{"title":"Michael Symmons Roberts","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the thought-provoking poetry and novels of Michael Symmons Roberts. His works delve into science, religion, and the human condition. Perfect for readers seeking intellectually stimulating narratives.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"edgelands-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224089029","title":"Edgelands","description":"Edgelands explores a wilderness that is much closer than you think: a debatable zone, neither the city nor the countryside, but a place in-between - so familiar it is never seen for looking. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, ignored, the edgelands have become the great wild places on our doorsteps, places so difficult to acknowledge they barely exist. Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own.  Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts - both well-known poets - have lived and worked and known these places all their lives, and in Edgelands their journeying prose fuses, in the anonymous tradition, to allow this in-between world to speak up for itself. They write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites in the same way the Romantic writers forged a way of looking at an overlooked - but now familiar - landscape of hills and lakes and rivers. England, the first country to industrialise, now offers the world's most mature post-industrial terrain, and is still in a state of flux: Edgelands takes the reader on a journey through its forgotten spaces so that we can marvel at this richly mysterious, cheek-by-jowl region in our midst.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49521712791825,"sku":"GOR002858218","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49550399734033,"sku":"GOR005819535","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50556642230545,"sku":"GOR004861727","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51544491983121,"sku":"GOR010142077","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224089021.jpg?v=1751290615"},{"product_id":"drysalter-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224093590","title":"Drysalter","description":"Winner of the 2013 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection  Winner of the 2013 Costa Poetry Award Shortlisted for the 2013 T.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49521953997073,"sku":"GOR004810165","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50107935195409,"sku":"CIN0224093592VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50307902734609,"sku":"GOR011343341","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50767270150417,"sku":"GOR005867680","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52102796869905,"sku":"CIN0224093592G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224093592.jpg?v=1751227553"},{"product_id":"half-healed-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224085670","title":"The Half Healed","description":"The poems in Michael Symmons Roberts's fifth collection move in a world riven by violence and betrayal, between nations and individuals. As ever, this is a metaphysical poetry rooted in physical detail - but the bodies here are displaced, disguised, in need of rescue. A man in a fox suit prowls the woods afraid of meeting true foxes, while a vixen dressed as a man moves among the powerful at society soirées. God no longer 'walks in his garden in the cool of the day', but drives through a damaged city in the small hours. At the same time a couple celebrate armistice with an act of love in an anonymous hotel room.   As the judges of the Whitbread Prize noted, Roberts' poetry 'inspires profound meditation on the nature of the soul, the body, the stars and the heart - and sparks revelation.' Roberts is a poet of unusual range and dexterity, fascinated by faith and science, by the physical and the transcendental, and with this new book he confirms his position as a truly original, and thrillingly gifted, lyric poet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49523145769233,"sku":"GOR004180599","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50478416625937,"sku":"NGR9780224085670","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53266320032017,"sku":"GOR012376118","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224085670.jpg?v=1751037516"},{"product_id":"selected-poems-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781910702420","title":"Selected Poems","description":"This selection of the best poems from six remarkable collections reveals that all the strength and sensuality and strangeness is in there from the start. This is a metaphysical poetry for our age: rooted, steeped in the physical, but stretching for lyric completion, philosophical clarity, emotional truth. These poems achieve their seriousness not through hectoring argument but through their lightness of touch, their wit, their tenderness, their music. Roberts has always been a poet who, in the words of Lavinia Greenlaw, ‘inspires profound meditation on the nature of the soul, the body, the stars and the heart, and sparks revelation’. He is also formally and thematically diverse, restlessly exploring a wide range of subjects from Cold-War fear to love lyrics, genetics to elegies, always returning to the crucial, elemental themes – the mapping of experience and the search for meaning.   After Drysalter, his double-prize-winning tour de force, we now have this opportunity to observe the whole arc to date: the consistency of grace and power, curiosity and risk, passion and intelligence that – together – make Michael Symmons Roberts such a thrilling and essential poet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49530028228881,"sku":"GOR008271898","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49896957739281,"sku":"GOR013809634","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50638512357649,"sku":"GOR013461283","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1910702420.jpg?v=1751281902"},{"product_id":"corpus-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224073424","title":"Corpus","description":"This collection of poems is a blend of modern and ancient wisdom and an exploration of the mysteries of the body. 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In this book, two contemporary poets undertake a series of journeys  across Britain, America and Europe  to the death places of poets of the past, in part as pilgrims, honouring inspirational writers, but also as investigators, interrogating the myth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49533696934161,"sku":"GOR010347116","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49547466375441,"sku":"GOR008306797","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49579528519953,"sku":"GOR008199158","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50346734682385,"sku":"CIN0224097547G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224097547.jpg?v=1751324061"},{"product_id":"ransom-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781787333123","title":"Ransom","description":"**SHORTLISTED FOR THE T.S. 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This is a profound and timely book from one of our finest poets.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49540214980881,"sku":"GOR011180270","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49739469881617,"sku":"NGR9781787333123","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1787333124.jpg?v=1751122448"},{"product_id":"miracles-of-jesus-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780745951942","title":"The Miracles of Jesus","description":"The ancient accounts tell us that Jesus could calm storms with a word, feed thousands with just a few scraps of bread and fish, walk on water, cure the sick and even raise people from the dead. In this enlightening book - an official tie-in to the major BBC1 3-part television series presented by Rageh Omaar - Michael Symmons Roberts examines many of Jesus' miracles in the context of 1st century Galilee. He reveals that Jesus' miracles were full of hidden meanings and shows how, by cracking this ancient code, we can come to a deeper understanding of who Jesus of Nazareth really was - a healer, a prophet or the long-awaited Messiah and Son of God? Rights to this series have also been sold to the Discovery Channel. 'What made Jesus' miracles stand out for the people of his time was not that God had acted in the world, but that God had acted in the world in very particular and significant ways. For twenty-first-century westerners, its is not so easy. To us miracles can seem less like a language and more like a code. But it is not an uncrackable code.' - Michael Symmons Roberts","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49545898098961,"sku":"GOR001959931","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50913849213201,"sku":"GOR001436017","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0745951945.jpg?v=1750816664"},{"product_id":"edgelands-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780099539773","title":"Edgelands","description":"The wilderness is much closer than you think. Passed through, negotiated, unnamed, unacknowledged: the edgelands - those familiar yet ignored spaces which are neither city nor countryside - have become the great wild places on our doorsteps.   In the same way the Romantic writers taught us to look at hills, lakes and rivers, poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts write about mobile masts and gravel pits, business parks and landfill sites, taking the reader on a journey to marvel at these richly mysterious, forgotten regions in our midst.   Edgelands forms a critique of what we value as 'wild', and allows our allotments, railways, motorways, wasteland and water a presence in the world, and a strange beauty all of their own.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49547378753809,"sku":"GOR003572564","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49649969332497,"sku":"GOR004269309","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49728146866449,"sku":"NGR9780099539773","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49865828008209,"sku":"GOR004563311","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50300271886609,"sku":"CIN0099539772VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50457670484241,"sku":"CIN0099539772G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50781268869393,"sku":"GOR009432220","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099539772.jpg?v=1750811292"},{"product_id":"deaths-of-the-poets-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780099581321","title":"Deaths of the Poets","description":"The post-Romantic lore of the dissolute drunken poet has fatally skewed the image of poets in our culture. What is the price of poetry?  In this book, two contemporary poets embark on a series of journeys to the death places of poets of the past, in part as pilgrims, but also as investigators, interrogating the myth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49563164999953,"sku":"GOR009375858","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731356360977,"sku":"NGR9780099581321","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52842645618961,"sku":"GOR010493335","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099581329.jpg?v=1751194669"},{"product_id":"patrick-s-alphabet-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780099483786","title":"Patrick's Alphabet","description":"When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. The letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town?   Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances.   As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49566007230737,"sku":"GOR002504029","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52825016238353,"sku":"GOR014631414","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099483785.jpg?v=1751226719"},{"product_id":"mancunia-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781911214298","title":"Mancunia","description":"Shortlisted for the 2017 T. S. Eliot Prize Longlisted for the 2019 Portico Prize PBS Autumn Recommendation  Mancunia is both a real and an unreal city. In part, it is rooted in Manchester, but it is an imagined city too, a fallen utopia viewed from formal tracks, as from the train in the background of De Chirico’s paintings. In these poems we encounter a Victorian diorama, a bar where a merchant mariner has a story he must tell, a chimeric creature – Miss Molasses – emerging from the old docks. There are poems in honour of Mancunia’s bureaucrats: the Master of the Lighting of Small Objects, the Superintendent of Public Spectacles, the Co-ordinator of Misreadings. Metaphysical and lyrical, the poems in Michael Symmons Roberts’ seventh collection are concerned with why and how we ascribe value, where it resides and how it survives. Mancunia is – like More’s Utopia – both a no-place and an attempt at the good-place. It is occupied, liberated, abandoned and rebuilt. Capacious, disturbing and shape-shifting, these are poems for our changing times.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49596873933073,"sku":"GOR008520892","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737148367121,"sku":"NGR9781911214298","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51868898165009,"sku":"GOR008770531","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53500809576721,"sku":"GOR009349231","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1911214292.jpg?v=1751156200"},{"product_id":"patrick-s-alphabet-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224075961","title":"Patrick's Alphabet","description":"When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. Sligo is missing, and a manhunt begins, but the letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene. When the other letters of the alphabet start appearing in sequence all over town, each immaculately painted in red, a seemingly random act of violence appears to be part of a bigger and more terrifying picture. For the town's inhabitants, it feels like the beginning of a new age of terror, with Adam Sligo still on the loose. What do the letters mean? Is he playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town? One man, Perry Scholes, is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio so that he can get to the car-crash or the crime scene before the police. Like his hero Weegee - the original ambulance-chaser photographer - he makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He always gets there first - he was the one to find the old BMW with its young corpses; he is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances. As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia - its inhabitants polarising into a new-age group that gather around a shrine to the murdered couple and a vigilante cult that arm themselves for the battle against evil - Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for Perry. Who is leaving them, and why, is the centre of this dark, disturbing parable of urban anxiety and primitive fear.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49632962281745,"sku":"GOR006434602","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224075969.jpg?v=1750940633"},{"product_id":"breath-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780099497233","title":"Breath","description":"In a country recovering from a brutal and divisive civil war, a young boy, Jamie, is knocked off his bike and dies in a city street. His father agrees to allow one of Jamie's lungs to be removed and flown over the border for a transplant.   As the night unfolds and the plane travels across the war-ravaged country, we see the drama from three different perspectives: the father, grieving for the son he perhaps never knew well enough; the lung's recipient, an old man fighting for breath; and in the turbulent sky between them, the young pilot who is closest to Jamie - or at least to his breath, his spirit, his voice.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49642832331025,"sku":"GOR002218491","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49653818097937,"sku":"GOR012900745","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51696490021137,"sku":"GOR002131948","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099497239.jpg?v=1751428501"},{"product_id":"soft-keys-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224090018","title":"Soft Keys","description":"When Corpus won the Whitbread Poetry Award, the judges described it as 'an outstanding, perfectly weighted collection that inspires meditation on the nature of the soul...reading it feels like making an exciting discovery and coming back to an acknowledged classic all at once.' Michael Symmons Roberts' first book, Soft Keys, was the original and most exciting discovery of all.   The poems in Soft Keys engage in a search for meaning and order in the everyday and in the extraordinary - a locust officer tracking swarms in an African desert, a hobbyist building a replica of the world out of matchsticks, a chance encounter with the French mystic Simone Weil playing video games in a Torquay arcade... Richly inventive, and written in a wide diversity of poetic forms, Soft Keys looks for those places and moments where the curtain between earth and heaven is thinnest; it was a powerful, arresting debut and the beginning of a remarkable career.   As Les Murray said at the time: 'Like Nijinsky, he can leap into the air and stay there. You can reach up and feel the thump of the stage finely persisting in an ankle bone. Roberts is a poet for the new, chastened, unenforcing age of faith that has just dawned.'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49657688391953,"sku":"GOR003884116","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224090011.jpg?v=1751070101"},{"product_id":"raising-sparks-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224059022","title":"Raising Sparks","description":"After his first collection - SOFT KEYS - Michael Symmons Roberts was hailed by Les Murray as 'a poet for the new, chastened, unenforcing age of faith that has just dawned'. The metaphysical concerns of that first book are central to this new collection, written in a language at once philosophical, sensuous and lyrical. From a doctor who washes lungs to the structure of genes, from mythical hounds born to fire to a cat's-eye souvenir from a smashed-up road, the scope of this collection is impressive. Whatever the subject, these poems are concerned with elemental themes, with the mapping of experience, and the search for sparks of life at its heart. At the heart of RAISING SPARKS are two sequences - 'Smithereens' and 'Quickenings' - which form part of a continuing collaboration with the composer James MacMillan; the former set as a song cycle and the latter as amajor choral piece. These sequences - alongside intamate lyrics and dramatic meditations on creation, redemption and the end of time - show a poet of enormous range and depth.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51430641467665,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51430641664273,"sku":"GOR007059636","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51478798369041,"sku":"GOR003951835","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0224059025.jpg?v=1751456292"},{"product_id":"quartet-for-the-end-of-time-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781787331853","title":"Quartet for the End of Time","description":"'This is a rich, lively, profound book' ROWAN WILLIAMS  A personal reckoning with grief, doubt, faith and poetry set to one of the most celebrated musical works of the twentieth century, from the award-winning poet and librettist.   The story goes like this: on a freezing winter night in 1941, a new piece of chamber music was performed to a crowd of prisoners of war on a three-stringed cello, clarinet, violin and pub piano with sticky keys. It was the premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps.   Listeners since then have been captivated by the ecstatic music and mythology of Messiaen’s masterpiece. Michael Symmons Roberts’ own lifelong fascination with the Quartet– having chanced upon it in a record shop in his late teens and fallen in love with its title - leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power. His fascination – at times frustration – with Messiaen’s vision opens into an exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it. Interwoven with poetry and wit, this book is an expansive evocation of music, loss, hope and time, seen through the lens of the Quartet's technicolour, apocalyptic vision.  Quartet for the End of Time is a moving, intimate and unforgettable book, attentive to ways of listening – in our noisy world – to birdsong, music, poems and radio silence, and to the call and response that we may find.  'A properly engrossing exploration of music, place, religion and what it is to be human' SARAH TARLOW, author of The Archaeology of Loss","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51606291054865,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51606291218705,"sku":"NGR9781787331853","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51869036052753,"sku":"GOR014436849","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52615367393553,"sku":"NLS9781787331853","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52658570002705,"sku":"GOR014578420","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1787331857.jpg?v=1769685487"},{"product_id":"quartet-for-the-end-of-time-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781529967173","title":"Quartet for the End of Time","description":"‘Wonderful’ Spectator  ‘This is a remarkable book’ TLS  A personal reckoning with grief, doubt, faith and poetry set to one of the most celebrated musical works of the twentieth century, from the award-winning poet and librettist.   Strange, ecstatic and apocalyptic – listeners of Olivier Messiaen’s masterpiece, Quartet for the End of Time, have been captivated by its music and mythology since the first extraordinary performance in a prisoner of war camp in 1941.  After discovering his music by chance as a teenager, Michael Symmons Roberts’s own fascination with the Quartet leads him on a quest to understand its enigmatic power.  What follows is a moving, unforgettable exploration of grief, of personal faith and doubt, of the end of time and what may lie beyond it.  ‘A rich, lively, profound book' Rowan Williams  ‘An outstanding writer’ Sunday Times","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51631143780625,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51631143944465,"sku":"NGR9781529967173","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53241036570897,"sku":"NLS9781529967173","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53405752426769,"sku":"GOR014908650","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1529967171.jpg?v=1776335530"},{"product_id":"burning-babylon-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780224061858","title":"Burning Babylon","description":"In his first two collections - Soft Keys and Raising Sparks - Michael Symmons Roberts established himself as a lyric and dramatic poet with metaphysical concerns. In this new collection, those concerns are as strong as ever, but rooted in a specific place and time. These poems describe the personal and public rise and fall of Greenham Common. The public story, as one of the most contentious missile bases of the cold war, ended with fences removed, buildings demolished, the base returned to common land. The private history emerges from the poet's own experience, as an adolescent living a mile away from Greenham Common at the height of its powers. That third community of locals - not the USAF or the peace camps - is finally given a voice in Burning Babylon. This is war poetry, but from an undeclared war in which battle lines were unclear, secrecy was an obsession, and threat was the chief weapon. At the heart of it all was that real and mythic gated city - the base - which was both a key part of the poet's childhood landscape, and the prime nuclear target in Britain. This image of a huge, occult and lethal power latent behind wire in the middle of England has haunted the minds of a generation - just as the poems in this book will resonate long after it is laid aside.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52153355305233,"sku":"GOR005779763","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53234402722065,"sku":"GOR002352262","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780224061858.jpg?v=1757619858"},{"product_id":"dog-star-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9781787336032","title":"Dog Star","description":"An inviting and poignant new collection exploring our increasingly turbulent relationship with nature, from award-winning poet Michael Symmons Roberts  'I love Michael Symmons Roberts' poetry' Jeanette Winterson  'An existential wrestle between body and soul ... sure-footed' Guardian, Best New Poetry  Dog Star is a book of linked poems rooted in encounters with real, imagined or mythical birds, trees, fish, flowers, bacteria, chimeras – ancient connections reshaped by technological and political change and critically endangered by species and habitat loss.  His poems are always attentive to glimpses of grace and presence, but always embodied and grounded. In this new book, that attention is sharper and more urgent than ever, at a time when the essential spiritual relationship between humanity and other forms of life is broken or lost.  Some encounters in Dog Star are head-on, face-to-face, some are more slant, distant, missed connections. There’s an elegiac sequence for the poet’s mother with each step measured in animals, an extended riff on the world as an aquarium and our lives seen through water – creatures dead and living, met in the flesh or mediated via film or stories. This is a profound, remarkable book by one of our major poets.  'The clearest and purest voice currently sounding in British poetry' Carol Ann Duffy  'An outstanding writer' Sunday Times","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52496978280721,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52496978673937,"sku":"NGR9781787336032","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781787336032.jpg?v=1769680704"},{"product_id":"miracles-of-jesus-book-michael-symmons-roberts-9780801012921","title":"The Miracles of Jesus","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53267123863825,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53267124453649,"sku":"CIN0801012929G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780801012921.jpg?v=1773944321"},{"product_id":"quartet-for-the-end-of-time-on-music-grief-and-birdsong-rare-book-michael-symmons-roberts-1771485913iev","title":"Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief and Birdsong","description":"2025. 1st Printing. 283 pages. 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