PlainspeakPlainspeak is the highly anticipated second collection by Astrid Alben, following her acclaimed debut Ai! Ai! Pianissimo. In these startling poems, readers will experience Albens unorthodox alter ego thinking out louder approach with the same exhilaration as they might engage with art or jazz. The poems in Plainspeak deal with place, ancestral ties, solitude, flight, insomnia and the embattled absurdities of daily life. Alben plays with formal

the latter three of whom held the first UK poetry readings of Emirati modernist poetry at the 2010 Ledbury Poetry Festival and at London’s South Bank Centre

Where the Rivers Meet is the first book-length study of his work in English

in the kitchen and in life

It seeds the countries of the world with words from elsewhere

belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers

irony and intelligence

Paula Morgan

with appreciations from Khaled Mattawa

new work by poets from the Occupied West Bank and Gaza

the other a humble doctor

he is also the Royal Literary Fund Writer for Queen Mary College University of London

Marine le Pen