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Martina Evans Shortlisted for 2024 PEN Heaney Prize
Many congratulations to Martina Evans, who has been shortlisted for the 2024 PEN Heaney Prize with The Coming Thing! read more
Andrew Shanks Shortlisted for 2024 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
Congratulations to Andrew Shanks, who has been shortlisted for the 2024 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation with Revelation Freshly Erupting by Nelly Sachs! read more
Rachel Mann and Carl Phillips Shortlisted for T.S. Eliot Prize
Congratulations to Rachel Mann and Carl Phillips, whose collections Eleanor Among the Saints and Scattered Snows, to the North have been shortlisted for the 2024 T.S. read more
Welcome to Carcanet Press, one of the outstanding independent literary publishers of our time. Now in its sixth decade, Carcanet publishes the most comprehensive and diverse list available of modern and classic poetry in English and in translation, as well as inventive fiction, Lives and Letters and critical writing.

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Invisible Dog Invisible Dog Fabio Morábito Tr. Richard Gwyn
Collected Poems Collected Poems Mimi Khalvati
One Little Room One Little Room Peter McDonald
Emotional Support Horse Emotional Support Horse Claudine Toutoungi
Dante's Purgatorio Dante's Purgatorio Philip Terry
Citizen Poet Citizen Poet Eavan Boland Ed. Jody Allen Randolph
Library Lives Library Lives Stella Halkyard
Tablets Tablets Dunya Mikhail
Conjurors Conjurors Julian Orde Ed. James Keery
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Poem of the Day

Actaeon

Evan Jones

Some names are words for grief,
graceless words for failure.
Actaeon was a crowd, a lonely man,
and in the end nothing,
awaiting his descent into simple witlessness,
cold beside a river of fire, who,
the story goes, either wandered
into a grove sacred to Artemis
and saw her bathing naked
or boasted he was the greater hunter.

And so, enduring the deep wrath of god,
thinking, No way out of this,
about to surrender it came to him that,
like any hound or creature in this world,
he too had yearned and hunted.

Later on in the underworld, he began to wonder
about symmetry, his cousin, unborn heirs
to the throne of Cadmus and whether or not
he’d been forgiven: a crowd, a lonely man,
nothing, awaiting his descent into witlessness,
and so cold near Phlegethon,
boundless river of fire.

Some men have grief in place of dreams.
How cold and sad an end those men will come to:
white caps over the blue, no linden trees
or red acorns under which to find shade,
and not one god to pray for mercy to.
Taken from 'New Poetries V'...
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The Carcanet Blog Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more PN Review 279: Elegies by Lorna Goodison read more Conjurors: Julian Orde read more
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