When Mahadai Das died at the tragically early age of 49, there was an outpouring of grief across the Caribbean that a poet, who never quite had the chance to build a literary career to match her talents, had been lost. She had been known for some time as a highly promising Guyanese poet, but when Peepal Tree published her Bones in 1988, there was widespread critical recognition that here was an outstandingly original new voice. Then severe illness struck and though there followed occasional poems that developed the achievement of Bones, there was no new collection.

This Collected Poems, discussed with Mahadai Das before her death, and organised in co-operation with the poet's sister, brings together almost all the poems she wrote. It includes I Want to Be a Poetess of My People (1976), My Finer Steel Will Grow (1982), and Bones (1988). In addition, A Leaf in His Ear brings together many of the fine poems published in journals and previously uncollected, and some unpublished work, from lively, humorous nation-language poems to experiments with ballad forms and the oblique, gnomic poems written in the years after Bones.

With an introduction by Denise DeCaires Narain Gurnah.

Mahadai Das was born in Guyana in 1954. She was a dancer, actress, teacher, beauty-queen and volunteer member of the Guyana National Service. She left Guyana to philosophy in the USA. Then came debilitating health problems. She died in 2003.

After completing four collections of dialogue in poems, Kwame Dawes in Nebraska (via Ghana and Jamaica) and John Kinsella in Western Australia, have produced a monumental fifth volume in four movements: unHistory. unHistory is an essential record of our times by two world-leading poets, acutely sensitive to the bracing global turmoil of the last five years. It is an exploration of historys undertones, its personal, familial and institutional resonances and of the relationship between public events and the literary imagination. It is at the same time an elegant enactment of friendship and memory. As in previous volumes, the marvel is poetry that has all the fluidity of spontaneous response, and the shapeliness and finesse of the most deeply considered work written by two prolific and influential writers at the height of their powers as poets.
What Dawes and Kinsella provide each other with is less a means of achieving perfect insight than of casting light on the others blindnesses."" Will Harris on Speak from Here to There Kwame Dawes is one of the most important writers of his generation who has built a mighty and lasting body of work. Elizabeth Alexander John Kinsella is one of Australias most vivid, energetic and stormy poets, a writer who turns to the natural world with a fierce light. Edward Hirsch, Washington Post

Roger Robinson recently came to the attention of UK audiences in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten, hailed by Carol Ann Duffy as ""a joyful and important moment in publishing"".

The Butterfly Hotel is his first full collection of poetry, a telling document of the immigrant experience, from the 1980s to the present day, and the realities of uprooted culture. Butterflies hold a symbolic importance throughout, fragile yet ideal, adapting to survive.

Roger Robinson is a writer and performer who lives in London. His one-man shows are The Shadow Boxer, Letter from My Father's Brother and Prohibition, all of which premiered at the British Festival of Visual Theatre at Battersea Arts Centre. He has received writing commissions from Stratford Theatre Royal East, the National Trust, the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate. His poetry has appeared in the Flipped Eye pamphlets Suitcase (2005; ISBN 9780954224776) and Suckle (2009; ISBN 9781905233212), the latter winning the Peoples Book Prize, and in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten, edited by Bernardine Evaristo and Daljit Nagra (2010; ISBN 9781852248796).