Breathe is a collection that explores the heart of Fidel Castro-era Cuba; an outsider's look that is balanced by a weight of empathy to illuminate truths that lie couched between the island's propaganda and the Western media's portrayal. Characters from Europe and the USA in Swimming, Taxi and Sabbatical seem to want to hold on to the indulgences that their countries offer them, while praising Cubans for the more abstemious lives they lead and seeking to sample what the locals experience; in Siempre Luchando, I Never See Them Cry and The Party, romantic liaisons strengthen or buckle under the strain of the minute exploitations that result from the assumptions one makes about the other; the seedy sexual aggression of Luca's Trip to Havana is undercut by the subtle yet intense lust of Breathe; while Leaving Cuba, with its closing image of Havana's night sky, is as eloquently balanced a tale of the lives of everyday Cubans as you will read in a long while - whichever path one takes, something is lost. As Aida Bahr, winner of Cuba's Premio de la Critica Literaria says, "relying more on subtleties than on drama, [Segal] portrays the tensions and struggles, but also the joy and warmth, that fill Cubans' lives."

Breathe: Stories from Cuba

Literature & Fiction

Segal, Leila

Short Stories & Anthologies

flipped eye publishing limited

The Waiting

Martin Egblewogbe

Contemporary

Woman

Meadows, Agnes

Poetry

In this precocious first collection, James Byrne explores the transitory process of time, connecting past and present through intricate attention to themes of childhood, love and nature.

Passages of Time

BYRNE, JAMES

Truth Thomas' audacious first pamphlet, Party of Black, not only introduced us to his eloquent, politically-charged voice, but also to a new poetic form of his own invention - the Skinny. In A Day of Presence, his first full collection, he deals with love - for the streets he was raised in, for his people, for womankind - and claims recognition and respect for African Americans, who have been present since, and contributed to, the birth of America as we know it. Sophisticated, confident in tone and daring in form, A Day of Presence announces the arrival of a major voice in American poetry, and a very necessary one.

A Day of Presence

Thomas, Truth

Truth Thomas' second collection 'Bottle of Life' is an oeuvre of multiple layers that straddles the immense cavern of human experience. Awash with startling imagery and word play, it chronicles childhood memories in Washington DC with as much verve as it explores the motivations for America's involvement in Afghanistan; it draws our eyes to accidents on the street and the common bend in our backs when we are fishing. And then there is music; Marvin Gaye, Celia Cruz and Michael Jackson break lines across the pages as families break bread in communion. At its core, 'Bottle of Life' is celebration of the sanctity and fragility of life and reaffirms Thomas' arrival as a major new voice in American poetry - a very necessary one.

Bottle of Life

A woman spots a stunning blue-headed bird at the edge of a Ghanaian village follows it. Sonokrom is a place that has not changed for hundreds of years; the men and women speak the language of the forest, drink aphrodisiacs with their palm wine and commune with the spirits of their ancestors. However, the woman's intrusion and ensuing events lead to an invasion from Accra, the capital city, spearheaded by Kayo; a young forensic pathologist convinced that scientific logic can shatter even the most inexplicable of mysteries. But as events in the village become more and more incomprehensible, Kayo and his sidekick, Constable Garba are drawn into a world where storytelling is more powerful than any scientific explanation. Tail of the Blue Bird is a poetic fable, at once unsettling and heart-warmingly funny, that exemplifies the futility of trying to categorise Africa, reminding us that the boundaries of truth have never been clear cut.

Tail of the Blue Bird

Parkes, Nii Ayikwei

Literary

Somebody has to tell the truth sometime, whatever that truth may be. In this, her début full collection, Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie offers up a body of work that bears its scars proudly, firm in the knowledge that each is evidence of a wound survived. These are songs of life in all its violent difficulty and beauty; songs of fury, songs of love. 'Karma's Footsteps' brims with things that must be said and turns the volume up, loud, giving silence its last rites. "Ekere Tallie's new work 'Karma's Footsteps' is as fierce with fight songs as it is with love songs. Searing with truths from the modern day world she is unafraid of the twelve foot waves that such honesties always manifest. A poet who "refuses to tiptoe" she enters and exits the page sometimes with short concise imagery, sometimes in the arms of delicate memoir. Her words pull the forgotten among us back into the lightning of our eyes." -Nikky Finney

Karma's Footsteps

Tallie, Mariahadessa Ekere

Snorkeling beneath dust and deep, the poems in 'The Dishonesty of Dreams' shapeshift from tender to tough at line-break speed in an ethereal dreamspace. Where Adrienne J. Odasso explored consequences in her first collection, 'Lost Books' (2010), here she engages the liminal, the reality that exists at the borders of a lived life; the fables we choose to build upon, the lies we tell ourselves to make our dreams true. In this liquid space emerges poetry of real power, beautifully crafted conjecture that illuminates the architecture of the human heart. Adrienne J. Odasso's poetry has appeared in a wide variety of strange and wonderful publications, including Sybil's Garage, Mythic Delirium, Jabberwocky, Cabinet des Fées, Midnight Echo, Not One of Us, Dreams &amp; Nightmares, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, and Stone Telling. Her début collection, Lost Books (flipped eye, 2010), was nominated for the 2010 LNPA Best New Poet Award, the 2011 Forward Prize, and was a finalist for the 2011 People's Book Prize. Adrienne is also the author of two chapbooks, Devil's Road Down and Wanderlust for Maverick Duck Press. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

The Dishonesty of Dreams

Odasso, Adrienne J.

Nick Makoha's poetic eye bulges out of this debut collection and refuses to be blinked away. The images line up like skittles but fall with the grace of leaves. Extract: from The Light The city clings like skin to the back of me,/ like summer sweat, my oils mixing/ with the humidity of the night./ Sleep the language I am speaking,/ every move mimicking death./ My body leaves a signature/ in the sheets. I rise; my feet touch the carpet’s canvas/ cooling me slightly. The window spilling moonlight/ into the room. Artificial light born from the TV mimics/ the light of the sky. Voices like my vision, blurred./ My hands snakes to the remote to mute the sound/ that brought me to sleep and in this moment awakens me.

Lost Collection of an Invisible Man (Mouthmark)

Makoha, Nick

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