Bloodaxe Books | Launch reading by Claire Askew, George Szirtes and Annemarie Austin @BloodaxeBooks | Uploaded October 2021 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
Join Bloodaxe Books for this launch reading by Claire Askew, Annemarie Austin and George Szirtes celebrating the publication of their new poetry collections.
Claire Askew and George Szirtes will be reading live and discussing their new collections with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, with audio recordings included of Annemarie Austin reading with screen-shares of her poems.
To order copies of the poets’ books direct from Bloodaxe, please click on these links (available via the Bloodaxe website from early October):
Claire Askew: How to burn a woman
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/how-to-burn-a-woman-1279
Annemarie Austin: Shall We Go?
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/shall-we-go--1253
George Szirtes: Fresh Out of the Sky
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/fresh-out-of-the-sky-1280
For details of the poets’ previous books, click on these links:
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/claire-askew
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/annemarie-austin
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/george-szirtes
*
Claire Askew: How to burn a woman
Claire Askew’s electrifying second collection How to burn a woman is an investigation of power: the power of oppressive systems and their hold over those within them; the power of resilience; the power of the human heart. It throngs with witches, outsiders, and women who do not fit the ordinary moulds of the world. It is a collection which traces historic atrocities, and celebrates the lives of those accused of witchcraft with empathy, tenderness and rage. It lifts a mirror up to contemporary systems of oppression and – in language that is both vivid and accessible – asks hard questions of our current world.
‘In this book of spells, Askew stirs together smart, modern poems about whisky, heartbreak and male-female relationships with a darker sequence about our “foremothers” who were persecuted as witches. How to burn a woman is full of hard-won wisdom and beauty. The vibe is Kim Addonizio joins a coven.’ – Clare Pollard
Annemarie Austin: Shall We Go?
Annemarie Austin’s vividly imaginative poems explore other worlds and other lives, drawing upon her own memories and experiences, as well as on art, travel, dream, myth, history and literature. Shall We Go? is her eighth book of poetry, following her Bloodaxe retrospective, Very: New & Selected Poems (2008) and later collection Track (2014). The first poem in her new collection asks ‘Shall we go on the shiny?’ and the last one ends ‘being altogether gone this time’. In between there’s the tightrope, ‘The Walking Shot’, the report on the pilgrimage in progress, the marquise going out at five o’clock. The eye moves left to right along with the poems’ movement. Though there are stops from time to time, for problems of the unidentified, the location of waterholes, whether or not those birds are oystercatchers, for the interior of a pocket and Nijinsky jumping. Then on, maybe to the beach again.
George Szirtes: Fresh Out of the Sky
Fresh Out of the Sky is a book of songs, dreams, laments, narratives and comedies about major life-changes involving country, identity and belonging. It is about perpetually standing at the edge of change, anticipating it, reflecting on it and dreaming about it. The title sequence of the book returns to the terza rima theme of memory, following sequences in George Szirtes’ earlier books, such as those about his early Budapest childhood explored in Reel, and about growing to adulthood in England in An English Apocalypse. Here the theme is his arrival in England as a child in 1956. Other parts of this expansive collection include the second part of The Yellow Room, a continuing poem of impossible questions about identity as residual Jewishness, in the form of a dialogue with Szirtes’ late father, and Going Viral, dreamlike reports from the Covid bunkers we have all been inhabiting and ending on occasions of consolation, delight and joy in the midst of darkness and uncertainty. As well as interludes and dream songs there is also a bestiary of transformations woven through Guillaume Apollinaire and Graham Sutherland.
Join Bloodaxe Books for this launch reading by Claire Askew, Annemarie Austin and George Szirtes celebrating the publication of their new poetry collections.
Claire Askew and George Szirtes will be reading live and discussing their new collections with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, with audio recordings included of Annemarie Austin reading with screen-shares of her poems.
To order copies of the poets’ books direct from Bloodaxe, please click on these links (available via the Bloodaxe website from early October):
Claire Askew: How to burn a woman
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/how-to-burn-a-woman-1279
Annemarie Austin: Shall We Go?
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/shall-we-go--1253
George Szirtes: Fresh Out of the Sky
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/fresh-out-of-the-sky-1280
For details of the poets’ previous books, click on these links:
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/claire-askew
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/annemarie-austin
bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/category/george-szirtes
*
Claire Askew: How to burn a woman
Claire Askew’s electrifying second collection How to burn a woman is an investigation of power: the power of oppressive systems and their hold over those within them; the power of resilience; the power of the human heart. It throngs with witches, outsiders, and women who do not fit the ordinary moulds of the world. It is a collection which traces historic atrocities, and celebrates the lives of those accused of witchcraft with empathy, tenderness and rage. It lifts a mirror up to contemporary systems of oppression and – in language that is both vivid and accessible – asks hard questions of our current world.
‘In this book of spells, Askew stirs together smart, modern poems about whisky, heartbreak and male-female relationships with a darker sequence about our “foremothers” who were persecuted as witches. How to burn a woman is full of hard-won wisdom and beauty. The vibe is Kim Addonizio joins a coven.’ – Clare Pollard
Annemarie Austin: Shall We Go?
Annemarie Austin’s vividly imaginative poems explore other worlds and other lives, drawing upon her own memories and experiences, as well as on art, travel, dream, myth, history and literature. Shall We Go? is her eighth book of poetry, following her Bloodaxe retrospective, Very: New & Selected Poems (2008) and later collection Track (2014). The first poem in her new collection asks ‘Shall we go on the shiny?’ and the last one ends ‘being altogether gone this time’. In between there’s the tightrope, ‘The Walking Shot’, the report on the pilgrimage in progress, the marquise going out at five o’clock. The eye moves left to right along with the poems’ movement. Though there are stops from time to time, for problems of the unidentified, the location of waterholes, whether or not those birds are oystercatchers, for the interior of a pocket and Nijinsky jumping. Then on, maybe to the beach again.
George Szirtes: Fresh Out of the Sky
Fresh Out of the Sky is a book of songs, dreams, laments, narratives and comedies about major life-changes involving country, identity and belonging. It is about perpetually standing at the edge of change, anticipating it, reflecting on it and dreaming about it. The title sequence of the book returns to the terza rima theme of memory, following sequences in George Szirtes’ earlier books, such as those about his early Budapest childhood explored in Reel, and about growing to adulthood in England in An English Apocalypse. Here the theme is his arrival in England as a child in 1956. Other parts of this expansive collection include the second part of The Yellow Room, a continuing poem of impossible questions about identity as residual Jewishness, in the form of a dialogue with Szirtes’ late father, and Going Viral, dreamlike reports from the Covid bunkers we have all been inhabiting and ending on occasions of consolation, delight and joy in the midst of darkness and uncertainty. As well as interludes and dream songs there is also a bestiary of transformations woven through Guillaume Apollinaire and Graham Sutherland.
