"There was no patriotism in the trenches. It was too remote a sentiment, and rejected as fit only for civilians. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out. As Blighty, Great Britain was a quiet, easy place to get back to out of the present foreign misery, but as a nation it was nothing."This is the original version of Robert Graves's intense memoir of the First World War, restoring this raw, emotionally truthful, darkly comic work to the way it w...

This is the annual Able Muse Review (Print Edition) - Winter 2024/2025 issue, Number 32. This issue continues the tradition of masterfully crafted poetry, fiction, essays, art & photography, and book reviews that have become synonymous with the *Able Muse-*online and in print. After more than a decade of online publishing excellence, Able Muse print edition maintains the superlative standard of the work presented all these years in the online edition, and, the Able Mu...

From the former Poet Laureate, a remarkable contemplation of departure and return.Andrew Motion's new collection gives a moving account of the friction and interplay between past and present. In the opening elegies for friends and former versions of the self, and in the long title sequence which completes the book, he explores the ways in which regrets compete with hope, and the appetite for life is always a prey to hard facts of mortality. The energy and reach of ...

'A tremendous sentimental education of a book ... a literary adventure ... chosen with a scholarly discernment mixed with a wild-card flair ... fascinating and unignorable' Kate Kellaway, Observer (Poetry Book of the Month)'If you have any weakness at all for poetry, this book will draw you in, then devastate you' Susie Goldsbrough. The TimesElegy is among the world's oldest forms of literature. Born in Anc...

Andrew Motion has been close to the centres of British poetry for over fifty years.Sleeping on Islands is his clear-sighted and open-hearted account of this remarkable career. It takes us from scenes of a teenage home-life coloured by tragedy and silence - where writing was as much a refuge as an assertion - to the excruciations of early public appearances, to the decade he spent as Poet Laureate, promoting and ensuring the central place of poetry in a nat...

This comprehensive edition draws on Andrew Motion's distinguished body of work from Secret Narratives (1983) to his most recent volume, Randomly Moving Particles (2020), and includes a substantial selection of new and previously uncollected poems.Certain preoccupations unite the book, which from first to last is particularly concerned with the ways in which our lives are shaped by loss - by wars, by accidents, by the erosion of time and by grief. Motion is an ener...

If it’s time for a rhyme, or you need a satiric lyric, the Collins Rhyming Dictionary is the fastest and easiest way to refine your line.The most accessible way to find the rhyme you need. Other rhyming dictionaries are characterised by the use of obscure words for padding, subsections for disyllabic and trisyllabic rhymes, and reverse phonetic order – but we avoid such complications and, as a result, have the most practical rhyming book available.The most satisfactory rhym...

THE END OF THE WORLDOR THE BEGINNING…On to the shores of Texas a raging sea coughs up two castaways: Jim and Natty, shipwrecked on their way home from Treasure Island.The Nightingale sunk, their silver gone, captured, weak and afraid, the pair steal a treasure they should have left well alone.The adventure of the New World lies in wait…

Salt Water is Andrew Motion's most ambitious collection, yet also his most accessible. The first part refines the narrative and lyric skills for which he is well-known, combining intense personal concerns with themes which are more expansive and social. Family and loved ones appear in the company of historical and legendary figures; private dramas raise large general issues. But there is concentration as well as diversity. From the Orford Merman of the title poem, to an el...

Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life won the Whitbread Award for Biography in 1993 and was championed as 'an exemplary biography of its kind' ( The Times). With a new introduction written by the author, this edition offers an engrossing portrait of one of the twentieth century's most popular, and most private, poets.'There will be other lives of Larkin, but Motion's, like Forster's of Dickens, will always have a special place.' John Carey, Sunday Times'...

‘I always liked your father – he was a lad of spirit. He was clever enough to know the value of an adventure, at any rate, and brave enough to carry it out!’‘What adventure?’ I asked, although I already knew the answer.‘Why the map of course, boy!’ Long John Silver’s voice rose into something of a scream. ‘The map and then the treasure across the sea! All the beautiful silver we left there. Your father and I only took what we could carry. But there’s more. Silver lying in t...

Andrew Motion's prose memoir, In the Blood (2006), was widely acclaimed, praised as 'an act of magical retrieval' ( Daily Telegraph) and 'a hymn to familial love' ( Independent). Now, having left UK shores and the bounds of his laureateship, Motion looks back once more to recreate a stunning biographical sequel - but this time, in verse.Essex Clay rekindles, expands and gives a tragic resonance to subjects that have haunted Andrew Motion througho...