Books
The Glimmer
“Shazea Quraishi disguises her poetic of taking apart and reanimating as the work of a taxidermist-in-residence in Mexico. Under poetic constraints, poems are imaginative and precise, but also lean diminutive... Her vessels are suggestive: “Sometimes live birds / were enclosed in the hollow bodies of dolls.” Like a breath in a kiln, she catches life, cools it. A clay pot, now 1000 funerary folded cranes, now a film, a poem.”
Leah Jun Oh in Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Autumn 2022
REVIEWS
Long Poem Magazine
PBS Autumn Bulletin
The Taxidermist
Brand new and long awaited poetry from this elegant and meticulous poet.
What has the body of a white mouse to show us? What is art? And how can we live with death?
The contemplative and poised poems in this collection tackle the vast questions of life and art. Their simplicity is beguiling, their vocabulary – hypnotic, as tiny details build slowly, calmly to create a vision as broad as existence itself.
REVIEWS
The Art of Scratching
“Shazea Quraishi’s first collection, The Art of Scratching, reveals the poet’s flair for re-imagining and feminising historical texts, and for inventing her own edgy fables of family life and childhood.”
Carol Rumens in Poem of the Week, the Guardian
The Courtesans Reply
“Shazea Quraishi, in The Courtesans Reply, sensitively reconstructs an unfamiliar and vanished culture. Working from historical and literary sources, Quraishi never allows her research to speak louder than the human voices of her characters, a community of courtesans in Ancient India. Their individual feelings and desires emerge through lines which are simultaneously spare and sensuous.”
Richard O’Brien, Poetry London
REVIEWS
Anthologies
Poetry: A Writers Guide and Anthology
Fully revamped and expanded, this second edition offers a complete introduction to the art and craft of writing poetry. Mapping out 38 foundational elements of poetry including image, line, point of view, metaphor, movement, and music, authors Amorak Huey and W. Todd Kaneko use these elements as starting points for discussion questions and writing prompts. With a focus on contemporary poems, the anthology features a truly diverse and global line-up of poets and poems to illustrate the elements and craft discussed in the book. Featuring all-new chapters on traditional poetic forms, prosody, writing poems that engage the current moment, and the value and ethics of imitation, this is the ultimate companion to studying and practicing the craft of poetry.
Mapping the Future: the complete works poets
Mapping the Future is not just a magnificent anthology of some of the best UK poets, it is also an exploration on how poetry in Britain has become much more inclusive over the past 15 years: what has been won, and what is still being fought for. This anthology offers a timely insight into British poetry and how the voice of the ‘other’ continues to take centre-stage in pivotal times.