Why Are You Shouting?, James Womack's fourth Carcanet collection, thinks about two things in particular: our struggle as individuals to find connections between ourselves, with friends, family and lovers, and the efforts we make as groups to connect to the environment we live and die in. Written in the shadow of the climate crisis and the pandemic years, the poems set out to find points of hope and solidarity, against a common backdrop of disruption and collapse to which we are often wilfu...

On Trust: A Book of Lies, James Womack's second collection of poems, is organised around the notion of telling the truth. Working against ideas of poetry as a vehicle for displaying individual truths or unprocessed confessions, these poems play hilariously, earnestly, undecidedly, with such simple identifications as the 'I' of a poem with the 'I' of the poet, offering us monologues which seem to be sincere, unvarnished accounts of things that have 'really' happened, but which twis...

On Trust: A Book of Lies, James Womack's second collection of poems, is organised around the notion of telling the truth. Working against ideas of poetry as a vehicle for displaying individual truths or unprocessed confessions, these poems play hilariously, earnestly, undecidedly, with such simple identifications as the 'I' of a poem with the 'I' of the poet, offering us monologues which seem to be sincere, unvarnished accounts of things that have 'really' happened, but which twis...

Brutality is nothing new. It's simply a manifestation of a human tendency, abuse of power. In the case of police brutality, it's been present ever since a police -force has existed. It doesn't t matter whether you refer to soldiers serving as the Vi Iles Urbani of the Roman Empire era. Nor does it matter if you refer to certain ego-centric gunfighter sheriffs and marshals of the old west. The brutality in many cases was and is mainly ignored, denied, or excused under some pretext or anothe...

Homunculus is a long poem from award-winning poet and translator James Womack, based around the Elegies of the Roman poet Maximian. The last of the Roman poets, Maximian wrote in the sixth century, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; critics have called his Elegies 'one of the strangest documents of the human mind', and W.H. Auden singled him out as a 'really remarkable poet'. Womack's versioning of the Elegies shows how this harsh poem of sex and old age can speak to our own conte...

A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death.Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of l...

A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death. Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also ...

'The only end of writing,' Dr Johnson said, 'is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.' Misprint offers the reader countries and languages perceived through the eyes of youth and loss. Untimely deaths and memories of far-off lands abound, some dreamed, some lived. In this first collection, James Womack plays with ideas of tradition, lightly conjuring heavy themes, and makes a bow to pulp culture. He ferries us between Russia, Spain and North Korea and the diffe...

An exciting and ambitious debut, this collection explores countries and languages through the eyes of youth and loss. It plays with ideas of tradition, lightly evoking significant themes, with a bow to pulp culture. Moving between real places, such as Russia, Spain, and North Korea, these poems also journey through virtual environments, memories, and dreams.

Shortlisted for the 2019 Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize for Second Collections.Longlisted for the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize.On Trust: A Book of Lies, James Womack's second collection of poems, is organised around the notion of telling the truth. Working against ideas of poetry as a vehicle for displaying individual truths or unprocessed confessions, these poems play hilariously, earnestly, undecidedly, with such simple iden...

Homunculus is a long poem from award-winning poet and translator James Womack, based around the Elegies of the Roman poet Maximian. The last of the Roman poets, Maximian wrote in the sixth century, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire; critics have called his Elegies 'one of the strangest documents of the human mind', and W.H. Auden singled him out as a 'really remarkable poet'. Womack's versioning of the Elegies shows how this harsh poem of sex and old age can speak to our own conte...

The first novel by one of the greatest writers of Latin American literature, The Mad Toy is a semi-autobiographical story reflecting the energy and chaos of the early twentieth century in Argentina. First published in 1920, The Mad Toy is set in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Feeling the alienation of youth, Silvio Astier's gang tours neighbourhoods, inflicting waves of petty crime, stealing from homes and shops until the police are forced to intervene. Drifting then from one...