Book cover of 'Ten Poems about Cities' with cityscape illustration and text.

Ten Poems About Cities

$14.99

'Instead of a Card' is the idea behind the British publisher Candlestick Press' range of gorgeous small poetry pamphlets. With covers created by leading contemporary artists and poems hand-picked to speak to every kind of reader, all their titles offer a richly rewarding reading journey. Pamphlets are supplied with an envelope for posting and a bookmark for a special message.

This volume -

Most of us live in cities, and there is a rich tradition of poems about their tireless hustle and bustle. In Jessica Mookherjee’s lively selection, we find poems that explore the hectic rhythms of day-to-day life in a city, as well as the rather more mysterious character of a city at night – a place where streetlights and “drunken rooftops” create a dreamscape in which anything might happen.

Ever present is the sense that a city never stops:

“All afternoon labouring geese fly over the city. Cars hoot,
sirens fugue. Beneath bank towers, a statue shifts. A man,
blue clown, blows two-note whistles for a living.”

from ‘Commerce, Madrid, 2012’ by Carola Luther

This mini-anthology transports us to cities real and imagined in a delightful kaleidoscope that shimmers and shifts at each rereading.

Poems by Suzannah Evans, Andrew Fusek-Peters, Kapka Kassabova, Carola Luther, John McCullough, Jessica Mookherjee, Meryl Pugh, Roger Robinson, James Tate and Sara Teasdale.

Cover illustration by Clare Curtis.