Jesus. Come discover what God can do in our cities when we work together.

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Milk Hours is an elegant debut that searches widely to ask what it means to exist in a state of loss. “We lived overlooking the walls overlooking the cemetery.” So begins the title poem of this collection, whose recursive temporality is filled with living, grieving things, punctuated by an unseen world of roots, bodies, and concealed histories. Like a cemetery, too, The Milk Hours sets unlikely neighbors alongside each other: Hegel and Murakami, Melville and the Persian astronomer al-Sufi, enacting a transhistorical poetics even as it brims with intimacy. These are poems of frequent swerves and transformations, which never stray far from an engagement with science, geography, art, and aesthetics, nor from the dream logic that motivates their incessant investigations. Indeed, while John James begins with the biographical—the haunting loss of a father in childhood, the exhausted hours of early fatherhood—the questions that emerge from his poetic synthesis are both timely and universal: what is it to be human in an era where nature and culture have fused? To live in a time of political and environmental upheaval, of both personal and public loss? How do we make meaning, and to whom—or what—do we turn, when such boundaries so radically collapse?